martyred armenia by fà'iz el-ghusein bedouin notable of damascus translated from the original arabic all rights of translation reserved new york george h. doran company mcmxviii foreword i am a bedouin, a son of one of the heads of the tribe of el-sulût, who dwell in el-lejât, in the haurân territory. like other sons of tribal chiefs, i entered the tribal school at constantinople, and subsequently the royal college. on the completion of my education, i was attached to the staff of the vali of syria (or damascus), on which i remained for a long while. i was then kaimakâm of mamouret-el-azîz (kharpout), holding this post for three and a half years, after which i practised as a lawyer at damascus, my partners being shukri bey el-asli and abdul-wahhâb bey el-inglîzi. i next became a member of the general assembly at that place, representing haurân, and later a member of the committee of that assembly. on the outbreak of the war, i was ordered to resume my previous career, that is, the duties of kaimakâm, but i did not comply, as i found the practice of the law more advantageous in many ways and more tranquil. i was denounced by an informer as being a delegate of a society constituted in the lebanon with the object of achieving the independence of the arab people, under the protection of england and france, and of inciting the tribes against the turkish government. on receipt of this denunciation, i was arrested by the government, thrown into prison, and subsequently sent in chains, with a company of police and gendarmes, to aalîya, where persons accused of political offences were tried. i was acquitted, but as the government disregarded the decisions given in such cases, and was resolved on the removal and destruction of all enlightened arabs--whatever the circumstances might be--it was thought necessary that i should be despatched to erzeroum, and jemâl pasha sent me thither with an officer and five of the regular troops. when i reached diarbekir, hasan kaleh, at erzeroum, was being pressed by the russians, and the vali of diarbekir was ordered to detain me at that place. after twenty-two days' confinement in prison for no reason, i was released; i hired a house and remained at diarbekir for six and a half months, seeing and hearing from the most reliable sources all that took place in regard to the armenians, the majority of my informants being superior officers and officials, or notables of diarbekir and its dependencies, as well as others from van, bitlis, mamouret-el-azîz, aleppo and erzeroum. the people of van had been in diarbekir since the occupation of their territory by the russians, whilst the people and officials of bitlis had recently emigrated thither. many of the erzeroum officers came to diarbekir on military or private business, whilst mamouret-el-azîz was near by, and many people came to us from thence. as i had formerly been a kaimakâm in that vilayet, i had a large acquaintance there and heard all the news. more especially, the time which i passed in prison with the heads of the tribes in diarbekir enabled me to study the movement in its smallest details. the war must needs come to an end after a while, and it will then be plain to readers of this book that all i have written is the truth, and that it contains only a small part of the atrocities committed by the turks against the hapless armenian people. after passing this time at diarbekir i fled, both to escape from captivity and from fear induced by what had befallen me from some of the fanatical turks. after great sufferings, during which i was often exposed to death and slaughter, i reached basra, and conceived the idea of publishing this book, as a service to the cause of truth and of a people oppressed by the turks, and also, as i have stated at the close, to defend the faith of islam against the charge of fanaticism which will be brought against it by europeans. may god guide us in the right way. _i have written this preface at bombay, on the 1st of september, 1916._ fà'iz el-ghusein. martyred armenia the narrative outline of armenian history.--in past ages the armenian race was, like other nations, not possessed of an autonomous government, until god bestowed upon them a man, named haig, a bold leader, who united the armenians and formed them into an independent state. this took place before the christian era. the nation preserved their independence for a considerable time, reaching the highest point of their glory and prosperity under their king dikrân, who constituted the city of dikrânokerta--diarbekir--the capital of his government. armenia remained independent in the time of the romans, extending her rule over a part of asia minor and syria, and a portion of persia, but, in consequence of the protection afforded by the armenians to certain kings who were hostile to rome, the romans declared war against her, their troops entered her capital, and from that time armenian independence was lost. the country remained tossing on the waves of despotism, now independent, now subjected to foreign rule, until its conquest by the arabs and subsequently by the ottoman power. the armenian population.--the number of the armenians in ottoman territory does not exceed 1,900,000 souls. i have borrowed this figure from a book by a turkish writer, who states that it is the official computation made by the government previous to the balkan war; he estimates the armenians residing in roumelia at 400,000, those in ottoman asia at 1,500,000. the armenians in russia and persia are said not to exceed 3,000,000, thus bringing the total number of armenians in the world to over four and a half millions. the vilayets inhabited by armenians.--the vilayets inhabited by armenians are diarbekir, van, bitlis, erzeroum, mamouret-el-azîz, sivas, adana, aleppo, trebizond, broussa, and constantinople. the numbers in van, bitlis, adana, diarbekir, erzeroum, and kharpout were greater than those in the other vilayets, but in all cases they were fewer than the turks and kurds, with the exception of van and bitlis, where they were equal or superior in number. in the province of moush (vilayet of bitlis) they were more numerous than the kurds; all industry and commerce in those parts was in armenian hands; their agriculture was more prosperous; they were much more advanced than the turks and kurds in those vilayets; and the large number of their schools, contrasted with the few schools of their alien fellow countrymen, is a proof of their progress and of the decline of the other races. armenian societies.--the armenians possess learned and political societies, the most important of which are the "tashnagtziân" and the "hunchak." the programme of these two societies is to make every effort and adopt every means to attain that end from which no armenian ever swerves, namely, administrative independence under the supervision of the great powers of europe. i have enquired of many armenians whom i have met, but i have not found one who said that he desired political independence, the reason being that in most of the vilayets which they inhabit the armenians are less numerous than the kurds, and if they became independent the advantage to the kurds would be greater than to themselves. hitherto, the kurds have been in a very degraded state of ignorance; disorder is supreme in their territory, and the cities are in ruins. the armenians, therefore, prefer to remain under turkish rule, on condition that the administration is carried on under the supervision of the great european powers, as they place no confidence in the promises of the turks, who take back to-day what they bestowed yesterday. these two societies thus earnestly labour for the propagation of this view amongst the armenians, and for the attainment of their object by every means. i have been told by an armenian officer that one of these societies proposes to attain its end by means of internal revolts, but the policy of the second is to do so by peaceful means only. the above is a brief summary of the policy of these societies. it is said, however, that the programme of one of them aims at armenian political independence. any who desire further details as to armenian history or societies should refer to their historical books. the armenian massacres.--history does not record that the kurds, fellow-countrymen of the armenians in the vilayets inhabited by both peoples, rose in conflict with the latter, or that the kurds plundered the property of the armenians, or outraged their women, until the year 1888, when they rose by order of the turkish government and slaughtered armenians in van, kharpout, erzeroum, and moush. again, in the time of abdul-hamîd ii., in 1896, when the armenians rose and entered the ottoman bank at constantinople, with the object of frightening the sultan and compelling him to proclaim the constitution, he ordered a massacre at constantinople and in the vilayets. but hitherto there has been no instance of the people of turkey proceeding to the slaughter of armenians on a general scale unless incited and constrained to do so by the government. in the massacre of 1896, 15,000 were killed in constantinople itself, and 300,000 in the vilayets. armenians were also killed in the vilayet of adana, some months after the proclamation of the constitution, but this slaughter did not extend beyond the two vilayets of adana and aleppo, where the influence of abdul-hamîd was paramount till the year 1909. i do not, however, find any detailed account of this massacre, or any information as to the numbers killed. the goods and cattle of the armenians were plundered, and their houses wrecked, more especially in the slaughter of 1896, but many of their countrymen[a] protected them and concealed them in their houses from the officials of the government. the government consistently inflamed the moslem kurds and turks against them, making use of the faith of islam as a means to attain their object in view of the ignorance of the mohammedans as to the true laws of their religion. [footnote a: presumably amongst the turks and kurds.--translator.] declaration of the ottoman government.--"inasmuch as the armenians are committing acts opposed to the laws and taking advantage of all occasions to disturb the government; as they have been found in possession of prohibited arms, bombs, and explosive materials, prepared with the object of internal revolt; as they have killed moslems in van, and have aided the russian armies at a time when the government is in a state of war with england, france, and russia; and in the apprehension that the armenians may, as is their habit, lend themselves to seditious tumult and revolt; the government have decreed that all the armenians shall be collected and despatched to the vilayets of mosul, syria, and deir-el-zûr, their persons, goods and honour being safeguarded. the necessary orders have been given for ensuring their comfort, and for their residence in those territories until the termination of the war." such is the official declaration of the ottoman government in regard to the armenians. but the secret resolution was that companies of militia should be formed to assist the gendarmes in the slaughter of the armenians, that these should be killed to the last man, and that the work of murder and destruction should take place under the supervision of trusty agents of the unionists, who were known for their brutality. reshîd bey was appointed to the vilayet of diarbekir and invested with extensive powers, having at his disposal a gang of notorious murderers, such as ahmed bey el-serzi, rushdi bey, khalîl bey, and others of this description. the reason for this decision, as it was alleged, was that the armenians residing in europe and in egypt had sent twenty of their devoted partisans to kill talaat, enver, and others of the unionist leaders; the attempt had failed, as a certain armenian, a traitor to his nation and a friend of bedri bey, the chief of the public security at constantinople (or according to others, azmi bey), divulged the matter and indicated the armenian agents, who had arrived at constantinople. the latter were arrested and executed, but secretly, in order that it might not be said that there were men attempting to kill the heads of the unionist society. another alleged reason also was that certain armenians, whom the government had collected from the vilayets of aleppo and adrianople and had sent off to complete their military service, fled, with their arms, to zeitoun, where they assembled, to the number of sixty young men, and commenced to resist the government and to attack wayfarers. the government despatched a military force under fakhry pasha, who proceeded to the spot, destroyed a part of zeitoun, and killed men, women and children, without encountering opposition on the part of the armenians. he collected the men and women and sent them off with parties of troops, who killed many of the men, whilst as for the women, do not ask what was their fate. they were delivered over to the ottoman soldiery; the children died of hunger and thirst; not a man or woman reached syria except the halt and blind, who were unable to keep themselves alive; the young men were all slaughtered; and the good-looking women fell into the hands of the turkish youths. emigrants from roumelia were conveyed to zeitoun and established there, the name of that place being changed to "reshadîya," so that nothing should remain to remind the turks of the armenian name. during our journey from hamah we saw many armenian men and women, sitting under small tents which they had constructed from sheets, rugs, etc. their condition was most pitiable, and how could it be otherwise? many of these had been used to sit only on easy chairs [lit., rocking-chairs], amid luxurious furniture, in houses built in the best style, well arranged and splendidly furnished. i saw, as others saw also, many armenian men and women in goods-wagons on the railway between aleppo and hamah, herded together in a way which moved compassion. after my arrival at aleppo, and two days' stay there, we took the train to a place called ser-arab-pounâri. i was accompanied by five armenians, closely guarded, and despatched to diarbekir. we walked on our feet thence to serûj, where we stopped at a _khân_ [rest-house] filled with armenian women and children, with a few sick men. these women were in a deplorable state, as they had done the journey from erzeroum on foot, taking a long while to arrive at serûj. i talked with them in turkish, and they told me that the gendarmes with them had brought them to places where there was no water, refusing to tell them where water was to be found until they had received money as the price. some of them, who were pregnant, had given birth on the way, and had abandoned their infants in the uninhabited wastes. most of these women had left their children behind, either in despair, or owing to illness or weakness which made them unable to carry them, so they threw them on the ground; some from natural affection could not do this and so perished in the desert, not parted from their infants. they told me that there were some among them who had not been used to walk for a single hour, having been brought up in luxury, with men to wait on them and women to attend them. these had fallen into the hands of the kurds, who recognize no divine law, and who live on lofty mountains and in dense forests like beasts of prey; their honour was outraged and they died by brutal violence, many of them killing themselves rather than sacrifice their virtue to these ravening wolves. we then proceeded in carts from serûj to el-raha (urfa). on the way i saw crowds going on foot, whom from a distance i took for troops marching to the field of battle. on approaching, i found they were armenian women, walking barefoot and weary, placed in ranks like the gendarmes who preceded and followed them. whenever one of them lagged behind, a gendarme would beat her with the butt of his rifle, throwing her on her face, till she rose terrified and rejoined her companions. but if one lagged from sickness, she was either abandoned, alone in the wilderness, without help or comfort, to be a prey to wild beasts, or a gendarme ended her life by a bullet. on arrival at urfa, we learned that the government had sent a force of gendarmes and police to the armenian quarters of the town to collect their arms, subsequently dealing with these people as with others. as they were aware of what had happened to their kinsmen--the _khâns_ at urfa being full of women and children--they did not give up their arms, but showed armed resistance, killing one man of the police and three gendarmes. the authorities of urfa applied for a force from aleppo, and by order of jemâl pasha--the executioner of syria--fakhry pasha came with cannon. he turned the armenian quarters into a waste place, killing the men and the children, and great numbers of the women, except such as yielded themselves to share the fate of their sisters--expulsion on foot to deir-el-zûr, after the pasha and his officers had selected the prettiest amongst them. disease was raging among them; they were outraged by the turks and kurds; and hunger and thirst completed their extermination. after leaving urfa, we again saw throngs of women, exhausted by fatigue and misery, dying of hunger and thirst, and we saw the bodies of the dead lying by the roadside. on our arrival at a place near a village called kara jevren, about six hours distant from urfa, we stopped at a spring to breakfast and drink. i went a little apart, towards the source, and came upon a most appalling spectacle. a woman, partly unclothed, was lying prone, her chemise disordered and red with blood, with four bullet-wounds in her breast. i could not restrain myself, but wept bitterly. as i drew out a handkerchief to wipe away my tears, and looked round to see whether any of my companions had observed me, i saw a child not more than eight years old, lying on his face, his head cloven by an axe. this made my grief the more vehement, but my companions cut short my lamentations, for i heard the officer, aarif effendi, calling to the priest isaac, and saying, "come here at once," and i knew that he had seen something which had startled him. i went towards him, and what did i behold? three children lying in the water, in terror of their lives from the kurds, who had stripped them of their clothes and tortured them in various ways, their mother near by, moaning with pain and hunger. she told us her story, saying that she was from erzeroum, and had been brought by the troops to this place with many other women after a journey of many days. after they had been plundered of money and clothing, and the prettiest women had been picked out and handed over to the kurds, they reached this place, where kurdish men and women collected and robbed them of all the clothes that remained on them. she herself had stayed here, as she was sick and her children would not leave her. the kurds came upon them again and left them naked. the children had lain in the water in their terror, and she was at the point of death. the priest collected some articles of clothing and gave them to the woman and the children; the officer sent a man to the post of gendarmes which was near by, and ordered the gendarme whom the man brought with him to send on the woman and children to urfa, and to bury the bodies which were near the guardhouse. the sick woman told me that the dead woman refused to yield herself to outrage, so they killed her and she died nobly, chaste and pure from defilement; to induce her to yield they killed her son beside her, but she was firm in her resolve and died heart-broken. in the afternoon we went on towards kara jevren, and one of the drivers pointed out to us some high mounds, surrounded by stones and rocks, saying that here zohrâb and vartakis had been killed, they having been leading notables among the armenians, and their deputies. krikôr zohrâb and vartakis.--no one is ignorant of who and what was zohrâb, the armenian deputy for constantinople, his name and repute being celebrated after the institution of the chamber. he used to speak with learning and reflection, refuting objections by powerful arguments and convincing proofs. his speeches in the chamber were mostly conclusive. he was learned in all subjects, but especially in the science of law, as he was a graduate of universities and had practised at the bar for many years. he was endowed with eloquence and great powers of exposition; he was courageous, not to be turned from his purpose or intimidated from pursuing his national aims. when the unionists realised that they were deficient in knowledge, understanding nothing about polity or administration, and not aware of the meaning of liberty or constitutional government, they resolved to return to the system of their tartar forefathers, the devastation of cities and the slaughter of innocent men, as it was in that direction that their powers lay. they sent zohrâb and his colleague vartakis away from constantinople, with orders that they should be killed on the way, and it was announced that they had been murdered by a band of brigands. they killed them in order that it might not be said that armenians were more powerful, more learned, and more intelligent than turks. why should such bands murder none but armenians? the falsity of the statement is obvious. zohrâb and vartakis fell victims to their own courage and firmness of purpose; they were killed out of envy of their learning and their love for their own people, and for their tenacity in pursuing their own path. they were killed by that villain, ahmed el-serzi, one of the sworn men of the unionists, he who murdered zeki bey; his story in the ottoman upheaval is well known, and how the unionists saved him from his fitting punishment and even from prison. a kurd told me that vartakis was one of the boldest and most courageous men who ever lived; he was chief of the armenian bands in the time of abdul-hamîd; he was wounded in the foot by a cannon-ball whilst the turkish troops were pursuing these bands, and was imprisoned either at erzeroum or at maaden, in the vilayet of diarbekir. the sultan abdul-hamîd, through his officials, charged him to modify his attitude and acknowledge that he had been in error, when he should be pardoned and appointed to any post he might choose. he rejected this offer, saying, "i will not sell my conscience for a post, or say that the government of abdul-hamîd is just, whilst i see its tyranny with my eyes and touch it with my hand." it is said that the unionists ordered that all the armenian deputies should be put to death, and the greater number of them were thus dealt with. it is reported also that dikrân gilikiân, the well-known writer, who was an adherent of the committee of union and progress, was killed in return for his learning, capacity, and devotion to their cause. such was the recompense of his services to the unionists. in the evening we arrived at kara jevren, and slept there till morning. at sunrise we went on towards sivrek, and half-way on the road we saw a terrible spectacle. the corpses of the killed were lying in great numbers on both sides of the road; here we saw a woman outstretched on the ground, her body half veiled by her long hair; there, women lying on their faces, the dried blood blackening their delicate forms; there again, the corpses of men, parched to the semblance of charcoal by the heat of the sun. as we approached sivrek, the corpses became more numerous, the bodies of children being in a great majority. as we arrived at sivrek and left our carts, we saw one of the servants of the _khân_ carrying a little infant with hair as yellow as gold, whom he threw behind the house. we asked him about it, and he said that there were three sick armenian women in the house, who had lagged behind their companions, that one of them had given birth to this infant, but could not nourish it, owing to her illness. so it had died and been thrown out, as one might throw out a mouse. demand for ransom.--whilst we were at sivrek, aarif effendi told me--after he had been at the government offices--that the commandant of gendarmerie and the chief of police of that place had requested him to hand over to them the five armenians who were with him, and that on his refusal they had insisted, saying that, if they were to reach diarbekir in safety, they must pay a ransom of fifty liras for themselves. we went to the _khân_, where the officer summoned the priest isaac and told him how matters stood. after speaking to his companions, the priest replied that they could pay only ten liras altogether, as they had no more in their possession. when convinced by his words, the officer took the ten liras and undertook to satisfy the others. this officer had a dispute with the commandant of gendarmerie at aleppo, the latter desiring to take these five men on the grounds that they had been sent with a gendarme for delivery to his office. ahmed bey, the chief of the irregular band at urfa, also desired to take them, but the officer refused to give them up to him--he being a member of the committee of union and progress--and brought them in safety to diarbekir. after passing the night at sivrek we left early in the morning. as we approached diarbekir the corpses became more numerous, and on our route we met companies of women going to sivrek under guard of gendarmes, weary and wretched, the traces of tears and misery plain on their faces--a plight to bring tears of blood from stones, and move the compassion of beasts of prey. what, in god's name, had these women done? had they made war on the turks, or killed even one of them? what was the crime of these hapless creatures, whose sole offence was that they were armenians, skilled in the management of their homes and the training of their children, with no thought beyond the comfort of their husbands and sons, and the fulfilment of their duties towards them. i ask you, o moslems--is this to be counted as a crime? think for a moment. what was the fault of these poor women? was it in their being superior to the turkish women in every respect? even assuming that their men had merited such treatment, is it right that these women should be dealt with in a manner from which wild beasts would recoil? god has said in the koran: "do not load one with another's burthens," that is, let not one be punished for another. what had these weak women done, and what had their infants done? can the men of the turkish government bring forward even a feeble proof to justify their action and to convince the people of islam, who hold that action for unlawful and reject it? no; they can find no word to say before a people whose usages are founded on justice, and their laws on wisdom and reason. is it right that these imposters, who pretend to be the supports of islam and the _khilâfat_, the protectors of the moslems, should transgress the command of god, transgress the koran, the traditions of the prophet, and humanity? truly, they have committed an act at which islam is revolted, as well as all moslems and all the peoples of the earth, be they moslems, christians, jews, or idolators. as god lives, it is a shameful deed, the like of which has not been done by any people counting themselves as civilised. the infant in the waste.--after we had gone a considerable distance we saw a child of not more than four years old, with a fair complexion, blue eyes, and golden hair, with all the indications of luxury and pampering, standing in the sun, motionless and speechless. the officer told the driver to stop the cart, got out alone, and questioned the child, who made no reply, and did not utter a word. the officer said: "if we take this child with us to diarbekir, the authorities will take him from us, and he will share the fate of his people in being killed. it is best that we leave him. perhaps god will move one of the kurds to compassion, that he take him and bring him up." none of us could say anything to him; he entered the cart and we drove on, leaving the child as we found him, without speech, tears, or movement. who knows of what rich man or notable of the armenians he was the son? he had hardly seen the light when he was orphaned by the slaughter of his parents and kinsmen. those who should have carried him were weary of him--for the women were unable to carry even themselves--so they had abandoned him in the waste, far from human habitation. man, who shows kindness to beasts, and forms societies for their protection, can be merciless to his own kind, more especially to infants who can utter no complaint; he leaves them under the heat of the sun, thirsty and famishing, to be devoured by wild creatures. leaving the boy, our hearts burning within us, and full of grief and anguish, we arrived before sunset at a _khân_ some hours distant from diarbekir. there we passed the night, and in the morning we went on amid the mangled forms of the slain. the same sight met our view on every side; a man lying, his breast pierced by a bullet; a woman torn open by lead; a child sleeping his last sleep beside his mother; a girl in the flower of her age, in a posture which told its own story. such was our journey until we arrived at a canal, called kara pounâr, near diarbekir, and here we found a change in the method of murder and savagery. we saw here bodies burned to ashes. god, from whom no secrets are hid, knows how many young men and fair girls, who should have led happy lives together, had been consumed by fire in this ill-omened place. we had expected not to find corpses of the killed near to the walls of diarbekir, but we were mistaken, for we journeyed among the bodies until we entered the city gate. as i was informed by some europeans who returned from armenia after the massacres, the government ordered the burial of all the bodies from the roadside when the matter had become the subject of comment in european newspapers. in prison.--on our arrival at diarbekir the officer handed us over to the authorities and we were thrown into prison, where i remained for twenty-two days. during this time i obtained full information about the movement from one of the prisoners, who was a moslem of diarbekir, and who related to me what had happened to the armenians there. i asked him what was the reason of the affair, why the government had treated them in this way, and whether they had committed any act calling for their complete extermination. he said that, after the declaration of war, the armenians, especially the younger men, had failed to comply with the orders of the government, that most of them had evaded military service by flight, and had formed companies which they called "roof companies." these took money from the wealthy armenians for the purchase of arms, which they did not deliver to the authorities, but sent to their companies, until the leading armenians and notables assembled, went to the government offices, and requested that these men should be punished as they were displeased at their proceedings. i asked whether the armenians had killed any government official, or any turks or kurds in diarbekir. he replied that they had killed no one, but that a few days after the arrival of the vali, reshîd bey, and the commandant of gendarmerie, rushdi bey, prohibited arms had been found in some armenian houses, and also in the church. on the discovery of these arms, the government summoned some of the principal armenians and flung them into prison; the spiritual authorities made repeated representations, asking for the release of these men, but the government, far from complying with the request, imprisoned the ecclesiastics also, the number of notables thus imprisoned amounting to nearly seven hundred. one day the commandant of gendarmerie came and informed them that an imperial order had been issued for their banishment to mosul, where they were to remain until the end of the war. they were rejoiced at this, procured all they required in the way of money, clothes, and furniture, and embarked on the _keleks_ (wooden rafts resting on inflated skins, used by the inhabitants of that region for travelling on the euphrates and tigris) to proceed to mosul. after a while it was understood that they had all been drowned in the tigris, and that none of them had reached mosul. the authorities continued to send off and kill the armenians, family by family, men, women and children, the first families sent from diarbekir being those of kazaziân, tirpanjiân, minassiân, and kechijiân, who were the wealthiest families in the place. among the 700 individuals was a bishop named--as far as i recollect--homandriâs; he was the armenian catholic bishop, a venerable and learned old man of about eighty; they showed no respect to his white beard, but drowned him in the tigris. megerditch, the bishop-delegate of diarbekir, was also among the 700 imprisoned. when he saw what was happening to his people he could not endure the disgrace and shame of prison, so he poured petroleum over himself and set it on fire. a moslem, who was imprisoned for having written a letter to this bishop three years before the events, told me that he was a man of great courage and learning, devoted to his people, with no fear of death, but unable to submit to oppression and humiliation. some of the imprisoned kurds attacked the armenians in the gaol itself, and killed two or three of them out of greed for their money and clothing, but nothing was done to bring them to account. the government left only a very small number of armenians in diarbekir, these being such as were skilled in making boots and similar articles for the army. nineteen individuals had remained in the prison, where i saw and talked with them; these, according to the pretence of the authorities, were armenian bravoes. the last family deported from diarbekir was that of dunjiân, about november, 1915. this family was protected by certain notables of the place, from desire for their money, or the beauty of some of their women. dikrân.--this man was a member of the central committee of the tashnagtziân society in diarbekir. an official of that place, who belonged to the society of union and progress, told me that the authorities seized dikrân and demanded from him the names of his associates. he refused, and said that he could not give the names until the committee had met and decided whether or not it was proper to furnish this information to the government. he was subjected to varieties of torture, such as putting his feet in irons till they swelled and he could not walk, plucking out his nails and eyelashes with a cruel instrument, etc., but he would not say a word, nor give the name of one of his associates. he was deported with the others and died nobly out of love for his nation, preferring death to the betrayal of the secrets of his brave people to the government. aghôb kaitanjiân.--aghôb kaitanjiân was one of the armenians imprisoned on the charge of being bravoes of the armenian society in diarbekir, and in whose possession explosive material had been found. i often talked to him, and i asked him to tell me his story. he said that one day, whilst he was sitting in his house, a police agent knocked at the door and told him that the chief of police wished to see him at his office. he went there, and some of the police asked him about the armenian society and its bravoes. he replied that he knew nothing of either societies or bravoes. he was then bastinadoed and tortured in various ways for several days till he despaired of life, preferring death to a continuance of degradation. he had a knife with him, and when they aggravated the torture so that he could endure it no longer, he asked them to let him go to the latrine and on his return he would tell them all he knew about the armenian matter. with the help of the police he went, and cut the arteries of his wrists[b] ... with the object of committing suicide. the blood gushed out freely; he got to the door of the police-office and there fainted. they poured water on his face and he recovered consciousness; he was brought before the officer and the interrogatory was renewed.[b] ... the chief of police was confounded at this proceeding and sent him to the hospital until he was cured. i saw the wounds on his hands, and they were completely healed. this was the story as he told it to me himself. he desired me to publish it in an armenian newspaper called _häyrenîk_ (fatherland), which appears in america, in order that it may be read by his brother garabet, now in that country, who had been convinced that the government would leave none of them alive. i associated freely with the young armenians who were imprisoned, and we talked much of these acts, the like of which, as happening to a nation such as theirs, have never been heard of, nor recorded in the history of past ages. these youths were sent for trial by the court-martial at kharpout, and i heard that they arrived there safely and asked permission to embrace the moslem faith. this was to escape from contemptuous treatment by the kurds, and not from the fear of death, as their conversion would not save them from the penalty if they were shown to deserve it. before their departure they asked me what i had heard about them, and whether the authorities purposed to kill them on the way or not. after enquiring about this, and ascertaining that they would not be killed in this way, i informed them accordingly; they were rejoiced, saying that all they desired was to remain alive to see the results of the war. they said that the armenians deserved the treatment which they had received, as they would never see the necessity for taking precautions against the turks, believing that the constitutional turkish government would never proceed to measures of this kind without valid reason. the government has perpetrated these deeds although no official, kurd, turk, or moslem, has been killed by an armenian, and we know not what the weighty reasons may have been which impelled them to so unprecedented a measure. and if the armenians should not be reproached with a negligence for which they have paid dearly, yet a people who do not take full precautions are liable to be taxed justly with blameworthy carelessness. [footnote b: episodes in the original are here omitted.--translator.] my travelling-companions.--from time to time i visited the men who had been in my company during the journey, but after my release the director of the prison would not permit me to go to them. i used, therefore, to ask for one of them and talk with him outside the prison in which the armenians were confined. after a while i enquired for them and was told that they had been sent to execution, like others before them, and at this i cried out in dismay. one day i saw a gendarme who had been imprisoned with us for a short time on the charge of having stolen articles from the effects of dead armenians, and as he knew my companions i asked him about them. he said that he had killed the priest isaac with his own hand, and that the gendarmes had laid wagers in firing at his clerical headdress. "i made the best shooting, hit the hat and knocked it off his head, finishing him with a second ball." my answer was silence. the man firmly believed that these murders were necessary, the sultan having so ordered. the sale of letters.--when the government first commenced the deportation of the 700 men, the officials were instructed to prepare letters, signed with the names of the former, and to send them to the families of the banished individuals in order to mislead them, as it was feared that the armenians might take some action which would defeat the plan and divulge the secret to the other armenians, thus rendering their extermination impracticable. the unhappy families gave large sums to those who brought them letters from their head. the government appointed a kurd, a noted brigand, as officer of the militia, ordering him to slaughter the armenians and deliver the letters at their destination. when the government was secure as to the armenians, a man was despatched to kill the kurd, whose name was aami hassi, or hassi aami. slaughter of the protestant, chaldean, and syriac communities.--the slaughter was general throughout these communities, not a single protestant remaining in diarbekir. eighty families of the syriac community were exterminated, with a part of the chaldeans, in diarbekir, and in its dependencies, none escaped save those in madiât and mardîn. when latterly orders were given that only armenians were to be killed, and that those belonging to other communities should not be touched, the government held their hand from the destruction of the latter. the syriacs.--but the syriacs in the province of madiât were brave men, braver than all the other tribes in these regions. when they heard what had fallen upon their brethren at diarbekir and the vicinity they assembled, fortified themselves in three villages near madiât, and made a heroic resistance, showing a courage beyond description. the government sent against them two companies of regulars, besides a company of gendarmes which had been despatched thither previously; the kurdish tribes assembled against them, but without result, and thus they protected their lives, honour, and possessions from the tyranny of this oppressive government. an imperial irâdeh was issued, granting them pardon, but they placed no reliance on it and did not surrender, for past experience had shown them that this is the most false government on the face of the earth, taking back to-day what it gave yesterday, and punishing to-day with most cruel penalties him whom it had previously pardoned. conversation between a postal contractor from bitlis and a friend of mine, as we were sitting at a café in diarbekir: contractor: i see many armenians in diarbekir. how comes it that they are still here? my friend: these are not armenians, but syriacs and chaldeans. contractor: the government of bitlis has not left a single christian in that vilayet, nor in the district of moush. if a doctor told a sick man that the remedy for his disease was the heart of a christian he would not find one though he searched through the whole vilayet. protection afforded by kurds to armenians on payment.--the armenians were confined in the main ward of the prison at diarbekir, and from time to time i visited them. one day, on waking from sleep, i went to see them in their ward and found them collecting rice, flour and moneys. i asked them the reason of this, and they said: "what are we to do? if we do not collect a quantity every week and give it to the kurds, they insult and beat us, so we give these things to some of them so that they may protect us from the outrages of their fellows." i exclaimed, "there is no power nor might but in god," and went back grieving over their lot. despatch of the armenians to the slaughter.--this was a most shocking proceeding, appalling in its atrocity. one of the gendarmes in diarbekir related to me how it was done. he said that, when orders were given for the removal and destruction of a family, an official went to the house, counted the members of the family, and delivered them to the commandant of militia or one of the officers of gendarmerie. men were posted to keep guard over the house and its occupants during the night until 8 o'clock, thereby giving notice to the wretched family that they must prepare for death. the women shrieked and wailed, anguish and despair showed on the faces of all, and they died even before death came upon them.[c] ... after 8 o'clock waggons arrived and conveyed the families to a place near by, where they were killed by rifle fire, or massacred like sheep with knives, daggers, and axes. [footnote c: a few sentences of immaterial description are here omitted.--translator.] sale of armenian effects, and removal of crosses from the churches.--after the armenians had been destroyed, all the furniture of their houses, their linen, effects, and implements of all kinds, as well as all the contents of their shops and storehouses, were collected in the churches or other large buildings. the authorities appointed committees for the sale of these goods, which were disposed of at the lowest price, as might be the case with the effects of those who died a natural death, but with this difference, that the money realised went to the treasury of the turkish government, instead of to the heirs of the deceased. you might see a carpet, worth thirty pounds, sold for five, a man's costume, worth four pounds, sold for two medjidies, and so on with the rest of the articles, this being especially the case with musical instruments, such as pianos, etc., which had no value at all. all money and valuables were collected by the commandant of gendarmerie and the vali, reshîd bey, the latter taking them with him when he went to constantinople, and delivering them to talaat bey.[d] ... the mind is confounded by the reflection that this people of armenia, this brave race who astonished the world by their courage, resolution, progress and knowledge, who yesterday were the most powerful and most highly cultivated of the ottoman peoples, have become merely a memory, as though they had never flourished. their learned books are waste paper, used to wrap up cheese or dates, and i was told that one high official had bought thirty volumes of french literature for 50 piastres. their schools are closed, after being thronged with pupils. such is the evil end of the armenian race: let it be a warning to those peoples who are striving for freedom, and let them understand that freedom is not to be achieved but by the shedding of blood, and that words are the stock-in-trade of the weak alone. i observed that the crosses had been removed from the lofty steeples of the churches, which are used as storehouses and markets for the keeping and sale of the effects of the dead. [footnote d: some remarks in this connection are omitted.--translator.] methods of slaughter.--these were of various kinds. an officer told me that in the vilayet of bitlis the authorities collected the armenians in barns full of straw (or chaff), piling up straw in front of the door and setting it on fire, so that the armenians inside perished in the smoke. he said that sometimes hundreds were put together in one barn. other modes of killing were also employed (at bitlis). he told me, to my deep sorrow, how he had seen a girl hold her lover in her embrace, and so enter the barn to meet her death without a tremor. at moush, a part were killed in straw-barns, but the greater number by shooting or stabbing with knives, the government hiring butchers, who received a turkish pound each day as wages. a doctor, named azîz bey, told me that when he was at marzifûn, in the vilayet of sivas, he heard that a caravan of armenians was being sent to execution. he went to the kaimakâm and said to him: "you know i am a doctor, and there is no difference between doctors and butchers, as doctors are mostly occupied in cutting up mankind. and as the duties of a kaimakâm at this time are also like our own--cutting up human bodies--i beg you to let me see this surgical operation myself." permission was given, and the doctor went. he found four butchers, each with a long knife; the gendarmes divided the armenians into parties of ten, and sent them up to the butchers one by one. the butcher told the armenian to stretch out his neck; he did so, and was slaughtered like a sheep. the doctor was amazed at their steadfastness in presence of death, not saying a word, or showing any sign of fear. the gendarmes used also to bind the women and children and throw them down from a very lofty eminence, so that they reached the ground shattered to pieces. this place is said to be between diarbekir and mardîn, and the bones of the slain are there in heaps to this day. another informant told me that the diarbekir authorities had killed the armenians either by shooting, by the butchers, or at times by putting numbers of them in wells and caves, which were blocked up so that they perished. also they threw them into the tigris and the euphrates, and the bodies caused an epidemic of typhus fever. two thousand armenians were slaughtered at a place outside the walls of diarbekir, between the castle of sultan murad and the tigris, and at not more than half an hour's distance from the city. brutality of the gendarmes and kurdish tribes.--there is no doubt that what is related as to the proceedings of the gendarmes and the kurdish tribes actually took place. on receiving a caravan of armenians the gendarmes searched them one by one, men and women, taking any money they might find, and stripping them of the better portions of their clothing. when they were satisfied that there remained no money, good clothes, or other things of value, they sold the armenians in thousands to the kurds, on the stipulation that none should be left alive. the price was in accordance with the number of the party; i was told by a reliable informant of cases where the price had varied between 2,000 and 200 liras. after purchasing the caravans, the kurds stripped all the armenians, men and women, of their clothes, so that they remained entirely naked. they then shot them down, every one, after which they cut open their stomachs to search for money amongst the entrails, also cutting up the clothing, boots, etc., with the same object. such were the dealings of the official gendarmerie and the kurds with their fellow-creatures. the reason of the sale of the parties by the gendarmes was to save themselves trouble, and to obtain delivery of further parties to plunder of their money. woe to him who had teeth of gold, or gold-plated. the gendarmes and kurds used to violently draw out his teeth before arriving at the place of execution, thus inflicting tortures before actual death. a kurdish agha slaughters 50,000 armenians.--a kurd told me that the authorities of kharpout handed over to one of the kurdish aghas in that vilayet, in three batches, more than 50,000 armenians from erzeroum, trebizond, sivas, and constantinople, with orders to kill them and to divide with themselves the property which he might take from them. he killed them all and took from them their money and other belongings. he hired 600 mules for the women, to convey them to urfa, at the rate of three liras a head. after receiving the price, he collected mules belonging to his tribe, mounted the women on them, and brought them to a place between malatîya and urfa, where he killed them in the most barbarous way, taking all their money, clothes, and valuables. the violation of women before or after death.--[e] ... [footnote e: i refrain from particulars. the gendarmes and kurds are stated to have been the perpetrators of these acts.--translator.] incident of the sheikh and the girl.--i said above that the armenian women were sent off in batches under guard of gendarmes. whenever they passed by a village the inhabitants would come and choose any they desired, taking them away and giving a small sum to the gendarmes. at one place a kurd of over 60 picked out a beautiful girl of 16. she refused to have anything to do with him, but said she was ready to embrace islam and marry a youth of her own age. this the kurds would not allow, but gave her the choice between death and the sheikh; she still refused, and was killed. barsoum agha.--whilst i was kaimakâm of the district of kiakhta, in the vilayet of kharpout, i was acquainted with an armenian notable of that place, named barsoum agha. he was a worthy and courageous man, dealing well with kurds, turks, and armenians, without distinction; he also showed much kindness to officials who were dismissed from their posts in the district. all the kurdish aghas thereabouts kept close watch over him, hating him because he was their rival in the supremacy of the place. when, after my banishment, i arrived at sivrek and heard what had befallen the armenians, i enquired about him and his family. i was told that when the government disposed of the armenians of kiakhta he was summoned and ordered to produce the records of moneys owing to him (kurds and armenians in that district owed him a sum of 10,000 liras); he replied that he had torn up the records and released his debtors from their obligations. he was taken away with the other armenians, and on arrival at the euphrates he asked permission to drown himself. this was granted, and he endeavoured to do so, but failed, as he could not master himself. so he said to the gendarmes, "life is dear and i cannot kill myself, so do as you have been ordered," whereupon one of them shot him and then killed the rest of the family. narrative of a young turk.--this youth, who had come to diarbekir as a schoolmaster, told me that the government had informed the armenians of broussa that their deportation had been decided, and that they were to leave for mosul, syria, or el-deir three days after receiving the order. after selling what they could, they hired carts and carriages for the transport of their goods and themselves and started--as they thought--for their destination. on their arrival at a very rugged and barren place, far distant from any villages, the drivers, in conformity with their instructions, broke up the conveyances and left the people in the waste, returning in the night to plunder them. many died there of hunger and terror; a great part were killed on the road; and only a few reached syria or el-deir. children perishing of hunger and thirst.--an arab of el-jezîra, who accompanied me on my flight from diarbekir, told me that he had gone with a sheikh of his tribe, men and camels, to buy grain from the sons of ibrahim pasha el-mellili. on their way they saw 17 children, the eldest not more than 13 years old, dying of hunger and thirst. the arab said: "we had with us a small water-skin and a little food. when the sheikh saw them he wept with pity, and gave them food and water with his own hands; but what good could this small supply do to them? we reflected that if we took them with us to the pasha, they would be killed, as the kurds were killing all armenians by order of the authorities; and our arabs were at five days' distance from the place. so we had no choice but to leave them to the mercy of god, and on our return, a week later, we found them all dead." narrative of a provincial governor.--we were talking of the courage and good qualities of the armenians, and the governor of the place, who was with us, told us a singular story. he said: "according to orders, i collected all the remaining armenians, consisting of 17 women and some children, amongst whom was a child of 3 years old, diseased, who had never been able to walk. when the butchers began slaughtering the women and the turn of the child's mother came, he rose up on his feet and ran for a space, then falling down. we were astonished at this, and at his understanding that his mother was to be killed. a gendarme went and took hold of him, and laid him dead on his dead mother." he also said that he had seen one of these women eating a piece of bread as she went up to the butcher, another smoking a cigarette, and that it was as though they cared nothing for death. narrative of shevket bey.--shevket bey, one of the officials charged with the extermination of the armenians, told me, in company with others, the following story: "i was proceeding with a party, and when we had arrived outside the walls of diarbekir and were beginning to shoot down the armenians, a kurd came up to me, kissed my hand, and begged me to give him a girl of about ten years old. i stopped the firing and sent a gendarme to bring the girl to me. when she came i pointed out a spot to her and said, 'sit there. i have given you to this man, and you will be saved from death.' after a while, i saw that she had thrown herself amongst the dead armenians, so i ordered the gendarmes to cease firing and bring her up. i said to her, 'i have had pity on you and brought you out from among the others to spare your life. why do you throw yourself with them? go with this man and he will bring you up like a daughter.' she said: 'i am the daughter of an armenian; my parents and kinsfolk are killed among these; i will have no others in their place, and i do not wish to live any longer without them.' then she cried and lamented; i tried hard to persuade her, but she would not listen, so i let her go her way. she left me joyfully, put herself between her father and mother, who were at the last gasp, and she was killed there." and he added: "if such was the behaviour of the children, what was that of their elders?" price of armenian women.--a reliable informant from deir-el-zûr told me that one of the officials of that place had bought from the gendarmes three girls for a quarter of a medjidie dollar each. another man told me that he had bought a very beautiful girl for one lira, and i heard that among the tribes armenian women were sold like pieces of old furniture, at low prices, varying from one to ten liras, or from one to five sheep.[f] ... [footnote f: an unimportant anecdote omitted.--translator.] the mutesarrif and the armenian girl.--on the arrival of a batch of armenians at deir-el-zûr from ras-el-ain, the mutesarrif desired to choose a servant-girl from amongst the women. his eye fell on a handsome girl, and he went up to her, but on his approach she turned white and was about to fall. he told her not to be afraid, and ordered his servant to take her to his house. on returning thither he asked the reason for her terror of him, and she told him that she and her mother had been sent from ras-el-ain in charge of a circassian gendarme, many other armenian women being with them. on the way, the gendarme called her mother, and told her to give him her money, or he would kill her; she said she had none, so he tortured her till she gave him six liras.[g] ... he said to her: "you liar! you [armenians] never cease lying. you have seen what has befallen, and will befall, all armenians, but you will not take warning, so i shall make you an example to all who see you." then he cut off her hands with his dagger, one after the other, then both her feet, all in sight of her daughter, whom he then took aside and violated, whilst her mother, in a dying state, witnessed the act. "and when i saw you approach me, i remembered my mother's fate and dreaded you, thinking that you would treat me as the gendarme treated my mother and myself, before each other's eyes."[h] ... [footnote g: unfit for reproduction.--translator.] [footnote h: unimportant anecdote omitted.--translator.] "the reward of hard labour."--the turks had collected all those of military age and dispersed amongst the battalions to perform their army service. when the government determined on the deportation and destruction of the armenians--as stated in their official declaration--orders were given for the formation of separate battalions of armenians, to be employed on roads and municipal works. the battalions were formed and sent to the roads and other kinds of hard labour. they were employed in this manner for eight months, when the severity of winter set in. the government, being then unable to make further use of them, despatched them to diarbekir. before their arrival, the officers telegraphed that the armenian troops were on their way, and the authorities sent gendarmes, well furnished with cartridges, to meet the poor wretches. the gendarmes received them with rifle-fire, and 840 men perished in this manner, shot close to the city of diarbekir. a caravan of women.--[i] ... [footnote i: unimportant. the writer describes the inhabitants of diarbekir, on the arrival of a party, as hastening to select women. two doctors pick out twenty of them to serve as hospital attendants.--translator.] a night's shelter for fifty pounds.--the man who showed the greatest capacity for exterminating armenians was reshîd bey, the vali of diarbekir. i have already stated how many were killed in his vilayet. when news of his removal arrived, the remaining armenians, and the christians generally rejoiced, and shortly after the report was current some armenians, who had hidden themselves, came out from their concealment and walked about the city. the vali, who was anxious to keep his removal secret and to inspire terror, began deporting armenians with still greater energy, and those who had come out returned to their hiding-places. one of the principal men of diarbekir stated that one armenian had paid fifty turkish pounds to an inhabitant for shelter in his house during the night before the vali's departure, and another told me that a man had received an offer of three pounds for each night until the same event, but had refused from fear of the authorities. chastity of the armenian women.--[j] ... an arab of the akidât told me that he was going along the bank of the euphrates when he saw some of the town rabble stripping two women of their clothes. he expostulated and told them to restore the clothes, but they paid no attention. the women begged for mercy, and finding it unavailing they threw themselves into the river, preferring death to dishonour. he told me also of another woman who had a suckling child, and begged food from the passers-by, who were in too great fear of the authorities to help her. on the third day of starvation, finding no relief, she left the baby in the market of el-deir and drowned herself in the euphrates. in this way do they show high qualities, honour, and courage such as many men do not possess. [footnote j: an official relates how he wanted to choose a servant from a boatload of victims, who said they were willing to come as servants, but as nothing else. he took one, and on coming home one night drunk he tried to offer her violence; she reproved him in suitable terms and he conducted himself well thenceforward.--translator.] women-servants in diarbekir.--you cannot enter a house in diarbekir without finding from one to five armenian maid-servants, even the humblest shopkeepers having one, who probably in the lifetime of her parents would not have condescended to speak a word to the master whom she now has to serve in order to save her life. it is stated that the number of such women and girls in the city is over 5,000, mostly from erzeroum, kharpout and other vilayets. narrative of shahîn bey.--shahîn bey, a man of diarbekir, who was in prison with me, told me that a number of armenian men and women were delivered to him for slaughter, he being a soldier. he said: "whilst we were on the way, i saw an armenian girl whom i knew, and who was very beautiful. i called her by name, and said 'come, i will save you, and you shall marry a young man of your country, a turk or a kurd.' she refused, and said: 'if you wish to do me a kindness i will ask one thing which you may do for me.' i told her i would do whatever she wished, and she said: 'i have a brother, younger than myself, here amongst these people. i pray you to kill him before you kill me, so that in dying i may not be anxious in mind about him.' she pointed him out and i called him. when he came, she said to him, 'my brother, farewell. i kiss you for the last time, but we shall meet, if it be god's will, in the next world, and he will soon avenge us for what we have suffered.' they kissed each other, and the boy delivered himself to me. i must needs obey my orders, so i struck him one blow with an axe, split his skull, and he fell dead. then she said: 'i thank you with all my heart, and shall ask you one more favour'; she put her hands over her eyes and said: 'strike as you struck my brother, one blow, and do not torture me.' so i struck one blow and killed her, and to this day i grieve over her beauty and youth, and her wonderful courage." photographs of armenians lying in the road, dressed in turbans, for despatch to constantinople. the turkish government thought that european nations might get to hear of the destruction of the armenians and publish the news abroad so as to excite prejudice against the turks. so after the gendarmes had killed a number of armenian men, they put on them turbans and brought kurdish women to weep and lament over them, saying that the armenians had killed their men. they also brought a photographer to photograph the bodies and the weeping women, so that at a future time they might be able to convince europe that it was the armenians who had attacked the kurds and killed them, that the kurdish tribes had risen against them in revenge, and that the turkish government had had no part in the matter. but the secret of these proceedings was not hidden from men of intelligence, and after all this had been done, the truth became known and was spread abroad in diarbekir. conversion of armenian women to islam.--when the government undertook the extermination of the armenians some of the women went to the mufti and the kadi, and declared their desire to embrace the mohammedan faith. these authorities accepted their conversion, and they were married to men of diarbekir, either turks or kurds. after a while, the government began to collect these women, so the mufti and the kadi went to the vali and said that the women in question were no longer armenians, having become mussulmans, and that by the sacred law the killing of mussulman women was not permissible. the vali replied: "these women are vipers, who will bite us in time to come; do not oppose the government in this matter, for politics have no religion, and the government know what they are about." the mufti and the kadi went back as they had come, and the women were sent to death. after the removal of the vali--in consequence, as it was said, of abuses in connection with the sale of effects left in armenian houses and shops--orders arrived that the conversion of any who desired to enter islam should be accepted, be they men or women. many of the armenians who remained, of both sexes, hastened to embrace the faith in the hope of saving their lives, but after a time they were despatched likewise and their islamism did not save them. the germans and the armenians.--whenever the talk fell on the armenians i used to blame the turks for their proceedings, but one day when we were discussing the question, an official of diarbekir, who was one of the fanatical young turk nationalists, said: "the turks are not to blame in this matter, for the germans were the first to apply this treatment to the poles, who were under their rule. and the germans have compelled the turks to take this course, saying that if they did not kill the armenians there would be no alliance with them, and thus turkey had no choice." this is what the turk said, word for word. and it was confirmed by what i heard from a turk who was imprisoned with me at aalîya, on the charge of corresponding with abdul-kerîm el-khalîl. he said that when passing through damascus he had visited the german vice-consul there, who had told him confidentially that oppenheim had come on a special mission, which was to incite jemâl pasha to persecute the arabs, with a view to causing hatred between the two races, by which the germans might profit in future if differences arose between them and the turks. this was a short time previous to the execution of abdul-kerîm. the killing of the two kaimakâms.--when the government at diarbekir gave orders to the officials to kill the armenians, a native of baghdad was kaimakâm of el-beshîri, in that vilayet, and an albanian was kaimakâm of lîjeh. these two telegraphed to the vilayet that their consciences would not permit them to do such work, and that they resigned their posts. their resignations were accepted, but they were both secretly assassinated. i investigated this matter carefully, and ascertained that the name of the baghdad arab was sabat bey el-sueidi, but i could not learn that of the albanian, which i much regret, as they performed a noble act for which they should be commemorated in history....[k] [footnote k: the writer here describes how a turkish judge (kâdi), to whom the office of kaimakâm was entrusted after the murder of sabat bey, boasted in conversation that he had killed four armenians with his own hand. "they were brave men," he said, "having no fear of death."--translator.] an armenian betrays his nation.--[l] ... [footnote l: the author tells the story of an armenian of diarbekir who gave information to the police against his own people, disclosing their hiding places. he saw him walking about the streets with an insolent demeanor, giving himself the airs of a person of great importance. he considers that such a traitor to his nation deserves the worst form of death.--translator.] the sultan's order.--whilst i was in prison, a turkish commissioner of police used to come to see a friend of his, who was also imprisoned. one day when i and this friend were together, the commissioner came, and, in the course of conversation about the armenians and their fate, he described to us how he had slaughtered them, and how a number had taken refuge in a cave outside the city, and he had brought them out and killed two of them himself. his friend said to him: "have you no fear of god? whence have you the right to take life in defiance of god's law?" he replied: "it was the sultan's order; the sultan's order is the order of god, and its fulfilment is a duty." armenian death statistics.--at the end of august, 1915, i was visited in prison by one of my diarbekir colleagues, who was an intimate friend of one of those charged with the conduct of the armenian massacres. we spoke of the armenian question, and he told me that, in diarbekir alone, 570,000 had been destroyed, these being people from other vilayets as well as those belonging to diarbekir itself. if to this we add those killed in the following months, amounting to about 50,000; and those in the vilayets of bitlis and van and the province of moush, approximately 230,000; and those who perished in erzeroum, kharpout, sivas, stamboul, trebizond, adana, broussa, urfa, zeitoun, and aintab--estimated at upwards of 350,000--we arrive at a total of armenians killed, or dead from disease, hunger, or thirst, of 1,200,000. there remain 300,000 armenians in the vilayet of aleppo, in syria, and deir-el-zûr (those deported thither), and in america and egypt and elsewhere; and 400,000 in roumelian territory, held by the balkan states, thus making a grand total of 1,900,000. the above is what i was able to learn as to the statistics of the slaughtered armenians, and i would quote an extract from _el-mokattam_, dealing with this subject: "the basle correspondent of the _temps_ states that, according to official reports received from aleppo in the beginning of 1916, there were 492,000 deported armenians in the districts of mosul, diarbekir, aleppo, damascus, and deir-el-zûr. the turkish minister of the interior, talaat bey, estimates the number of deportees at 800,000, and states that 300,000 of these have been removed or have died in the last few months. "another calculation gives the number of deported armenians as 1,200,000 souls, and states that at least 500,000 have been killed or have died in banishment" (_el-mokattam_, may 30th, 1916). the armenians and the arab tribes.--as i approached diarbekir, i passed through many arab tribes, with whom i saw a number of armenians, men and women, who were being well treated, although the government had let the tribes know that the killing of armenians was a bounden duty. i did not hear of a single instance of an armenian being murdered or outraged by a tribesman, but i heard that some arabs, passing by a well into which men and women had been thrown, drew them out when at the last extremity, took them with them, and tended them till they were recovered. the arab and the armenian beggar woman.--[m] ... [footnote m: the narrative concludes with the relation of an instance of courageous charity on the part of a baghdad soldier to an armenian woman begging in the streets of diarbekir.--translator.] conclusion if the turkish government were asked the reasons for which the armenian men, women, and children were killed, and their honour and property placed at any man's mercy, they would reply that this people have murdered moslems in the vilayet of van, and that there have been found in their possession prohibited arms, explosive bombs, and indications of steps towards the formation of an armenian state, such as flags and the like, all pointing to the fact that this race has not turned from its evil ways, but on the first opportunity will kill the moslems, rise in revolt, and invoke the help of russia, the enemy of turkey, against its rulers. that is what the turkish government would say. i have followed the matter from its source. i have enquired from inhabitants and officials of van, who were in diarbekir, whether any moslem had been killed by armenians in the town of van, or in the districts of the vilayet. they answered in the negative, saying that the government had ordered the population to quit the town before the arrival of the russians and before anyone was killed; but that the armenians had been summoned to give up their arms and had not done so, dreading an attack by the kurds, and dreading the government also; the government had further demanded that the principal notables and leading men should be given up to them as hostages, but the armenians had not complied. all this took place during the approach of the russians towards the city of van. as to the adjacent districts, the authorities collected the armenians and drove them into the interior, where they were all slaughtered, no government official or private man, turk or kurd, having been killed. as regards diarbekir, you have read the whole story in this book, and no insignificant event took place there, let alone murders or breaches of the peace, which could lead the turkish government to deal with the armenians in this atrocious manner. at constantinople, we hear of no murder or other unlawful act committed by the armenians, except the unauthenticated story about the twenty bravoes, to which i have already referred. they have not done the least wrong in the vilayets of kharpout, trebizond, sivas, adana, or bitlis, nor in the province of moush. i have related the episode at zeitoun, which was unimportant, and that at urfa, where they acted in self-defence, seeing what had befallen their people, and preferring death to surrender. as to their preparations, the flags, bombs and the like, even assuming there to be some truth in the statement, it does not justify the annihilation of the whole people, men and women, old men and children, in a way which revolts all humanity and more especially islam and the whole body of moslems, as those unacquainted with the true facts might impute these deeds to mohammedan fanaticism. to such as assert this it will suffice to point out the murders and oppressive acts committed by the young turks against islam in syria and mesopotamia. in syria they have hanged the leading men of enlightenment, without fault on their part, such as shukri bey el-asli, abdul-wahhâb bey el-inglîzi, selîm bey el-jezairi, emir omar el-husseini, abdul-ghani el-arîsi, shefîk bey el-moweyyad, rushdi bey el-shamaa, abdul-hamîd el-zahrâwi, abdul-kerîm el-khalîl, emir aarif el-shehâbi, sheikh ahmed hasan tabâra, and more than thirty leading men of this class. i have published this pamphlet in order to refute beforehand inventions and slanders against the faith of islam and against moslems generally, and i affirm that what the armenians have suffered is to be attributed to the committee of union and progress, who deal with the empire as they please; it has been due to their nationalist fanaticism and their jealousy of the armenians, and to these alone; the faith of islam is guiltless of their deeds. from the foregoing we know that the armenians have committed no acts justifying the turks in inflicting on them this horrible retribution, unprecedented even in the dark ages. what, then, was the reason which impelled the turkish government to kill off a whole people, of whom they used to say that they were their brothers in patriotism, the principal factor in bringing about the downfall of the despotic rule of abdul-hamîd and the introduction of the constitution, loyal to the empire, and fighting side by side with the turks in the balkan war? the turks sanctioned and approved the institution of armenian political societies, which they did not do in the case of other nationalities. what is the reason of this sudden change of attitude? it is that, previous to the proclamation of the constitution, the unionists hated despotic rule; they preached equality, and inspired the people with hatred of the despotism of abdul-hamîd. but as soon as they had themselves seized the reins of authority, and tasted the sweets of power, they found that despotism was the best means to confirm themselves in ease and prosperity, and to limit to the turks alone the rule over the ottoman peoples. on considering these peoples, they found that the armenian race was the only one which would resent their despotism, and fight against it as they previously fought against abdul-hamîd. they perceived also that the armenians excelled all the other races in arts and industries, that they were more advanced in learning and societies, and that after a while the greater part of the officers of the army would be armenians. they were confounded at this, and dreaded what might ensue, for they knew their own weakness and that they could not rival the armenians in the way of learning and progress. annihilation seemed to them to be the sole means of deliverance; they found their opportunity in a time of war, and they proceeded to this atrocious deed, which they carried out with every circumstance of brutality--a deed which is contrary to the law of islam, as is shown by many precepts and historical instances.[n] ... in view of this, how can the turkish government be justified at the present time in killing off an entire people, who have always paid their dues of every kind to the ottoman state, and have never rebelled against it? even if we suppose the armenian men to have been deserving of death, what was the offence of the women and children? and what will be the punishment of those who killed them wrongfully and consumed the innocent with fire? i am of opinion that the mohammedan peoples are now under the necessity of defending themselves, for unless europeans are made acquainted with the true facts they will regard this deed as a black stain on the history of islam, which ages will not efface. from the verses, traditions, and historical instances, it is abundantly clear that the action of the turkish government has been in complete contradiction to the principles of the faith of islam; a government which professes to be the protector of islam, and claims to hold the _khilâfat_, cannot act in opposition to moslem law; and a government which does so act is not an islamic government, and has no rightful pretension to be such. it is incumbent on the moslems to declare themselves guiltless of such a government, and not to render obedience to those who trample under foot the verses of the koran and the traditions of the prophet, and shed the innocent blood of women, old men and infants, who have done no wrong. otherwise they make themselves accomplices in this crime, which stands unequalled in history. in conclusion, i would address myself to the powers of europe, and say that it is they themselves who have encouraged the turkish government to this deed, for they were aware of the evil administration of that government, and its barbarous proceedings on many occasions in the past, but did not check it. _completed at bombay on the 3rd september, 1916._ fà'iz el-ghusein. [footnote n: fà'iz el-ghusein here gives a list of citations from the koran, the traditions, and from moslem history in support of this view.--translator.] _important books of the day_ the crime _by a german. author of "i accuse!"_ an arraignment in even more cogent form than "i accuse!" of the rulers and governments of germany and austria. two vols. 8vo. vol. i. net, $2.50 the great crime and its moral _by j. selden willmore_ a volume which is an invaluable library. an illuminating summary of the immense documentary literature of the war. 8vo. net, $2.00 belgium in war time _by commandant de gerlache de gomery_ translated from the french edition by bernard miall the authoritative book essential to an understanding of the history, the position and the sufferings of the country that will not die, the title of the norwegian and swedish editions of this famous work set up under fire. illustrations, maps and facsimiles. 8vo. net, $2.00 the battle of the somme _by john buchan_ "mr. buchan's account is a clear and brilliant presentation of the whole vast manoeuver and its tactical and strategic development through all four stages."--springfield republican. illustrated. 12mo. net, $1.50 the land of deepening shadow _by d. thomas curtin_ revealing the germany of fact in place of the germany of tradition; telling the truth about germany-in-the-third-year-of-the-war. 12mo. net, $1.50 i accuse! 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https://archive.org/details/whyarmeniashould00pasduoft why armenia should be free armenia's rôle in the present war [illustration: dr. g. pasdermadjian (armen garo)] why armenia should be free armenia's rôle in the present war by dr. g. pasdermadjian (armen garo) ex-deputy from erzeroum in the ottoman parliament former commander of the second battalion of the armenian volunteers on the caucasian front representative in america of armenian national council of the caucasus. with an introduction by george nasmyth, ph. d. former president of the central committee of the international federation of students secretary of the massachusetts joint committee for a league of free nations illustrated boston hairenik publishing company 1918. written at washington, d. c., october, 1918. all rights reserved published, december, 1918 the blanchard printing co. boston massachusetts. to those who were martyred and to those who died on the field of battle for the liberation of armenia contents _page_ introduction 1 translator's preface 5 turkish and russian proposals to the armenians in 1914 15 military services rendered by the armenians on the caucasian front 18 armenian resistance to the turkish massacres 24 attitude of russian czarism toward the armenians 28 rôle played by the armenians in the caucasus after the russian collapse 34 armenia's co-operation with the allies on other fronts 41 conclusion 42 introduction armenia has become a touchstone of victory in the great war for freedom and humanity. if armenia is granted national independence it will mean that in the making of the peace treaty the forces of democracy and human progress have triumphed over the forces of imperialism and short-sighted reaction. it will mean that in the future the rights of the small nations are to be recognized as well as those of the great. it will mean that international justice is to be the foundation of the new world order. the triumph of the principle that is involved will mean that the war has been won because its moral aims have been achieved. but if the armenians were to be thrust back under the yoke of turkey, it would mean that injustice, massacre and atrocity are to be permanent features of the world of the future. it would mean that the justice-loving nations of the world will prepare for inevitable conflicts that are to come. it would mean that the war which was fought to end war has been lost. national independence for armenia will mean that the old order of secret intrigue and orthodox diplomacy has given way to a new order of open democratic diplomacy, based on the self-determination of nations and the principles of international justice. it will mean that the peace which ends this war will be a democratic peace, a peace of the peoples, a peace that will last. it will mean that imperialistic aims, secret treaties and selfish greedy interests have given way before the conception of a world organized for righteousness and permanent peace. national independence for armenia will mean that the balance of power, which has always considered the subject nations of turkey as mere pawns in a diplomatic game, has been replaced by a league of free nations opening the way towards a world federation and the parliament of man. it will mean that the old chaos of international anarchy is to be replaced by a new world order in which peoples and nations shall be free to live their own lives, to speak their own language, to worship in their own religion and to develop their own civilization, in the fullest friendship and democratic co-operation with the other free nations of mankind. national independence for armenia is a touchstone of victory because it will mean that mankind has come to recognize that there is a moral law in the world, which applies to nations as well as to individuals. it will mean the overthrow of imperialism, militarism and the philosophy of force. it will mean an invaluable extension of the principle of democracy in the world. it will mean that the way will be open to develop the great highway between europe and asia amid political conditions of a stable and durable peace. it will mean that mankind can proceed to cultivate again the valleys of the tigris and the euphrates and that once more after centuries of desolation this region will become one of the garden spots of the earth. what should be the boundaries of the new armenian nation? i have before me stanford's linguistic map of europe, a map based upon the most careful scientific research and conscientious scholarship. this map shows the area in which the armenian speaking population is dominant as extending to adana and alexandretta on the mediterranean, almost to the black sea near trebizond, to tiflis in the caucasus mountains and to lake urmia near the western boundary of persia on the east. at the edges this armenian territory shades over into regions occupied by turks and kurds. in the interest of international justice and permanent peace in the future, the boundaries of the new armenia ought to be extended as far as the armenian race extends as an important element of the population, because the armenians have proved their capacity for self-government even under the almost impossible conditions of turkish misrule, while turks and kurds have again and again proved incapable of governing themselves, much less of governing others. the hope for toleration of racial minorities, which is the indispensable condition for peace in areas of mixed population, would be many times greater in a government by the armenians than in a government by turks and kurds. armenia is a touchstone of victory in this war because, unlike belgium, it lies so far beyond the range of accurate news reports and the limelight of public opinion, that it is likely to be overlooked unless a settlement is approached in a new spirit of international justice. the horrors of the armenian massacres have been so unendurable that many people have had to try to escape from thinking about armenia in order to keep their sanity in the midst of such wholesale horror. but oblivion is no remedy for the problem of armenia and the world of the future will not be safe for democracy or for anything else unless armenia and the problem which it represents is permanently solved in the peace conference. i do not believe that any indemnities or annexations of territories or any imperialistic gain of this war is worth the life of a single american soldier, but i do believe that only by giving armenia its independence, by establishing the principle of international justice, of which armenia is a concrete example, and by creating a league of free nations as the basis of the new world order, will we be enabled to say that the sacrifices of these young men shall not have been in vain. thus armenia becomes the touchstone of victory in this great war for freedom and humanity. george nasmyth. boston, mass. december 12, 1918. translator's preface dr. pasdermadjian, the author of this pamphlet, is a native of erzeroum, and a member of a family which, both in the past and in the present, has been an object of barbarous persecution at the hands of the turks. when the russians in 1829 captured erzeroum for the first time, 96,000 armenians, with the encouragement of the russian government, left that city and the outlying villages with the russian army, and emigrated towards the caucasus, where they founded three new cities, alexandropol, akhalkalak, and akhaltsikh. only 300 armenian families remained in erzeroum, refusing to leave their homes, even in face of the turkish despotism. among these was the pasdermadjian family. in 1872 the turkish government had khatchatour pasdermadjian killed, simply because he was a well-to-do and influential armenian, and, therefore, undesirable. in 1877 during the russo-turkish war, the pasdermadjian family was subjected to the basest kind of persecution by the turkish government, which still owes the pasdermadjians 36,000 turkish _liras_ ($180,000), the value of a quantity of wheat wrested from them by the military authorities. during those same hostilities, taking advantage of the war conditions, the turkish government planned to hang haroutiun pasdermadjian, on the ground that he was in communication with the russian army; but he was saved through the intervention of the british consul. when the russian army occupied erzeroum in 1878, the pasdermadjians naturally gave a very hospitable reception to the two armenian generals, loris melikoff and lazareff. after learning of the family's history, loris melikoff asked haroutiun pasdermadjian to emigrate to the caucasus. he promised to bring the influence of the russian government to bear on turkey and to claim the family's extensive real estate and various sums of money which the turkish government owed them. but haroutiun pasdermadjian refused the kind offer, saying that he could not leave the country which contained his martyred father's grave. when the russians, in accordance with the terms of the berlin treaty, were forced to evacuate erzeroum, the turks came back and began anew to persecute the pasdermadjians in every possible way. in 1890 the armenians of erzeroum made a protest against turkish despotism, and demanded to have the reforms promised in the berlin treaty carried out. the first bullet fired by the turkish soldiers during those disturbances was aimed at haroutiun pasdermadjian; but he was saved through the heroism of a group of young armenians. in the massacres of 1895, the pasdermadjians were again attacked by an armed turkish mob, but were saved from plunder and murder through the stubborn resistance of all the members of the household, including the servants. afterwards, three members of the family, hovhannes, tigrane, and setrak, were imprisoned for a long time as revolutionists. in reality, they were imprisoned simply because they had not allowed themselves to be slaughtered like sheep by the turkish mob. in february, 1915, when the present turkish government began its organized slaughters to eliminate the armenians from the world, the first victim in erzeroum was setrak pasdermadjian, because he was an influential armenian and had had the courage several times to protest against the unlawful acts of the government. the remnants of this numerous and ancient armenian family are now scattered throughout mesopotamia. the author of this booklet, garegin pasdermadjian, is the son of haroutiun pasdermadjian and the grand-son of khatchatour efendi. he was born in 1873, and received his elementary education at the sanasarian college of erzeroum, being one of its first graduates (1891). in 1894 he went to france and studied agriculture in the college at nancy, intending to return and develop the lands belonging to his family according to the modern agricultural methods of europe, and in that way give a practical lesson to the armenian peasants. he had hardly begun his course when the great massacres of 1895 revolutionized the plans of the younger generation of armenian students. out of the 26 young armenians at the university of nancy, four, sarkis srentz, haik thirakian, max zevrouz, and garegin pasdermadjian, left their studies and returned to participate in the effort at vengeance which the armenian revolutionary dashnaktzoutiun (federation) had decided to organize in constantinople. in 1896, garegin pasdermadjian and haik thirakian, under their assumed names of armen garo and hratch respectively, took part in the seizure of the ottoman bank. this european institution, with its 154 inmates and 300 million francs ($60,000,000) of capital, remained in the hands of the armenian revolutionists for fourteen hours as a pledge that the european ambassadors should immediately stop the armenian massacre in constantinople and give assurances that the reforms guaranteed to the armenians in the treaty of berlin should be carried out. on behalf of the six great powers, signatories to the berlin treaty, the chief interpreter of the russian embassy, mr. maximoff, made a gentleman's agreement with the young armenian revolutionists to fulfill their demands. trusting to mr. maximoff's word of honor, the armenians left constantinople. but immediately after their departure, the massacres were resumed with more intensity, while the reforms have remained a dead letter to this day. such were international morals in 1895. after these events garegin pasdermadjian returned to europe to continue his unfinished studies. mr. hanoteau, however, the french foreign minister at that time, would not allow the armenians who had been connected with this affair to remain in france, so young pasdermadjian went to switzerland and studied the natural sciences at the university of geneva. in 1900 he completed his course and received the degree of doctor of science. unable to return to turkish armenia, as was his desire, dr. pasdermadjian went to the caucasus and settled at tiflis in 1901. there he opened the first chemical laboratory, for the purpose of investigating the rich mines of that region. national events, however, prevented him from pursuing his research work. having been a member of the responsible body of the armenian revolutionary dashnaktzoutiun (federation) since 1896, he took part in all the movements which aimed to protect the moral and physical well being of the armenian people from turkish and russian despotism. for example, in 1905, when the caucasian tartars, with the approval of the russian government, began to massacre the armenians in divers parts of the caucasus, dr. pasdermadjian became a member of the committee created by the armenian revolutionary dashnaktzoutiun (federation) to organize defence work among the armenian people. in november of the same year, when the armeno-tartar hostilities began right in tiflis, under the very nose of the russian administration, he was entrusted with the command of the armenian volunteers to protect tiflis and its environs. during the seven-day struggle which took place in the streets of tiflis, 500 armenian volunteers faced nearly 1400 armed tartars, and drove them back with heavy losses. the situation in the caucasus was almost normal, and dr. pasdermadjian and his idealistic colleagues were about to resume their main object,--to carry arms and ammunition from the caucasus to the turkish armenians in order to prepare them for self-defense,--when the turkish revolution came in 1908. the armenians in erzeroum, as well as the party to which he was a member, telegraphed to dr. pasdermadjian and strongly urged him to become their candidate in the coming elections for representative to the ottoman parliament. after seven years of professional studies, dr. pasdermadjian had been able to create for himself in the caucasus a life fairly prosperous financially. he had just secured the right to develop a copper mine, and was about to work it in partnership with a large company. his business required that he should stay in the caucasus to continue his successful enterprise, but he yielded to the moral pressure of his comrades and left his personal affairs to go to constantinople as a deputy from erzeroum. during his four years in constantinople as a deputy, dr. pasdermadjian devoted his entire time to better the economic conditions of the armenian vilayets, and especially worked for the railroad bill, of which he was the real author, but which was known to the public as chester's bill. its main object was to build railroads as soon as possible in those vilayets of armenia which were considered to be russia's future possessions. for that reason neither france nor germany wished to undertake it, lest they should arouse the enmity of russia. another fundamental object was to build those lines with american capital, which would make it possible to counteract the russo-franco-german policies and financial intrigues, for the benefit of the armenian people. but in spite of all his efforts, dr. pasdermadjian was unable to overcome the german opposition in constantinople, although, as the outcome of the struggle in connection with that bill, two ministers of public works were forced to resign their post. both of the ministers were absolute german agents under the name of turkish ministers. it may also be worth mentioning that during his four years at constantinople as a deputy from erzeroum, at three different times, talaat bey (who became the butcher of the armenian people in 1915), on behalf of the "committee of union and progress," offered the portfolio of public works to dr. pasdermadjian, as the most competent man for the post. dr. pasdermadjian, however, refused these proposals, for the simple reason that he did not wish to compromise in any way with the leaders of the turkish government, as long as they continued their chauvinistic and anti-armenian policy. in the parliamentary elections of 1914, the "committee of union and progress" used every means to defeat the election of dr. pasdermadjian in erzeroum. on account of this attitude of the turks, all the armenian inhabitants of the erzeroum vilayet refused to take part in the last elections. this intense opposition of the turks to the candidacy of dr. pasdermadjian was due to the fact that he had taken too active a part in 1913 in the conferences held for the consideration of the armenian reforms, and especially because, while parliamentary elections were going on in turkish armenia during april, 1914, he was in paris and holland, as the delegate of the armenian revolutionary dashnaktzoutiun (federation), to meet the inspectors general who were invited to carry out the reforms in turkish armenia. in the autumn of 1914, a month and a half before the beginning of turco-russian hostilities, dr. pasdermadjian went to the caucasus on a special mission, and joined the committee which had been appointed by the armenian national council of the caucasus to organize the armenian volunteer movement. in november of the same year, when the russo-turkish war had begun, he accompanied the second battalion of the armenian volunteers, as the representative of the executive committee of tiflis, to prepare the local inhabitants of turkish armenia for self-defence, as the russian army was about to advance into the captured territories of that country. on november 14 the second battalion of the armenian volunteers engaged in battle for the first time, near bayazid, with the turkish soldiers and the kurds. in the course of a bloody combat which lasted twenty-four hours, dro, the brave commander of the battalion, was seriously wounded, and dr. pasdermadjian was forced immediately to take his place. from that day to march of the following year, he remained at the head of that battalion, and led it into eleven battles in the neighborhood of alashkert, toutakh, and malashkert, until dro recovered and returned to resume the command. in the summer of 1915, dr. pasdermadjian (again as a representative of the executive committee of tiflis) went to van. he was there when the people migrated en masse to the caucasus (when the russian army was forced to retreat to the old russo-turkish frontiers) and shared their untold hardships. in the spring of 1917, when the russian revolution turned all the defence work of the caucasus up-side down, dr. pasdermadjian, with dr. zavrieff, was sent from the caucasus to petrograd to negotiate with the temporary russian government concerning caucasian affairs. from petrograd he left for america in june of the same year as the representative of the armenian national council of tiflis and as the special envoy of his holiness the catholicos of all the armenians, to lay before the american public and government the sorrows of the armenian people with the view of winning their sympathy and protection for the indisputable rights of armenia. he is still acting in that capacity with all the energy at his command. his last effort has been the preparation of this pamphlet, in which the reader will find a part of these biographical facts under his assumed name of armen garo. a word or two more about this booklet, which has been written in the nick of time. the critical days in the spring of this year are over, and the complete victory of the allies and of the united states has been won. "the day is not very far," in the words of the writer, "when ... the representatives of all the nations of the world,--guilty or just,--are to receive their punishment or reward...." it is the purpose of this pamphlet to demonstrate beyond any shadow of doubt, with most authentic facts, that armenia has fulfilled her duty to the allied cause in full measure (and suffered untold sacrifices in doing so), and, therefore, is entitled to her just claims as an independent armenia. one other purpose the writer had in view in writing this booklet: to make the great and generous american public realize that armenians are not an anaemic and unaggressive people, with no fighting blood in their veins; that the armenians have not been butchered like sheep, but, on the contrary, have fought most bravely and resisted most stubbornly the savage attacks of the turks whenever they had an opportunity. if the translation can possibly convey the spirit of the original, the sustained eloquence and suppressed emotion with which the author pleads the cause of his unfortunate but brave people, should be intensely effective because they are not mere words, but are based on actual, real, undeniable facts, and are the expression of a soul wholly dedicated to a sacred cause. a. t. cambridge, mass. december, 1918. why armenia should be free armenia's rôle in the present war "the interest of the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the strongest." president wilson. new york, sept. 27, 1918. [illustration: a seventy-year old armenian priest leading the volunteers to the battlefield.] why armenia should be free armenia's rôle in the present war in the early days of august, 1914, when civilized nations took up arms against the german aggression, only three of the smaller nations of europe and the near east had the courage, from the very first days of the war, to stand by the allies without any bargaining or dickering, and they still stand at their posts on the ramparts, in spite of the immense sacrifices they have already made. the first member of this heroic triad was brave serbia, which was the first victim of austrian aggression, and whose sons, after four years of heroic struggle, are about to regain their lost native land. the second member was little belgium, whose three weeks of heroic resistance delayed the german advance of 1914 and enabled gallant france to crown with success the historic battle of the marne. the third member of this heroic triad was the armenian people, who for four years and without an organized government or a national army, played the same role in the near east by preventing the turco-german advance toward the interior of asia as the belgians played in the west by arresting the march of germany toward paris. the armenians, however, paid a higher price to the god of war than either the belgians or the serbs. out of four and one-quarter millions of armenians living in turkey and russia at the beginning of the war, scarcely three millions remain at the present time. what were the conditions under which the armenians sided with the allies, and why were they forced to bear so great a sacrifice for their cause? turkish and russian proposals to the armenians in 1914. in the beginning of this world conflagration, in 1914, both the russian and the turkish governments officially appealed to various armenian national organizations with many promises in order to secure the active participation of the armenians in the military operations against each other, the principal stage of which would be armenia itself. both turkey and russia were very anxious to win the co-operation of the armenians, because, judging from their past experience, they were convinced that without such co-operation they would not be able to accomplish the much desired military successes on the armenian plateau. with such aims in view, russia, through count varantzoff dashkoff, informed the armenian national council (then in existence at tiflis) that if the armenians would unreservedly give their support to the russian armies during the course of the war, russia would grant autonomy to the six armenian vilayets. the russian armenians, however, through bitter experience, knew very well what little practical value could be attached to the promises of russian czarism. during the course of the 19th century at three different times the russians had made similar promises to the armenians when they waged war with turkey and persia, and, although the self-sacrificing co-operation of the russian armenians enabled the russians to capture the districts of elizavetpol, erivan and kars in 1806, in 1828, and again in 1878, at the end of these wars their flattering promises to the armenians were promptly forgotten. but this time the armenians thought that russia was not alone; the two great liberal nations of the west, france and england, were her allies. after long and weighty consultation, with their hopes pinned on france and england, the armenians resolved to aid the russian armies in every possible way. while russian diplomacy was in the midst of these diplomatic negotiations at tiflis, during the last days of august, 1914, a turkish mission of twenty-eight members (the object of which was to organize a pan-islamic and a pan-turanian movement among all the races of the near east against russia and her allies) left constantinople for armenia. the leaders of that mission were omar nadji bey, dr. bahaeddin shakir, and lieutenant hilmy, all of them very influential members of the "committee of union and progress." the mission included representatives of all the eastern races, such as the kurds, persians, georgians, chechens, lezgies, circassians, and the caucasian tartars, but not the armenians. during those same days the annual congress of the armenian national organization was in session at erzeroum. in the name of the turkish government the above mentioned mission appealed to the armenian organization with the following proposition: [illustration: armenians of van defending themselves against the turkish and kurdish raids in 1915. the volunteers in their trenches.] "if the armenians,--the turkish as well as the russian armenians--would give active co-operation to the turkish armies, the turkish government under a german guarantee would promise to create after the war an autonomous armenia (made up of russian armenia and the three turkish vilayets of erzeroum, van, and bitlis) under the suzerainty of the ottoman empire." the turkish delegates, in order to persuade the armenians to accept this proposal, informed them also that they (the turks) had already won the co-operation of the georgians and the tartars, as well as the mountaineers of the northern caucasus, and therefore the noncompliance of the armenians under such circumstances would be very stupid and fraught with danger for them on both sides of the boundary between turkey and russia. in spite of these promises and threats, the executive committee of the dashnaktzoutiun (federation) informed the turks that the armenians could not accept the turkish proposal, and on their behalf advised the turks not to participate in the present war, which would be very disastrous to the turks themselves. the armenian members of this parley were the well-known publicist, mr. e. aknouni, the representative from van, mr. a. vramian, and the director of the armenian schools in the district of erzeroum, mr. rostom. of these mr. aknouni and mr. vramian were treacherously killed a few months later for their audacious refusal of the turkish proposals, while mr. rostom luckily escaped the murderous plots against his life. the bold retort of the armenians to the turkish proposal mentioned above, intensely angered the turks, and from that very day the extermination of the armenians was determined upon by the turkish government. and in reality, arrests and persecutions within the armenian vilayets began in the early part of september, 1914, a month and a half before the commencement of the russo-turkish war. the speed of the persecutions gained greater momentum as the months rolled by and tens of villages in different parts of armenia were subjected to fire and sword. in the district of van alone, during february and march of 1915, twenty-four villages were razed to their foundations and their populations put to the sword. early in april of the same year, they attempted the massacre of the inhabitants of the city of van as well, but the armenians took up arms, and, guided by their brave leader, aram, defended their lives and property for a whole month, until the armenian volunteers from erivan with russian soldiers came to the rescue and saved them from the impending doom. this resistance on the part of the inhabitants of van gave the turkish government a pretext to deport in june and july of the same year the entire armenian population of turkish armenia, with the pretended intention of transporting them to mesopotamia, but with the actual determination to exterminate them. out of the million and a half of armenians deported, scarcely 400,000 to 500,000 reached the sandy deserts of syria and mesopotamia, and most of these were women, old men, and children, who were subjected in those desolate regions to the mortal pangs of famine. more than a million defenceless armenians were murdered at the hands of turkish soldiers and turkish mobs. the gang of robbers, headed by talaat and enver, resorted to this fiendish means to eliminate the armenian question once for all, because the armenians had had the courage to oppose their pan-turanian policies. the barbarities of jenghiz khan and tamerlane pale in comparison with the savageries which were perpetrated against the turkish armenians in the summer of 1915 during this wholesale massacre organized by the turkish government. mr. morgenthau, who was the american ambassador at constantinople during those frightful months, has proclaimed all these atrocities by his authentic pen to the civilized nations. this was the price which the armenian people paid within the boundaries of turkey for refusing to aid the turco-german policies. now let us see what positive services from a military point of view this same martyred people rendered to the allied cause on both sides of the turco-russian boundary line. military services rendered by the armenians on the caucasian front in order to have an adequate comprehension of the events which took place on the caucasian front, it would be well to bear in mind that all the peoples of trans-caucasia, including the armenians, felt great enmity toward the government of the czar, whose treatment of them in the past had been very tyrannical and very brutal. for this very reason, the turco-german propaganda had easily won the sympathy of nearly 3,000,000 tartars and 2,000,000 georgians. the dream of the tartars was to join the ottoman turks and re-establish the old great tartar empire, which was to extend from constantinople to samarkant, including all the lands of the caucasus and trans-caspia, while the georgians, through their alliance with the turco-germans, hoped to regain their lost independence in the western caucasus. only the 2,000,000 armenians of the caucasus were not influenced by the turco-german propaganda, although they hated the russian despotism as much as their neighbors. but, on the other hand, having very close acquaintance with the psychology of the turkish race and with their ulterior aspirations, the armenians had the political wisdom and courage to put aside their petty quarrels with russian czarism and throw in their lot with the allied cause. [illustration: armenian volunteers of the caucasus taking the oath of allegiance administered by the church dignitaries before leaving for the battlefield in october, 1914.] these were the circumstances under which the mobilization of 1914 took place in the caucasus. the armenian reservists, about 160,000 in number, gladly responded to the call, for the simple reason that they were to fight the arch enemy of their historic race. besides the regular soldiers, nearly 20,000 volunteers expressed their readiness to take up arms against the turks. the georgians, on the other hand, answered the call very reluctantly, and the armenian-georgian relations were greatly strained from the very beginning. the attitude of the armenians toward the despotic russian government was incomprehensible to the georgians, who thought that, because the armenians sided with russia,--the oppressor of all the caucasian races,--they must be unfriendly to the georgians. many georgian young men crossed the border from batoum, went to trebizond, and prepared bands of volunteers under the leadership of prince abashizé in order to aid the turks. as to the tartars, not being subject to call, they assumed the role of spectators on the one hand, and on the other used every means to arm themselves, impatiently awaiting the arrival of the turks. the great land-owners of the provinces of erivan, elizavetpol, and baku began to accumulate enormous stores, and prepare a huge reserve of sugar and wheat. the price of one rifle, which was 100 rubles ($50), rose to 1500 rubles ($750). through persia, the germans took to the caucasus great sums of money in order to push forward the task of arming the tartars from the very first days of the war. great numbers of young tartars went to persia and joined the turkish armies. and all this was carried on in broad daylight under the very eyes of the short-sighted russian bureaucracy. the russian administration of the caucasus was more concerned with the armenian "danger" and had no time to pay attention to the georgians and the tartars. was it not a fact that officially no georgian or tartar question was placed on the diplomatic table, whereas the armenian question was there? and for that very reason, before the commencement of the russo-turkish hostilities, the second and third army corps of the caucasian army, the majority of which were armenians, were transferred to the german front and were replaced by russian army corps. moreover, out of the 20,000 armenian volunteers who responded to the call, only 7,000 were given arms; the authorities objected that they had no rifles ready, while a few months later the same administration distributed 24,000 rifles to the kurds in persia and in the district of van. it is needless to say that all the armenian officers and generals were transferred to the western front; only one armenian general was left as a specimen on the entire caucasian front, general nazarbekoff, and he was transferred to persia, away from the armenian border. under these trying conditions commenced the russo-turkish war and the armenian-russian co-operation on the caucasian front in the autumn of 1914. but, in spite of this suspicious and crafty attitude assumed by the russian administration, the armenian inhabitants of the caucasus spared nothing in their power for the success of the russian armies. in the three main unsuccessful turkish offensives the battalions of armenian volunteers played a great role. let us now see just what took place during those offensives. [illustration: keri vartan hamazasp commanders of armenian volunteers; keri, of the 4th battalion; hamazasp, of the 3rd battalion, and vartan, of the regiment of ararat.] the first serious turkish offensive took place in the beginning of december, 1914, when enver pasha attempted to reach tiflis by shattering the right wing of the russian army. the turkish "napoleon" was anxious to connect his name with that great victory which seemed certain to his puny brain. and with that very purpose in view he boarded goeben, the german cruiser, and left constantinople, amid great demonstrations. he reached erzeroum in three days, thanks to the german automobiles which were ready for him at different stops between trebizond and the frontier. the offensive was planned with great care, and had great chances of success if all the three wings of the turkish army had reached their objectives on time. enver had under his command three army corps--the ninth, the tenth, and the eleventh. the ninth army corps was to advance toward ardahan by way of olti and from there to march on tiflis by way of akhalkalag, when it should receive word that the tenth army corps had already captured sarikamish and cut off the retreat of the russian army of 60,000 men; while the eleventh army corps was to attack the centre of the russian army near the frontier. the ninth army corps, in three days and without difficulty, reached ardahan, where the local moslem inhabitants assisted it in every possible way. the tenth army corps, during its march from olti to sarikamish, suffered a delay of twenty-four hours in the barduz pass, due to the heroic resistance of the fourth battalion of the armenian volunteers which made up the russian reserve. this delay of twenty-four hours enabled the russians to concentrate a sufficient force around sarikamish (which had been left entirely undefended) and thereby force back the ninth corps of the turkish army. the turks were so certain of the success of their plan that they had no transports with them and no extra supply of provisions. opposite sarikamish, where a battle was waged for three days and three nights, the turks suffered a loss of 30,000 men, mostly due to cold rather than to the russian arms. but if the turkish army corps had reached sarikamish twenty-four hours earlier, as was expected, it would have confronted only one battalion of russian reserves, and that without artillery. this was the invaluable service rendered to the russian army by the fourth battalion of the armenian volunteers under the command of the matchless keri. six hundred armenian veterans fell in the barduz pass, and at such a high price saved the 60,000 russians from being taken prisoners by the turks. this great service of the armenians to the russian army was announced at the time by enver pasha himself, when he returned to constantinople immediately after his defeat. from that time on the government at constantinople laid the blame of its defeat at the door of the armenians, as a preliminary step in its preparation for the execution of its already-planned massacres of the armenian people. after their defeat at sarikamish, the turks attempted in april of 1915 to turn the extreme left wing of the russian army by marching to joulfa through persia, and from there (in case of success) moving on to baku, with the hope that the tartar inhabitants of the eastern caucasus would immediately join them and enable them to cut the only communicating line of railroad of the russians, and thereby force the entire russian army to retreat toward the northern caucasus. the work of the intelligence department of the turks was very well organized, especially as the tartar and georgian officers of the caucasus rendered them invaluable services. the turks knew very well that the russians in persia at that time had only one brigade of russian troops under the command of the armenian general nazarbekoff and one battalion of armenian volunteers scattered throughout salmast and urmia, while their own army was made up of one regular and well-drilled division of troops (sent especially from constantinople) under the command of khalil bey and nearly 10,000 kurds. khalil bey with his superior forces captured the city of urmia in a few hours (taking prisoner nearly a thousand russians) and victoriously marched on salmast. here took place one of the fiercest battles between the armenians and the turks. the first battalion of the armenian volunteers, under the command of the veteran andranik, strongly enforced in its trenches, repulsed the attacks of khalil bey for three days continuously, until the russians, with the newly-arrived forces from the caucasus, were able to put to flight the army of khalil bey. thirty-six hundred turkish soldiers lay dead before the armenian trenches in the course of those three days. in that very month of april, while khalil bey was confidently attempting, as we have seen, to surround the left wing of the russian army in persia, over in van the armenians had taken up arms in self-defence, and for one whole month were fighting another division of turkish troops and thousands of kurds until the first days of may, when three other battalions of armenian volunteers, under the command of general nikolaeff, came to the rescue, riding a distance of 250 kilometers (155 miles)--from erivan to van--in ten days. for one who is acquainted with the local conditions, it is an undisputed fact that if the armenians of van in april, 1915, by their heroic resistance had not kept busy that one division of regular turkish troops and thousands of kurds, and had made it possible for them to join the army of khalil bey, the turks undoubtedly would have been able to crush the russian forces in persia and reach baku in a few weeks, for the simple reason that from the banks of the araxes to baku the russians had no forces at all, while the local tartar inhabitants, armed and ready, were awaiting the coming of the turks before rising en masse to join them. from the very beginning of the war, baku has been the real objective of the turks, just as paris has been the objective of the germans, and that for two reasons: first, as a fountain of wealth, the turks knew very well that the russian government received from the oil wells of baku an annual income of more than 200,000,000 rubles ($100,000,000), a sum which is more than all the revenues of the bankrupt turkish government put together, and they looked upon these financial resources as indispensable for the accomplishment of their plan of a pan-turanian empire; second, because the very plan of their pan-turanism had been introduced in constantinople after 1908 by these very tartars of baku. the commanders of the turkish forces engaged in persia and van--khalil and jevded--understood very well why their plans failed in the month of april, 1915; and that failure is the explanation of those frightful massacres which took place on the plains of bitlis and moush in june of the same year, when the armies of the same khalil and jevded, defeated in persia and van, were forced to retreat under the pressure of the armenian volunteers. [illustration: andranik the commander of the first battalion of armenian volunteers] the third turkish offensive took place early in july, 1915. this time the turks, with all their available forces--eleven divisions of regular troops, again under the command of khalil bey--attacked the very center of the caucasian army. in a few days they re-occupied malashkert, toutakh, and the greater part of the plains of alashkert. during one week the center of the russian army retreated more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) leaving behind the district of van entirely unprotected, and in danger of being surrounded at any moment. if the turks had had one or two more divisions of troops at their service in those days, they would have been able very easily to take prisoners the entire fourth army of the russian left wing and cut off their way of retreat. in order to escape from this dangerous situation, the russian left wing was forced to retreat hastily toward the russian frontier and sent a part of its forces to aid the central army. only at the end of july did the russian army, having received aid from its left wing, and under the leadership of the armenian general nazarbekoff, succeed in forcing back the turks to their former line. these were the conditions under which nearly 150,000 armenian inhabitants of the district of van were compelled to leave all their property at the mercy of the enemy's fire and flee toward erivan. armenian resistance to the turkish massacres it is true that the battalions of armenian volunteers took no active part in the battles of july, for they were then in the district of van and undertaking the heavy duty of rear guard work for the russian army and the armenian refugees. but the turkish armenians behind the front, who were being deported and massacred as early as the month of july, by their heroic resistance, occupied the attention of four turkish divisions and tens of thousands of kurds just at the time when the turks had such great need of those forces to aid them in their july drive. it is worth while, therefore, to point out here that, during the deportations and massacres of 1915, whenever the armenians had any possible means at all of resisting the criminal plans of the turkish government, they took up arms and organized resistance in different parts of armenia. even before the deportations had begun, toward the latter part of 1914, the turkish government cunningly attempted to disarm the zeitunians, the brave armenian mountaineers of cilicia, who had taken up arms against the turkish government at three different times in the nineteenth century, and each time had laid down their arms only on the intervention of the european powers, believing that they would put an end to the turkish barbarities. this time the government filled the prisons with the prominent zeitunians and persuaded the young warriors to surrender, promising to set them free if they did so. after accomplishing its deceitful plan, the government put to death most of the young men, deported the inhabitants, and made the mouhajirs from balkans inhabit zeitun, even changing the name of the place to soulaymania, in order to erase the memory of those brave mountaineers. a group of warriors, however, found means to take up their arms, climb the mountains, and fight the turkish soldiers. they are still free, and live among the mountains of giaur dagh. in the following year the inhabitants of suediah were the first to defend themselves against the turks. in april, when the turkish government ordered the armenian peasants of suediah to leave their homes and emigrate toward der-el-zor, the inhabitants of four or five villages, nearly 5,000 in number, refused to obey this unlawful order of the turkish government. with their families they climbed the amanos mountains and for forty-two days heroically resisted the cannonading of the regular turkish forces. their situation was of course critical. the desperate villagers sewed a large red cross on a white sheet to inform the fleet of the allies in the mediterranean that they were in danger. the french cruiser, guechène, got in touch with the armenian peasants, informed its war department of the situation, and obtained permission to remove them by transports to port said (egypt). most of them are still there, cared for by the british, while the young warriors went to join the french oriental legion, and fought on the palestine front under general allenby. [illustration: turkish cannons captured by the armenians of van in april, 1915.] the resistance at van has already been spoken of. the next place of importance must be given to the brave mountainous district of sasoun, that very sasoun which had retained its semi-independent position in turkish armenia up to the beginning of the last century, and had taken up arms at three different times in the present generation to defend its independence against the ottoman troops--in 1894, in 1904, and again in 1915. this last time, toward the end of june, when the troops of khalil and jevded began to lay waste with fire and sword the city of moush and the unprotected villages of the outlying district, the gallant sasounians, under the guidance of their two idealistic leaders, came down from their mountains and made several raids on the city to drive away the turks. one of their leaders was roupen, a self-sacrificing and highly educated young man who had received his university training in geneva, switzerland, and had shouldered his gun in 1904 and had dedicated himself to the task of defending sasoun. the name of the other was vahan papazian (a native of van, but educated in russian universities), who had been elected representative from van to the ottoman parliament. this daring step on the part of sasoun forced the turkish commanders to march on sasoun with two divisions of troops and with nearly 30,000 kurds. from the first days of july to sept. 8, the sasounians were able to resist the turco-kurdish attacks, always with the hope that the russian army would come to their assistance. during that interval of time, the sasounians sent several couriers to the russian army and asked for help, but the russian commanders remained indifferent, in spite of the fact that the extreme front line of the russian army was scarcely 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from sasoun, and the sound of the turkish artillery aimed at the sasounians could be heard very distinctly by the russian army. one of the commanders of the armenian volunteers, dro, appealed to the russian commander and asked for one battery of cannon and a score or two of machine guns, which would have enabled his men to break the turkish front and join the sasounians. that request likewise was refused by the heartless commanders of despotic russia. these were the conditions under which fell the historic verdun of armenia, heroic little sasoun which, with its 10,000 mountaineers, succeeded in facing 50,000 turks and kurds for two months, with antiquated weapons and without adequate food or ammunition. making all due allowance for the relative magnitude and importance of the near eastern and the western fronts, we may safely say without exaggeration that van and sasoun, on the caucasian front in the year 1915, played exactly the same role which liege played in 1914 and verdun in 1916 on the western front. had it not been for these two points of stubborn resistance against the turkish troops in the summer of 1915, the two turkish offensives, already spoken of, would have had great chances of success. this is an undisputed fact with all the inhabitants of the near east. and indeed, three months after these events, when the armenian volunteers together with the russian troops recommenced their drive and captured the cities of moush and bitlis, in the diary of a turkish officer, who was taken prisoner in bitlis, was found the following item, which appeared at the time in the russian press: "we are asked why we massacre the armenians. the reason is quite plain to me. had not the armenians fought against us, we should have reached tiflis and baku long ago." in addition to van and sasoun, during the same july when deportations and organized massacres were going on, three other places might be mentioned where hopeless attempts at resistance were made by the armenians against the savage turks and kurds. these places were sivas, urfa, and shabin-karahissar. at sivas the heroic resistance of mourat and his comrades and their escape were so full of thrilling events that they have been likened to the adventures of odysseus. mourat is a brave warrior who, together with his companion, sepouh, had fought at sasoun, in 1904, and had taken part in the armenian and tartar clashes of 1905 and 1906 in the caucasus. when deportations and massacres commenced in 1915, turkish gendarmes were sent to capture mourat, who was living with his wife and child in a village near sivas. realizing the coming danger, mourat climbed the mountains with his band of warriors and resisted the raids of the enemy. after a year and a half of stubborn resistance, he descended one day to the shore of the black sea, captured a turkish sail-boat near samsoun, and, putting his comrades into it, ordered the turkish sailor to steer the boat toward batoum, a russian port. according to cable messages, mourat was chased by a turkish gun-boat. several battles took place in which he lost a few of his men, but finally repulsed the turks and reached batoum safe and sound. at urfa the armenians were able for forty days to repulse the attacks of one turkish division, but finally fell heroically under the fire of turkish artillery, commanded by german officers, having previously destroyed all their property so that it would not fall into the hands of their enemies. in the ruined armenian trenches at urfa, by the side of armenian young men there had fallen dead also armenian young women who, arms in hand, were found all mangled by the german bombs. at shabin-karahissar, nearly 5,000 armenians, for twenty-seven days without interruption, in the same month of july, kept busy another division of turkish troops with their artillery. there took place one of the most tragic and heroic episodes of the present war. when the ammunition of the armenians was almost gone, on the last day of the struggle, nearly 3,000 armenian women and girls drank poison and died in order not to fall alive into the hands of the savage turks. if the supply of poison had not given out, all the women would have done likewise. an eye-witness, one who had taken part in the struggle and who succeeded in reaching the caucasus in 1916, after wandering in the mountains and valleys of armenia for a whole year, related how on that last day armenian mothers and girls, with tears in their eyes and with hymns on their lips, received poison from the armenian physicians and apothecaries for themselves and their little ones. when the supply of poison gave out, those who were unable to obtain any uttered terrible wailing, and many of the girls cast themselves down from the rocks of the karahissar citadel and committed suicide. [illustration: dro the commander of the second battalion of armenian volunteers.] these events reveal the following facts: first, that in spite of all the precautions which the turkish government employed to disarm the armenians before carrying out its fiendish design, the armenians found means to organize in the four corners of armenia hopeless but serious plans of resistance against the swords of their enemy; second, that in order to eliminate these armenian points of resistance during the summer of 1915, five turkish divisions and tens of thousands of kurds were kept employed, and were unable to add their immediate co-operation in those very days to the other turkish forces engaged in their two offensives on the caucasian front. these were the positive services which the martyred armenian people rendered to the allied cause in the near east. their active resistance to the turco-german plans, however, cost the armenians more than one million men massacred under the most savage conditions, and the deprivation of their means of livelihood in turkish armenia. but, to complete the description of the armenian calvary, it is necessary to picture also in a few words the attitude assumed by the government of the russian czar toward the very armenian people whose active participation on russia's side enabled the caucasian front to repulse the turkish attacks in 1914 and 1915, and, moreover, to accomplish definite successes during the following year, 1916. attitude of russian czarism toward the armenians as we have already mentioned, from the beginning of the war the russian bureaucracy tried on the one hand by various false promises to win over the sympathy of the armenians, while on the other it tried by every means to keep the armenian military forces away from the caucasian front. only seven battalions of armenian volunteers were kept on the caucasian front. as we have already seen, those few battalions even, in 1914 and 1915, rendered to the russians invaluable services, twice saving the right and left wings of the russian army from an unavoidable catastrophe by their heroic resistance; but the russian official communiqués do not contain one line in which the battalions of armenian volunteers are even mentioned. the same silence was maintained by the russian communiqués concerning the heroic resistance of the armenians at van, and with regard to the assistance which the armenian volunteers rushed to that city. this was the policy of the government of russian czarism from the beginning of the war to the end of its existence,--to avoid in every way speaking about the armenians and armenia. the russian press was even forbidden to speak about the massacres carried on in turkish armenia at the hands of the turkish government. therefore, when the capture of erzeroum in 1916 made the immediate co-operation of the armenian volunteers unnecessary to the russians, the commander-in-chief of the caucasian army at the time, grand duke nicolas nicolaevitch, ordered the disbanding of all the battalions of the armenian volunteers. besides this amazing treatment of the armenian military forces, the czar's government removed from the caucasus before the war all the armenian officers and replaced them by generals (manifestly anti-armenian in spirit) from the russians, georgians, and other caucasian races. the object of this move was to enable the government to check the national aspirations of the armenians, and to give it a plausible opportunity at the end of the war to take over the armenian vilayets without gratifying the demands of the armenians for autonomy. [illustration: the civilian armenians of urfa who defended themselves against the turks and the kurds in july, 1915.] from the third month of the war, it became clear to us that the russian government pursued unswervingly its lobanoff-policy toward the armenians. what was that policy? in 1896, when an english correspondent interviewed the russian minister of foreign affairs, count lobanoff rostowsky, and asked him why russia did not occupy the armenian vilayets of turkey in order to save that christian people from the turkish massacres, the russian minister cynically replied: "we need armenia, but without the armenians." it is worth while, then, to give here a few actual facts which reveal this fiendish policy pursued by the russian government toward a people which was the only one of all the peoples of the caucasus and the near east to help the russian army by its unreserved co-operation, and which was the only factor that saved the caucasian front from an unavoidable catastrophe in 1914 and 1915. one. every time that the russian army was forced to retreat from the recaptured parts of turkish armenia, no precautionary measures were taken in order to save the local armenian inhabitants from the inevitable massacres. for example, in december, 1914, when the turks advanced as far as sarikamish and ardahan and forced the central russian army to retreat from the neighborhood of alashkert and bayazid, the commander of the local forces, general abatzieff (an acétine moslem who had joined the greek church) strictly ordered the local armenian inhabitants, nearly 32,000 in number, not to stir from their places, and in order to have his command accurately carried out he placed mounted cossack patrols in the plains of alashkert lest the armenian peasants should emigrate toward the russian frontier, in which direction the russian army with its transports had already been moving since december 13. three days later the second battalion of the armenian volunteers, which had been fighting in the first-line positions for over two months under the command of the same general, returned to the army headquarters for a well-earned rest, and there only it heard about the serious happenings already mentioned, and the extraordinary attitude assumed by the russian general. the armenian peasants from every side appealed to the armenian volunteers with tears in their eyes and begged to be saved from an inevitable massacre. the commander of the armenian volunteers, armen garo, and his brave assistant, khetcho, who died like a hero in july, 1915, on the shores of lake van, went immediately to general abatzieff and asked him to revoke his order and permit the armenian inhabitants to move with the army toward igdir. the hostile general refused their request, his answer being that, if the people stirred from the place, he would be unable to remove the army transports soon enough. when he heard this answer, armen garo immediately telegraphed to igdir and appealed to the commander-in-chief of the fourth army, general oganowsky, and in touching words asked for his intervention. on the following day only, thanks to the intervention of general oganowsky, the armenian volunteers received permission to organize the retreat of the armenian inhabitants of the plains of alashkert toward igdir and to defend them from the attacks of the kurds. during the seven days that the retreat lasted the armenians lost only 400 persons, and most of those on account of the severe cold. another example of this hostile treatment of the armenians by the russian authorities might be mentioned,--the retreat from the van district in july, 1915. there general nikolaeff for eight continuous days deceived the armenian leaders and made them remain idle (telling them every day that he would not retreat under any circumstances, and that therefore it was entirely needless to remove the people), until behold, one day, july 18, he suddenly sent for the mayor of van, aram, and the commander-in-chief of the armenian volunteers, vartan, and informed them that he had received orders to retreat immediately, but in order to make it possible for the people to prepare for departure, he would wait until the 20th of the month. thus the armenian leaders were forced to remove in two or three days nearly 150,000 people of the van region, and if those three battalions of armenian volunteers had not been there to protect the people from kurdish and turkish raids, the loss of life during the journey would have been tenfold more than it actually was. whereas, if the russian general had not been so deceitful in his behavior but had given an opportunity of seven or eight days to organize the retreat, it would have been possible to direct the people to erivan without the loss of a single life. the armenians suffered a loss of 8,000 to 10,000 men, women, and children during the retreat. [illustration: khetcho the commander of the cavalry corps of the armenian volunteers, who was killed in july, 1915, near bitlis.] two. when turkish armenia was almost wholly emptied of its armenian inhabitants, due to these successive retreats, the russian government raised all sorts of barriers before the refugees to prevent them from returning to their former homes when the russian army recaptured the armenian vilayets. for example, in 1916-1917, scarcely 8,000 to 10,000 armenians were permitted to go back and inhabit the region of van; the rest were compelled to stay within the borders of the caucasus as refugees. toward the latter part of 1916, even among russian governmental circles there was talk of transferring to siberia nearly 250,000 turkish armenian immigrants who had sought refuge in the caucasus, because it was objected that no available lands existed there for them. russians considered it a settled question that even after the war the turkish armenians would not be permitted to return to their own homes. on the other hand, the same russian bureaucracy resorted to every means to win the sympathy of the turkish and kurdish inhabitants remaining in armenia. with that purpose in view, in the spring of 1916, on behalf of the ministry for foreign affairs at petrograd, count chakhowsky with his own organization established himself in bashkalé (a city in the district of van) and distributed nearly 24,000 rifles to the kurds of the neighboring regions. it is needless to say that not long after those very rifles were used by the kurds against the russian army both in persia and armenia. this amazing action of count chakhowsky was taken so openly that it was even known to ordinary russian soldiers, who were extremely enraged against the count, a fact which accounts for the murder of the same count chakhowsky in persia by russian soldiers, when the discipline of the russian army was relaxed on account of the revolution which took place in the spring of 1917. three. while the russians were preventing the turkish armenian immigrants from returning to their own lands, they, in the spring of 1916, commenced to organize in turkish armenia colonies of cossacks. the russian administration sent special propagandists to the northern caucasus to persuade the cossacks living there to move to armenia, and during that same year 5,000 of them, under the name of agricultural battalions, were already cultivating the plains of alashkert, lands which rightly belonged to the armenians. this last act of the russian government was so revolting that even the liberal organs of the russian press complained of the government for such inhuman proceedings, while in the russian duma two russian representatives, n. milukoff and a. kerensky (both of whom played such great roles the following year in the downfall of czarism), publicly criticised the government of the czar for its base treatment of the armenians. documentary evidence relating to this disgraceful action of the russian government, which incensed the ire of prominent liberals in the duma, may be found in the july 28, 1916, issue of the _retch_, the organ of the constitutional democrats in russia. in order to characterize this criminal action of the russian bureaucracy against the armenian people who were martyred for the allied cause, it may be worth while also to cite the following details: in the month of july, 1915, the armenian inhabitants of erzeroum, nearly 25,000 in number, were likewise deported by the turkish government, leaving all their real and personal property at the disposal of the turks. the governor of the place, tahsin bey, arranged a scheme by means of which every armenian before leaving the city could store his goods and household furniture (with the name of the owner on each article) in the cathedral, with the apparent purpose of returning them to their owners after the war, but with the real purpose of preventing so much riches from falling into the hands of the turkish mob, in order to appropriate them later for the government. the cathedral of erzeroum was packed with the goods of the exiled armenians when the russians captured the city in february, 1916. ordinary human decency demanded that the russians should not have touched the articles stored in that sacred edifice, especially as they belonged to the very martyred people whose professed sympathies for them (the russians) were the cause of their being exiled to the deserts of mesopotamia. but the fact is that the commander of the russian army, general kaledine himself, set the example of desecration; he personally entered the cathedral first, and selected for himself a few car-loads of rugs and sundry valuable articles. then the other officers of the russian army followed his example, and in a few days half of the contents of the church was already pillaged before the representative of the armenian committee, mr. rostom, after repeated telegrams, was able to receive an order from tiflis to stop the plunder. in that same summer of 1916, the buxton brothers (representatives of the armenian committee of london) and other english armenophiles came to armenia. when they witnessed all these disgraceful particulars they could not believe their own eyes, so monstrous was the attitude of the russian government toward the armenians. the english and american friends of armenia consoled them by saying that on their return they would have the privilege of explaining this state of affairs to their government and that they would doubtless do all in their power to protect the rights of the armenians. these were the circumstances under which the armenian people joined its fate to the allied cause from the very beginning of the war, and, having made colossal sacrifices during three whole years, was almost crushed to death in the claws of turkish and russian despotism. [illustration: the mounted troops of the second battalion of armenian volunteers of the caucasus, november, 1914.] in that same sorrowful summer of 1916 the armenians heard the news that england, france, and russia had signed an agreement concerning armenia. according to that agreement russia was to take over the three vilayets of turkish armenia, erzeroum, bitlis, and van, while southern armenia and cilicia were to be put under the guardianship of france. one must be an armenian in order to feel the depth and intensity of the bitterness and disappointment which filled the hearts of all the wandering armenians from the caucasus to mesopotamia. every armenian asked himself or herself: was this to be our recompense? in those very days (september, 1916) one of the agents of the german government in switzerland approached dr. zavrieff (one of the representatives of the armenian committee of that place) with the following proposal: "you armenians made a great mistake when you joined your fate to that of the allies. it is time for you to rectify your mistaken policy. your dreams with regard to the historic armenia are unrealizable. you may as well accustom yourselves to that fact, and before it is too late you will do better to join the fate of your people with the german policies, and remove the remnants of the armenian people to mesopotamia, where the germans will put at the disposal of the armenians every means which will enable them to create for themselves a new and a more fortunate fatherland under their (german) immediate protection." in order to persuade his armenian opponent, the german agent constantly reminded him of the agreement (between england, france and russia), and especially of the hostile attitude of the russians up to that time towards the armenians. the news of this german proposal reached the caucasus in december of the same year. it was made the subject of serious consultation among the armenian leaders. the writer of these lines was present at those conferences, and his impression was this: had there not been that superhuman adoration (so peculiarly armenian) which every armenian has for his ancestral home and recollections so sanctified by blood, the german proposal would very likely have been accepted by the armenians at that psychological moment when their hearts were overflowing with bitterness and disappointment toward the russian government,--a member of the allied nations. the outcome of those conferences was that we decided to continue our former policy toward the entente, in spite of the base behavior of the russians towards us, and at the same time to invite the serious attention of our great allies of the west to our hopeless situation. role played by the armenians in the caucasus after the russian collapse. this was the state of affairs when there came the crash of the russian revolution. the heart of every armenian was greatly relieved, thinking that the greater part of their torments would come to an end. and in truth, during the first few months of the revolution, the temporary government of kerensky made definite arrangements to rectify the unjust treatment of the armenians by the government of the czar. but events progressed in a precipitate manner. the demoralization of the russian troops on all the fronts assumed greater proportions as the days went by. foreseeing the danger which threatened the caucasus, the armenian national organization of the caucasus, as early as april, 1917, sent to petrograd on a special mission dr. zavrieff, already mentioned, and the writer of these lines, in order to have them obtain permission to transfer to the caucasus some 150,000 armenian officers and men (scattered throughout the russian army), by whose assistance the armenians might be able to protect their own native land against the turkish advance. mr. kerensky, who was well acquainted with the abnormal conditions reigning in the caucasus, agreed to grant the request of the armenian delegates, but, on the other hand, for fear of receiving similar requests from the other races in case he granted an order favorable to the armenians, he decided to fulfill our request unofficially, that is, without a general ordinance, to send the armenian soldiers to the caucasus gradually, in small groups, in order not to attract the attention of the other races. and he carried out this plan. [illustration: khetcho dro armen garo the staff of the second battalion of armenian volunteers in the caucasus in november, 1914.] but unfortunately, scarcely 35,000 armenian soldiers had been able to reach the caucasus by november, 1917, when kerensky himself fell at the hands of the bolsheviks, and there was created a chaotic condition the result of which was the final demobilization of the russian army. during december, 1917, and january, 1918, the russian army of 250,000 men on the caucasian front, without any orders, abandoned its positions and moved into the interior of russia, leaving entirely unprotected a front about 970 kilometers (600 miles) in length, extending from the black sea to persia. as soon as the russian army disbanded, the 3,000,000 tartar inhabitants of the caucasus armed themselves and rose en masse. toward the end of january last, the tartars had cut the baku-tiflis railroad line as well as the erivan-joulfa line, and now began to raid and plunder the armenian cities and villages, while behind, on the frontier, the regular turkish army had commenced to advance in the first days of february. against all these turks and tartars the armenians had one army corps made up of some 35,000 regular troops under the command of general nazarbekoff, and nearly 20,000 armenian volunteers under the command of their experienced leaders. armenia's only hope of assistance was their neighbors, the georgians, who were as much interested in the protection of the caucasus as the armenians were, because the turkish demands of the brest-litovsk treaty included definite portions of georgia, as well as of armenia; for example, the port of batoum. and in fact, during the months of january and february they seemed quite inclined to help the armenians, but when the turks captured batoum on april 15 and came as far as usurgeti, the morale of the georgians was completely broken, and they immediately sent a delegation to berlin and put georgia under german protection. from this time on the 2,000,000 armenian inhabitants of the caucasus remained entirely alone to face, on the one hand, the turkish regular army of 100,000 men, and on the other hand, the armed forces of hundreds of thousands of tartars. from the end of february the small number of armenian forces commenced to retreat step by step before the superior turkish forces, from erzingan, baiburt, khenous, mamakhatoun, erzeroum, and bayazid, and concentrated their forces on the former russian-turkish frontier. here commenced serious battles which arrested for quite a long time the advance of the turkish troops. it took them until april 22 to arrive before the forts of kars, where the first serious resistance of the armenians took place. the fierce turkish attack which continued for four days was easily repulsed by the armenians, owing to the guns on the ramparts of kars. during these events a temporary government of the caucasus existed in tiflis, composed of representatives of three caucasian races--georgian, armenian, and tartar. this caucasian government was formed immediately after the _coup d'etat_ of the bolsheviks, and conducted caucasian affairs as an independent body. it refused to recognize the authority of the bolshevik government, or the terms of the brest-litovsk treaty signed by its accredited delegates. the president of the government was chekhenkeli, a georgian. immediately after the capture of batoum the caucasian government opened peace negotiations with turkish delegates in batoum itself. the turks, by their usual crafty tricks, persuaded the georgian delegates that they would return batoum to the georgians if kars surrendered without resistance. feeling assured of this turkish promise, the georgian president of the caucasian government, chekhenkeli, on the night of april 25, without consultation with the other members of the government, telegraphed the commander of kars that an armistice had been signed with the turks on condition of surrendering kars, and therefore to give up the forts immediately and retreat as far as arpa-chai. on the following day the commander of the armenian soldiers who were defending kars delivered the fortress into the hands of the turks and retreated to alexandropol. then it became known that chekhenkeli had sent the fateful telegram on his own responsibility, but it was already too late. this event occasioned very strained relations between the armenians and georgians. not long after, on the 26th of may, the georgians, assured of german protection, declared in tiflis the independence of georgia. thus the temporary caucasian government dissolved. [illustration: mourat who lead the volunteers at erzingan after the russian collapse and died heroically in the fighting at baku.] after the separation of the georgians the armenian national council of the caucasus declared armenian independence, under the name of the republic of ararat, with erivan as its capital. while the negotiations were going on in batoum--always between the delegates of the turks and the three caucasian races comprising the caucasian temporary government,--the turkish armies, after the occupation of kars, became more aggressive and commenced to advance toward alexandropol and karakilissa. concentrating their forces around karakilissa and erivan, early in june, the armenians in two fierce battles drove the turks back almost to their frontier. in the battle of karakilissa, which lasted four days, the turks left 6,000 dead before the armenian posts, and escaped to alexandropol. when the turks felt that their position in the face of the armenian resistance was becoming more and more hopeless and that it would cost them dear to continue the fight, they immediately began to make concessions. up to that time the turks had not yet recognized the right of russian armenia to independence, their objection being that they only recognized in the caucasus georgian and tartar countries. but when they heard the news of the last military victory of the armenians, on june 14, in batoum, the turkish delegates, together with the representatives of the republic of ararat, signed the first terms of armistice, leaving the final peace signature to the congress of constantinople, where the final negotiations were to take place. the delegates of the three nations of the caucasus reached constantinople on june 19. they were 32 in number. among them were also the representatives of the republic of ararat, mr. a. khatissoff, the minister of foreign affairs, and mr. a. aharonian, the president of the armenian national council. in that congress, which convened in presence of the delegates of the german and austrian governments, the turks signed peace treaties with each of the newly-formed caucasian republics. it is needless to say that those treaties had as much value as that which the roumanian government was forced to sign a few months before by the central powers. and, as was expected, the turks and the germans rewarded the georgians and the tartars at the expense of the armenians. they gave the greater part of the armenian territories to the other two nations, and the remainder was claimed by turkey, with the exception of 32,000 square kilometers (about 12,350 square miles), with 700,000 armenian inhabitants, which were left to the republic of ararat. according to these terms only one-third of the armenians of the caucasus are included within the republic of ararat, while the remaining 1,400,000 armenians are left in territories allotted to the tartars or the georgians. that portion of the armenians which inhabits the mountainous regions of karabagh (which was assigned to the tartars), up to this very day, october, 1918, resists the turco-tartar hordes and refuses at any price to be subjected to the unjust terms of the treaty of constantinople, while beyond, the armenians at van, when their military forces realized that their retreat was cut off early last may, after being sheltered for two whole months in van, moved toward persia, there joined the christian assyrians in the neighborhood of urmia, repulsed for a long time the turkish and kurdish attacks, and only early in september succeeded in shattering the turkish lines and thereby reached the city of hamadan in persia, where they entrusted to the care of the british forces the protection of about 40,000 armenian and assyrian refugees. in order to complete this picture of the heroic resistance of the caucasian armenians, let me say a few words more about the struggle at baku. as already mentioned, early in may, 1917, through the efforts of the armenian national organization of the caucasus, the armenian soldiers and officers scattered throughout russia were gradually brought together and mobilized on the caucasian front. with that purpose in view an armenian military committee was formed in petrograd with general bagradouni as president. bagradouni was one of the most brilliant young generals of the russian army. he had received his military training at the highest military academy of petrograd, and, during kerensky's administration, was appointed chief of the staff of the military forces at petrograd. when the bolsheviks assumed power they ordered him to take an oath of loyalty to the new government. general bagradouni refused to do so, and for that reason he was imprisoned, with many other high military officials. after remaining in prison two months, through repeated appeals by the armenian national bodies, he was freed by the bolsheviks on condition that he should immediately leave petrograd. after his release from prison, general bagradouni, accompanied by the well known armenian social worker, mr. rostom, with 200 armenian officers, left for the caucasus to assume the duties of commander-in-chief of the newly-formed armenian army. this group of armenian officers reached baku early in march, where it was forced to wait, for the simple reason that the baku-tiflis railroad line was already cut by the tartars. during that same month of march from many parts of russia a large number of armenians gathered at baku and waited to go to erivan and tiflis in response to the call issued by the armenian national council. toward the end of march nearly 110,000 armenian soldiers had come together at baku. [illustration: armenians valiantly defending baku against the tartars. _taken from "asia."_] by the 30th of march the news of german victories was spread throughout the caucasus by the turco-german agents. on the same day in baku and other places appeared the following leaflets: "awake, turkish brothers! "protect your rights; union with the turks means life. "unite, o children of the turks! "brothers of the noble turkish nation, for hundreds of years our blood has flowed like water, our motherland has been ruined, and we have been under the heel of thousands of oppressors who have almost crushed us. we have forgotten our nation. we do not know to whom to appeal for help. "countrymen, we consider ourselves free hereafter. let us look into our conscience! let us not listen to the voice of plotters. we must not lose the way to freedom; our freedom lies in union with the turks. it is necessary for us to unite and put ourselves under the protection of the turkish flag. "forward, brothers! let us gather ourselves under the flag of union and stretch out our hands to our turkish brothers. long life to the generous turkish nation! by these words we shall never again bear a foreign yoke, the chains of servitude." and on the following day (march 31) from all sides of the caucasus the armed hordes of tartars attacked the armenians. the leaders of the tartars at baku were convinced that they would easily disarm the armenian soldiers, because they were somewhat shut up in baku, but they were sadly mistaken in their calculations. after a bloody battle which lasted a whole week the armenians remained masters of the city and its oil wells. they suffered a loss of nearly 2,500 killed, while the tartars lost more than 10,000. the commander of the military forces of the armenians was the same general bagradouni, who, although he lost both of his legs during the fight, continued his duties until september 14, when the armenians and the small number of englishmen who came to their assistance were forced to abandon baku to the superior forces of the turco-tartars, and retreat toward the city of enzeli in the northern caucasus. during these heroic struggles, which lasted five and a half months, the small armenian garrison of baku, together with a few thousand russians, defended baku and its oil wells against tens of thousands of tartars, the caucasian mountaineers, and more than one division of regular turkish troops which had come to the assistance of the latter by way of batoum. time after time the turkish troops made fierce attacks to capture the city, but each time they were repulsed with heavy losses by the gallant armenian garrison. the armenians had built their hopes on british assistance, since nothing was expected from the demoralized russian army. but, unfortunately, the british were unable to reach baku with large forces from their bagdad army. nevertheless, on august 5, they landed at baku 2,800 men to help the armenians. the arrival of this small british contingent caused great enthusiasm among the tired and exhausted defenders of the city. but meanwhile the turks had received new forces from batoum and renewed their attacks. after a series of bloody battles the armed armenian and british forces were forced to leave baku on september 14 and retreat toward persia, taking with them nearly 10,000 refugees from the inhabitants of the city. as to the condition of those who were left behind, this much is certain; that on the day the city was occupied by the turco-tartars, nearly 20,000 armenians were put to the sword, the greater portion of them being women and children. according to the news received from persia, after that first terrible massacre, other massacres likewise have taken place. the number of the losses is not known; but it may safely be surmised without any exaggeration that out of the entire 80,000 armenian inhabitants of baku, all those who were unable to leave the city in time were slaughtered by the revengeful turks and tartars. thus ended the resistance of five months and a half by the armenians at baku against the turco-germans. [illustration: young armenian students in france, who took part in the immortal defence of verdun in 1916.] the remnants of the retreating armenian garrison of baku, at the time of writing, are located in the persian city of enzeli, where, under the command of their heroic leader, general bagradouni, they are recuperating before hastening to the aid of the armenians in the eastern caucasus, who, as already mentioned, up to this very day are resisting the forces of the turco-tartars in the mountains of karabagh. armenia's co-operation with the allies on other fronts. the armenians, besides battling on the caucasian front, where they have been fighting in their own native land, have co-operated unreservedly with the allies on far distant fronts, as for example on the french front. at the beginning of the war the young armenian students living in france--about 900 in number--volunteered to serve in the french army for the defence of civilization and freedom. today, scarcely 50 of them are alive; the majority of the 850 others gave their lives in 1916 in the immortal defence of verdun. this small episode in this universal drama will not be forgotten by either france or the free armenia of the future. glory to the memory of those immortal heroes! beyond, on another front of the war, by an extraordinary coincidence of fate, in the deadly blow which fell on the head of the criminal ottoman empire in the holy land, the sons of the sorrowful people whom it had ruthlessly slaughtered had their just share of active participation. and indeed, in general allenby's victorious army, which saved palestine and syria from turkish tyranny in september, 1918, by general allenby's own testimony, the eight battalions of the armenian volunteers (who took part in those battles under the french flag) were conspicuous for their bravery. in response to a congratulatory telegram from the chairman of the armenian national union of egypt for the victories on the palestine front, general allenby said: "i thank you warmly for your congratulations, and am proud of the fact that your armenian compatriots in the oriental legion took an active part in the fighting and shared in our victory." conclusion. if we wish to condense all we have said in a few pages, we shall have the following picture: in 1914 both turkey and russia appealed to the armenians by various promises of a future autonomous armenia to secure their assistance in their respective military operations. through their long and bitter experience the armenians knew very well that the imperialistic governments of both turkey and of russia were opposed to their national aspirations and therefore those promises had no value whatever. but, realizing the universal significance of the present war, and considering the fact that justice was on the side of the entente, the armenians, in spite of their distrust of the russian government, from the very beginning, unreservedly bound themselves to the allied cause. this decision of the armenians cost them the sacrifice of more than 1,000,000 men in turkish armenia, and complete devastation of their native land even in the first year of the war. in spite of this terrible blow, the armenians did not lose their vigor, and, even though the autocratic russian government, up to the time of the revolution, created all sorts of obstacles to impede their activities, they still continued their assistance to the allied cause. in bringing about the failure of the three turkish offensives in 1914 and 1915 the armenians gave the allied cause important armed assistance, on both sides of the turco-russian frontier. after the russian revolution, when, the russian military forces fled from the caucasian front and left it unprotected from january, 1918, to the middle of the following september, the armenians were the only people who resisted and delayed the turco-german advance toward baku. moreover, the armenians accomplished all this with their own forces, all alone, surrounded on all sides by hostile elements, without any means of communication with their great allies of the west. as an evidence of this we may mention the fact that during the last eight months and a half the armenians have received from the allies only 6,500,000 rubles ($3,250,000) of financial assistance, and the 2,800 british soldiers who were too few and arrived too late to save baku. [illustration: armenian volunteers who fought on the palestine front in september and october, 1918, under the command of gen. allenby.] let us now look at the other side of the picture. had the armenians assumed an entirely opposite attitude from what they actually did; in other words, had they bound their fate in 1914 to the turco-german cause, just as the bulgarians did in 1915, what would have been the trend of events in the near east? here is a question to which, it is quite possible, our great allies have had no time to give any consideration. but that very question was put before the armenians in 1914, and with no light heart did they answer it by their decision to join the allies. each and every one of them had a clear presentiment of the terrible responsibility they assumed. those millions of corpses of armenian women and children which spotted the plains in the summer of 1915, rose like phantoms before our very eyes in the august of 1914 when we decided to resist the wild turkish revengefulness and its frightful outcome. now, in october, 1918, when we are so close to the hour of the final victory, and feel quite safe and certain that the heavy and gloomy days of the summer of 1914 will never return, i shall permit myself to picture in a few words, before i finish, that which would have taken place if the armenians had sided with the germano-turks in the near east from the beginning of the war. first of all, those frightful armenian massacres would not have taken place. on the contrary, the turks and the germans would have tried to win the sympathy of the armenians in every possible way until the end of the war. on the other hand, so long as the georgians and tartars of the caucasian peoples were only too eager to co-operate with the germano-turks, as the events of 1918 fully demonstrate, had the armenians likewise joined them in 1914, by cutting the railroads, the backbone of the caucasian russian army, all the caucasian country would have slipped out of the hands of the russians in a few weeks, and the turco-germans would have reached baku in the autumn of the same year. the armenians, georgians, and tartars of the caucasus, united, would have been able to form with the greatest ease an army of 700,000 men, by which they would have been able to defend the caucasian mountain-ridge against the russians. meanwhile, the entire turkish army would have been available to advance immediately toward the interior of asia and join the 18,000,000 moslems of asiatic russia. we may safely say, neither persia nor afghanistan could have remained neutral on seeing such successful achievements by the turks. in the course of such events russia would have been compelled to remove the greater portion of her forces to the east and would not have been able to protect her western frontiers as successfully as she did. therefore, quite probably, the russian collapse would have taken place in the summer of 1915, when the germans occupied russian poland. on the other hand, great britain would have been obliged to appropriate the greater portion of her newly-formed land forces for the protection of india, and would have been unable to rush as great a force to the defence of heroic france as she actually did. quite likely, under these conditions, neither italy nor roumania would have abandoned her neutrality, and thus the war might have ended in 1915 or 1916 with the victory of the central powers, at least on land. it was as clear as day to the armenians that a germano-turkish victory could never satisfy their national aspirations. the most that those nations would have done for us would have been to grant nominal rights to the armenia of their own choice. but it was very plain to us also that we should not have suffered such frightful human losses had we not sided with the allies. we consciously chose this last alternative, namely: we tied our fate to the allied victory; we exposed our very existence to danger in order to realize the complete fulfillment of our national ambition, that is, to see the re-establishment of the united historic independent armenia. with our modest means, we have fulfilled our duty in full measure in this great struggle in order to save civilization from an impending doom. now it is for our great allies to act. the day is not very far distant when, gathered around the great tribunal of justice, the representatives of all the nations of the globe--guilty or just--are to receive their punishment or reward from the hands of the four distinguished champions of democracy, president wilson, premiers lloyd george, georges clemenceau, and orlando. if the representatives present themselves in the order of seniority, the first in the rank will be the representative of the armenian people--the aged mother armenia. behold! into the peace congress hall there enters an old woman, bathed in blood, clothed in rags, her face covered with wrinkles 3,000 years old, and completely exhausted. with her thoughtful eyes the venerable mother armenia will survey the countenances of all those present, and thus will she address the great figures of the world: "century after century my sons took part in all the strifes waged to safeguard justice and the freedom of suffering humanity. three thousand years ago my sons struggled for seven hundred years against the despotism of babylon and nineveh, which eventually collapsed under the load of their own crimes. fifteen centuries ago the armenians resisted for five hundred years the persecutions of the mighty persian empire to preserve their christian faith. since the eighth century my sons have been the vanguard of christian civilization in the east against moslem invasions threatening for a while the very existence of all europe. if you doubt my statements, ask the sacred mountain of ararat; he will relate to you how all the nations and empires, which attempted to possess by criminal means the indisputable inheritance of my sons, have received their just punishment. "let us not go very far. here, before you, stand the representatives of those three nations which tried to destroy my sons before your very eyes, in order to rule those parts of our ancestral lands, so sanctified by blood, known as armenia. look at this turk; it was he who wished to wipe the very name of armenia off the face of the map; but today, foiled in his attempt, he stands there like a criminal awaiting his sentence. and where is today the czar of russia, who planned to occupy armenia without the armenians,--the representative of that empire before which the world trembled. and what has remained of the policies of the german empire, in whose hands is the bagdad railroad now, built at the cost of the blood of hundreds of thousands of armenian women and children? thus, those three modern malevolent empires, which tried to attain happiness through the blood of my sons, have received their just punishment. "such will be the fate in the future of all those who shall attempt similar crimes against armenia. this is the message, gentlemen, handed down to us through three thousand years of history. "i have nothing more to add. i await your verdict with confidence." germany turkey and armenia a selection of documentary evidence relating to the armenian atrocities from german and other sources london. j. j. keliher & co., ltd. 1917. table of contents. page a. the invasion of persia 17 1. letters from german missionaries in north-west persia 17 b. the six armenian vilayets 21 2. van after the turkish retreat 21 3. moush. statement by a german eye-witness 23 4. erzindjan. statement by two danish red cross nurses, formerly in the service of the german military mission at erzeroum 30 5. h--: statement made by a danish red cross nurse 44 6. malatia. statement by a german eye-witness 51 c. cilicia and northern syria 53 7. exiles from zeitoun. diary of a foreign resident, communicated by a swiss gentleman 53 8. information regarding events in armenia published in two periodicals issued by german missionary societies 61 9. extracts from the records of a german who died in turkey 66 10. narrative of a german official of the bagdad railway 80 11. the amanus passes. statements by two swiss ladies, resident in turkey 86 d. aleppo 93 12. "a word to the accredited representatives of the german people" by dr. martin niepage, teacher in the german technical school at aleppo 93 13. message dated 17th february, 1916, from a german lady (fräulein o.) 112 e. the places of exile 113 14. der-el-zor. letter from a german lady missionary 113 15. exiles from the euphrates: report from fräulein o. 119 appendix. reports by mohammedan officers 123 (1) a.b.'s report 123 (2) c.d.'s report 127 introduction. the blue book as to the treatment of the armenians which has recently been issued (miscellaneous, no. 31, 1916) contains a large mass of evidence relating to facts which, incredible as they are, have been so incontrovertibly established that no doubt as to their existence can possibly be entertained by any reasonable person. the greater part of the documents included in the blue book does not, however, throw much light on the attitude taken by the german public and the german government with reference to the crimes which have been committed. the object of this pamphlet is to bring before the public a collection of documents specially selected for the purpose of throwing light on this subject. some of them are included in the blue book, but the documents nos. 1, 6, 9, 10 and 12 have not, as yet, been published in great britain or the united states. the two documents printed in the appendix have no direct bearing on the questions relating to the german attitude. but as they came into the possession of the british authorities after the publication of the blue book and are of special interest as giving the impressions of two intelligent turkish officers, [1] it was thought right to include them. a perusal of the documents included in this collection must convince the reader of three things: (1) that the germans in armenia are as full of indignation, and as anxious to see a stop put to the methods of extermination applied by the turkish government, as the most ardent friends of the armenian cause in this country; (2) that, owing to the wilful or reckless perversion of the facts in the german press and the german pamphlet-literature, and owing also to the indifference and credulity of the general german public, the true state of things is unknown or ignored by the majority; (3) that the german government could have stopped the outrages if they had desired to do so and that their non-interference was not in any way due to ignorance of the true facts. one very interesting document which has come to the editor's notice is of too confidential a nature to be reproduced in this place. it is a memorandum written by a distinguished german scholar, whose name for obvious reasons has to be suppressed, but whose good faith and whose critical acumen would be acknowledged by every one of his countrymen whose powers of judgment have not been perverted by the passion of war. this memorandum contains ample evidence of the fact referred to above, that in consequence of the misstatements or suppressions of fact of which german writers on the subject have been guilty, public opinion in germany has entirely failed to realise the horrors of the armenian situation, and that some influential persons even approve of the action of the turkish authorities. the old legend about the unscrupulousness of the armenian traders and their exploitation of turkish innocence and trustfulness--of which the groundlessness is convincingly demonstrated by the author of the memorandum--seems to be firmly believed throughout germany, and is made use of by those german politicians and journalists who approve cruelty, provided only it serves the cause of german world-dominion. thus count reventlow in a passage quoted in the memorandum refers to these matters in the following terms: "the turk is unsuspicious and good-natured; everywhere he furnishes a convenient object for exploitation--up to a certain point and to a certain degree; then despair seizes him and he rises against his tormentors. regrettable as such unlawful self-defence may be from the point of view of civilisation, it is obvious that the armenians ... least of all deserve the pity and the compassionate emotions of the civilized world." the author of the memorandum disposes of this tirade by saying that "it is of course unknown to the writer" of the passage quoted by us "that 80 per cent. of the armenian population, and particularly those who were affected by the deportations, are peasant farmers, who presumably were not engaged in the exploitation of the kurdish brigands by whom they were surrounded.... the assumption that the deportation and annihilation of the armenian race was in the nature of unlawful self-defence is so far removed from the true facts that it does not require any refutation." the whole german press--as stated by the author of the memorandum--reproduced an interview with dr. rifaat, a member of the committee of union and progress, originally published in a danish paper, in the course of which the interviewed politician spoke of "a conspiracy embracing the whole armenian population residing in turkey, threatening the very existence of the country and intended to play constantinople into the hands of the allies." he further stated that the plot was discovered before it had ripened, that many of the conspirators, including the arabian chief abd-ul-kerim, had been arrested and punished, and that 21 of the adherents of the latter were hanged. the author of the memorandum makes the following comment on this statement: "if dr. rifaat knows anything of an arabian conspiracy, it is impossible for us to verify this finding. in any case an 'arabian' conspiracy is not an 'armenian' conspiracy. but the number of the 21 conspirators hanged and the other contents of the 'interview' lead inevitably to the conclusion that dr. rifaat did intentionally mislead public opinion, by representing the plot of the turkish opposition which had already been discovered before the war, [2] and which aimed at the fall of the present government and the murder of talaat bey and other young turk leaders, as 'a conspiracy embracing the whole armenian population residing in turkey.'" the interview with dr. rifaat is also one of the trump-cards played in a pamphlet published in berlin under the title of "the armenian question" by c. a. bratter, a person describing himself as "a citizen of a neutral state and a german journalist." this pamphlet (which was written in order to counteract the influence of an appeal in favour of the armenians over the signatures of a number of distinguished swiss residents) is minutely analyzed by the author of the memorandum, together with its pretended sources of information; and he demonstrates irrefutably its utter untrustworthiness as well as the bad faith of its writer. he significantly adds: "how forgetful and how uncritical must any reader be to whom it is possible to present such lies." [3] being ourselves in a position of greater freedom, we can say that this forgetfulness and this want of critical power are not surprising in the german public, having regard to the fact that their government is in close alliance with the perpetrators of the crimes which bratter and other persons of the same mental and moral calibre try to explain away or justify, and which could and would have been prevented long ago if that government had not disregarded the elementary dictates of humanity. the german scholar's memorandum contains some very interesting evidence showing: (a) that the armenian leaders, far from engaging in an anti-turkish conspiracy either before or during the war, were entirely loyal to the turkish government, in fact so loyal that this was made a cause of complaint by some of the turkish opponents of the committee of union and progress; (b) that the policy finally adopted with regard to the armenians was originally opposed by some of the members of the ruling party, but when so adopted was a deliberate policy of extermination; (c) that the acts of resistance on the part of the armenians, which are relied upon as an excuse for their treatment, were isolated acts due in each case to particularly grave provocation; that, in every instance except that of zeitoun, they were later in date than the beginning of the deportations, and were in fact provoked by the fear of suffering the fate which had already overtaken neighbouring armenian communities [see historical summary in blue book]; (d) that some of the other excuses put forward are so much at variance with the well-known facts that they could only deceive persons unable or unwilling to ascertain the truth. as regards the loyalty of the turkish armenians, it is shown by extracts from leading papers, circulars sent out by the ecclesiastical dignitaries and by the "dashnakzagan" (the only influential party organisation of the armenians), as well as by several official announcements of the turkish government or of its agents, issued as late as august, 1915, that that loyalty was not only the policy declared by the armenian leaders and carried out by the bulk of the population, but that it was also fully acknowledged by the authorities. in a letter dated the 26th february, 1915, written by enver pasha to the armenian bishop of konia, the former says: "i avail myself of this opportunity to tell you that the armenian soldiers in the ottoman army conscientiously perform their duties in the theatre of war, as i can testify from personal observation. i beg of you to communicate to the armenian people, whose perfect devotion to the ottoman government is well known, the expression of my satisfaction and gratitude." several other testimonies of a similar kind are quoted in the memorandum. in the days of abd-ul-hamid the "dashnakzagan" were closely allied with the committee of union and progress, and several of the members of that committee received considerable help and protection from the armenians. those among them, whose sense of gratitude was not entirely destroyed by racial fanaticism, were therefore inclined to oppose the sinister schemes of their less scrupulous colleagues. these schemes, however, were the natural result of the tendencies which had gradually gained the upper hand in the committee of union and progress, which committee, as is well known, had met with considerable opposition in some powerful sections of the turkish population, and for the sake of removing that opposition had been driven into a policy of pan-islamism. this policy had already been proclaimed in a report presented to the congress of the young turk party held in 1911, on which occasion it was urged that "sooner or later the complete ottomanisation of all turkish subjects must be carried through, but that it was clear that this object could never be obtained by persuasion, and that the force of arms would have to be resorted to." the nationalities in the said report are declared to be a "quantité négligeable"; they might keep their religion, but not their language. the first symptoms of the fact that the advocates of the policy of "thorough" against the armenians had overcome the resistance of their more scrupulous colleagues appeared on the 18/31 march, 1915, when the press organ of the "dashnakzagan" was suppressed. on the 12/25 april 235 leading armenians were arrested in constantinople and deported. the excuse given by talaat bey to vartkes, one of the armenian members of the ottoman parliament, shows: (1) that the destruction of the armenians had then been definitely decided on; (2) that no act of disloyalty on the part of the armenians could have been adduced for the justification of this decision. these are talaat's words: "in the days of our weakness you put your knife to our throat by raising the question of reform. for that reason we will now avail ourselves of our present favourable situation, for the purpose of scattering your people to such an extent that for the next fifty years all thought of reforms will be driven out of your heads." vartkes thereupon said: "then it is the intention to continue the work of abd-ul-hamid?" talaat laconically replied, "yes." as pointed out by the author of the memorandum, the movement for reform referred to by talaat had for its only object the protection of the life and property of the armenians against the attacks of kurdish brigands; the reforms had been stipulated for by art. 61 of the treaty of berlin of 1878 and had been constantly supported by the great powers, including germany, which last named power had been specially active in that behalf during the year 1913. the constantinople arrests were soon followed by the deportations in the provinces and many acts of violence. the two members of parliament, zohrab and vartkes, were arrested shortly after the interview of the latter with talaat; they were deported and murdered. thenceforth the policy of extermination manifested itself in all its nakedness. one of the principal officials in the turkish ministry of justice said to an armenian: "there is not sufficient room in this empire for you and ourselves; it would be unpardonable recklessness on our part if we did not use this opportunity to clear you out of the way." some members of the young turk committee even showed their hand more openly by declaring that "all foreigners must disappear from turkey, first the armenians, then the greeks, then the jews, and finally the europeans." one of the ministers of state boasted that he would have attained in three weeks what abd-ul-hamid failed to accomplish in thirty years. the excuses brought forward in a number of successive official statements made by the turkish government for the purpose of stifling the consciences of their wilfully credulous german allies are summed up in the memorandum. the substance of this summary appears from the following statement, in which the contrast between the accusation and the real facts is pointed out under each head:-1. one garo pasdermadjian, a russian armenian, is vaguely alleged to have joined certain volunteer corps in the district of erzeroum. (all the positive acts ascribed to him are connected with the doings of the russian armenians.) 2. two armenians are alleged to have--on the instigation of the british authorities--caused a train in cilicia to go off the rails. (in the turkish official statement dated 4th june, 1915, in which this accusation is made, a preliminary observation appears, to the effect that the armenians "of cilicia had done no act which could have disturbed the public peace and order, or could have necessitated any repressive measures"). 3. the commanders of english and french warships are accused of having placed themselves in communication with armenians of adana, alexandretta, and other places on the coast, for the purpose of inciting them to rebellion. (no evidence is produced as to this accusation, and it is not even alleged that the attempt complained of had any success.) 4. the resistance of the armenians of zeitoun to the turkish authorities is referred to. (the events at zeitoun are well known. turkish gendarmes had taken possession of some armenian young women; twenty young men had thereupon come to blows with the gendarmes and had barricaded themselves in a monastery some distance away from the town. the town was then surrounded by soldiers and the whole population of the town was deported.) 5. it is made a complaint that four "hintchakists" were involved in a plot against the turkish government organized by the party in opposition. (the plot was started in 1912, and had been discovered before the outbreak of war. the "hintchakists" were active as a revolutionary armenian party in the nineties, but in 1913 the turkish hintchakists repudiated all connection with any revolutionary movement; the four hintchakists in question were egyptian, armenians, and had been arrested before the outbreak of war.) 6. it is stated that armenians in van and other places hear the south-eastern corner of lake van, had risen in arms against the government. (the events in this district are well-known; there was no premeditated resistance; but the violence of the turkish and kurdish soldiers, which caused many inhabitants to cross the russian frontier, also caused some occasional acts of resistance.) 7. the occupation of the castle rock at shabin-karahissar by 500 armenians is made another ground of complaint. (this happened after the town had been surrounded by soldiers, who had been summoned on account of the excitement caused in the town by the execution of a citizen and the threats of deportations.) the far-fetched character of the justification of the outrages is laid bare by the analysis given above, which is a summarised reproduction of the criticism contained in the german scholar's memorandum. the old maxim, "qui s'excuse s'accuse," is particularly appropriate in this instance. the deliberate character of the policy of extermination is only seen with greater distinctness through the flimsy cloak of pretexts which is intended to conceal it. the result is described as follows in the german memorandum: "what has happened, is an eviction carried out on the largest possible scale, affecting 1 1/2 millions of citizens, who by their pertinacity and capacity for work have had the greatest share in the development of the economic progress of the country." some persons in germany seem to think that the fate of the armenians was due to the fact that the continued co-existence in the same country of races so antagonistic to one another as the turkish and armenian is impossible in the nature of things; but this is most emphatically denied by the author of the memorandum, who asserts that in this instance the government did not even make use of its favourite method of inciting one part of the population against another part, but carried out its scheme by the sole agency of administrative measures. the author of the memorandum is no doubt himself actuated entirely by humane and high-minded feelings, and the very fact of his taking such a very strong attitude on the armenian question reveals an amount of courage which calls for unqualified admiration; but he evidently knows that many of his countrymen require more tangible inducements for abandoning their callous or hostile attitude on the armenian question. he therefore calls attention to the serious loss which not only turkish economic life but also german trade interests will suffer, if the extermination of the armenians is to be carried to the bitter end. he shows that the turks are absolutely without any talent for trade and industry, and that the legend about the dishonesty of the armenians and greeks as opposed to the honesty of the turks has no foundation in fact of any sort. he says that many german merchants are under the impression that their customers in turkey are turks, while in reality they are armenians, greeks, or jews. the greeks apparently are chiefly concerned with export trade, while the import trade is mainly in the hands of armenian merchants. the german exporters, who give longer credits than others, are of course interested in the solvency of their customers, but many of them are ignorant of their nationality, and--starting from the notion that everyone who wears a fez is of turkish nationality--they think that they are dealing with turks. these exporters will have a rude wakening when the true facts become known to them. the memorandum, by way of illustration, mentions one firm of importers in constantinople who sell goods to 378 customers residing in 42 towns in the interior. the total amount owing by these customers at the date when the information was given, was nearly £14,000, which sum had to be written off as lost, as all the 378 debtors, with their employees and with their goods, have vanished; they are either dead or wander about as beggars on the borders of the arabian desert. during the balkan war some members of the young turk committee tried to damage the trade of the armenians and of the greeks by means of a boycott, which was put into operation with the aid of the government. the rural population, which was in this way compelled to make their purchases in turkish shops only, obtained bad goods at increased prices, and returned to the armenians and greeks as soon as the boycott was raised. the memorandum quotes a report, dated 15th august, 1915, and made by the american consul at aleppo, which sums up the result of the deportations of the armenians in the following passage:-"as 90 per cent. of the trade into the interior is in the hands of the armenians, the result is that the country has to face economic ruin. as the greater part of the commercial transactions are credit transactions, hundreds of business men of high standing, though not themselves armenians, have to face bankruptcy. in the evacuated localities, barring a few exceptions, there will not be a single mason, smith, tailor, carpenter, potter, tentmaker, weaver, shoemaker, jeweller, chemist, doctor, lawyer, or any other person engaged in trade or in a profession; the country will, in fact, be in a helpless position." the author of the memorandum winds up the section relating to the effect of the deportations on turkish trade with the following passage:-"the popularity of the--otherwise unpopular--war may have been temporarily increased with the turkish populace by the annihilation and spoliation of the non-mohammedan population, more particularly of the armenians, but partly also of the syrians, the greeks, the maronites, and the jews; but the more thoughtful mohammedans will, on perceiving the net result of the damage suffered by their country, regretfully lament the economic ruin of turkey, and come to the conclusion that the turkish government has lost incomparably more by the internal warfare than it can ever gain by external victories." as regards the "moral consequences" of the armenian massacres, the german scholar says that they will not be properly felt till after the end of the war. he means by that, that the civilized world will then wake up to the horrors of the deeds which have been perpetrated by the turkish government. he continues: "the world will not allow itself to be persuaded by the contention that strategical considerations had required the deportation of half a million of women and children, wholesale conversions to the mohammedan faith, and the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of defenceless persons." the german scholar's memorandum, for obvious reasons, is very silent as to the moral responsibility of the german government for the deeds which rouse his indignation, but several of his countrymen are more outspoken. in this respect some of the documents included in this pamphlet are very instructive. the german whose experiences are recorded in document 9 reports that a turkish official said to him: "this time germany has given these unbelieving swine a lesson which they will not forget." (see below, p. 66.) at arab pounar a turkish major addressed him in the following language: "i and my brother took possession of a young girl at ras-el-ain, who had been left on the road. we are very angry with the germans for doing such things." when challenged on this point the turks replied: "the chief of the general staff is a german; von der goltz is commander-in-chief, and ever so many german officers are in our army. our koran does not permit such treatment as the armenians have to suffer now." (see p. 79.) in nuss tell a mohammedan inspector made a similar remark, and when asked to explain himself he replied: "it is not only i who say this; everyone will tell you the same tale." (see p. 79.) document no. 12, which voices the indignation of a german teacher in a german secondary school in turkey, is also of peculiar interest. the following passages deserve special notice:--"we deem it our duty to call attention to the fact that our educational work will lose its moral foundation and the esteem of the natives, if the german government is not in a position to prevent the brutality with which the wives and children of slaughtered armenians are treated in this place." (see p. 95.) "'ta alim el aleman' ('that is the teaching of the germans') says the simple turk, when asked about the authors of these measures. the educated moslems are convinced that, though the german people may disapprove of such horrors, the german government is taking no steps to prevent them, out of consideration for its turkish allies. mohammedans of more refined feelings, turks as well as arabs, shake their heads disapprovingly; they do not even conceal their tears, when, in the passage of a convoy of deported armenians through the town, they see turkish soldiers inflicting blows with heavy sticks on women in advanced pregnancy or dying persons who cannot drag themselves any further. they cannot imagine that their government has ordered these cruelties, and ascribe all excesses to the guilt of the germans, who during the war are held to be the teachers of the turks in all matters. even the mollahs declare in the mosques that it was not the sublime porte but the german officers who had ordered the ill-treatment and annihilation of the armenians. the things which in this place have been before everybody's eyes during many months must indeed remain a blot on germany's shield of honour in the memory of oriental nations." (see pp. 96-97.) "nothing would be more humiliating for us than the erection of a costly palace at constantinople commemorating german-turkish friendship, while we are unable to protect our fellow-christians from barbarities unparalleled even in the blood-stained history of turkey." (see p. 106.) the author of the document considers it "out of the question that the german government, if it were seriously inclined to stem the tide of destruction even at this eleventh hour, could find it impossible to bring the turkish government to reason." he proceeds as follows: "if the turks are really so well disposed to us germans as people say, then it is surely permissible to show them to what an extent they compromise us before the whole civilised world, if we, as their allies, are to look on calmly, when hundreds of thousands of our fellow-christians in turkey are slaughtered, when their wives and daughters are violated, and their children brought up in the faith of islam." (see p. 105.) he concludes his report with the following peroration: "we may indignantly repudiate the lies circulated in enemy countries accusing the german consuls of having organized the massacres. we shall not, however, destroy the belief of the turkish people that germany has ordered the armenian massacres unless energetic action be at last taken by german diplomatists and german officers." more than a year has elapsed since the appeal was issued, but the rulers of germany apparently are more inclined to act on count reventlow's suggestion, according to which "the armenians least of all deserve the pity and the compassionate emotions of the civilized world," than to listen to an eye-witness whose conceptions as to the true mission of german culture differ so widely from the ideas which, to the disgrace and misfortune of his country, have of late characterised german political aims and german methods of warfare. a. the invasion of persia. 1. letters from german missionaries in n.w. persia. (a) the russians had hardly gone when the mohammedans began to rob and to pillage. window-frames, doors, staircases, woodwork, everything was taken away. many syrians had abandoned the whole of their household goods and the stores accumulated for the winter, and had fled. everything fell into the enemy's hands. flight was the best expedient; for those who were left behind had a sad fate. fifteen thousand syrians found protection within the walls of the mission station, and were provided with bread by the missionaries. one lavasch (a thin water biscuit) was each person's daily ration. sickness broke out; the death rate mounted up to fifty a day. in the villages the kurds killed nearly every man who came into their power. during six weeks a turkish soldier guarded us. the fact that i was born in germany was very helpful; nobody even touched us. [4] am i to report how the turks had erected gallows on the main road outside the town gates and had hanged many innocent syrians and shot others, who previously had been detained a long time in prison? i will be silent as to all these horrible things. like many other armenian soldiers, one was beaten to death here outside the gate and buried close to miss friedemann's wall, but so carelessly that the dogs were able to disinter part of the corpse. one of the hands was quite uncovered. i took a few spades and we heaped a mound over him. miss friedemann's garden, the property of the german orient mission, was destroyed by the mohammedans and some of the houses were set on fire. we gladly welcomed the first cossacks, who appeared again after five months. now we feel once more that our life is safe and that it is unnecessary to keep the gates locked during the day-time. (b) the latest reports tell us that 4,000 syrians and 100 armenians who were here with the [american] missionaries [in urmia] died of sickness alone. all the surrounding villages have been plundered and burnt down, more particularly göktepe, gülpashan, and icharguscha. two thousand christians have been massacred in urmia and the surrounding country; many churches have been destroyed and burnt; also many houses in the town. (c) sautchbulak was razed to the ground by the turks. gallows were erected for the missionaries, but help came and prevented the worst. a lady missionary and a doctor have died. (d) in haftevan and salmas 850 corpses were found in the wells and cisterns alone, all headless. why? the commander-in-chief of the turkish troops had promised a sum of money for every christian head. the wells are drenched with the blood of christians. from haftevan alone 500 women and girls were handed over to the kurds in sautchbulak. in diliman crowds of christians were locked up and forced to become mohammedans. the males were circumcised. gülpashan, the richest village in the district of urmia, has been razed to the ground. the men were killed, the pretty girls and women carried off. the same fate befell babaru. hundreds of women threw themselves into the depths of the river when they saw so many of their sisters being violated in the streets in broad daylight; the same happened in miandoab in the district of sulduz. the soldiers who passed through from sautchbulak carried the russian consul's head on a bayonet-point into maragha. forty syrians were hanged on the gallows erected in the catholic mission station at fath-ali-han-göl. the nuns had run into the street and prayed for pity, but in vain. in salmas in khosrova their whole station has been destroyed; the nuns have fled. maragha is destroyed. in tabriz things are not quite so bad; 1,175 christians were massacred in salmas, 2,000 in the district of urmia. of those who had taken refuge with the missionaries 4,100 died of typhus. the whole number of the refugees, including those from tergavar, van, and azerbaijan, is estimated at 300,000. in etchmiadzin a committee was formed for the purpose of taking care of the poor people. over 500 children were found on the roads over which the refugees had come, some only nine days old. altogether over 3,000 orphans were collected at etchmiadzin. b. the six armenian vilayets. 2. van after the turkish retreat. letter from herr spörri, of the german mission at van, published in the german journal, "sonnenaufgang," october, 1915. there lies artamid before us, adorned by its charming gardens; but how does the village look? the greater part of it is nothing now but a heap of ruins. we talked there with three of our former orphan protégées, who had had fearful experiences during the recent events. we rode on across the mountain of artamid. even in time of peace one crosses the pass with one's heart in one's mouth, because the kurds ply their robber trade there. now it is all uncannily still. our glance swept over the magnificent valley of haiotz-tzor. there lay antananz before us, now utterly destroyed like the rest. we gave shelter, at the time, to people from antananz who had managed to escape. further on in the magnificent green landscape lay vostan. at first sight one might call it a paradise, but during these latter days it has also been a hell. what rivers of blood must have flowed there; it was one of the chief strongholds of the armed kurds. at the foot of the mountain we came to angegh. there again there were many houses destroyed. we found here a young woman who, after many years of widowhood, had married a native of the village. things had been going well with her; now her husband, too, was slaughtered. one hundred and thirty people are said to have been murdered thus. we pitched our camp here in face of the blackened ruins. straight in front of us stood an "amrodz," a tower built of cakes of dung--a common enough sight in these parts. we were told that the kurds had burnt the corpses of the slaughtered armenians in it. horrible! and yet that is at least better than if the corpses of the slain, as has happened in other places, are allowed to lie for an indefinite period unburied, so that they are devoured by dogs and poison the air. there we were met by some soldiers; they were armenian "volunteers" who had come from russia and were now fighting on the side of the russians for the liberation of their haiasdan. they were coming now from the neighbourhood of bitlis, where heavy fighting was in progress. they had brought some sick back to the town, and proposed to rest here awhile. after that we rode on to ten, where people we already knew came out to meet us from the village and informed us of what had happened there. there, too, the scenes of our former activity, the school and the church, lay in ruins, and many dwelling houses as well. the man who used to put us up was also among the slain; his widow is still quite distraught. here about 150 are said to have been murdered. there were so many orphans in the place, they said to us:--should we now be inclined to take charge of any again? we were unable to give them any definite answer. as we rode on and on over the mountains, the splendid air did us much good and we thanked god for it, for little by little we have come to be in sore need of recuperation. we had a wonderful view from the mountain heights, but everywhere in the villages one sees blackened and ruined houses. 3. moush. statement by a german eye-witness of occurrences at moush. communicated by the american committee for armenian and syrian relief. towards the end of october (1914), when the turkish war began, the turkish officials started to take everything they needed for the war from the armenians. their goods, their money, all was confiscated. later on, every turk was free to go to an armenian shop and take out what he needed or thought he would like to have. only a tenth perhaps was really for the war, the rest was pure robbery. it was necessary to have food, etc., carried to the front, on the caucasian frontier. for this purpose the government sent out about 300 old armenian men, many cripples amongst them, and boys not more than twelve years old, to carry the goods--a three weeks' journey from moush to the russian frontier. as every individual armenian was robbed of everything he ever had, these poor people soon died of hunger and cold on the way. they had no clothes at all, for even these were stolen on the way. if out of these 300 armenians thirty or forty returned, it was a marvel; the rest were either beaten to death or died from the causes stated above. the winter was most severe in moush; the gendarmes were sent to levy high taxes, and as the armenians had already given everything to the turks, and were therefore powerless to pay these enormous taxes, they were beaten to death. the armenians never defended themselves except when they saw the gendarmes ill-treating their wives and children, and the result in such cases was that the whole village was burnt down, merely because a few armenians had tried to protect their families. toward the middle of april we heard rumours that there were great disturbances in van. we have heard statements both from turks and from armenians, and as these reports agree in every respect, it is quite plain that there is some truth in them. they state that the ottoman government sent orders that all armenians were to give up their arms, which the armenians refused to do on the ground that they required their arms in case of necessity. this caused a regular massacre. all villages inhabited by armenians were burnt down. the turks boasted of having now got rid of all the armenians. i heard it from the officers myself, how they revelled in the thought that the armenians had been got rid of. thus the winter passed, with things happening every day more terrible than one can possibly describe. we then heard that massacres had started in bitlis. in moush everything was being prepared for one, when the russians arrived at liz, which is about 14 to 16 hours' journey from moush. this occupied the attention of the turks, so that the massacre was put off for the time being. hardly had the russians left liz, however, when all the districts inhabited by armenians were pillaged and destroyed. this was in the month of may. at the beginning of june, we heard that the whole armenian population of bitlis had been got rid of. it was at this time that we received news that the american missionary, dr. knapp, had been wounded in an armenian house and that the turkish government had sent him to diyarbekir. the very first night in diyarbekir he died, and the government explained his death as a result of having overeaten, which of course nobody believed. when there was no one left in bitlis to massacre, their attention was diverted to moush. cruelties had already been committed, but so far not too publicly; now, however, they started to shoot people down without any cause, and beat them to death simply for the pleasure of doing so. in moush itself, which is a big town, there are 25,000 armenians; in the neighbourhood there are 300 villages, each containing about 500 houses. in all these not a single male armenian is now to be seen, and hardly a woman either, except for a few here and there. in the first week of july 20,000 soldiers arrived from constantinople by way of harpout with munitions and eleven guns, and laid siege to moush. as a matter of fact, the town had already been beleaguered since the middle of june. at this stage the mutessarif gave orders that we should leave the town and go to harpout. we pleaded with him to let us stay, for we had in our charge all the orphans and patients; but he was angry, and threatened to remove us by force if we did not do as instructed. as we both fell sick, however, we were allowed to remain at moush. i received permission, in the event of our leaving moush, to take the armenians of our orphanage with us; but when we asked for assurances of their safety, his only reply was: "you can take them with you, but being armenians, their heads may and will be cut off on the way." on the 10th july moush was bombarded for several hours, on the pretext that some armenians had tried to escape. i went to see the mutessarif, and asked him to protect our buildings. his reply was: "it serves you right for staying, instead of leaving as instructed. the guns are here to make an end of moush. take refuge with the turks." this, of course, was impossible, as we could not leave our charges. next day a new order was promulgated for the expulsion of the armenians, and three days' grace was given them to make ready. they were told to register themselves at the government building before they left. their families could remain, but their property and their money were to be confiscated. the armenians were unable to go, for they had no money to defray the journey, and they preferred to die in their houses rather than be separated from their families and endure a lingering death on the road. as stated above, three days' grace was given to the armenians, but two hours had scarcely elapsed when the soldiers began breaking into the houses, arresting the inmates and throwing them into prison. the guns began to fire, and thus the people were effectually prevented from registering themselves at the government building. we all had to take refuge in the cellar for fear of our orphanage catching fire. it was heartrending to hear the cries of the people and children who were being burnt to death in their houses. the soldiers took great delight in hearing them, and when people who were out in the street during the bombardment fell dead, the soldiers merely laughed at them. the survivors were sent to ourfa (there were none left but sick women and children); i went to the mutessarif and begged him to have mercy on the children at least, but in vain. he replied that the armenian children must perish with their nation. all our people were taken from our hospital and orphanage; they left us three female servants. under these atrocious circumstances moush was burnt to the ground. every officer boasted of the number he had personally massacred as his share in ridding turkey of the armenian race. we left for harpout. harpout has become the cemetery of the armenians; from all directions they have been brought to harpout to be buried. there they lie, and the dogs and the vultures devour their bodies. now and then some man throws some earth over the bodies. in harpout and mezré the people have had to endure terrible tortures. they have had their eye-brows plucked out, their breasts cut off, their nails torn off; their torturers hew off their feet or else hammer nails into them just as they do in shoeing horses. this is all done at night time, and in order that the people may not hear their screams and know of their agony, soldiers are stationed round the prisons, beating drums and blowing whistles. it is needless to relate that many died of these tortures. when they die, the soldiers cry: "now let your christ help you." one old priest was tortured so cruelly to extract a confession that, believing that the torture would cease and that he would be left alone if he did it, he cried out in his desperation: "we are revolutionists." he expected his tortures to cease, but on the contrary the soldiers cried: "what further do we seek? we have it here from his own lips." and instead of picking their victims as they did before, the officials had all the armenians tortured without sparing a soul. early in july 2,000 armenian soldiers were ordered to leave for aleppo to build roads. the people of harpout were terrified on hearing this, and a panic started in the town. the vali sent for the german missionary, mr. ehemann, and begged him to quiet the people, repeating over and over again that no harm whatever would befall these soldiers. mr. ehemann took the vali's word and quieted the people. but they had scarcely left when we heard that they had all been murdered and thrown into a cave. just a few managed to escape, and we got the reports from them. it was useless to protest to the vali. the american consul at harpout protested several times, but the vali makes no account of him, and treats him in a most shameful manner. a few days later another 2,000 armenian soldiers were despatched via diyarbekir, and, in order to hinder them the more surely from escaping, they were left to starve on the way, so that they had no strength left in them to flee. the kurds were given notice that the armenians were on the way, and the kurdish women came with their butcher's knives to help the men. in mezré a public brothel was erected for the turks, and all the beautiful armenian girls and women were placed there. at night the turks were allowed free entrance. the permission for the protestant and catholic armenians to be exempted from deportation only arrived after their deportation had taken place. the government wanted to force the few remaining armenians to accept the mohammedan faith. a few did so in order to save their wives and children from the terrible sufferings already witnessed in the case of others. the people begged us to leave for constantinople and obtain some security for them. on our way to constantinople we only encountered old women. no young women or girls were to be seen. already by november [5] we had known that there would be a massacre. the mutessarif of moush, who was a very intimate friend of enver pasha, declared quite openly that they would massacre the armenians at the first opportune moment and exterminate the whole race. before the russians arrived they intended first to butcher the armenians, and then fight the russians afterwards. towards the beginning of april, in the presence of a major lange and several other high officials, including the american and german consuls, ekran bey quite openly declared the government's intention of exterminating the armenian race. all these details plainly show that the massacre was deliberately planned. in a few villages destitute women come begging, naked and sick, for alms and protection. we are not allowed to give them anything, we are not allowed to take them in, in fact we are forbidden to do anything for them, and they die outside. if only permission could be obtained from the authorities to help them! if we cannot endure the sight of these poor people's sufferings, what must it be like for the sufferers themselves? it is a story written in blood. two old missionaries and a younger lady (an american) were sent away from mardin. they were treated just like prisoners, dogged continually by the gendarmes, and were brought in this fashion to sivas. for missionaries of that age a journey of this kind in the present circumstances was obviously a terrible hardship. 4. erzindjan. statement by two danish red cross nurses, formerly in the service of the german military mission at erzeroum. [6] communicated by a swiss gentleman of geneva. in march, 1915, we learnt through an armenian doctor, who died later on of typhoid, that the turkish government was preparing for a massacre on a grand scale. he begged us to find out from general passelt whether the rumour was true. we heard afterwards that the general (a gallant officer) had his own fears of it, and asked, for that reason, to be relieved of his post. ... we fell sick of typhoid and ... in consequence of a number of changes in the hospital staff ... we were obliged to leave erzeroum. through the good offices of the german consul at erzeroum, who also possessed the confidence of the armenians, we were engaged by the red cross at erzindjan, and worked there seven weeks. at the beginning of june, the head of the red cross mission at erzindjan, staff-surgeon a., told us that the armenians had revolted at van, that measures had been taken against them which would be put into general execution, and that the whole armenian population of erzindjan and the neighbourhood would be transported to mesopotamia, where it would no longer find itself in a majority. there was, however, to be no massacre, and measures were to be taken to feed the exiles and to secure their personal safety by a military escort. wagons loaded with arms and bombs were reported, he said, to have been discovered at erzindjan, and many arrests were to be made. the red cross staff were forbidden to have any relations with the exiles, and prohibited any excursions on foot or horseback beyond a certain radius. after that, several days' grace was given to the population of erzindjan for the sale of their property, which was naturally realised at ludicrous prices. in the first week of june, [7] the first convoy started; the rich people were allowed to hire carriages. they were to go to harpout. the three succeeding days, further deportations followed; [8] many children were taken charge of by moslem families; later on, the authorities decided that these children must go into exile as well. the families of the armenians employed in our hospital had to go with the rest, including a woman who was ill. a protest from dr. neukirch, who was attending her, had no effect except to postpone her departure two days. a soldier attached to our staff as cobbler said to sister b. [9]: "i am now forty-six years old, and yet i am taken for military service, although i have paid my exemption-tax regularly every year. i have never done anything against the government, and now they are taking from me my whole family, my seventy-year-old mother, my wife and five children, and i do not know where they are going." he was especially affected by the thought of his little daughter, a year and a half old; "she is so sweet. she has such pretty eyes"; he wept like a child. the next day he came back; "i know the truth. they are all dead." and it was only too true. our turkish cook came to us crying, and told us how the kurds had attacked the unhappy convoy at kamakh boghaz, [10] had pillaged it completely, and had killed a great number of the exiles. this must have been the 14th june. two young armenian teachers, educated at the college of harpout, whose lives were spared, related that the convoy had been caught under a cross-fire by the kurds on the flanks and the turkish irregulars in the rear. they had thrown themselves flat on the ground and pretended to be dead; afterwards they succeeded in finding their way back to erzindjan by circuitous paths, bribing some kurds whom they met on the way. one of them had with her her fiancé in woman's clothes. he had been shielded by a turkish class-mate. when they reached erzindjan a gendarme tried to abduct the girl, and her fiancé interfered. he was killed, and the girls were carried off to turkish houses, where they were treated kindly, but had pressure put upon them to change their religion. they conveyed this news to us through a young doctor who attended some armenian patients in our hospital, and was thereby enabled to get into touch with us; he brought us an appeal from them to take them with us to harpout. if only they had poison, they said, they would poison themselves. they had no information whatever as to the fate of their companions. the day after [11], friday, the 11th june, a party of regular troops (belonging to the 86th cavalry brigade) were sent out "to keep the kurds in order." we heard subsequently from these soldiers how the defenceless armenians had been massacred to the last one. the butchery had taken four hours. the women threw themselves on their knees, they had thrown their children into the euphrates, and so on. [12] "it was horrible," said a nice-looking young soldier; "i could not fire, i only pretended." for that matter, we have often heard turks express their disapproval and their pity. the soldiers told us that there were ox-carts all ready to carry the corpses to the river and remove every trace of the massacre. [13] next day there was a regular battue through the cornfields. (the corn was then standing, and many armenians had hidden in it.) from that time on, convoys of exiles were continually arriving, all on their way to the slaughter; we have no doubt about their fate, after the unanimous testimony which we have received from many different quarters. later, our greek driver told us that the victims had their hands tied behind their backs, and were thrown down from the cliffs into the river. this method was employed when the numbers were too great to dispose of them in any other fashion. it was also easier work for the murderers. sister b. and i, of course, began at once to think what we could do, and we decided to travel with one of these convoys to harpout. we did not know yet that the massacre on the road had been ordered by the government, and we also thought that we could check the brutality of the gendarmes and stave off the assaults of the kurds, since we speak kurdish and have some influence over the tribesmen.... we then telegraphed to the consul at erzeroum, telling him that we had been dismissed from the hospital, and urging him, in the interests of germany, to come to erzindjan. he wired back: "impossible to leave my post. wait for austrians, who are due to pass here the 22nd june." on the evening of the 17th june, we went out for a walk with mr. c., the druggist of the red cross staff. he was as much horrified as we were at the cruelties that were being perpetrated.... on our walk we met a gendarme, who told us that, ten minutes' distance away, a large convoy of exiles from baibourt had halted. he narrated to us, with appalling vividness, how one by one the men had been massacred and cast into the depths of the gorge. [14] he told how, at each village, the women had been violated; how he himself had desired to take a girl, but had been told that already she was no longer a maid; how children had had their brains battered out when they cried or hindered the march. "there were the naked bodies of three girls; i buried them to do a good deed," was the remark with which he concluded his story. the following morning, at a very early hour, we heard the procession of exiles passing in front of our house, along the high road leading in to erzindjan. we followed them and kept up with them as far as the town, about an hour's walk. mr. g. came with us. it was a very large gang--only two or three of them men, all the rest women and children. many of the women looked demented. they cried out: "spare us, we will become moslems or germans or whatever you will; only spare us. we are being taken to kamakh boghaz to have our throats cut," and they made an expressive gesture. others kept silence, and marched patiently on with a few bundles on their backs and their children in their arms. others begged us to save their children. many turks arrived on the scene to carry off children and girls, with or without their parents' consent. there was no time for reflection, for the crowd was being moved on continually by the mounted gendarmes brandishing their whips. on the outskirts of the town, the road to kamakh boghaz branches off from the main highway. at this point the scene turned into a regular slave market; for our part, we took a family of six children, from three to fourteen years old, who clutched hold of us, and another little girl as well. we entrusted the latter to our turkish cook, who was on the spot. she wanted to take the child to the kitchen of dr. a.'s private house, and keep her there until we could come and fetch her; but the doctor's adjutant, riza bey, gave the woman a beating and threw the child out into the street. meanwhile, with cries of agony, the gang of sufferers continued its march, while we returned to the hospital with our six children. dr. a. gave us permission to keep them in our room until we had packed our belongings; they were given food and soon became calmer. "now we are saved," they had cried when we took them. they refused to let go of our hands. the smallest, the son of a rich citizen of baibourt, lay huddled up in his mother's cloak; his face was swollen with crying and he seemed inconsolable. once he rushed to the window and pointed to a gendarme: "that's the man who killed my father." the children handed over to us their money, 475 piastres (about £4), which their parents had given them with the idea that the children would not be searched. we then rode into the town to obtain permission for these children to travel with us. we were told that the high authorities were in session to decide the fate of the convoy which had just arrived. nevertheless, sister b. succeeded in getting word with someone she knew, who gave her the authorisation to take the children with her, and offered to give them false names in the passport. this satisfied us, and, after returning to the hospital, we left the same evening with baggage and children and all, and installed ourselves in a hotel at erzindjan. the turkish orderlies at the hospital were very friendly, and said: "you have done a good deed in taking these children." we could get nothing but one small room for the eight of us. during the night there was a frightful knocking at our door, and we were asked whether there were two german ladies in the room. then all became quiet again, to the great relief of our little ones. their first question had been, would we prevent them from being made mohammedans? and was our cross (the nurses' red cross) the same as theirs? after that they were comforted. we left them in the room, and went ourselves to take our tea in the hotel café. we noticed that some discharged hospital patients of ours, who had always shown themselves full of gratitude towards us, behaved as if they no longer recognised us. the proprietor of the hotel began to hold forth, and everyone listened to what he was saying: "the death of these women and children has been decreed at constantinople." the hodja (turkish priest) of our hospital came in, too, and said to us, among other things: "if god has no pity on them, why must you have pity? the armenians have committed atrocities at van. that happened because their religion is ekzik (inferior). the moslems should not have followed their example, but should have carried out the massacre with greater humanity." we always gave the same answer--that they ought to discover the guilty and do justice upon them, but that the massacre of women and children was, and always will remain, a crime. then we went to the mutessarif himself, with whom we had not succeeded in obtaining an interview before. the man looked like the devil incarnate, and his behaviour bore out his appearance. in a bellowing voice he shouted at us: "women have no business to meddle with politics, but ought to respect the government!" we told him that we should have acted in precisely the same way if the victims had been mohammedans, and that politics had nothing to do with our conduct. he answered that we had been expelled from the hospital, and that we should get the same treatment from him; that he would not stand us, and that he would certainly not permit us to go to harpout to fetch our belongings, but would send us to sivas. worst of all, he forbade us to take the children away, and at once sent a gendarme to carry them off from our room. on our way back to the hotel we actually met them, but they were hurried past us so quickly that we had not even a chance to return them their money. afterwards we asked dr. lindenberg to see that this money was restored to them; but, to find out where they were, he had to make enquiries of a turkish officer, and just at the moment of our departure, when we had been told that they had already been killed, and when we had no longer any chance of making further search for them, the aforementioned riza bey came and asked us for this money, on the ground that he wanted to return it to the children! we had already decided to spend it on relieving other armenians. at erzindjan we were now looked askance at. they would no longer let us stay at the hotel, but took us to a deserted armenian house. the whole of this extensive quarter of the town seemed dead. people came and went at will to loot the contents of the houses; in some of the houses the families of moslem refugees were already installed. we had now a roof over our heads, but no one would go to get us food. however, we managed to send a note to dr. a., who kindly allowed us to return to the hospital. the following day the mutessarif sent a springless baggage cart, in which we were to do the seven days' journey to sivas. we gave him to understand that we would not have the conveyance, and, upon the representations of dr. a., they sent us a travelling carriage, with the threat to have us arrested if we did not start at once. this was on monday, the 21st june, and we should have liked to wait for the austrians, who were due to arrive on the tuesday morning, and continue the journey in their company; but dr. a. declared that he could no longer give us protection, and so we started out. dr. lindenberg did us the kindness of escorting us as far as rifahia. [15] during the first days of our journey we saw five corpses. one was a woman's, and still had clothes on; the others were naked, one of them headless. there were two turkish officers on the road with us who were really armenians, as we were told by the gendarme attached to us. they preserved their incognito towards us, and maintained a very great reserve, but always took care not to get separated from us. on the fourth day they did not put in an appearance. when we enquired after them, we were given to understand that the less we concerned ourselves about them the better it would be for us. on the road, we broke our journey near a greek village. a savage-looking man was standing by the roadside. he began to talk with us, and told us he was stationed there to kill all the armenians that passed, and that he had already killed 250. he explained that they all deserved their fate, for they were all anarchists--not liberals or socialists, but anarchists. he told the gendarmes that he had received orders by telephone to kill our two travelling companions. so these two men with their armenian drivers must have perished there. we could not restrain ourselves from arguing with this assassin, but when he went off our greek driver warned us: "don't say a word, if you do ..."--and he made the gesture of taking aim. the rumour had, in fact, got about that we were armenians, which was as good as to say condemned to death. one day we met a convoy of exiles, who had said good-bye to their prosperous villages and were at that moment on their way to kamakh boghaz. we had to draw up a long time by the roadside while they marched past. the scene will never be forgotten by either of us: a very small number of elderly men, a large number of women--vigorous figures with energetic features--a crowd of pretty children, some of them fair and blue-eyed, one little girl smiling at the strangeness of all she was seeing, but on all the other faces the solemnity of death. there was no noise; it was all quiet, and they marched along in an orderly way, the children generally riding on the ox-carts; and so they passed, some of them greeting us on the way--all these poor people, who are now standing at the throne of god, and whose cry goes up before him. an old woman was made to get down from her donkey--she could no longer keep the saddle. was she killed on the spot? our hearts had become as cold as ice. the gendarme attached to us told us then that he had escorted a convoy of 3,000 women and children from mamahatoun (near erzeroum) to kamakh boghaz. "hep gildi, bildi," he said: "all gone, all dead." we asked him: "why condemn them to this frightful torment; why not kill them in their villages?" answer: "it is best as it is. they ought to be made to suffer; and, besides, there would be no place left for us moslems with all these corpses about. they will make a stench!" we spent a night at enderessi, one day's journey from shabin kara-hissar. as usual, we had been given for our lodging an empty armenian house. on the wall there was a pencil scrawl in turkish: "our dwelling is on the mountains, we have no longer any need of a roof to cover us; we have already drained the bitter cup of death, we have no more need of a judge." the ground floor rooms of the house were still tenanted by the women and children. the gendarmes told us that they would be exiled next morning, but they did not know that yet; they did not know what had become of the men of the house; they were restless, but not yet desperate. just after i had gone to sleep, i was awakened by shots in our immediate neighbourhood. the reports followed one another rapidly, and i distinctly heard the words of command. i realised at once what was happening, and actually experienced a feeling of relief at the idea that these poor creatures were now beyond the reach of human cruelty. next morning our people told us that ten armenians had been shot--that was the firing that we had heard--and that the turkish civilians of the place were now being sent out to chase the fugitives. indeed, we saw them starting off on horseback with guns. at the roadside were two armed men standing under a tree and dividing between them the clothes of a dead armenian. they were just holding up a pair of blue cloth trousers. we passed a place covered with clotted blood, though the corpses had been removed. it was the 250 road-making soldiers, of whom our gendarme had told us. once we met a large number of these labourers, who had so far been allowed to do their work in peace. they had been sorted into three gangs--moslems, greeks and armenians. there were several officers with the latter. our young hassan exclaimed: "they are all going to be butchered." we continued our journey, and the road mounted a hill. then our driver pointed with his whip towards the valley, and we saw that the armenian gang was being made to stand out on the high road. there were about 400 of them, and they were being made to line up on the edge of a slope. we know what happened after that. two days before we reached sivas, we again saw the same sight. the soldiers' bayonets glittered in the sun. at another place there were ten gendarmes shooting them down, while turkish workmen were finishing off the victims with knives and stones. here ten armenians had succeeded in getting away. later on, in the mission hospital at sivas, we came across one of the men who had escaped. he told us that about 100 armenians had been slaughtered there. our informant himself had received a terrible wound in the nape of the neck and had fainted. afterwards he had recovered consciousness and had dragged himself in two days to sivas. twelve hours' distance from sivas, we spent the night in a government building. for hours a gendarme, sitting in front of our door, crooned to himself over and over again: "ermenleri hep kesdiler--the armenians have all been killed!" in the next room they were talking on the telephone. we made out that they were giving instructions as to how the armenians were to be arrested. they were talking chiefly about a certain ohannes, whom they had not succeeded in finding yet. one night we slept in an armenian house where the women had just heard that the men of the family had been condemned to death. it was frightful to hear their cries of anguish. "cannot your emperor help us?" they cried. the gendarme saw the despair on our faces, and said: "their crying bothers you; i will forbid them to cry." however, he let himself be mollified. he had taken particular pleasure in pointing out to us all the horrors that we encountered, and he said to young hassan: "first we kill the armenians, then the greeks, then the kurds." he would certainly have been delighted to add: "and then the foreigners!" our greek driver was the victim of a still more ghastly joke: "look, down there in the ditch; there are greeks there too!" at last we reached sivas. we had to wait an hour in front of the government building before the examination of our papers was completed and we were given permission to go to the americans. there, too, all was trouble and sorrow. on the 1st july we left sivas, and reached kaisaria on the 4th. we had been given permission to go to talas, after depositing our baggage at the jesuit school; but when we wanted to go on from kaisaria, we were refused leave and taken back to the jesuit school, where a gendarme was posted in front of our door. however, the american missionaries succeeded in getting us set at liberty. we then returned to talas, where we passed several days full of commotion, for there, as well as at kaisaria, there were many arrests being made. the poor armenians never knew what the morrow would bring, and then came the terrifying news that all armenians had been cleared out of sivas. what happened there and in the villages of the surrounding districts will be reported by the american mission. when we discovered that they meant to keep us there--for they had prevented us from joining the austrians for the journey--we telegraphed to the german embassy, and so obtained permission to start. there is nothing to tell about this part of our journey, except that the locusts had in places destroyed all the fruit and vegetables, so that the turks are already beginning to have some experience of the divine punishment. 5. the town of h. statement made by miss da., a danish lady in the service of the german red cross at h., to mr. db. at basle, and communicated by mr. db. to lord bryce. sister da. left the german red cross mission at h. in april, 1916, travelling through ourfa to aleppo, and thence by road and railway across anatolia to constantinople. mr. db. met her at basle, on her way from constantinople to denmark, in the house of a mutual friend. sister da. told mr. db. that on the 16th march, 1915, the german vice-consul appointed provisionally to erzeroum (the consul himself being interned in russia) was passing through the town of h., accompanied by two german officers, and arranged to dine that evening with the german red cross staff, after paying his respects to the vali. at the hour fixed, only the two officers appeared. they said that they had called, with the vice-consul, upon the vali, but after a time the vali had shewn signs of being irked by their presence, and so they had taken their departure, leaving the vali and the vice-consul together. the company waited for the vice-consul about two hours. he arrived about 9.30 p.m., in a state of great agitation, and told them at once the purport of his interview. the vali had declared to him that the armenians in turkey must be, and were going to be, exterminated. they had grown, he said, in wealth and numbers until they had become a menace to the ruling turkish race; extermination was the only remedy. the vice-consul had expostulated, and represented that persecution always increased the spiritual vitality of a subject race, and on grounds of expediency was the worst policy for the rulers. "well, we shall see," said the vali, and closed the conversation. this incident occurred on the 16th march, 1915, and mr. db. points out that it must have been practically simultaneous with an interview given by enver pasha at constantinople to the gregorian bishop of konia in the course of february, 1915, old style. in this interview the bishop had asked enver whether he were satisfied with the conduct of the armenian soldiers in the ottoman army, and enver had testified warmly to their energy, courage and loyalty--so warmly, in fact, that the bishop at once asked whether he might publish this testimonial over enver's name. enver readily consented, and the gregorian patriarchate at constantinople accordingly circulated an authorised account of the interview to the armenian, and even to the turkish, press. [16] thus, in the latter part of february, 1915, the central government at constantinople was advertising its friendly feelings towards its armenian subjects, while by the 16th march, less than a month later, it had given its representative in a remote province to understand that a general massacre of these same armenians was imminent. to return to sister da.'s narrative--she told mr. db. that between february and the beginning of may, 1915, about 400 armenians had been arrested and imprisoned at h. they were the young men, the strong in body and the intellectuals. most of their kind had been taken for the army in the mobilisation of the previous autumn, but these 400 had been left, and were now thrown into prison instead of being conscribed. at the beginning of may, the vali of h. sent for the head of the german protestant mission station in the town, and requested him to tell the armenians that they must surrender their arms. otherwise, he said, the most stringent measures would be taken against them. the missionaries must persuade them to deliver up the arms quickly. the head of the mission station called a meeting of armenian notables, and put to them what the vali had said. the armenians decided to consult with their turkish fellow-townsmen, and so a mixed meeting was held of all the turkish and armenian notables of h. at this meeting the turkish notables urged the armenians to give up their arms, and promised that, if they did so, they themselves would guarantee their security, and would see that they suffered nothing at the government's hands. this promise induced the armenians to comply. they collected their arms and presented them to the vali, but the vali declared that all had not been brought. the newest and most dangerous weapons, he said, had been in the hands of the 400 prisoners. these must be surrendered also, or the penalties he had threatened would still be inflicted on the whole armenian community at h. so the notables went to the men in prison, and besought them to reveal where their arms were hidden; all the gregorian priests went, and the head of the german mission station went with them. the 400 were obstinate at first, but it was represented to them that, if they refused, they would be responsible for the destruction of the whole community, and at last they gave in. they revealed the hiding-places, and the arms were duly found and delivered up to the vali. the vali immediately had photographs taken of all the arms collected, and sent them to constantinople as evidence that an armenian revolution was on the point of breaking out at h. he asked for a free hand to suppress it, and an order came back from constantinople that he was to take whatever measures he considered necessary on the spot. after that, the 400 young men were conveyed out of the town by night and never heard of again. shots were said to have been heard in the distance. three days later, the rest of the armenian community at h. was summoned by bugle to assemble before the government building, and then deported. the men were first sent off in one direction, and later the women and children, on ox-carts, in another. they were only given a few hours to make their preparations, and sister da. described their consternation as being terrible. they tried to dispose of their property, which the turks bought up for practically nothing. sewing-machines, for instance, sold for two or three piastres (4d. to 6d.). the process of deportation was extended to the whole vilayet. the armenian children in the german orphanage at h. were sent away with the rest. "my orders," said the vali, "are to deport all armenians. i cannot make an exception of these." he announced, however, that a government orphanage was to be established for any children that remained, and shortly afterwards he called on sister da. and asked her to come and visit it. sister da. went with him, and found about 700 armenian children in a good building. for every twelve or fifteen children there was one armenian nurse, and they were well clothed and fed. "see what care the government is taking of the armenians," the vali said, and she returned home surprised and pleased; but when she visited the orphanage again several days later, there were only thirteen of the 700 children left--the rest had disappeared. they had been taken, she learnt, to a lake six hours' journey by road from the town and drowned. three hundred fresh children were subsequently collected at the "orphanage," and sister da. believed that they suffered the same fate as their predecessors. these victims were the residue of the armenian children at h. the finest boys and prettiest girls had been picked out and carried off by the turks and kurds of the district, and it was the remainder, who had been left on the government's hands, that were disposed of in this way. as soon as the armenians had been deported from h., convoys of other exiles began to pass through from the districts further north. sister da. did not see these convoys, because they made a detour round the town, and she never left the town precincts; but she talked with many people who did see them, and they gave a terrible description of their plight. the roads near the town, they said, were littered with the corpses of those who had died of sickness or exhaustion, or from the violence of their guards. and these accounts were confirmed by her own experiences last april (1916), on her journey to aleppo. on the road to aleppo from ourfa she passed numbers of corpses lightly buried under a layer of soil. the extremities of the limbs were protruding, and had been gnawed by dogs. she was told by people she met that unheard-of atrocities had been committed, and that there were cases of women who had drowned themselves to escape their tormentors. it was sister da.'s impression that the deportation and massacre of the armenians had ruined turkey economically. the armenians had been the only skilled workers in the country, and industry came to a stand-still when they were gone. you could not replace copper vessels for your household; you could not get your roof re-tiled. the government had actually retained a few armenian artisans--bakers, masons, etc.--to work for the army, and whatever work was still done was done by these and a few others who had gone over to islam. but though the sources of production were cut off, the turks had not begun to feel the pinch. having laid hands on the property of the armenians, they were richer, for the moment, than before. during the past year bread had been plentiful and cheap, cattle and meat had been abundant, and there were still enough supplies, she thought, to last for some time yet. under these circumstances, the turkish peasantry were well content--except for the women, who resented the absence of their husbands at the war. the dearth of men, sister da. said, was everywhere noticeable. she had been told, however, that some kurdish tribes had refused to furnish recruits, and that the kizil bashis of the dersim had furnished none at all. the government had been preparing an expedition against the kizil bashis to extort a toll of conscripts, but the plan had been thwarted by the russian advance. in the turkish villages agricultural work was being largely carried on by the armenian women and children, who had been handed over to the moslem peasants by the authorities. sister da. saw quantities of them everywhere, practically in the condition of slaves. they were never allowed to rest in peace, but were constantly chivied about from one village to another. as she came down to aleppo she found the country under good cultivation. great stores of bread had been accumulated for the army in mesopotamia. in anatolia, on the other hand, the fields were neglected, and she thought that there famine was not far off. but it was not till she reached constantinople that she found any present scarcity. in the provinces only sugar and petrol had been scarce; at constantinople all commodities were both scarce and dear. sister da. was told at constantinople that turks of all parties were united in their approval of what was being done to the armenians, and that enver pasha openly boasted of it as his personal achievement. talaat bey, too, was reported to have remarked, on receiving the news of vartkes' [17] assassination: "there is no room in the empire for both armenians and turks. either they had to go or we." 6. malatia. statement by a german eye-witness. in malatia there were 10,000--12,000 armenians. a german, who left malatia immediately before the deportation, reports as follows on the events which preceded the execution of that measure:-"the mutessarif, nabi bey, an extremely friendly and well-disposed elderly gentleman, was deposed sometime about may--as we suppose, on the ground that he would not have carried out the measures against the armenians with the desired harshness. "his deputy, the kaimakam of arrha, had all the qualities required for that purpose. there could hardly be any doubt as to his anti-armenian feelings or as to the lawlessness of his mode of action. he is probably responsible, together with a clique of rich 'beys,' for the arbitrary imprisonment of many armenians, for the inhuman application of the bastinado, and also for the clandestine murder of armenian men. the mutessarif's official successor, reshid pasha, who arrived from constantinople towards the end of june, a conscientious kurd, endowed with an altogether surprising kindness of heart, did everything in his power, from the first day of his assumption of the duties of his office, to mitigate the fate of the numerous armenian prisoners, to prevent outrages against the population on the part of the irregular soldiers and zaptiehs, and to make possible a lawful and humane settlement of the extremely difficult situation; in doing this he knew that he incurred danger and put himself into a very undesirable position. notwithstanding his severity, the greater part of the armenian population held him in esteem as a just, incorruptible and warm-hearted man. unfortunately his powers did not go very far. the movement against the armenians had already, on his arrival, gained too much strength, his own executive staff was neither sufficiently numerous nor sufficiently trustworthy to enable him to make any energetic stand for the maintenance of law and order. he succumbed to the power of his adversaries and collapsed physically and morally within a very few days. even during his serious illness he used every particle of strength that was in him to insure that the banished armenians should be able to undertake their journey with safety and be properly cared for on the way. "he had delayed the departure of the armenians from week to week, partly with the silent hope that his great endeavours to procure a countermanding order might be successful, and partly in order to be able to make all preparations for a humane execution of the deportation order. finally he had to give way to the stringent directions of the central government and to the pressure of the party opposed to him in the town. "before the deportation, which was effected towards the middle of august, wholesale murders among the male population occurred in the beginning of july." c. cilicia and northern syria. 7. exiles from zeitoun. diary of a foreign resident in the town of b. on the cilician plain. communicated by a swiss gentleman of geneva. sunday, 14th march, 1915. this morning i had a long conversation with mr.---about events at zeitoun. he has managed to obtain some information regarding the little armenian town, although all direct communication with it has been interrupted. turkish troops have left aleppo for zeitoun--some say 4,000, some 6,000, others 8,000. with what intention, one wonders? mr.----, who has been there himself during last summer and this winter, assures me that the armenians have no wish to revolt, and are prepared to put up with anything the government may do. contrary to the old-established custom, a levy was made at zeitoun at the time of the august mobilisation, and they did not offer the slightest resistance. none the less, the government has played them false. in october, 1914, their leader, nazaret tchaoush, came to marash with a "safe conduct" to arrange some special points with the officials. in spite of the "safe conduct," they imprisoned him, tortured him and put him to death. still the people of zeitoun remained quiet. bands of zaptiehs (turkish gendarmes), quartered in the town, have been molesting the inhabitants, raiding shops, stealing, maltreating the people and dishonouring their women. it is obvious that the government are trying to get a case against the zeitounlis, so as to be able to exterminate them at their pleasure and yet justify themselves in the eyes of the world. --th april, 1915. three armenians from dört yöl were hanged last night in the chief square of adana. the government declare that they had been signalling to the british warship or warships stationed in the gulf of alexandretta. this is untrue, for i know, though i dare not put the source of my information on paper, that only one armenian from dört yöl has had any communication with the english. --th april. two more armenians from dört yöl have been hanged at adana. --th april. three armenians have been hanged at adana. we were out riding to-day, and the train came into the station just as we reached the railway. imagine our indignation when we saw a cattle-truck filled with armenians from zeitoun. most of these mountaineers were in rags, but a few were quite well dressed. they had been driven out of their homes and were going to be transplanted, god knows where, to some town in asia minor. it seems we have returned to the days of the assyrians, if whole populations can be exiled in this way, and the sacred liberty of the individual so violated. --th april (the next day). we were able to see the unfortunate refugees, who are still here to-day. these are the circumstances of their departure from zeitoun, or rather this is the tragedy which preceded their exile, though it was not the cause of it. the turkish gendarmes outraged several girls in the town, and were attacked in consequence by about twenty of the more hot-headed young men. several gendarmes were killed, though all the while the population as a whole was opposed to bloodshed, and desired most earnestly to avoid the least pretext for reprisals. the twenty rebels were driven out of the town and took refuge in a monastery about three-quarters of an hour's distance from the town. at this point the troops from aleppo arrived. the zeitounlis gave them lodging, and it seemed that all was going excellently between the populace and the 8,000 soldiers under their german officers. the turks surrounded the monastery and attacked it for a whole day; but the insurgents defended themselves, and, at the cost of one man slightly wounded, they killed 300 of the regular troops. during the night, moreover, they managed to escape. their escape was as yet unknown to the town when, about nine o'clock on the following morning, the turkish commandant summoned about 300 of the principal inhabitants to present themselves immediately at the military headquarters. they obeyed the summons without the least suspicion, believing themselves to be on excellent terms with the authorities. some of them took a little money, others some clothing or wraps, but the majority came in their working clothes and brought nothing with them. some of them had even left their flocks on the mountains in the charge of children. when they reached the turkish camp, they were ordered to leave the town at once without returning to their homes. they were completely stupefied. leave? but for where? they did not know. they had been unable even yet to learn their destination, but it is probable that they are being sent to the vilayet of konia. some of them have come in carriages and some on foot. --th april. i heard to-day that the whole population of dört yöl has been taken away to work on the roads. they continue to hang armenians at adana. it is a point worth remembering that zeitoun and dört yöl are the two armenian towns which held their own during the adana massacres of 1909. --th may. a new batch of zeitounlis has just arrived. i saw them marching along the road, an interminable file under the turkish whips. it is really the most miserable and pitiable thing in the world. weak and scarcely clothed, they rather drag themselves along than walk. old women fall down, and struggle to their feet again when the zaptieh approaches with lifted stick. others are driven along like donkeys. i saw one young woman drop down exhausted. the turk gave her two or three blows with his stick and she raised herself painfully. her husband was walking in front with a baby two or three days old in his arms. further on an old woman had stumbled, and slipped down into the mud. the gendarme touched her two or three times with his whip, but she did not stir; then he gave her several kicks with his foot; still she did not move; then he kicked her harder, and she rolled over into the ditch; i hope that she was already dead. these people have now arrived in the town. they have had nothing to eat for two days. the turks forbade them to bring anything with them from zeitoun, except, in some cases, a few blankets, a donkey, a mule, or a goat. but even these things they are selling here for practically nothing--a goat for one medjidia (3s. 2d.), a mule for half a lira (nine shillings). this is because the turks steal them on the road. one young woman who had only been a mother eight days, had her donkey stolen the first night of the journey. what a way of starting out! the german and turkish officers made the armenians leave all their property behind, so that the mouhadjirs (refugees) from thrace might enter into possession. there are five families in ----'s house! the town and the surrounding villages (about 25,000 inhabitants) are entirely destroyed. between fifteen and sixteen thousand exiles have been sent towards aleppo, but they are going to be taken further. perhaps into arabia? can the real object be to starve them to death? those who have passed through our town were going to the vilayet of konia; there too there are deserts. --th may. letters have come which confirm my fears. it is not to aleppo that the zeitounlis are being sent, but to der-el-zor, in arabia, between aleppo and babylonia. and those we saw the other day are going to kara-pounar, between konia and eregli, in the most arid part of asia minor. certain ladies here have given blankets and shoes to some of the poorest. the local christians, too, have shown themselves wonderfully self-sacrificing. but what can one do? it is a little drop of charity in the ocean of their suffering. --th may. news has come from konia. ninety armenians have been taken to kara-pounar. the zeitounlis have arrived at konia. their sufferings have been increased by their having had to wait--some of them 8, some 15, some 20 days--at bozanti (the terminus of the anatolian railway in the taurus, 2,400 feet above sea level). this delay was caused by the enormous masses of troops passing continually through the cilician gates; it is the army of syria which is being recalled for the defence of the dardanelles. when the exiles reached konia, they had eaten nothing, according to our news, for three days. the greeks and armenians at once collected money and food for their relief, but the vali of konia would not allow anything of any kind to be given to the exiles. they therefore remained another three days without food, at the end of which time the vali removed the prohibition and allowed food to be served out to them under the supervision of the zaptiehs. my informant tells me that, after the departure of the armenians from konia for kara-pounar, he saw an armenian woman throw her new-born baby into a well; another is said to have thrown hers out of the window of the train. --th may. a letter has come from kara-pounar. i know the writer of it, and can have no doubt of his truthfulness. he says that the 6,000 or 8,000 armenians from zeitoun are dying there from starvation at the rate of 150 to 200 a day. so from 15,000 to 19,000 zeitounlis must have been sent into arabia, the total population of the town and the outlying villages having been about 25,000. --th may. the whole garrison of ---and of adana have left for the dardanelles. there are no troops left to defend the district if it should be attacked from outside. --th may (the next day). new troops have arrived, but they are untrained. --th may. the last batch of zeitounlis passed through our town to-day, and i was able to speak to some of them in the han where they had been put. i saw one poor little girl who had been walking, barefoot, for more than a week; her only clothing was a torn pinafore; she was shivering with cold and hunger, and her bones were literally pushing through her skin. about a dozen children had to be left on the road because they could not walk any further. have they died of hunger? probably, but no one will ever know for certain. i also saw two poor old women without any hair left, or with hardly any. when the turks drove them out of zeitoun they had been rich, but they could not take anything with them beyond the clothes they were wearing. they managed somehow to hide five or six gold pieces in their hair, but, unfortunately for them, the sun glinted on the metal as they marched along and the glitter attracted the notice of a zaptieh. he did not waste any time in picking out the pieces of gold, but found it much quicker to tear the hair out by the roots. i came across another very characteristic case. a citizen of zeitoun, formerly a rich man, was leading two donkeys, the last remnants of his fortune. a gendarme came along and seized their bridles; the armenian implored him to leave them, saying that he was already on the verge of starvation. the only answer he received from the turk was a shower of blows, repeated till he rolled over in the dust; even then the turk continued beating him, till the dust was turned into a blood-soaked mud; then he gave a final kick and went off with the donkeys. several turks stood by watching; they did not appear to be at all surprised, nor did any of them attempt to intervene. --th may. the authorities have sent a number of people from dört yöl to be hanged in the various towns of adana vilayet. --th may. there is a rumour of a partial exodus from marash. it is going to be our town next. dört yöl has also been evacuated and the inhabitants sent into arabia. hadjin is threatened with the same fate. there has been a partial clearing out of adana; tarsus and mersina are threatened too, and also aintab. 8. information regarding events in armenia, published in the "sonnenaufgang" (organ of the "german league for the promotion of christian charitable work in the east"), october, 1915; and in the "allgemeine missions-zeitschrift," november, 1915. this testimony is especially significant because it comes from a german source, and because the german censor made a strenuous attempt to suppress it. the same issue of the "sonnenaufgang" contains the following editorial note:-"in our preceding issue we published an account by one of our sisters (schwester möhring) of her experiences on a journey, but we have to abstain from giving to the public the new details that are reaching us in abundance. it costs us much to do so, as our friends will understand; but the political situation of our country demands it." in the case of the "allgemeine missions-zeitschrift," the censor was not content with putting pressure on the editor. on the 10th november, he forbade the reproduction of the present article in the german press, and did his best to confiscate the whole current issue of the magazine. copies of both publications, however, found their way across the frontier. both the incriminating articles are drawn from common sources, but the extracts they make from them do not entirely coincide, so that, by putting them together, a fuller version of these sources can be compiled. in the text printed below, the unbracketed paragraphs are those which appear both in the "sonnenaufgang" and in the "allgemeine missions-zeitschrift"; while paragraphs included in angular brackets [< >] appear only in the "sonnenaufgang," and those in square brackets ([ ]) only in the "allgemeine missions-zeitschrift." between the 10th and the 30th may, 1,200 of the most prominent armenians and other christians, without distinction of confession, were arrested in the vilayets of diyarbekir and mamouret-ul-aziz. <it is said that they were to be taken to mosul, but nothing more has been heard of them.> [on the 30th may, 674 of them were embarked on thirteen tigris barges, under the pretext that they were to be taken to mosul. the vali's aide-de-camp, assisted by fifty gendarmes, was in charge of the convoy. half the gendarmes started off on the barges, while the other half rode along the bank. a short time after the start the armenians were stripped of all their money (about £6,000 turkish) and then of their clothes; after that they were thrown into the river. the gendarmes on the bank were ordered to let none escape. the clothes of these victims were sold in the market of diyarbekir.] <about the same time 700 young armenian men were conscribed, and were then sent to build the karabaghtché-habashi road. there is no news of these 700 men either. it is said that in diyarbekir five or six priests were stripped naked one day, smeared with tar, and dragged through the streets. in the vilayet of aleppo they have evicted the inhabitants of hadjin, shar, albustan, göksoun, tasholouk, zeitoun, all the villages of alabash, geben, shivilgi, furnus and the surrounding villages, fundadjak, hassan-beyli, harni, lappashli, dört yöl and others.> [they have marched them off in convoys into the desert on the pretext of settling them there. in the village of tel-armen (along the line of the bagdad railway, near mosul) and in the neighbouring villages about 5,000 people were massacred, leaving only a few women and children. the people were thrown alive down wells or into the fire. they pretend that the armenians are to be employed in colonising land situated at a distance of twenty-four to thirty kilometres from the bagdad railway. but as it is only the women and children who are sent into exile, since all the men, with the exception of the very old, are at the war, this means nothing less than the wholesale murder of the families, since they have neither the labour nor the capital for clearing the country.] a german met a christian soldier of his acquaintance, who was on furlough from jerusalem. the man was wandering up and down along the banks of the euphrates searching for his wife and children, who were supposed to have been transferred to that neighbourhood. such unfortunates are often to be met with in aleppo, because they believe that there they will learn something about the whereabouts of their relations. it has often happened that when a member of a family has been absent, he discovers on his return that all his family are gone--evicted from their homes. [for a whole month corpses were observed floating down the river euphrates nearly every day, often in batches of from two to six corpses bound together. the male corpses are in many cases hideously mutilated (sexual organs cut off, and so on), the female corpses are ripped open. the turkish military authority in control of the euphrates, the kaimakam of djerablous, refuses to allow the burial of these corpses, on the ground that he finds it impossible to establish whether they belong to moslems or to christians. he adds that no one has given him any orders on the subject. the corpses stranded on the bank are devoured by dogs and vultures. to this fact there are many german eye-witnesses. an employee of the bagdad railway has brought the information that the prisons at biredjik are filled regularly every day and emptied every night--into the euphrates. between diyarbekir and ourfa a german cavalry captain saw innumerable corpses lying unburied all along the road.] <the following telegram was sent to aleppo from diyarbekir:--"we have accepted the true religion. now we are all right." the inhabitants of a village near anderoum went over to islam and were allowed to stay. at hadjin six families wanted to become mohammedans. they were told: "nothing under one hundred families will be accepted." aleppo and ourfa are the assembling-places for the convoy of exiles. there were about 5,000 of them in aleppo during june and july, while during the whole period from april to july many more than 50,000 must have passed through the city. the girls were abducted almost without exception by the soldiers and their arab hangers-on. one father, on the verge of despair, besought me to take with me at least his fifteen-year-old daughter, as he could no longer protect her from the persecutions inflicted upon her. the children left behind by the armenians on their journey are past counting. women whose pains came upon them on the way had to continue their journey without respite. a woman bore twins in the neighbourhood of aintab; next morning she had to go on again. she very soon had to leave the children under a bush, and a little while after she collapsed herself. another, whose pains came upon her during the march, was compelled to go on at once and fell down dead almost immediately. there were several more incidents of the same kind between marash and aleppo. [18] the villagers of shar were permitted to carry all their household effects with them. on the road they were suddenly told: "an order has come for us to leave the high road and travel across the mountains." everything--waggons, oxen and belongings--had to be left behind on the road, and then they went on over the mountains on foot. this year the heat has been exceptionally severe, and many women and children naturally succumbed to it even in these early stages of their journey. there are about 30,000 exiles of whom we have no news at all, as they have arrived neither at aleppo nor at ourfa.> 9. extracts from the records of a german who died in turkey. between the 28th july and the 20th august, 1915, i travelled to marash. at beshgöz, between killis and aintab, it was a subject of conversation among the villagers that the deportation of the armenians would begin at aintab too on the following day. a little while after, a well-dressed gentleman, a circassian, according to his appearance, being partly in mufti and partly in officer's uniform, joined the group of talkers and asked: "from what part of the town are people being sent away? by what road do they go? what kind of people are they? are they people from whom anything is to be got?" when one of the persons present asked him whether he was a civilian or in military service, he said smilingly: "is there a finer opportunity of being a soldier than now?" the same person said afterwards: "this time germany has given these unbelieving swine a lesson which they will not forget." [19] on hearing this, i could not refrain from replying that it was soiling the name of germany to mention it in connection with the things which i had just been compelled to hear. on my return journey i heard that the first convoys from aintab, consisting almost exclusively of well-to-do families, were stripped to their shirts, and i was assured from several sides that this was done with the connivance of the government authorities, with whom the above-mentioned questionable gentleman must, according to all appearances, have been in relation. at karaböyük, between aintab and marash, i met a convoy of armenians, consisting of about forty women and children and five or six men. close in front of them, at a distance of about 180 yards, 100 newly-enlisted soldiers were marching. there was a young lady among the women, a teacher, who for several years had been in german employment; she had just recovered from a serious attack of typhoid fever. the soldiers wanted her and a young wife, whose husband is at present a soldier in damascus, to spend the night with them, and used force to make them. it was only through the mohammedan mule drivers coming to the assistance of the women, that the soldiers could be kept off during their three attacks. on the 6th august the armenian village of fundadjak, near marash, a place of about 3,000 inhabitants, was battered down to the ground. the population, consisting almost exclusively of mule drivers, had, during the preceding three months, been frequently compelled to transport armenians in the direction of the euphrates. they had seen the corpses in the euphrates, and had also observed with their own eyes the selling and raping of women and girls. in an armenian school at marash i saw over 100 women and children with bullet wounds in their legs and their arms, and with all sorts of mutilations; among them were children of one to two years. on the 13th august, 34 armenians, including two boys twelve years old, were shot at marash. again, on the 15th august, 24 were shot and 14 were hanged. the 24 who were shot were tied together with a heavy chain that went round their necks, and were made to stand up together in one mass. they were shot in the presence of the mohammedan population behind the american college. with my own eyes i saw the bodies, while still convulsed by the agonies of death, being abandoned to the license of the rough civilian mob, who pulled the hands and feet of the corpses; and during the next half-hour the policemen and gendarmes shot continuously with revolvers on these corpses, some of which were terribly disfigured, while the population looked on with amusement. afterwards the same people marched up and down in front of the german hospital and shouted, "vashasin almanya" (long live germany). [20] again and again i have been told by mohammedans that it was germany which caused the armenians to be extirpated in this way. on the way from the town to the farm i saw, on the outskirts of the town, a human head lying on a dung-heap, which was used as a target by turkish boys. in marash itself, during my stay there, armenians were every day killed by the civil population, and the corpses were left for days in the open sewers or elsewhere. kadir pasha said to me at marash: "i know that, in pursuance of an order from the government, the whole male population within the area of the 4th army corps was killed." on the 20th august, 1915 [21], at six o'clock in the evening, it was proclaimed at marash that, according to the order of the vali of adana, all males over 15 years of age (5,600 altogether) must be assembled outside the town, ready for marching, by mid-day on saturday; any one of them found in the town after 12 o'clock would be shot on the spot. everyone knew the meaning of this order, and we lived through hours of most awful terror. at the last moment the vali's order, owing to the intervention of the very humane governor of marash, was modified to the extent that the men would be allowed to leave with their families. only on the 18th august the vali had sent for the clerical authorities, and had given them an assurance that the armenians in marash would not be deported. thus the first who had to leave the town had to do so without any previous preparation. in the village of böveren, near albistan, all the armenian inhabitants, 82 in number, with the exception of a boy twelve years old, who jumped into the water and escaped, were killed. in the neighbourhood of zeitoun the inhabitants of a village infested by the smallpox were deported. the patients suffering from smallpox, including those whose eyesight had been destroyed by the illness, were lodged in hans (i.e. inns) at marash, in which deported persons from other districts were lodged already. at marash i saw a convoy, consisting of about 200 persons, among whom were several blind. a mother, of the age of about 60, led her daughter, who was lame from birth; in this manner they started on their journey on foot. after an hour's march a man collapsed near the erkeness bridge; he was robbed and killed. four days afterwards we still saw his corpse lying in a ditch. last night i called on an acquaintance; he had given hospitality to a mother and her child who had been deported from sivas--the two survivors of a family of 26 persons who had been deported from sivas three months before and had reached marash in the last few days. in aintab i saw a written order of the governor of the town, prohibiting the purchase on the part of the mohammedan population of any objects belonging to the deported armenians. the same governor caused preparations to be made for a raid on the deported persons. two convoys were robbed of everything, down to the shirts of the people belonging to them. about 2,800 persons deported from gürün were attacked and robbed at airan-pounar (12 hours to the north-east of marash) by eight brigands, who wore uniforms, partly officer's uniform and partly private's. at kisyl gedjid, 1 1/2 hours short of airan-pounar, the eight brigands joined the gendarmes escorting the convoy and had a long conversation with them. at airan-pounar the gendarmes ordered the people to divide into two parties; the few men formed one party, and the women the other party. the women were stripped naked and robbed of everything; four women and two girls were dragged away in the night and violated; five of them returned on the following morning. in a defile of the engissek-dagh the whole convoy was completely plundered by turks and kurds. in this assault 200 persons were killed; 70 severely wounded persons had to be left behind, and more than 50 more were taken along with the convoy. i met the convoy, then consisting of about 2,500 persons, at karaböyük. the people were in an indescribable state of misery; one hour short of karaböyük two men were lying on the road, one with two and the other with seven knife-wounds; further on there were two exhausted women; still further four women, including a girl of 13, with a two days' old baby in her arms, wrapped in rags. a man of about 60, who was lying in the road with a deep wound (inflicted by a dagger), as long as a finger and two fingers wide, told me that he had left gürün with 13 animals. all the animals and all his goods were taken away from him at airan-pounar, and he had dragged himself away on foot, until he reached a place about an hour short of karaböyük, where he fell down exhausted. these people had all been in easy circumstances; the value of the goods, the animals and the money of which they were robbed, is estimated at t£8,000. those who were exhausted were left lying on the road; corpses can be seen lying on both sides of it. among the 2,500 persons of whom this convoy was composed i saw no males, with the exception of about 30-40. all males over the age of 15 were taken away in the sight of the women, and were probably killed. these armenians were intentionally transported by circuitous routes and over dangerous paths. by the direct road to marash they would have arrived in four days, and they have been on the road for over a month. they had to travel without animals, without beds, without food; once in every day they received a thin slice of bread, and then not enough to satisfy their hunger. four hundred of them (protestants) have in the meantime arrived at aleppo; out of these two or three die every day. the raid at ainar-pounar was carried out with the connivance of the kaimakam at albistan, who made them pay him t£200, and promised the people that he would see that they reached aintab safely. the kaimakam at gürün made them pay him t£1,020, and gave the same assurances. i saw a man who, together with others, handed this sum to the kaimakam in the club room at gürün. in the neighbourhood of aintab several women belonging to this convoy were violated in the night by civilian inhabitants of aintab. on the occasion of the raid at airan-pounar men were tied to trees and burnt alive. while the armenians at gürün were actually leaving the town, the mollahs called the faithful to prayer from the roofs of the christian churches. an eye-witness told me about a dispute between two brothers relating to the booty at airan-pounar; one of them said: "for these four loads i have killed forty women." at marash a mohammedan of the name of hadji, whom i have known for years, told me the following incident: "at nissibin, i and all the mule-drivers were locked up in a han; several young women belonging to furnus were violated during the night by the gendarmes escorting the convoy and by civilians." at aintab, at the office of the commissioner of police, a mohammedan agha said in my presence to an armenian: "in such and such places letters have been found. what are your relations with this man? i have often told you to become a mohammedan: if you had listened to me, you would have escaped all the disagreeable things to which your nation is exposed." out of 18,000 persons who were deported from kharput and sivas, 350 arrived at aleppo (consisting of women and children); out of 1,900 deported from erzeroum, only eleven--one sick boy, four girls and six women--reached that town. a convoy of women and girls had to walk the 65 hours from ras-el-ain to aleppo along the railway line, notwithstanding the fact that at the same time the railway carriages, which had been used for the transport of soldiers, were returning empty. mohammedan travellers, who came along this way, report that the roads are impassable owing to the many corpses lying unburied on both sides of the road, the smell of which is poisoning the air. of those "remaining over," who so far have not been sent further on, 100-120 persons have died at aleppo up to the present, in consequence of the hardships of the journey. the starving and emaciated women and children, on their arrival at aleppo, fell on the food like wild beasts. in the case of many of them the digestive organs had ceased to work; after having devoured one or two spoonfuls they put the spoon aside. the government alleges that the deported persons receive food, but in the case of the above-mentioned convoy, which came from kharput, a distribution of bread took place only once in three months. the government does not merely neglect to make any provision for the people; on the contrary, it causes everything to be taken away from them. at ras-el-ain a convoy of 200 girls and women arrived in a state of complete nudity; their shoes, their chemises, everything, in short, had been taken away from them, and they were made to walk for four days under the hot sun--the temperature was 122 degrees in the shade--in their condition of nakedness, jeered at and derided by the soldiers of their escort. mr. x. told me that he himself had seen a convoy, consisting of 400 women and children, in the same state. whenever the wretched exiles appealed to the humanity of the officials, the reply was: "we have strict orders from the government to treat you in this way." at first the dead in aleppo were brought to the cemetery in the coffins provided by the armenian church. this was done by "hamals" (professional porters), who received two piastres for each dead. when the "hamals" were unable to cope with the whole work, the women themselves brought their dead to the cemetery--the babies in their arms, the bigger children laid on sacks and carried by four women, one at each corner. i saw corpses carried to the cemetery across a donkey's back. a friend of mine saw a dead body tied to a stick, which was carried by two men. another friend saw a cart drawn by oxen going to the cemetery with a full load of corpses. the two-wheeled cart was too large to pass the narrow cemetery-gate, whereupon the driver, without any hesitation, turned it round and emptied it; then he dragged the dead bodies to their respective graves by the arms and legs. at the present moment five or six carts are in use, which take the dead to the cemetery. in one of the hans, which is called a hospital, i saw on a sunday something like 30 corpses lying about in a yard, which was about 25 yards wide and 50 yards long. about 20 had already been buried on that day. the 30 corpses remained lying there until the evening. my wife got them carried away in the darkness by engaging three "hamals," to whom she gave a medjidié (about 3s. 2d.) each. in the case of one of the corpses the skin adhered to the hands of the "hamals," showing how far the process of decomposition had already gone. dying persons and persons suffering from serious illnesses, about 1,000 altogether, were lying among the dead, under the burning sun. the whole scene was more terrible than anything i had ever seen, even than the shooting of the 24 people at marash in the summer, which has been described above. nearly all the people suffered from diarrhoea. channels had been dug in the ground within the courtyard, by the side of which the dying were placed, with their backs towards the channel, so that the emptyings of their bowels could pass into it at once. whenever anyone died, he was removed, and his melancholy place was filled by another. it happened frequently that persons who were carried away as dead gave signs of life when they were near the grave; they were dragged aside, until it was certain that death had supervened. one young girl recovered so far that she could be carried back to the town, and one person who had been buried in the evening was found sitting on his grave the next morning. several corpses had been thrown into one grave, and he was on the top; in the twilight only a thin layer of earth had been put over him. in tel-abiad mr.-saw open graves with 20-30 corpses. the graves were filled up with earth when it was no longer possible to put any more corpses into them. mr.-told me that it was impossible to go near these places owing to the stench, and yet the deported persons had to encamp in the immediate vicinity. out of 35 orphans who were kept in one room at aleppo, 30 died in a week for want of nourishment. mr.-says that on his journey to this place he saw corpses everywhere on the road, and that a kurd boasted to him of having killed 14 children. on sunday, the 12th august, 1915, i had to go to the station of the damascus railway at aleppo, and was able to see the loading into cattle trucks of about 1,000 women and children. with us in germany the cattle are allowed more space than those wretched people; 90 per cent. of them had death written on their faces. there were people among them who literally had no time allowed them for dying. on the previous evening a convoy had been taken away, and on the next morning the dead bodies of two children, about half grown up, were found, who had died during the loading of the trucks and had been left lying on the platform. on the 13th september, 1915, the following telegraphic order from the commander-in-chief of the 4th army, djemal pasha, was brought to the notice of the inhabitants: "all photographs, which may have been taken by the engineers or other officers of the bagdad railway construction company relating to the convoys of armenians, are to be delivered within 48 hours, together with the negatives, to the military commissariat of the bagdad railway at aleppo. any contravention of this order will be punished by court-martial." several times i saw women and children search for scraps of food in the dustheaps: anything that was found was devoured immediately. i saw the children gnawing at raw bones which they had picked up in corners used as urinals. on the road between marash and aintab the mohammedan population of a village wanted to distribute water and bread among a convoy of 100 families, but the soldiers escorting the convoy prevented this. four-fifths of the deported persons are women and children; the majority of the men have been called up for the army. twenty thousand persons who had been deported by way of marash were not allowed to pass on to aintab and obtain supplies of food, though the direct caravan route goes through aintab. at ras-el-ain there are at present about 1,500 women and children, the only survivors out of several thousands, who, together with their husbands and fathers, were deported from kharput and the surrounding country. among these 1,500 persons there is not a single male over the age of 10-12 years. these people, healthy or sick, are left lying from morning till evening in the sun without food and without protection against a temperature of 109 1/2 degrees in the shade, and they are in the arbitrary power of their guards. mr. l.-who during the last month had, in conversation with me, used the expression "armenian rabble"--spoke literally as follows: "i am not a man who is easily touched, but after what i have seen at ras-el-ain i cannot keep the tears away. i did not think it possible that such acts of ill-treatment and violence, outraging all rules of humanity, could be perpetrated in our century." a "tchaoush" (sergeant-major) of the name of suleiman took 18 women and girls and sold them to arabs, charging 2-3 mejidiés (6s. 4d.--9s. 6d.) for each of them. a turkish police-commissary said to me: "we have lost all count of the numbers of women and girls who were taken away by the arabs and kurds, either by force or with the connivance of the government. this time we have carried out our operations against the armenians according to our heart's desire; not one out of ten has been left among the living." while i am writing this down, my wife has returned from a walk into the town, and reports tearfully that she met a convoy of over 800 armenians, all bare-footed, with torn clothes, carrying their scanty possessions on their backs, together with their babies. in besné the whole population, consisting of 1,800 souls, principally women and children, were expatriated; it was alleged that they were to be deported to ourfa. when they reached the göksu, a tributary of the euphrates, they were compelled to take their clothes off, and thereupon they were all massacred and thrown into the river. on a single day latterly 170 corpses were observed drifting down the euphrates, on other days 50-60. mr. a., an engineer, saw 40 corpses in the course of one ride. those which are stranded on the river bank are devoured by the dogs, those on sandbanks in mid-stream by the vultures. the above-mentioned 800 armenians had been deported from the district of marash. they had been told that they would be taken to aintab, and they were to provide themselves with food for two days. when they reached the neighbourhood of aintab the soldiers said: "we have made a mistake, we were meant to go to nissibin." no food was supplied by the authorities, and no opportunities for the purchase of provisions were given. at nissibin the word went round: "we came the wrong way; we were meant to go to mumbidj." there again the soldiers said: "we came the wrong way; we were meant to go to bab." in this manner they had to wander about for seventeen days, abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure of their escort. during the whole time no provisions were supplied by the government, and their scanty possessions had to be given away in exchange for bread. one mother, whose eldest daughter was taken away by force, threw herself in despair into the euphrates with her two remaining children. said, an emigrant from tripoli, who had been a groom in mr. l.'s stables for four years with a monthly salary of 400 piastres (about £3), enlisted as a volunteer for the war, in order to be able, according to his own statement, to take part in the slaughter of a few armenians. a nice house in an armenian village near ourfa was promised him (he hinted) by way of reward. two circassians who were in the service of mr. e., a storekeeper, enlisted as volunteers for the war on the same ground. the head of a circassian village community, tchordekli, speaking of the war volunteers from his village, said to an acquaintance of mine: "ev yikmak itchun giderler" (they go in order to ruin whole families). at arab pounar a turkish major, who spoke german, expressed himself as follows: "i and my brother took possession of a young girl at ras-el-ain, who had been left on the road. we are very angry with the germans for doing such things." when i contradicted them, they said: "the chief of the general staff is a german; von der goltz is commander-in-chief, and ever so many german officers are in our army. our koran does not permit such treatment as the armenians have to suffer now." [22] at nuss tell a mohammedan inspector made similar remarks to a clerk. when i taxed him with this utterance in the presence of others, he said: "it is not only i who say this; everyone will tell you the same tale." at biredjik the prisons are filled every day and emptied over night. tell armen, a village of 3,000 inhabitants, was raided, the inhabitants were massacred, thrown dead or alive into the wells, or burnt. major von mikusch was a witness of the devastation. a german cavalry captain saw unburied corpses between diyarbekir and ourfa on both sides of the road, with their throats cut. innumerable unburied corpses of children were seen on the way by mr. s. at tel-abiad seventeen dead or dying persons were left behind near the station, on the departure of a convoy. two railway officials afterwards had all seventeen buried. all the convoys of armenians have for the last few days been taken into these parts. the statement made by mr. n. is entirely in accord with the reply given to me by the chairman of the deportation commission, when i made an application in favour of four armenian children: "you do not grasp our intentions; we want to destroy the armenian name. just as germany will only let germans exist, so we turks will only let turks." [23] 10. narrative of a german official of the bagdad railway. when the inhabitants of the cilician villages left their homes, many of them still had donkeys for riding or carrying packs, but the soldiers escorting the convoys would only allow the "katerdjis" (donkey-drivers) to ride on these animals, saying that strict orders had been given that no deported persons, whether male or female, might ride. in the case of the convoy starting from hadjin the "katerdjis" simply took all the pack animals which they suspected of carrying money or valuables straight to their own villages. other animals, which the people had taken with them, were taken away from them by force or purchased for prices so absurdly low that it would hardly have made any difference if they had been given away gratis. a woman whose family is known to me sold 90 sheep for a hundred piastres, which at any other time would have realised about t£60 to £70; in other words, she had to sell ninety animals for the proper price of one animal. the villagers of shar had received permission to take away their oxen, carts and pack animals. near gökpunar they were forced to leave the carriage road and to take the shorter footpath which crosses the mountains. they had to march on without any food, for their journey or other equipment. the escort simply said that these were their orders. at the beginning each deported person received from the government one kilogram (2 lbs.) of bread per month (not per day). they lived on the provisions which they had taken with them. small sums of money were afterwards paid to them. i was told of about 30 persons who had formerly been in good positions in the circassian village of bumbudj (mumbidj, on the ruins of the ancient bambyke), 1 1/2 days' journey from aleppo, who had received 20 piastres in thirty days--not per head; but the 30 between them. that meant a penny a month each. about four hundred barefooted women, each with one child on her arm, one child on her back (often enough a dead one) and one held by the hand, passed through marash during the first days. the armenians of marash--who afterwards were themselves deported--purchased £50 (turkish) worth of shoes to supply those who passed through the town. between marash and aintab the mohammedan population in a turkish village wished to give water and bread to a convoy of about 100 families. the soldiers refused to permit this. the american mission and the armenians of aintab--who later on were also deported--managed to bring bread and money during the night to the convoys which passed aintab, and which totalled about 20,000 persons, mostly women and children. these were the villagers of the sandjak of marash. the convoys were not allowed to enter marash, but encamped in the open. the american missionaries found it possible to provision them thus by night as far as nisib (nine hours to the south-east of aintab, on the way to the euphrates). while on the march the deported armenians were at first robbed of their ready money, and afterwards of all their possessions. a deported protestant minister saw t£43 being taken away from one family and £28 from another. this minister was himself newly married, and was compelled to leave his young wife at hadjin, expecting her first child. four-fifths of the deported persons are women and children. three-fifths of them are barefooted. a former inhabitant of hadjin who is known to me personally and who had a fortune of at least t£15,000 had, like everybody else, been robbed of his clothes, and clothes had to be begged for him here. the deported armenians are specially troubled by the fact that they are unable to bury their dead. they are left dying anywhere on the road. the women often carry their dead children for days on their backs. at bab, ten hours to the east of aleppo, those who came through were lodged provisionally for a week or two, but they were not allowed to retrace their steps to bury the companions who had died on the way. the hardest fate is that of the women who are confined on the way. they are hardly allowed sufficient time to bring their child into the world. one poor woman gave birth to twins during the night. in the morning she had to march on, carrying the two newly-born children on her back. after a two hours' march she collapsed. she had to put the children on the ground under a bush, and the soldiers compelled her to walk on with her companions. another woman was confined during the march and was forced to proceed on her march immediately; she fell down dead. a third woman was surrounded by ladies belonging to the american mission, while she was confined in the neighbourhood of aintab. they only succeeded in obtaining permission for her to ride an animal, and she continued her journey in this manner, holding the child in her lap with a few rags round it. these cases were witnessed merely on the section of road between marash and aintab. at aintab the people clearing up a han, which an hour before had been left by a convoy, found a new-born child. in the tash-han, in marash, three new-born children were found buried in dung. innumerable corpses of children are found lying unburied on the road. a turkish major, who returned with me three days ago, said that many children were abandoned by their mothers on the way because they could not feed them any more. older children are taken away from their mothers by the turks. the major, as well as each of his brothers, had an armenian child with him; they intended to educate them as mohammedans. one of the children speaks german. it must be one of the inmates of a german orphanage. it is thought that about 300 of the women who passed through here were confined on the way. in this place a family, in its dire poverty and despair, sold a girl of the age of 18 years to a turk for t£6. the husbands of most of the women had been called up for service in the army. anyone who does not obey the summons calling him up is hanged or shot; there were seven cases lately at marash. the conscripts are, however, generally used merely for mending the roads, and are not allowed to carry arms. those who return home find their houses empty. two days ago i met an armenian soldier at djerabulus, who had come from jerusalem, having obtained leave to visit his native village, geben (situate between zeitoun and sis). i have known this man for years. here he heard that his mother, his wife and three children had been deported into the desert. all inquiries as to the fate of his family were fruitless. corpses drifting down the euphrates have been observed every day during the last 28 days, pairs of them being tied together back to back, while others are tied three to eight together by the arms. a turkish colonel who is stationed at djerabulus was asked why he did not have the corpses buried, whereupon he replied that he had no orders to do so, and that, moreover, it was impossible to ascertain whether they were mohammedans or christians, as their sexual organs had been cut off. (they would bury mohammedans, but not christians.) the corpses which had been stranded on the shore were eaten by the dogs. others which had stuck on the sandbanks became the prey of the vultures. a german, in the course of one ride, saw six pairs of corpses drifting down stream. a german cavalry captain said he had, in the course of a ride from diyarbekir to ourfa, seen innumerable unburied corpses on both sides of the road, all corpses of young men whose throats had been cut. (these were the armenians called up for military service and used for mending the roads.) a turkish pasha, addressing a distinguished armenian, expressed himself as follows: "be thankful, if at least you find a grave in the desert; many of you have to do without this." not one half of the deported persons remain alive. the day before yesterday one woman died here in the station yard; yesterday there were 14 deaths, and this morning a further 10. a protestant minister from hadjin said to a turk at osmanieh: "not one half of these deported persons remain alive." the turk replied: "that is what we are after." it ought not to be overlooked that there are some mohammedans who disapprove of the horrible deeds done against the armenians. a mohammedan sheikh, a person of great authority at aleppo, said in my presence: "when i hear talk about the treatment of the armenians, i am ashamed of being a turk." anyone who wishes to remain alive is compelled to go over to islam. in order to promote this, isolated families are in certain cases sent to purely mohammedan villages. the number of deported persons who have passed through here and at aintab has so far reached about 50,000. nine-tenths of them were told on the evening before their deportation that they had to start in the morning. the majority of the convoys go through ourfa, the minority through aleppo. the first mentioned take the road for mosul, the others for der-el-zor. the authorities say that they are to be settled there, but those who escape the knife will certainly perish of hunger. some 10,000 persons have reached der-el-zor on the euphrates; no news has so far been received of the others. as regards those who were sent towards mosul, it is said that they are to be settled at a distance of about 16 miles from the railway; this probably means that they are to be driven into the desert, where their extirpation can proceed without witnesses. what i have written down is only a small fraction of all the cruelties which have been practised here during the last two months, and which assume larger proportions every day. it is only a fraction of the things which i have seen with my own eyes and heard from acquaintances and friends who were eye-witnesses. i am prepared at any time to mention the dates of the events and to give the names of the witnesses. 11. the amanus passes. statements by two swiss ladies, resident in turkey. communicated by the american committee for armenian and syrian relief. (a) report by fräulein m., dated 16th november, 1915. i have just returned from a ride on horseback through the baghtché-osmania plain, where thousands of exiles are lying out in the fields and on the roads, without any shelter and completely at the mercy of all manner of brigands. last night, about 12 o'clock, a little camp was suddenly attacked. there were between 50 and 60 persons in it. i found men and women badly wounded--bodies slashed open, broken skulls and terrible knife-wounds. fortunately i was provided with clothes, so i could change their blood-soaked things and then bring them to the next inn, where they were nursed. many of them were so much exhausted from the enormous loss of blood that they died, i fear, in the meantime. in another camp we found thirty or forty thousand armenians. i was able to distribute bread among them! desperate, and half-starved, they fell upon it; several times i was almost pulled off my horse. a number of corpses were lying about unburied, and it was only by bribing the gendarmes that we could induce them to allow their burial. usually the armenians were not allowed to perform the last offices of love for their relatives. dreadful epidemics of typhoid-fever broke out everywhere; there was a victim of it practically in every third tent. nearly everything had to be transported on foot; men, women and children carried their few belongings on their backs. i often saw them break down under their burden, but the soldiers kept on driving them forward with the butt-ends of their rifles, even sometimes with their bayonets. i have dressed bleeding wounds on the bodies of women that had been caused by these bayonet thrusts. many children had lost their parents and were now without any support. three hours' distance from osmania two dying men were lying absolutely alone in the fields. they had been here for days without food or even a drop of water, after their companions had continued their march. they had grown as thin as skeletons, and only their heavy breathing showed that there was still life in them. unburied women and children were lying in the ditches. the turkish officials in osmania were very obliging; i succeeded in obtaining many concessions from them, and many hardships were remedied. i obtained carriages to pick up the dying people and bring them in to town. (b) report by fräulein o. on a visit to the exiles' camp at mamouret, 26th november, 1915. we saw thousands of tiny low tents, made of thin material. an innumerable crowd of people, of all ages and every class of society! they were looking at us partly in surprise, partly with the indifference of desperation. a group of hungry, begging children and women were at our heels: "hanoum, bread! hanoum, i am hungry; we have had nothing to eat to-day or yesterday!" you had only to look at the greedy, pale, suffering faces to know that their words were true. about 1,800 loaves could be procured. everybody fell greedily upon them; the priests who were charged with the distribution of the bread had almost to fight for their lives; but it was by no means sufficient, and no further bread was to be had. a crowd of hungry people stood imploringly before us. the gendarmerie had to keep them back by force. suddenly the order for departure was given. if anybody was slow in striking their tent, it was torn down with the bayonet. three carriages and a number of camels were held in readiness. a few wealthy people quickly hired the carriages, while others less well-to-do loaded a camel with their things. the wailing of the poor, the old and the sick filled the air: "we can't go any further, let us die here." but they had to go on. we were at least able to pay for a camel for some of them, and to give small change to others in order to buy bread at the next station; clothes, sewn at the mission station in adana, were also distributed. soon the immense procession was moving on. some of the most miserable were left behind (others rested there already in the newly-dug graves). as many as 200--destitute, old or sick--are said to have waited there for help to come. the misery was increased a hundredfold by the severe rain and cold that had set in. everywhere convoys left dying people in their track--little children and invalids perishing. besides all this the epidemic was spreading more and more. (c) report by fräulein m. on a visit to the exiles' camp at islohia, 1st december, 1915. it had rained three days and three nights; even in our houses we were acutely sensible of the cold and damp. as soon as possible, i set out on my way. about 200 families had been left behind at mamouret. they were unable to proceed through exhaustion or illness. in this rain the soldiers, too, felt no inclination to rouse them up and drive them on, so they were lying about in what might have been a lake. there was not a single dry thread left in their ragged bedding. many women had their feet frost-bitten; they were quite black and in a state for amputation. the wailing and groaning was horrible. everywhere there were dying people in their last agonies or dead bodies lying in front of the tents. it was only by "bakshish" that the soldiers could be persuaded to bury them. it seemed a comfort to them when we came with dry clothes; they could change their things and get some bread and small change. then i drove in a carriage along the whole route to islohia. though i had seen much distress before, the objects and the scenes i saw here defy description. a frailly-built woman was sitting by the roadside with her bedding on her back, and a young baby strapped on at the top of it; in her arms she had a two-year-old child--its eyes were dim and it was at its last gasp. the woman had broken down in her distress and was weeping in a heartbreaking way. i took her with me to the next camp, where the child died; then i took care of her and sent her on her way. she was so grateful. the whole carriage was packed with bread. i kept on distributing all the time. we had three or four opportunities of buying fresh supplies. these thousands of loaves were a great help to us. i was also able to hire some hundreds of animals to help the poor people forward. the camp at islohia itself is the saddest thing i have ever seen. right at the entrance a heap of dead bodies lay unburied. i counted 35, and in another place 22, in the immediate neighbourhood of the tents of those who were down with virulent dysentery. the filth in and around these tents was something indescribable. on one single day the burial committee buried as many as 580 people. men were fighting for bread like hungry wolves. one saw hideous scenes. with what timidity and apathy these poor people often stared at me, as though they wondered where this assistance came from! for some weeks now many camps have been provided daily with bread. of course, everything has to be done as unobtrusively as possible. we are so thankful to god that we may at least do something. (d) letter from fräulein m. to mr. n., dated 13th december, 1915, on the way to aleppo. i should have written long before this, but during these last weeks i have been more on the road than at home, and the work in the camps was often so urgent that i could not find time for anything else. i suppose you have had, in the meantime, the receipt for the 200 liras you sent me. many thanks for the quick response. i only wish you could see these poor people yourself; you would get an impression of the absolutely dreadful need and distress that these camps conceal. it is simply indescribable; one has to have seen it oneself. so far i have had no difficulty whatever; on the contrary, the officials here are most obliging, and grateful for everything we are doing for the poor people. you will find some reports enclosed which miss o. copied for you as well; they will give you an idea of what we are doing here. up to the present we have worked in four camps, twelve hours distant. we were often able to distribute about 10 to 20 liras' worth of bread a day; besides this, we gave flour, clothes and nirra to many sick people, to help them on the long journey. sometimes it happened that in some places we did not have nearly enough bread--in such cases we provided the people with money to buy bread at the next bakery along the route. now we are on our way to aleppo, and miss o. will stay there some weeks, d.v., to prepare everything for another journey to der-el-zor. i intend to come back soon, since there is still much work to do on the mamouret-islohia route, and it seems to me that we ought not to give up the work among the distressed so long as any of them are left in this place, for if we did they would absolutely die of starvation. judging by our recent experience, we shall need about 300 to 400 liras a month. dr. l. told me to send you word about this, because i should get the money from you. it would be better not to stop the work for lack of money, because the poor people would suffer by it. if, however, you think that less money ought to be spent, or that the whole work should be given up, please send me a telegram in time, so that we may stop doing it. if not, will you please be so kind as to send me the amount. to-day i have asked you by wire to send me 400 liras--200 for mamouret and 200 for islohia-hassan-beyli. i hope you are well. we got a message that dr. l. is down with typhoid. i hope that god will soon give him new strength. fräulein o. and i both send you our best wishes. d. aleppo. 12. "a word to the accredited representatives of the german people," by dr. martin niepage, higher grade teacher at the german technical school at aleppo, at present at wernigerode. on my return in september, 1915, from beirut to aleppo, after a three months' holiday, i heard, to my horror, that a new period of armenian massacres had been initiated. i was told that they were far more terrible than those under abdul hamid; and that their object was to exterminate, root and branch, the intelligent, prosperous and progressive nation of the armenians and to transfer their property to turkish hands. at first i was unable to believe such a monstrous report. i was told that in various quarters of aleppo there were masses of half-famished human beings, the survivors of so-called "deportation-convoys," and that in order to cover the extermination of the armenian people with a political cloak, military reasons had been put forward, which were alleged to necessitate the expulsion of the armenians from the homes they had occupied for over 2,500 years, and their deportation into the arabian desert. it was also said that individual armenians had lent themselves to acts of espionage. after having investigated the facts and made enquiries on all sides, i came to the conclusion that the accusations against the armenians related in all cases to trifling matters, which were taken as a pretext to slay ten thousand innocent persons for one who was guilty, to commit the most savage outrages against women and children, and to carry on a war of starvation against the deported persons with the object of destroying the whole nation. in order to test the judgment which i had formed from the information i had obtained, i visited every place in the town in which there were any armenians who had formed part of one of the convoys and had been left behind. i found in dilapidated caravansaries (hans) heaps of dead bodies, many of which were in an advanced state of decomposition, with living persons interspersed among them who were all near to the agony of death. in other yards i found heaps of sick and famished persons who were absolutely uncared for. near the german technical school, of which i am one of the higher grade teachers, there were four hans of this class with 700-800 deported persons who were starving. we, the teachers at the school, and our pupils had to pass them every day. through the open windows we saw, each time we went out, the emaciated forms, covered with rags, of these miserable beings. our school children had every morning almost to touch the two-wheeled carts drawn by oxen which they had to pass in the narrow streets, and in which every day 8-10 rigid corpses were carted away without coffins and without covering of any sort, the arms and legs protruding from the cart. after having been a witness of these scenes during several days, i thought it my duty to draft the following report-"as teachers at the german technical school at aleppo we take leave humbly to submit the following report:-"we deem it our duty to call attention to the fact that our educational work will lose its moral foundation and the esteem of the natives, if the german government is not in a position to prevent the brutality with which the wives and children of slaughtered armenians are treated in this place. the convoys which, on the departure of the exiles from their homes in upper armenia, consisted of 2,000-3,000 persons--men, women and children--arrive here in the south with a remnant of only two or three hundred survivors. the men are killed on the way, the women and children, excepting those of unattractive appearance and those who are quite old or quite young, are first abused by turkish soldiers and officers, and then brought into turkish or kurd villages, where they have to go over to islam. as regards the remnant of the caravans, every effort is made to reduce them by hunger and thirst. even when a river is passed, those who are dying of thirst are not permitted to drink. as their only food a small quantity of flour is strewn on their hands as a daily ration; this they greedily lick off, but its only effect is to delay death from starvation for a little while longer. "opposite to the german technical school at aleppo in which we do our work as teachers, a remnant of some of these convoys is lying in one of the hans; there are about 400 emaciated forms; about 100 boys and girls, from five to seven years old, are among them. most of them are suffering from typhoid and dysentery. on entering the yard one has the impression of coming into a lunatic asylum. when food is brought to them, one notices that they have lost the habit of eating. the stomach, weakened by months of starvation, has ceased to be able to receive food. any bread that is given to them is laid aside with an air of indifference. they just lie there quietly, waiting for death. "how can we teachers read german fairy tales with our pupils, or, indeed, the story of the good samaritan in the bible? how can we ask them to decline and conjugate indifferent words, while round about in the neighbouring yards the starving brothers and sisters of our armenian pupils are succumbing to a lingering death? in these circumstances our educational work flies in the face of all true morality and becomes a mockery of human feeling. "and those poor creatures who in their thousands have been driven through the town and the neighbouring districts into the desert; nearly all of them are women and children, and what becomes of them? they are driven on from place to place, until the thousands dwindle into hundreds and until the hundreds dwindle into insignificant remnants. and these remnants are again driven on until the last survivors have ceased to live. then only the final goal of the migration has been reached. then the wanderers have arrived at 'the new homes assigned to the armenians,' as the newspapers express it. "'ta'alim el aleman' ('that is the teaching of the germans') says the simple turk, when asked about the authors of these measures. [24] the educated moslems are convinced that, though the german people may disapprove of such horrors, the german government is taking no steps to prevent them, out of consideration for its turkish allies. "mohammedans of more refined feelings, turks as well as arabs, shake their heads disapprovingly; they do not even conceal their tears when, in the passage of a convoy of deported armenians through the town, they see turkish soldiers inflicting blows with heavy sticks on women in advanced pregnancy or dying persons who cannot drag themselves any further. they cannot imagine that their government has ordered these cruelties, and ascribe all excesses to the guilt of the germans, who during the war are held to be the teachers of the turks in all matters. [25] even the mollahs declare in the mosques that it was not the sublime porte but the german officers who had ordered the ill-treatment and annihilation of the armenians. "the things which in this place have been before everybody's eyes during many months, must indeed remain a blot on germany's shield of honour in the memory of oriental nations. "many educated persons, who do not wish to be obliged to give up their faith in the character of the germans whom they have hitherto respected, explain the matter to themselves in the following manner: they say, 'the german nation probably knows nothing of the horrible massacres which are on foot at the present time against the native christians all over turkey. how is it possible otherwise, having regard to the veracity of the german nation, that articles should appear in german papers showing complete ignorance of all these events, and only stating that some individual armenians were deservedly shot by martial law as spies and traitors?' others say: 'perhaps the hands of the german government are tied by some convention regulating the limits of its competence, or intervention does not appear opportune at the present moment.' "it is known to us that the embassy at constantinople was informed of all these events by the german consulates. as, notwithstanding this fact, nothing has been altered in the system of deportation, our conscience compels us to make this report." [26] at the time i composed this report, the german consul at aleppo was represented by his colleague from alexandretta, consul hoffmann. the latter told me that the embassy at constantinople was fully informed of what was happening in the country by repeated reports from the consulates at aleppo, alexandretta and mosul, but that a report about the things which i had seen with my own eyes would be welcome as a supplement to the existing records, and as filling in the details. he promised to send my report by a sure agency to the embassy at constantinople. i thereupon drafted a report in the desired manner, giving a detailed description of the state of things in the han opposite our school. the consul wished to add some photographs which he himself had taken in the han. they revealed heaps of corpses, between which young children, still alive, were crawling about or relieving nature. in this revised form the report was signed not only by me, but also by my colleagues, dr. graeter (higher grade teacher) and frau marie spiecker. the director of our institution, herr huber, also added his name and the following words: "the report of my colleague, dr. niepage, is not in any way exaggerated. for many weeks we have lived here in an air poisoned with sickness and the stench of corpses. only the hope for a speedy change of things makes it possible for us to continue our work." [27] the hoped-for change of things did not occur. i then thought of resigning my post as higher grade teacher at the german technical school, stating as the ground for my decision that it appeared senseless and morally indefensible to give instruction and education as a representative of european culture, and at the same time to have to sit with folded hands while the government of the country abandoned persons belonging to the same nation as our pupils to an agonizing death by starvation. but those around me, as well as the director of the institution, herr huber, dissuaded me from this intention. my attention was called to the fact that it would be useful for us to remain in the country as eye-witnesses of the events which were occurring. perhaps our presence would have the effect of inducing the turks, out of consideration for us germans, to behave somewhat more humanely towards their unfortunate victims. i see now that i have far too long remained a silent witness of all these wrongs. nothing was improved by our presence, and we ourselves were able to give only very little help. frau spiecker, our energetic, brave fellow teacher, purchased some soap, and the lice-covered bodies of the women and children who were still alive in our neighbourhood were washed and freed from vermin (there were no men left). frau spiecker engaged some women, who prepared soup for those of the patients who were still able to eat. i myself distributed, every evening for six weeks, among the dying children the contents of two pails filled with tea, cheese and soaked bread. but when the hunger-typhus or spotted-typhus spread into the town from these charnel-houses, we succumbed, together with five of our colleagues, and had to stop our relief work. moreover, no help given to the exiles who came to aleppo was of any use. we could only afford those condemned to death a few slight alleviations of their death agony. what we saw here in aleppo with our own eyes was, in fact, only the last scene of the great tragedy of the extirpation of the armenians; only a trifling fraction of the horrors which were being perpetrated simultaneously in the other turkish provinces. the engineers of the bagdad railway, on their return from the section under construction, and german travellers, who on their way had met the caravans of the deported, spoke of still more abominable horrors. many of these men could eat nothing for days; the impression of the loathsome things they had seen was too overpowering. one of them (herr greif, of aleppo) reported that heaps of corpses of violated women were lying naked on the railway embankment near abiad and ras-el-ain. in the case of many, sticks had been driven into the anus. another (herr spiecker, of aleppo) saw turks tie armenian men together, fire several volleys of small shot with fowling pieces into the human mass, and go off laughing, while their victims slowly perished in frightful convulsions. other men were sent rolling down steep slopes with their hands tied behind their backs. below there were women, who slashed those who had rolled down with knives until they were dead. a protestant minister who two years ago had given a most cordial reception to my colleague, dr. graeter, had his finger nails torn out. the german consul at mosul said in my presence in the german club at aleppo that he had seen so many children's hands lying hacked off on his way from mosul to aleppo, that one could have paved the road with them. [28] in the german hospital at ourfa there is also a little girl, both of whose hands have been hacked off. herr holstein, the german consul at mosul, also saw, in the neighbourhood of an arab village, shortly before reaching aleppo, shallow graves with freshly-buried armenian corpses. the arab villagers asserted that they had killed these armenians by order of the government. one of them said proudly that he personally had killed eight. in many houses in aleppo, inhabited by christians, i found armenian girls hidden away, whom some accidental circumstances had enabled to escape death; they had either remained behind in a state of exhaustion, having been taken for dead when their convoy was driven on; or some european had found an opportunity to purchase these miserable beings for a few shillings from the turkish soldier who had last violated them. all these girls are in a state of mental collapse. many had been compelled to look on while their parents had their throats cut. i know some of these pitiable creatures, who for months were unable to utter a word, and even now cannot be coaxed into a smile. a girl of the age of 14 was received into the home of the depôt-manager of the bagdad railway at aleppo, herr krause. the child had been raped so many times by turkish soldiers during one night that she had completely lost her reason. i saw her tossing on her pillow in delirium with hot lips, and i found it difficult to make her drink some water. a german who is known to me witnessed the following incident in the neighbourhood of ourfa; hundreds of christian peasant women were forced by turkish soldiers to take off all their clothes. for the amusement of the soldiers they had to drag themselves through the desert for days together in a temperature of 40° centigrade, until their skin was completely burnt. another person saw a turk tear a child out of the womb of its armenian mother, and throw it against the wall. other facts, some of them worse than the few instances given here, are recorded in the numerous reports of the german consuls at alexandretta, aleppo and mosul. [29] the consuls are of opinion that, up to the present date, about a million armenians have perished by the massacres of the last months. women and children, who either were killed or died from starvation, probably form one half of this number. conscience compels us to call attention to these things. though the government, by the annihilation of the armenian people, only intends to further internal political objects, the execution of the scheme has in many respects the character of a persecution of christians. all the tens of thousands of young girls and women, who have been dragged away to turkish harems, and the masses of children who have been collected by the government and distributed among turks and kurds, are lost to the christian churches and are compelled to go over to islam. the opprobrious name of "giaour" is again used against the germans. in adana i saw a troop of armenian orphans marching through the streets under the escort of turkish soldiers. the parents have been slaughtered; the children must become mohammedans. it has happened everywhere that adult armenians were able to save their lives by declaring their readiness to go over to islam. in some places, however, turkish officials, wishing to throw dust in the eyes of europeans, replied grandiloquently to christians who had applied for admission into the mohammedan fold, that religion is not a thing to play with, and preferred to have the petitioners killed. men like talaat bey and enver pasha have repeatedly said, thanking distinguished armenians, who brought them gifts, that they would have been still better pleased if the givers had presented them as mohammedans. one of these gentlemen said to a newspaper reporter: "certainly we are now punishing many innocent people, but we must protect ourselves, even from those who might become guilty in the future." such reasons are adduced by turkish statesmen in justification of the indiscriminate slaughter of defenceless woman and children. a german catholic priest reports that enver pasha had told monsignore dolci, the papal representative at constantinople, that he would not rest while one single armenian was still living. the object of the deportations is the extirpation of the entire armenian nation. this intention is also evidenced by the fact that the turkish government refuses all help from missionaries, sisters of mercy, and europeans settled in the country, and tries systematically to prevent the giving of any such help. a swiss engineer was to have come before a court-martial, because he had distributed bread in anatolia among the starving women and children belonging to a convoy of deported persons. the government did not scruple to deport armenian pupils and teachers from the german schools at adana and aleppo, and armenian children from the german orphanages; the protests of the consuls and of the heads of the institutions were left unheeded. the offer of the american government to take the deported persons to america on american ships and at america's expense was refused. what our german consuls and many foreigners residing in turkey think about the massacres of armenians will one day be known from their reports. as regards the opinion of the german officers in turkey i am unable to say anything. i often noticed when in their company an ominous silence or a convulsive effort to change the subject whenever any german of strong feelings and independent judgment began to speak about the fearful sufferings of the armenians. [30] when field-marshal von der goltz travelled to bagdad and had to cross the euphrates at djerabulus, there was a large encampment of half-starved, deported armenians there. shortly before the field-marshal's arrival these wretched people, as i was told in djerabulus, were driven under the whip a few miles off over the hills, sick and dying persons among the number. when von der goltz passed through, all traces of the repulsive spectacle had been removed. when, soon afterwards, i visited the place with a few colleagues, we still found in the more out of the way places corpses of men and children, remnants of clothes, and skulls and bones which had been partly stripped of the flesh by jackals and birds of prey. the author of this report considers it out of the question that the german government, if it were seriously inclined to stem the tide of destruction even at this eleventh hour, could find it impossible to bring the turkish government to reason. if the turks are really so well disposed to us germans as people say, then it is surely permissible to show them to what an extent they compromise us before the whole civilised world, if we, as their allies, are to look on calmly, when hundreds of thousands of our fellow-christians in turkey are slaughtered, when their wives and daughters are violated, and their children brought up in the faith of islam. [31] do not the turks understand that their barbarous acts are imputed to us, and that we germans shall be accused either of criminal connivance or of contemptible weakness if we shut our eyes to the abominable horrors which this war has brought forth, and attempt to ignore facts which are already known to the whole world? if the turks are really as intelligent as people say, it should surely not be impossible to convince them of the fact that, by extirpating the christian nations in turkey, they are exterminating the productive factors and the intermediaries of european trade and general civilisation? if the turks are really as far-seeing as people say, they will not be blind to the danger, that all civilized european states, after having discovered the things which were done in turkey during the war, must form the conclusion that turkey has forfeited the right of governing herself, and has, once for all, destroyed all belief in her capacity for becoming civilized, and in her tolerance. will not the german government be acting in turkey's own best interests, if she prevents her from committing economic and moral suicide? with this report i am attempting to reach the ear of the government through the accredited representatives of the german people. these things, painful as they are, must no longer be passed over in silence at the sittings of the committees of the reichstag. nothing would be more humiliating for us than the erection of a costly palace at constantinople commemorating german-turkish friendship, while we are unable to protect our fellow-christians from barbarities unparalleled even in the blood-stained history of turkey. would not the funds collected be better spent in building orphanages for the innocent victims of turkish barbarism? when, after the adana massacres in 1909, a sort of "reconciliation banquet" took place, in which high turkish officials as well as the heads of the armenian clergy took part, an armenian ecclesiastic made a speech, the contents of which were communicated to me by the german consul, büge, who was present. he said: "it is true we armenians have lost much in the days of these massacres, our men, our women, our children, and our possessions. but you turks have lost more. you have lost your honour." if we persist in treating the massacres of christians in turkey as an internal affair, of no importance for us except as making us sure of turkey's friendship, then it will be necessary to alter the whole orientation of our german cultural policy. we must cease to send german teachers to turkey, and we teachers must no longer speak to our pupils in turkey of german poets and german philosophers, of german culture and german ideals, and least of all of german christianity. three years ago the german foreign office sent me as higher grade teacher to the german technical school at aleppo. the royal provincial education board at madgeburg, on my departure, specially enjoined me to show myself worthy of the confidence reposed in me by the granting of leave of absence to take up the office of teacher at aleppo. i should not perform my duty as a german official and as an authorised representative of german culture if, in face of the atrocities of which i was a witness, i were to remain silent and passively look on while the pupils entrusted to me are driven out to die of starvation in the desert. to a person inquiring into the reasons which have induced the young turkish government to order and carry out these terrible measures against the armenians, the following answer might be given:-the young turk has before him the european ideal of a united national state. he hopes to be able to "turkify" the non-turkish mohammedan races--kurds, persians, arabs, and so on--by administrative measures and by turkish school education and by appeals to the common mohammedan interest. he is afraid of the christian nations--armenians, syrians and greeks--on account of their cultural and economic superiority, and their religion appears to him an obstacle impeding "turkification" by peaceful measures. therefore they must be extirpated or forced into mohammedanism. the turks do not realise that they are sawing off the branch on which they themselves are sitting. who is to bring progress to turkey, except the greeks, the armenians and the syrians, who constitute more than a quarter of the population of the turkish empire? the turks, the least gifted among the races living in turkey, themselves form only a minority of the population, and are still far behind even the arabs in civilisation. is there anywhere any turkish commerce, turkish handicraft, turkish manufacture, turkish art, turkish science? even law and religion, even the literary language, is borrowed from the subjected arabs. we teachers, who for years have taught greeks, armenians, arabs, turks and jews in german schools in turkey, can only declare that of all our pupils the pure turks are the least willing and the least capable. whenever one hears about anything accomplished by a turk, one can be sure, in nine cases out of ten, that the person concerned is a circassian, or an albanian, or a turk with bulgar blood in his veins. judging from my own personal experience, i can only prophesy that the real turk will never accomplish anything in commerce, manufacture or science. the german newspapers have told us a great deal lately about the turkish "hunger for education"; it is said that the turks are thronging eagerly to learn german, and even that courses of instruction in that language for adults are being arranged in turkey. no doubt they are being arranged, but with what result? they go on to tell one of a language course at a technical school, which started with twelve turkish teachers as pupils. the author of this story, however, forgets to add that after four lessons only six, after five lessons only five, after six lessons only four, and after seven lessons only three pupils presented themselves, so that after the eighth lesson the course had to be abandoned, before it had properly begun, owing to the indolence of the pupils. if the pupils had been armenians, they would have persevered town to the end of the school year, learnt patiently, and come away with a fair knowledge of the german language. what is the duty of germany, as well as of every civilized christian nation, in face of the armenian massacres? we must do all we can to preserve the lives of the 500,000 armenian women and children who may now [beginning of 1916] be still in existence in turkey and who are abandoned to starvation--to preserve them from a fate which would be a disgrace to the whole civilized world. the hundreds of thousands of deported women and children, who have been left lying on the borders of the mesopotamian desert, or on the roads which lead there, will not be able to preserve their miserable existence much longer. how long can people support life by picking grains of corn out of horse dung and depending for the rest upon grass? many of them will be beyond help on account of the underfeeding, which has continued for many months, and of the attacks of dysentery which are so prevalent. in konia there are still a few thousand armenians alive--educated people from constantinople, who were in easy circumstances before their deportation, physicians, authors, and merchants; help for them would still be possible, before they succumb to the fate that threatens all. there are still 1,500 healthy armenians--men, women and children, including grandmothers 60 years old and many children of six and seven--who are at work breaking stones and shovelling earth, on the part of the bagdad railway between eiran and entilli, near the big tunnel. at the present moment superintendent engineer morf, of the bagdad railway, is still providing for them, but their names too have already been registered by the turkish government. as soon as their work is completed, that is to say, probably in two or three months, and they are no longer wanted, "new homes will be assigned to them"--which means that the men will be taken away and slaughtered, the good-looking women and girls will find their way into the harems, and the others will be driven about in the desert without food, until the end comes. the armenian people has a claim to german help. when a few years ago massacres of armenians threatened to break out in cilicia, a german warship appeared off mersina. the commander called on the armenian "katholikos" in adana and assured him that as long as there was any german influence in turkey, massacres tike those perpetrated under abdul hamid would be impossible. [32] the same assurance was given by the german ambassador von wangenheim [since deceased] at an audience given to the armenian patriarch and the president of the armenian national council in april, 1915. even apart from our common duty as christians, we germans are under a special obligation to put a stop to the complete extirpation of the surviving half million of armenian christians. we are the allies of turkey, and having eliminated the influence of the french, english and russians, we are the only foreigners who have any say in turkey. we may indignantly repudiate the lies circulated in enemy countries accusing the german consuls of having organised the massacres. we shall not, however, destroy the belief of the turkish people that germany has ordered the armenian massacres, unless energetic action be at last taken by german diplomatists and german officers. if only the one reproach remained that our timidity and our weakness in dealing with our ally had prevented us from preserving half a million women and children from death by starvation, the image of the german war in the mirror of history would be disfigured, for all time, by an ugly feature. it would be a serious mistake to imagine that the turkish government would, of its own accord, desist from the extermination of the women and children, unless the strongest pressure were to be exercised by the german government. a short time before my departure from aleppo in may, 1916, all the women and children encamped at ras-el-ain, on the bagdad railway, whose number was estimated at 20,000, were mercilessly slaughtered. 13. aleppo. message dated, 7th february, 1916, from fräulein o.; published in the german journal, "sonnenaufgang," april, 1916. i want to beg our friends at home not to grow weary of making intercession for the members of the armenian nation who are in exile here. if there is no visible prospect of a change for the better, a few months more will see the end of them all. they are succumbing in thousands to famine, pestilence, and the inclemency of the weather. the exiles at hama, homs, and in the neighbourhood of damascus are comparatively better off. they are left where they are, and can look about for means of subsistence. but further east, along the euphrates, they are driven from place to place, plundered and maltreated. many of our friends are dead. e. places of exile. 14. der-el-zor: letter, dated 12th july, 1915, from schwester l. möhring, a german missionary, describing her journey from bagdad to the passes of amanus; published in the german journal, "sonnenaufgang," september, 1915. at der-el-zor, a large town in the desert about six days' journey from aleppo, we found the big han full to overflowing. all available rooms, roofs, and verandahs were occupied by armenians. the majority were women and children, but there were also a certain number of men squatting on their quilts wherever they could find a spot of shade. as soon as i heard that they were armenians, i started going round and talking to them. they were the people of furnus (a village in the neighbourhood of zeitoun and marash); herded together here in these narrow quarters, they presented an extraordinarily melancholy appearance. when i enquired for children from our orphanage at bm., they brought me a protégée of sister o., martha karahashian. she gave me the following account of what had happened. one day turkish gendarmes had come to furnus and arrested and carried off a large number of men, to turn them into soldiers. neither they nor their families knew where they were being taken to. those who remained were told that they would have to leave their houses within the space of four hours. they were allowed to take with them as much as they could carry; they might also take their beasts. after the lapse of the specified time the poor people had to march out of their village under the escort of soldiers (zaptiehs), without knowing where they were going or whether they would ever see their village again. to begin with, as long as they were still among their mountains and had some provisions left, things went well enough. they had been promised money and bread, and were actually given some in the early stages--as far as i can remember, it was 30 paras (1 1/2d.) per head per day. but very soon these rations ceased, and there was nothing to be had but bulgur meal--50 drams (=150 grammes) per head per day. in this fashion the furnusli, after four weeks of extremely hard travelling via marash and aleppo, had arrived at der-el-zor. they had already been three weeks there in the han, and had no idea what was to happen to them. they had no more money left, and the provisions supplied by the turks had also dwindled almost to nothing. it was days since they had had any bread. in the towns they had been barred in at nights, and not allowed to speak to the inhabitants. martha, for instance, had not been allowed at bm. to go to the orphanage. she said to me sadly: "we had two houses and we had to leave everything; now there are mouhadjirs [33] in them." there had been no massacres in furnus, and the zaptiehs, too, had treated the people well. they had suffered principally from lack of food and water on the march through the burning hot desert. these yailadji or mountaineers, as they called themselves, suffered twice as much from the heat as other people. the zaptiehs escorting them told us then that, since the massacres, the armenians had cherished such hatred against the turks that the latter had always to go in fear of them. the intention now, they said, was to employ the armenians in building roads, and in this way to move them on gradually to bagdad. when asked the "wherefore" of this, the zaptiehs explained that the people had been in collusion with russia. the armenians themselves declared that they did not know the reason for their expulsion. next day, at the midday rest, we fell in with a whole convoy of armenians. the poor people had made themselves primitive goat's hair tents after the manner of the kurds, and were resting in them. but the majority lay on the burning sand without defence against the scorching sun. on account of the number of sick, the turks had allowed them a day's rest. it is simply impossible to conceive anything more disconsolate than such a mass of people in the desert under the given circumstances. one could tell by their clothes that they had lived in considerable prosperity, and now misery was written on their faces. "bread!" "bread!" was the universal cry. they were the people of geben, who had been driven out with their pastor. the latter told me that every day there were five or six deaths among the children and the sick. this very day they had only just buried the mother of a girl about nine years old, who was now quite alone in the world. they besought me most urgently to take the child with me to the orphanage. the pastor gave precisely the same account of what had happened as the little girl at der-el-zor. no one without personal experience of a desert can form anything approaching a conception of the misery and distress. the desert is mountainous, but almost entirely without shade. for days together the route leads over rocks and is extremely difficult going. on the left hand, as one comes from aleppo, there is always the euphrates, which trails along like a streak of clay, yet not near enough for one to be able to draw water from it. the poor people must suffer intolerable pangs of thirst; no wonder that so many sicken and die. as it was the midday halt, we, too, unpacked our provisions and prepared to eat. that morning we had had bread and tea; our midday meal consisted once more of hard arab bread, cheese, and a tin of sardines. in addition we had a bottle of mineral water. it was not very sumptuous, and yet it was not an easy task to eat anything in face of that crowd of distressed and suffering humanity. we gave away as much as we possibly could, and each of my three companions silently pressed into my hand a medjidia (3s. 2d.) "for the poor people." a bag of bread from bagdad, as hard as stone, was received with extraordinary gratitude. "we shall soak it in water and then the children will eat it," said the delighted mothers. another scene comes back to me, which will give an idea of their destitution. one of my companions threw away an empty glass bottle. an old man threw himself upon it, begged to be allowed to take it for himself, and gave profuse thanks for the boon. then he went down to the river, washed it out, and brought it back filled with the thick clayey water, carrying it carefully in his arms like a treasure, to thank us for it once more. now he had at least drinking water for his journey. followed by many good wishes we at last continued on our way, with the impression of this misery still weighing upon us. in the evening, when we reached the village, we met yet another armenian convoy of the same kind. this time it was the people of zeitoun. there was the same destitution and the same complaint about the heat, the lack of bread and the persecutions of the arabs. a little girl who had been brought up by kaiserswerth deaconesses in the orphanage at beirout, told us of her experiences in good german:-"why does god allow it? why must we suffer like this? why did not they strike us dead at once?" were her complaints. "in the daytime we have no water for the children and they cry of thirst. at night the arabs come to steal our bedding and clothes. they have taken girls from us and committed outrages against women. if we cannot drag ourselves further on the march, we are beaten by the zaptiehs." they also told us that other women had thrown themselves into the water to escape their shame, and that mothers with their new-born children had done the same, because they saw no other way out of their misery. along the whole desert route there was a dearth of food--even for us who had money to pay for it--on account of the number of turkish soldiers passing through and resting at every han. in zeitoun, too, no one had been killed; the people could mention no instance of it. the armenian is bound up with his native soil; every change of climate is extremely upsetting to him, and there is nothing he misses so much as clear, cold water. for this reason alone residence in the desert is intolerable for him. a speedy death for the whole family at once seems a better fate to the mothers than to watch death by starvation slowly approaching themselves and their children. on my arrival at aleppo i was at once asked about the armenians, and how they were doing for supplies. their case had been taken up in every possible way, and representations had been made to the government on their behalf. all that could be obtained was permission for the formation of an armenian league of help, which the government at constantinople as well as the vali of aleppo had sanctioned. the armenian community at aleppo at once proceeded to raise a relief fund among themselves, and have been supporting their poor, homeless brethren with money, food and clothing. in the amanus mountains, on our second day's journey after leaving aleppo, we met with armenians again. this time it was the people of hadjin and the neighbourhood. they explained to us that they were going to aleppo, but they knew nothing beyond that. they had only been nine days on the road, and did not ask for any assistance. compared with those in the desert, they were faring sumptuously; they had wagons with them carrying their household goods, horses with foals, oxen and cows, and even camels. the procession making its way up through the mountains seemed endless, and i could not help asking myself how long their prosperity would last. they were still in the mountains on their native soil, and had no suspicion of the terrors of the desert. that was the last i saw of the armenians, but such experiences are unforgettable, and i publish them here with the most earnest appeal for help. many of the armenians may be guilty and may only be suffering what they have brought upon themselves, but the poor women and children need our help. 15. exiles from the euphrates: report from fräulein o. on the 20th of april, 1916, i arrived at meskene, and found there 3,500 deported armenians, and more than 100 orphans. a part of the people have settled here as bakers and butchers, etc., even though meskene is but a halting place. all the rest are begging. in every tent there are sick and dying. anyone who cannot manage to get a piece of bread by begging, eats grass raw and without salt. many hundreds of the sick are left without any tent and covering, in the open, under the glowing sun. i saw desperate ones throw themselves in grave-trenches and beg the grave-diggers to bury them. the government does not give the hungry any bread, and no tent to those who remain outside. as i was in meskene, there came a caravan of sick women and children from bab. they are in an indescribable condition. they were thrown down from the wagons like dogs. they cried for water; they were given each a piece of dry bread, and were left there. no one gave them any water, though they remained a whole day under the hot sun. we had to work the whole night to ameliorate their condition a little. among the orphans there was a small boy of four years old. it was early in the morning, and i asked him if he had eaten anything. he looked much amazed, and said: "i have always gazed at the stars, and my dear god has satisfied me." on my questioning him where his father and mother were, he said simply that they were dead in the desert. in meskene i gathered one hundred children under a tent. i had their hair cut and their rags washed. they received daily some bread and some soup. as i had to go further, i sought someone to care for the orphans. i found a young widow from hadjin, who asked me if she might take the children under her care. she belonged to a good family and had received a good education. she gave herself with an intense love to the children-work. ten days after my departure they had sent the woman with the one hundred children south. i found her a few weeks later in sepka, clothed in rags. she had lost her wits, and wandered about the place asking, "where are my children? what have you done with my children?" when she had reached abu hara she had spent all her money and was destitute. the children were scattered--a prey to hunger. in der-el-zor i found two of them, the only survivors; they said that all the rest had perished. in meskene i saw more than 600 deported who had lived in muara till now, and who had spent a pitiful sojourn of nine months there. they were now once more persecuted and sent to different places. slowly and wearily they came on with their possessions on their backs. as nourishment they cook grass, press the water out, and make balls which they dry in the sun. on the first of may, i came to debsy, where i found the above mentioned six hundred deported, all in despair. they had not even been allowed to rest once or even to gather grass, but had been cruelly driven on. on the way i found people dying everywhere, exhausted from hunger and thirst. they had remained behind the caravan and must perish so painfully. every few minutes came a stench of corpses. the gendarmes beat these stragglers, saying that they pretend to be tired. in debsy there are 3,000 deported. in abu hara 6,000. in both places the death rate is one per cent. daily. in hama i found 7,000 deported, 3,000 of them hungry and practically naked. here there is no grass, the locusts have consumed everything. i saw the people were gathering locusts and eating them raw or cooked. others were looking for the roots of grasses. they catch street dogs, and like savages pounce upon dead animals, whose flesh they eat eagerly without cooking. they showed me how they bury the dead, shallow near the tents. in rakka alone there are 15,000 deported in tents. the camp is situated on both banks of the euphrates, but these people are not allowed to enter the city. rich people are paying from t£30-40 to get permission from those in authority to live for a length of time in the city. everywhere the same lamentable pictures repeat themselves. in sepka there are 1,500 persons who have bought the privilege of establishing themselves there. the rest, 6,000, remain in camps on the banks of the euphrates. there is great misery here. some in despair throw themselves into the river. in each deportation from one place to another, at least five or six perish through the brutal illtreatment of the accompanying gendarmerie. they expect to extract money from the poor, and exact vengeance with heavy blows when they receive nothing. many are transported on boats in the euphrates. in tibne i found 5,000--everywhere we met caravans of deportees. in every arabian village there are some families, in every arabian house young women and girls. here the government is giving 150 gr. of bread to every poor person daily. children and grown-ups search among the garbage heaps for food, and whatever is eatable (chewable) is eaten. at the butchers' people wait eagerly for scraps. of every fifty persons who start from rakka or sepka on boats, twenty arrive, often even less. at the time of my arrival, the government had gathered 200 orphans in a house in der-el-zor. at my departure (six weeks later) there were 800. they get daily a little bread and some soup. in the meantime 12,000 deported came to der-el-zor. every day we see caravans going in the direction of mosul. nevertheless, at my departure, there were at der-el-zor and in its neighbourhood over 30,000 armenians. those who have means are getting permission to delay. the rest must proceed further. the deported are especially badly treated in the region of der-el-zor. the people are driven back and forward with whip blows, and cannot even take their most urgent necessities. on my return i met new caravans everywhere. the people have the appearance of lost men. we often see a whole row of ghastly forms rising suddenly out of a grave and asking for bread and water. they have all dug their graves and lie waiting for death. people of better standing, who cannot make up their minds to beg for a piece of bread, lie, when exhausted, on their beds, till death comes to release them. no one looks after them. in sepka a preacher from aintab told me that parents have often killed their children. at the government investigation it was shown that some people had eaten their children. it has happened that dying people have been fought over in order to secure their flesh for food. another report from the region of meadine and ana, south of der-el-zor, where there are thousands of deported, will be sent by the next mail. our messenger returned to aleppo on the 20th june. on the 26th he was again on a journey to the south. appendix. reports by mohammedan officers in the turkish army as to incidents witnessed by them. (1) a.b.'s report. in april, 1915, i was quartered at erzeroum. an order came from constantinople that armenians inhabiting the frontier towns and villages be deported to the interior. it was said then that this was only a precautionary measure. i saw at that time large convoys of armenians go through erzeroum. they were mostly old men, women and children. some of the able-bodied men had been recruited in the turkish army and many had fled to russia. in may, 1915, i was transferred to trebizond. in july an order came to deport to the interior all the armenians in the vilayet of trebizond. being a member of the court martial, i knew that deportations meant massacres. the armenian bishop of trebizond was ordered to proceed under escort to erzeroum to answer for charges trumped up against him. but instead of erzeroum he was taken to baipurt and from there to gumush-khana. the governor of the latter place was then colonel abdul-kader aintabli, of the general staff. he is famous for his atrocities against the armenians. he had the bishop murdered at night. the bishop of erzeroum was also murdered at gumush-khana. besides the deportation order referred to above, an imperial "iradeh" was issued ordering that all deserters, when caught, should be shot without trial. the secret order read "armenians" in lieu of deserters. [34] the sultan's "iradeh" was accompanied by a "fetua" from sheikh-ul-islam stating that the armenians had shed moslem blood and their killing was lawful. then the deportations started. the children were kept back at first. the government opened up a school for the grown-up children, and the american consul of trebizond instituted an asylum for the infants. when the first batches of deported armenians arrived at gumush-khana all able-bodied men were sorted out, with the excuse that they were going to be given work. the women and children were sent ahead under escort with the assurance by the turkish authorities that their final destination was mosul and that no harm will befall them. the men kept behind were taken out of town in batches of 15 or 20, lined up on the edge of ditches prepared beforehand, shot, and thrown into the ditches. hundreds of men were shot every day in a similar manner. the women and children were attacked on their way by the "shotas" and armed bands organised by the turkish government, who attacked them and seized a certain number. after plundering and committing the most dastardly outrages on the women and children, they massacred them in cold blood. these attacks were a daily occurrence until every woman and child had been got rid of. the military escorts had strict orders not to interfere with the "shotas." the children that the government had taken in charge were also deported and massacred. the infants in the care of the american consul at trebizond were taken away on the pretext that they were going to be sent to sivas, where an asylum had been prepared for them. they were taken out to sea in little boats. at some distance out they were stabbed to death, put in sacks and thrown into the sea. a few days later some of their little bodies were washed up on the shore of trebizond. in july, 1915, i was ordered to accompany a convoy of deported armenians. it was the last batch from trebizond. there were in the convoy 120 men, 700 children, and about 400 women. from trebizond i took them to gumush-khana. here the 120 men were taken away, and, as i was informed later, they were all killed. at gumush-khana i was ordered to take the women and children to erzindjan. on the way i saw thousands of bodies of armenians unburied. several bands of "shotas" met us on the way and wanted me to hand over to them women and children. but i persistently refused. i did leave on the way about 200 children with moslem families who were willing to take care of them and educate them. the "mutessarif" of erzindjan ordered me to proceed with the convoy to kamach. at the latter place the authorities refused to take charge of the women and children. i fell ill and wanted to go back, but i was told that as long as the armenians in my charge were alive i would be sent from one place to the other. however, i managed to include my batch with the deported armenians that had come from erzeroum. in charge of the latter was a colleague of mine, ---effendi, from the gendarmerie. he told me afterwards that after leaving kamach they came to a valley where the euphrates ran. a band of "shotas" sprang out and stopped the convoy. they ordered the escort to keep away, and then shot every one of the armenians and threw them into the river. at trebizond the moslems were warned that if they sheltered armenians they would be liable to the death penalty. [35] government officials at trebizond picked out some of the prettiest armenian women of the best families. after committing the worst outrages on them, they had them killed. cases of rape of women and girls even publicly are very numerous. they were systematically murdered after the outrage. the armenians deported from erzeroum started with their cattle and whatever possessions they could carry. when they reached erzindjan they became suspicious, seeing that all the armenians had already been deported. the vali of erzeroum allayed their fears, and assured them most solemnly that no harm would befall them. he told them that the first convoy should leave for kamach, the others remaining at erzeroum until they received word from their friends informing them of their safe arrival to destination. and so it happened. word came that the first batch had arrived safely at kamach, which was true enough. but the men were kept at kamach and shot, and the women and children were massacred by the "shotas," after leaving that town. the turkish officials in charge of the deportation and extermination of the armenians were: at erzeroum, bihaa eddin shaker bey; at trebizond, naiil bey, tewfik bey monastirly, colonel of gendarmerie, the commissioner of police; at kamach, the member of parliament for erzindjan. the "shotas'" headquarters were also at kamach. their chief was the kurd murzabey, who boasted that he alone had killed 70,000 armenians. afterwards he was thought to be dangerous by the turks, and thrown into prison charged with having hit a gendarme. he was eventually executed in secret. (2) c.d.'s report. in august, 1915, in the suburbs of mush i saw large numbers of dead bodies of armenians, men, women and children, lying in the fields. some had been shot, some stabbed, and most of them had been horribly mutilated. the women were mostly naked. in the villages around mush i saw old women and children wandering in the streets, haggard and emaciated. in the same month, in a camp outside bitlis, i saw collected about 500 women, girls, and children, guarded by gendarmes. i asked the latter what was to become of these people. they said that they were being deported, but that they had orders to let the bands deal with them on the way. the bands had been organized by the turkish government for the purpose of massacring the armenians. they were formed by kurds, turkish gendarmes and criminals who had been specially set free. [36] on the river at bitlis i saw quite a number of bodies of armenians floating on the water, and some washed up on the banks. the smell was pestilential and the water undrinkable. in the same month of august, in the country at a distance of about two hours from zaart, i saw the bodies of about 15,000 massacred armenians. they were piled up on top of each other in two ravines. the armenian bishop of zaart was, at his own request, taken to a cave near by and shot. on my return from zaart to mush, in a village of the suburbs of mush over 500 armenians, mostly women and children, were herded up in a stable and locked in. the gendarmes threw flaming torches through an opening in the ceiling. they were all burnt alive. i did not go near, but i distinctly saw the flames and heard the screams of the poor victims. i heard from reliable persons that women in the family way had their bodies cut open and the child snatched out and thrown away. at mush the streets were strewn with bodies of armenians. every armenian who ventured out of doors was instantly killed. even men of great age, blind and invalids, were not spared. from mush to hinis, at short distances from each other, i saw piles of bodies of armenians in the fields alongside the road. between sherkes-koi and hinis i saw two ravines filled with corpses of armenians, about 400 in each ravine, mostly men. another ravine was filled with bodies of little children. at khara-shuban i saw a large number of bodies of armenians floating on the river murad. when i went to erzindjan i was told that wholesale massacres were perpetrated at erzindjan, mamakhatoun, and the whole country around. besides those that the turks had killed and burnt alive, they threw thousands of them into the euphrates. a large number of armenians, seeing that their death was inevitable, and fearing worse atrocities, preferred to throw themselves into the euphrates. printed in great britain by j. j. keliher & co., ltd., marshalsea road, london, s.e. notes [1] the particulars as to name and rank are given in the original documents, but must for obvious reasons be suppressed in this pamphlet. [2] the italics are those of the author of the memorandum. [3] here again the italics are those of the author of the memorandum. [4] the italics are the editor's. [5] 1914. [6] they were at work in the german hospital at erzeroum from october, 1914, to april, 1915.--editor. [7] 7th june: allgemeine missions-zeitschrift, november, 1915. [8] amounting to about 20,000-25,000 people in all: allgemeine missions-zeitschrift, november, 1915. [9] one of the two authors of the present statement, which has been drafted in the first person by the other witness, but represents the experience of both. the editor is in possession of the drafter's name, but does not know the identity of sister b., dr. a., or mr. g.--editor. [10] a defile, 12 hours' journey from erzindjan, where the euphrates flows through a narrow gorge between two walls of rock. [11] i.e., after the departure of the last convoys of exiles from erzindjan (10th june), not after the narrators were informed of the massacres by their cook and by the two armenian girls. the passages about the cobbler, the cook, and the two girls are evidently in parenthesis, and interrupt the sequence of the narrative.--editor. [12] the further details are given in the allgemeine missions-zeitschrift. november, 1915: "when we exclaimed in horror: 'so you fire on women and children!' the soldiers answered: 'what could we do? it was our orders.' one of them added: 'it was a heart-breaking sight. for that matter, i did not shoot.'"--editor. [13] on the evening of the 11th. we saw soldiers returning to town laden with loot. we heard from both turks and armenians that children's corpses were strewn along the road. [14] every day ten or twelve men had been killed and thrown into the ravines.--allgemeine missions-zeitschrift. [15] this was not the route followed by the convoys of exiles. [16] this incident was communicated to mr. db. by dc. effendi, a gentleman who had held high office under the ottoman government till the outbreak of the war. [17] mr. vartkes was an armenian deputy in the ottoman parliament, who was murdered, together with another deputy, mr. zohrab, when he was being escorted by gendarmes from aleppo to be court-martialled at diyarbekir.--editor. [18] "we have just picked up fifteen babies. three are already dead. they were terribly thin and ailing when we found them. ah! if we could only write all that we see."--extract from a letter dated marash, 4th june, 1915, published in "sonnenaufgang," september, 1915. [19] the italics are the editor's. [20] the italics are the editor's. [21] this was a friday. [22] the italics are the editor's. [23] the italics are the editor's. [24] the italics are the editor's. [25] the italics are the editor's. [26] the italics are the editor's. [27] the remarks of this headmaster, who only calls attention to the personal inconvenience suffered by the teachers in the school, is in singular contrast with the impassioned feelings of pity for the armenians expressed and undoubtedly felt by the author of the report.--editor's note. [28] the italics are the editor's. the fact which comes out clearly in several of the documents included in this pamphlet, that many german consuls reported indignantly about these horrors, and that their reports were left unheeded, throws a lurid light on the attitude of the german government.--editor's note. [29] see the last note (editor's note). [30] the italics are the editor's. [31] the italics are the editor's. [32] the italics are the editor's. [33] moslem immigrants from europe. [34] the italics are the editor's. [35] the italics are the editor's. [36] the italics are the editor's. available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/armeniaandwaran00hacogoog armenia and the war an armenian's point of view with an appeal to britain and the coming peace conference by a. p. hacobian with a preface by the rt. hon. viscount bryce, o.m. hodder and stoughton london new york toronto mcmxvii "they are slaves who fear to speak for the fallen and the weak: they are slaves who will not choose hatred, scoffing and abuse, rather than in silence shrink from the truth they needs must think: they are slaves who dare not be in the right with two or three." lowell. "_to serve armenia is to serve civilization._" _w. e. gladstone._ "_we have put our money on the wrong horse._"[1] _the marquis of salisbury._ " ... _a government incurably barbarous and corrupt._" _the duke of argyll._ " ... _the ottoman empire ... decidedly foreign to western civilization._" _allies' note to president wilson, january 11, 1917._ introductory note the end of the war will leave great britain and her allies the practical arbiters of the destinies of europe and the near east. the predominant part played in the prosecution of the war by great britain and the british empire will entitle them to an equally decisive voice in the councils of the peace conference. that proud position carries with it a supreme privilege as well as a heavy moral responsibility. that the voice and weight of britain and greater britain will be cast, on all occasions, on the side of justice and liberty, there cannot be the slightest doubt. but however just and fair-minded a judge may be, it is impossible for him to dispense justice without hearing all sides of the case before him. that is my plea for placing this statement of the cause of my afflicted country before the british public, confident that, with its inherent love of fair play, it will give my pleading a fair hearing. i am anxious to make one point clear. i hold no authority and claim no right whatever to speak for the nation or any national or local organization of any kind. the views set forth in this little volume are the views of an individual armenian who feels, as do no doubt all his compatriots, that the armenian blood that has flowed so freely in this war, imposes upon every living armenian the sacred duty of employing all legitimate means in his power to secure to the survivors the justice and reparation to which their numerous fallen relatives have given them an overwhelming and indisputable title. they are my views, and the responsibility for them rests on myself and myself alone. i have stated my views frankly. one or two of my friends were kind enough to express the opinion that that might injure our cause. while i appreciate their interest and solicitude, i do not share their fears. i am convinced that the truth can never be unpopular with the british public or prejudice a good cause. i have, of necessity, had to quote freely from many sources, and i take this opportunity to express my apologies and indebtedness to the authorities quoted, in particular to lord bryce and mr. arnold j. toynbee for very kindly permitting me to quote extracts from the blue book. a. p. hacobian. _london, february, 1917._ preface of all the peoples upon whom this war has brought calamity and suffering, the armenian people have had the most to endure. great as has been the misery inflicted by the invaders upon the non-combatant populations of belgium and northern france, upon poland, upon serbia, the misery of armenia, though far less known to the outer world, has been far more terrible. when the european war broke out, in 1914, the government of the turkish empire had fallen into the hands of a small gang of unscrupulous ruffians calling themselves the committee of union and progress, who were ruling through their command of the army, but in the name of the harmless and imbecile sultan. by means which have not been fully disclosed, but the nature of which can be easily conjectured, this gang were won over to serve the interests of germany; and at germany's bidding they declared war against the western allies, thus dragging all the subjects of turkey, muslim and christian, into a conflict with which they had no concern. the armenian christians scattered through the asiatic part of the turkish dominions, having had melancholy experience in the adana massacres some years previously of what cruelties the ruling gang were capable of perpetrating, were careful to remain quiet, and to furnish no pretext to the turkish authorities for an attack upon them. but the rulers of turkey showed that they did not need a pretext for the execution of the nefarious purposes they cherished. they had formed a design for the extermination of the non-mohammedan elements in the population of asiatic turkey, in order to make what they called a homogeneous nation, consisting of mohammedans only. the wickedness of such a design was equalled only by its blind folly, for the christian armenians of asia minor and the north-eastern provinces constituted the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the best-educated part of the population. most of the traders and merchants, nearly all the skilled artisans, were armenians, and to destroy them was to destroy the chief industrial asset which these regions possessed. however, this was the plan of the committee of union and progress, and as soon as they began to feel, in the spring of 1915, that the allied expedition against the dardanelles was not likely to succeed, they proceeded to execute it. they first disarmed all the armenians in order to have them at their mercy; and in some cases, in order to make it appear that the armenians were intending to take up arms, they actually sent weapons into the towns and then had them seized as evidence against the christians. when such arms as the christians possessed had been secured, orders for massacre were issued from constantinople to the local governors. the whole armenian population was seized. the grown men were slaughtered without mercy. the younger women were sold in the market place to the highest bidder, or appropriated by turkish military officers and civil officials to become slaves in turkish harems. the boys were handed over to dervishes to be carried off and brought up as muslims. the rest of the hapless victims, all the older men and women, the mothers and their babes clinging to them, were torn from their homes and driven out along the tracks which led into the desert region of northern syria and arabia. most of them perished on the way from hardships, from disease, from starvation. a few were still surviving some months ago near aleppo and along the banks of the euphrates. many, probably thousands, were drowned in that river and its tributaries, martyrs to their christian faith, which they had refused to renounce; for it was generally possible for women, and sometimes for men, to save themselves by accepting mohammedanism. by these various methods hundreds of thousands--the number is variously estimated at from 500,000 to 800,000--have perished. and all this was done with the tacit acquiescence of the german government, some of whose representatives on the spot are even said to have encouraged the turks in their work of slaughter, while the government confined its action to propagating in germany, so as to deceive its own people, false stories which alleged that the armenians had been punished for insurrectionary movements. all these facts, with many details too horrible to be repeated here, are set forth in the blue book recently published in england, containing accounts based upon incontrovertible evidence, and to which no reply has been made, though some denials, palpably false, have emanated from the turkish gang, and some others from the german government. the victims who have thus been put to death, a large part of the whole armenian people, belong to what is one of the oldest nations in the world, which has been christian and civilized ever since the third century of our era. if any people ever deserved the sympathy of the civilized world, it is they who have clung to their faith and the traditions of their ancient kingdom ever since that kingdom was overthrown by the turkish invaders many centuries ago. they now appeal to the allied nations who are fighting the battle of right and humanity against the german government and its barbarous turkish allies, asking that when the end of the war comes their case may be considered and they may be for ever delivered from the turkish yoke. nowhere is their hard case better known than in the united states, for it is the american missionaries who have, by their admirable schools and colleges planted in many cities of asiatic turkey, done more for them than any other country has done, giving them light, consolation and sympathy. the author of this little book is an armenian gentleman belonging to a family originally from ispahan in persia, but now settled in england. he speaks with intimate knowledge as well as with patriotic feeling, and states the case of his countrymen with a moderation well fitted to inspire confidence. upon the arguments he puts forward i do not venture to express any opinion in detail. but those who know something of asiatic turkey will recognize with him that the armenians are, by their intelligence and their irrepressible energy, the race best fitted to restore prosperity to regions desolated by turkish oppression. the educated armenians, notwithstanding all they have suffered, are abreast of the modern world of civilization. among them are many men of science and learning, as well as artists and poets. they are scattered in many lands. i have visited large armenian colonies as far west as california, and there are others as far east as rangoon. many of the exiles would return to their ancient home if they could but be guaranteed that security and peace which they have never had, and can never have, under the rule of the turk. may we not confidently hope that the allied powers will find means for giving it to them at the end of this war, for extending to them that security which they have long desired and are capable of using well? bryce. _may, 1917._ footnote: [1] _after the massacres of 1895-1896, lord salisbury, who had himself taken a prominent part in the consummation of the treaty of berlin and the cyprus convention, frankly admitted the failure of the policy which gave birth to these treaties, and the futility of relying upon turkish promises._ contents page i. armenia as a war issue--greatest sufferer from turko-prussian "frightfulness"--effect on american opinion 1 ii. armenia and reparation--armenia's martyrdom--condemnation and demand for reparation inadequately expressed 10 iii. "the gentle and clean-fighting turk" 22 iv. anglo-russian friendship a vital necessity for peace and progress in asia--moslems and turkish rule--armenians progressive and democratic by temperament 40 v. armenia as a peace problem--views of the "manchester guardian" and the "spectator"--can armenians stand alone among the kurds?--american opinion and the future of armenia 50 vi. armenia's services in the war 66 vii. armenia the battle-ground of asia minor and victim of contending empires 81 viii. the blue-book--the epic of armenia's martyrdom, the revelation of her spirit and character--"truth" on the armenians: a digression 94 ix. extracts from the blue book 114 x. great britain and armenia--the late duke of argyll's views--an appeal to britain 140 xi. an appeal to the coming peace conference 160 postscript 181 appendix 189 armenia and the war i armenia as a war issue--greatest sufferer from turko-prussian "frightfulness"--effect on american opinion the first official advance for peace made by germany and her allies, although couched in defiant and menacing terms, was nevertheless an unmistakable signal of distress, and has brought the world within measurable distance of that just and durable peace which the allies have set out to achieve. the prospect of approaching peace has set on foot a general reiteration of the issues at stake, and consideration of the terms and problems of peace. public attention in this country will naturally be occupied, in the first place, with the momentous issues and interests of the united kingdom, the british empire and her allies raised by the war and to be settled and secured by the impending peace. it will therefore, i hope, not be considered amiss or premature for a member of one of those small and oppressed peoples engulfed in the vortex of the war who look to great britain and her allies for deliverance, reparation and the security of their future liberty, to put before the british public his views, as well as facts and arguments that may be of some service in enabling it to form a just estimate of the claims and merits of one of the smaller problems which run the risk of not receiving a full hearing at the peace conference, in the presence of a multitude of larger and more important questions. the item in the allied peace terms stated in their reply to president wilson's note, "the setting free of the populations subject to the bloody tyranny of the turks," is the bearer to armenians of a message of comfort and hope. it heralds the dawn of a new day that will mark the end of the long and hideous nightmare of turkish tyranny. if president wilson, the american people, or other neutrals were in search of evidence that would prove to them conclusively which of the two groups of belligerents is sincere in its professions of regard for "the rights and privileges of weak peoples and small states"; if belgium had not been violated and ravaged; if the _lusitania_ and so many hospital ships, liners and merchantmen had not been sunk without any care as to the fate of the wounded, the children and women, the non-combatant men and crews; if zeppelins had not spread death and destruction among women and children in their homes in the night; if all these and so many other outrages had not been committed, and there had been, in the whole course of the war, no other act of the quadruple alliance in any degree contrary to the laws and usages of civilized warfare and dictates of humanity, the single word armenia would provide that proof--a crushing, monumental proof--as to who is and who is not sincere in the professions of regard for right, justice and humanity. the spirit of desolated armenia stands at the head of the phantom spirits of outraged humanity, which must rise and shatter to atoms every mask of benevolence, righteousness and injured innocence that the protagonists of "frightfulness" may assume for the deception of their own peoples and neutrals. but in the united states at least there is no need for any fresh proof or explanation of the issue at this stage, and the martyrdom of armenia has contributed largely to that state of american opinion. i have little doubt that president wilson's peace note and speech to the senate are the first steps towards america casting her whole weight into the scale, aiming at the realization of a just and lasting peace. the intense interest evinced by the people and government of the united states in the fate of armenia and the armenians is abundantly shown not only by the generous gifts of money for the relief of the survivors and the noble personal services by devoted missionaries and relief agents, some of whom lost their lives in their work of mercy; but also by diplomatic action on behalf of the armenians in constantinople (where mr. morgenthau, to his great honour, struggled valiantly to stay the hand of the ruthless oppressor), and by the prominence given to any and every scrap of news concerning the holocaust in armenia. it is no exaggeration to say that, military operations apart, no incident of the war, not excepting the violation and martyrdom of belgium, has been given more space and prominence in the american press than anything connected with the martyrdom of armenia and syria and the relief of the refugees and exiles. in his reply to the armenian deputation who on december 14, 1916, presented to him an illuminated parchment from the catholicos expressing his holiness's gratitude and thanks to the american nation, president wilson said, _inter alia_- "we have tried to do what was possible to save your people from the ravages of war. my great regret is, that we have been able to accomplish so little. there have been many suffering peoples as the result of that terrible struggle, and _the lot of none has touched the american heart more than the suffering of the armenians_."[2] nothing in the war has brought home to the people of the united states the moral issues of the war more strongly and vividly than the unprecedented barbarities committed by the turks in their diabolical attempt to wipe out the armenian race. no event of the war has been more damaging to the central powers in the eyes of the united states. here they have seen the ruthless spirit of the twin enemies of humanity and liberty--the turkish _yatagan_ supported by the prussian jack-boot--in its hideous nakedness, at work in the depths of asia, unrestrained and unperceived, as they thought, by the light of civilization. this gospel of the jack-boot and the _yatagan_ will be best illustrated by putting side by side two quotations, one from the _tanine_, the official organ of the committee of union and progress in constantinople, and the other from a statement made by count reventlow in october 1915. the _tanine_ "invited the government to exterminate or forcibly convert to islam all armenian women in turkey as the only means of saving the ottoman empire."[3] count reventlow, the high priest of the gospel of brute force and militarism, writing in the _tageszeitung_ in defence and approval of turkey's appalling crime, said that it was the ottoman government's obvious right and duty to take the strongest repressive measures against "the bloodthirsty armenians"--the measures advocated by the _tanine_, which were carried out by count reventlow's worthy allies on the bosphorus with a completeness and ferocity that must have greatly pleased him. the german government and german apologists have made a great parade of the use of indian and african troops in europe by the allies. by all reports, these troops have fought as clean a fight as any troops in the war. i think that in the judgment of future historians no incident of this war, whose history is so heavily shadowed on one side with outrages and violations of the laws of civilized warfare, will meet with so strong a condemnation as germany's alliance with the young turks, the declaration of a "holy war" at her behest, and its dire consequences for the already sorely tried christian subjects of the turks. (it should be remembered that germany and austria are signatories to the treaty of berlin, art. 61 of which was to have brought about "the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the armenians," and to have "guaranteed their security against the kurds and circassians." this point cannot be too strongly emphasized.) she could have foreseen these consequences; and if she did not foresee them, she could have stopped them when they made themselves apparent. turkey's entry into the war placed her christian subjects in a position of great peril, as it has been her custom to wreak upon them her vengeance for defeats; while a state of war freed her from the moral restraint of europe. it was hoped that german and austrian influence would check this tendency. how cruelly events have shattered that hope! they have proved that it was too much to expect humanity and the ordinary feelings of chivalry and compassion for the honour and suffering of women and children from the state policies of these great christian governments and the majority of their agents in turkey. i do not believe that this ungodly and inhuman policy has received general approbation either in germany or austria-hungary. this is evident from the quotations from german missionary journals in the blue-book on the "treatment of armenians in the ottoman empire."[4] it is also proved by the protests addressed to the imperial chancellor by several catholic and protestant organizations. footnotes: [2] quoted in _the new armenia_ of new york, january 1, 1917. the italics are mine. [3] quoted in _guerre sociale_ (paris), september 16, 1915. [4] _the treatment of armenians in the ottoman empire._ documents presented to viscount grey of fallodon, secretary of state for foreign affairs, with a preface by viscount bryce (hodder & stoughton). ii armenia and reparation--armenia's martyrdom--condemnation and demand for reparation inadequately expressed the governments of the allies have unanimously declared that peace is only possible on the principles of adequate reparation for the past, adequate security for the future, and recognition of the principle of nationalities and of the free existence of small states. "reparation" means no doubt in the first place reparation for the wanton and ruthless destruction of unoffending and defenceless civilian lives and property. it is characteristic of the british sense of justice and fair play that belgium, france and serbia should be given the first place in their demand for reparation, for, of course, there are the british victims of "frightfulness," zeppelin and submarine victims and the victims of judicial murders to be atoned for and recompensed. this unanimous demand for reparation to the smaller nations for all they have suffered as a result of the brutal and unscrupulous aggression of their more powerful neighbours, and their security and free development, augurs well for the future. it is an earnest given by the entente powers to the world, of the sincerity of their declarations regarding the unselfish, just and worthy objects which they entered the war to attain. i must be excused, however, if i confess to feeling not a little perplexity at the fact that, in discussing the peace terms, the great organs of british public opinion, with some notable exceptions,[5] have made little or no reference to armenia in the demand for penalties, reparation and redemption. this fact must have impressed mr. arthur henderson, who, in his reference to armenia quoted more fully elsewhere, remarked that " ... armenian atrocities _were not much talked about_ here ... etc." my anxiety will be understood when i point out that for us it is not a question of a little more or less territory, a little larger or smaller indemnity. for us more than for any other race involved in the war it is a question of "to be or not to be" in a real and fateful sense: the rebirth of armenian nationality from the profusion of its lost blood and heaps of smouldering ashes, or the end of that long-cherished and bled-for aspiration, and the consummation of the "policy" of abdul hamid and the young turks. the first general discussion of the terms of peace has coincided with the publication, as a blue-book, of lord bryce's comprehensive documentary evidence on the attempt of the turks to murder the armenian nation in cold blood. i gratefully acknowledge the fact that many newspapers wrote sympathetic editorial articles or reviews on the blue-book, emphasizing, with incontestable force, that this conclusive evidence of the abominable crimes committed by the turks in armenia without any protest from official germany, is a crushing reply to the german chancellor's protestations of solicitude for humanity. but, opportune as has been the immediate effect of this fresh evidence of lord bryce's noble and untiring labours in the cause of humanity, as a tragic and terrible exposure of the irony of the central powers' professions of pity for suffering humanity, that is surely not the only or the principal moral to be drawn from these haunting pages. they constitute a terrible and lasting reproach to the european diplomacy of our time. they unfold to the horrified gaze of mankind a vast column of human smoke and human anguish rising to the heavens as the incense of the most fearful yet most glorious mass-martyrdom the world has ever seen, but casting a shadow of lasting shame upon christendom and civilization. the unparalleled outburst of barbarity they reveal did not come as a surprise. europe had heard its premonitory rumblings these last forty years. as far back as 1880 the representatives of the great powers in their famous and futile identic note to the sublime porte, said: "so desperate was the misgovernment of the country that it would lead in all probability to the destruction of the christian population of vast districts." the massacres of 1895-1896 and 1909 cost the lives of 250,000 to 300,000 armenians. but most of the european statesmen of the day persistently refused to believe that "the gentle turk" was capable of such bursts of unspeakable barbarism; while bismarck declared openly that the whole eastern question was not worth "the bones of a pomeranian grenadier." his successors have followed and improved upon his ruthless, unchristian policy, and europe sees the result. with due respect to the small minority of humane turks, who, i dare say, are themselves shocked at what their rulers, their soldiery and populace have proved themselves capable of, the turk as a race has added yet another and vaster monument than ever before to the long series of similar monuments that fill the pages of his blood-stained history, in proof of the unchangeable brutality of his nature. you cannot reason or argue with him. nor can you expect justice or ordinary human feelings from such a nature. the only sane and honest way to deal with him is to make him innocuous. it is official europe that is to blame for leaving him so long at large and his prey at his mercy. it is european diplomacy of the past forty years that is responsible for looking on while the relentless mutilation was going on limb by limb, until moloch saw his chance in the war and all but devoured his hapless victim, with the tacit acquiescence of the governments of two great christian empires, and the applause of count reventlow and his disciples. how is it to be explained that this deliberately planned destruction of more than half a million human beings by all the tortures of the dark ages, and the deportation and enslavement worse than death of more than half a million, have not aroused the righteous wrath of the great british writers and thinkers of the day to nearly the same extent as the martyrdom of belgium? how is it that great writers and poets have not felt the call of expressing to the world in the language of genius the stupefying horror as well as the moral grandeur of this vast, unparalleled tragedy?[6] great britain has always been, and is to-day more than ever, the champion and "the hope of the oppressed and the despair of the oppressor." that sympathy, horror and indignation exist in this country in the fullest measure there is not the slightest doubt. one sees proofs and indications of their existence at every turn. but why, in heaven's name, is it not proclaimed to the world that the culprits may know and tremble and stay their hand? bishops have been burnt to death, hundreds of churches desecrated, and ministers of christ tortured and murdered; hundreds of thousands of christian women and children done to death in circumstances of unspeakable barbarity and bestiality. why are the churches of great britain and all christendom not raising a cry of indignation that will reverberate throughout the world and strike the fear of god into the hearts of these assassins and all powers of darkness? why is not a word said as a tribute, so richly deserved, to the heroic and indomitable spirit of the men and women and even children who chose torture and death rather than deny their christ, sacrifice their honour or renounce their nationality?[7] here is assuredly the most inspiring example of all times of the triumph of the spirit of christ and the fidelity in death to conscience, personal honour and independence, over savage fury and brutal lust at the highest pitch ever attained in them by fiends in human form; a triumph and an example more inspiring, and with a deeper and more lasting significance for humanity and christianity, perhaps, than this great and terrible war itself; and the churches and spokesmen and writers of great christian countries, belligerent and neutral, pass over that aspect of the great tragedy almost in complete silence! i do not ask tributes for the martyrs; let their praise be sung by the hosts of heaven. nor is this a complaint; and it would be a presumption on my part to assume the rã´le of critic or mentor to leaders of religion, thought and learning in great christian countries. it is far indeed from my intention to assume such a rã´le. but these are facts which i contemplate with inexpressible sorrow, almost despair--facts which perplex and puzzle me and which surpass my understanding. perhaps my judgment is dimmed and embittered by my nation's sufferings. if that is so, is any one surprised that the armenian soul should be bitter to-day, bitter with a bitterness, anguish and indignation such as the soul of man has never tasted before, or any people can possibly imagine? some papers speak of the sufferings of the armenians being _equal_ to those of the belgians. armenians know, if any one does, what bondage and suffering under the tyrant's heel mean, and they yield to none in their profound sympathy and admiration for heroic belgium, serbia and the occupied parts of france. the martyrdom of 5000 unoffending belgian civilians is a horrible enough episode, but surely there is some difference between 5000 and 600,000 victims, to say nothing of the 600,000 who were enslaved, forcibly converted to islam, and driven in caravans of torture and death to the mesopotamian deserts.[8] what is the condition of these unfortunates, and how many have survived, must remain a dread secret of the desert until the end of the war. is it because the victims are armenians, mere armenians so used to massacre, so long abandoned by europe to the lust and pleasure of "the gentle turk"? that may be so in the eyes of men. but there is god, and in his eyes the life and pain and torture and death of an armenian child, woman, or man are the same, exactly the same, as those of any other child, woman, or man without exception. footnotes: [5] armenians are especially indebted to the _manchester guardian_ and _the times_ for their valuable services to their cause, humanity and truth in exposing the reign of terror in armenia and the turk's affectation of "clean-fighting." part 101 of _the times history and encyclopã¦dia of the war_ was the first detailed account of what had happened in armenia since the outbreak of war, and i may add that, considering the difficulties of obtaining information, it is a remarkably well-informed account. [6] mr. israel zangwill concludes a moving and eloquent tribute to the agony of armenia in _the new armenia_ (new york) of march 1, 1917, entitled "the majesty of armenia," in the following words--"i bow before this higher majesty of sorrow. i take the crown of thorns from israel's head and i place it upon armenia's." is it not a strange fact that of all contemporary authors and publicists of note, it should have fallen to a famous and gifted jew to pay the first tribute to "the majesty" of armenia's martyrdom for the christian faith? [7] mr. p. w. wilson's sympathetic and appreciative articles in _the westminster gazette_ and _the daily news and leader_ of february 3, 1917, appeared after the above was written. while i am most grateful to mr. wilson and the two great organs of british public opinion, i avail myself of this opportunity to make one or two observations on some of the points mr. wilson has raised-"the first impulse of the refugee" has not only been "to start a shop" but also to start a school and improvise the means of continuing the publication of the newspaper he was publishing in van before the exile, as the belgians have done here under more favourable circumstances. the toleration practised by armenians and their church is not due to adversity, but the true understanding of christianity. the spirit of toleration breathes through the pages of the history of the armenian church from the earliest times. mr. wilson says: "it is doubtless regrettable that the armenians should have failed to recommend their progressive conception of life to the moslems around them." this is a striking example of the misconception that so often exists in the minds of even the most sympathetic observers of armenian affairs. mr. wilson knows no doubt for how much prestige counts in the east. if the european missions with all the prestige of their great nations, governments, embassies, consulates, etc., behind them (to say nothing of the unlimited funds at their disposal) have had such little success in moslem countries, is it reasonable to blame the armenians, oppressed, harried, tortured, massacred, plunged into the depths of misery, for not having fared better? what respect could the armenian's religion inspire among his moslem neighbours who murdered his bishops and priests, desecrated his churches and inflicted the most revolting insults upon the outward symbols of his faith, while his powerful co-religionists stood by and did nothing? under these circumstances what better service could the armenian render his religion than die for it? in happier days, the early armenian christians were largely instrumental in converting the georgians. [8] it is some consolation to know, as some reports say, that the arabs have treated these unfortunates kindly. it is an indication of--and a credit to--their superior civilization. iii "the gentle and clean-fighting turk"[9] the allies have declared in their reply to president wilson that one of their aims is "the turning out of europe of the ottoman empire, _as decidedly foreign to western civilization_." this fact of the turk being "decidedly foreign to western civilization," affirmed on the authority and conviction of the governments of four of the greatest and most advanced nations of europe, needs no further proof. nevertheless it seems desirable, in the interests of truth, to endeavour to dissipate the misconception that has been created by the extraordinary myth of "the clean-fighting turk." there has been a disposition in this country, natural and intelligible under the circumstances, to attribute the recent (let us hope the last) and most terrible of the armenian massacres wholly or largely to german influence. that the german government had it in its power to stop this gigantic crime if it had so wished, there is no doubt. it seems likely also that the turk applied to his brutal scheme the method and thoroughness he had learned from his german ally. but seriously to assert, as some writers and speakers have done, that german influence instigated the massacres, is to shut one's eyes to the turk's record ever since he became known to history. one need only turn the pages of his history--a veritable chamber of horrors--to convince oneself that massacre, outrage, and devastation have always been congenial to the turk. without for a moment wishing to absolve the german government of its responsibility, before god and humanity, for not exerting its influence to save more than a million absolutely innocent human beings from death, slow torture, and slavery: the fact, nevertheless, remains that hulagu, sultan selim, bayazid and abdul hamid were not under german influence, that there were no germans at the sack of constantinople or the massacres of bagdad and sivas, or, in more recent times, at the butcheries of chios, greece, crete, batak, macedonia, sassoon, urfa, or adana. the turk, in fact, has nothing to learn from his teutonic ally in "frightfulness"; he has a great deal to teach him. i readily admit that there are some turks who are gentle and good men. some of these have risked good positions and even their lives to protect armenian women and children. but most unfortunately for us, for humanity and for the turks themselves, such good turks are few and far between. it is true that orders for the extirpation of the armenians were issued from constantinople, but can any one imagine such revolting orders _being carried out_ by "gentle and clean-fighting" troops and people? i shall be much surprised if any unprejudiced man or woman in any civilized country believes that any but the turkish populace and soldiery would be capable of carrying out such orders. history at any rate has given us no such evidence. i believe that, under a just and honest government and better influences, the turkish peasant will, in course of time, lose his proneness to cruelty, for he has good qualities. but if this war is intended to see the end of tyranny, oppression, brutal religious and political persecution and the discontent and unrest that such conditions always produce; if it is to prevent the possibility of a repetition of the hell that the turks have let loose in armenia since they entered the war and _so often before the war_; then it is clear that never again must the turk be allowed to possess the power over other races, which he has so abominably abused ever since he "hacked his way through" to the fair, fertile and once highly prosperous country which he has devastated and converted into a charnel-house. the armenians of turkey had no separatist aspirations. they knew that was impracticable. nothing would have suited them better than a reformed government in turkey, that would give them security of life, honour and property, the free development of their national and religious institutions and an approach to equality with moslems before the law. on the promulgation of the constitution, all the armenian revolutionary societies were transformed into peaceable and orderly political parties as by magic. they had great hopes of achieving these aims and the regeneration of the ottoman empire from within in co-operation with the young turks before the war, and they gave the committee of union and progress (was there ever a more incongruous misnomer?) all the support they could, which was by no means negligible; but they had not long to wait to be completely and bitterly disillusioned. the adana massacres gave their hopes the first blow. the armenian leaders proved too earnest and sincere democrats for the committee leaders who, with few exceptions, were actuated, as events proved, more by inordinate personal ambition than the "liberty" and "equality" which they so loudly proclaimed and which have proved such a hideous mockery. the chauvinistic wing soon gained complete ascendancy over the party, which resolved on the covert or forcible "ottomanization" of all non-turk races of the empire (as is proved by the recent exposures of the grand sheriff of mecca), and ended by joining the germans in the war in the hope of conquering egypt and the caucasus. it is a mistake to think that germany forced turkey into the war against her will by the presence of the _goeben_ and _breslau_. those who had any knowledge of turkish affairs had no doubt of the existence of a military understanding between germany and turkey for some years before the war. the arrival of a military mission at constantinople under liman von sanders left no doubt on that point. on the outbreak of the european war, the armenian dashnakist party met in congress at erzerum to determine the attitude to be observed by the party in relation to the war. hearing of this, the young turks forthwith sent representatives to ascertain the attitude of the party in the event of turkey going to war against russia. (see blue-book, p. 80.) this took place some weeks before the arrival of the _goeben_ and _breslau_ at constantinople. nor was the war as unpopular with the turkish masses at the outset as is thought by many. if that were so there would have been a revolt against the young turks, and turkey would have been detached from the central powers long ago. it may be less popular now, because their dreams of conquest have been shattered and the whole country is suffering. no turk, young or old, had any particular objection to the prospects of the conquest either of egypt or the caucasus, and many of them aimed at a moslem triple alliance between turkey, persia and afghanistan under german auspices, and even dreamt dreams of an empire that would ultimately embrace india and the whole of northern africa![10] the young turks have tried their hand at the government of the ottoman empire, and have failed more completely and proved infinitely more cruel and brutal than the old turks. besides this, their betrayal of the entente powers and the vast and unprecedented crime which they have committed against humanity have left only one solution possible that holds out any promise of peace, justice and normal progress in the future. that one solution is, to draw up a new map of the ottoman empire on the basis of nationality and historical rights, reparation in proportion to services and sacrifices during the war, and the proved aptitude of the races concerned for progress and development on the lines of western civilization. there has long existed in europe a school of politicians who have always asked: "if you eliminate turkish rule over the turks' subject races, what will you put in its place?" after what has happened in armenia and syria, he would be a bold man or a prejudiced man who would deny that _any_ change will be an improvement. the unfitness of the turk to govern alien, and especially christian peoples has been proved by such an overwhelming accumulation of historical evidence and rivers of innocent christian blood, that to urge the contrary must appear like an attempt to obscure the sun by the palm of the hand. if this war is to bring peace and progress to asia minor instead of chronic anarchy, bloodshed and devastation as in the past, there must be an end of turkish domination over alien races in any shape or form. by all means give the turk the chance of governing himself in the provinces inhabited purely by turks. during the turkish retreat from thrace in 1913, the evidence of newspaper correspondents was that the turk was leaving europe in the same state--moral, material and intellectual--as he entered it four centuries ago. the fact is, that centuries of contact with civilization has made no difference to the nature of the turk. war brings to the surface the true nature of a people as nothing else can. the turk has proved by his conduct in this war that he is as cruel and brutal as he was when he first swooped down as the scourge of god in asia minor one thousand years ago. by centuries of conquest and domination he has acquired an attractive free and easy outward manner which has stamped him a "gentleman" in the eyes of european travellers. but the same "gentleman" who will charm you with his manner will murder or enslave any number of women and children without the slightest twinge of conscience. such is the turkish "gentleman." the turks are to-day proving their gratitude for a hundred years of british and french support by throwing the whole of their man-power and resources--largely built up by british and french capital--into the scale on the side of germany. they have put at the disposal of germany and held for germany the land routes by which alone she can hope to threaten the british and french colonial empires. they have done their best to do england and her allies all the injury they can, and have given the enemies of england all the help they can. and still the turk and even the young turk have friends and protectors in this country.[11] this, to my mind, is the most astonishing phenomenon of the whole war. it must appear strange to thinking moslems that there should be found, in great and mighty christian countries, respected and prominent men who defend the young turks at the very moment when their _protã©gã©s_ are persecuting and massacring their weak and defenceless co-religionists in countless thousands. i gravely doubt whether such an act is calculated to enhance the prestige of christianity in the eyes of the moslem world. have the apologists of the turks ever put themselves this question: "if under german influence the turks have been capable of attempting the cold-blooded murder of a whole nation, how is the fact to be explained, that under the same influence they were able to gain the reputation of 'clean fighters'?" the irony of it all is, that in a war in which more than twenty different nations are engaged, the turk and the turk alone among the belligerents should have gained the epithet of "clean-fighter," though, note well, from one of his adversaries only. how is this fact to be explained? is it seriously claimed that the turk has proved himself, under the test of war, superior in morals and chivalry to all the nations of europe? turkish mentality is not understood in western europe. the turk has a fanatical bravery which, however, easily degenerates into brutality. the russians, rumanians and serbs have fought the turks for centuries. it would be interesting to have their opinion of his "clean-fighting" qualities. the fact is, the turk knows he may need english help again some day. he knows that there has long existed in england a school of politicians which has believed that british interests in the near east will be best served by supporting the turk. he knows that england has millions of mohammedan subjects who have still some sympathy for him on religious grounds, and whose susceptibilities englishmen are naturally anxious to avoid hurting. he also knows that the british soldier is a chivalrous warrior who gives full credit to his adversary for any good qualities he may seem to possess. he understands the power of public opinion in england. he sees, in short, that there is in england a fertile and responsive psychological soil ready to nurture and fructify a hundred-fold the smallest show of "clean-fighting" he may make. accordingly, the order goes forth to the turkish soldier to be on his best behaviour whenever and wherever he is fighting british troops, and the turkish soldier obeys with the blind obedience which is his chief characteristic. that is the true explanation of the amazing fact that so many--though not all--british officers and soldiers have written or spoken of the turk as a clean-fighter. it is well-known that some wounded australians who had the misfortune of falling into the hands of the turks were most brutally mutilated in the early part of the dardanelles campaign. a wounded and gallant young new zealander told me at a hampstead hospital that the turks "put three bullets into him," while he was being carried to the rear of the fighting line on a stretcher. (in case my remarks concerning the clean-fighting qualities of the turk should be misconstrued or misrepresented as in any way implying a doubt as to the evidence of british officers and soldiers, i wish to say emphatically, what hardly needs affirmation, that i regard such evidence as absolutely above doubt or question.) the russians said in one of their official _communiquã©s_ that a number of their wounded had been mutilated by the turks. two russian hospital ships have been deliberately torpedoed by submarines manned by turks and flying the turkish flag. i do not of course suggest that there are no really clean-fighting men among the turks. there must be many such. it should be borne in mind in this connection that, in the early stages of the war, the turkish army contained a considerable sprinkling of christians--greeks, armenians, syrians, etc. but to label the turks _as such and as a whole_ as clean fighters and gentle folk is to admit the success of the most subtle propagandist make-believe of the war and the biggest hoax ever played off by oriental cunning upon a chivalrous and unsuspecting adversary. armenians have known the turk for centuries. they have known him _as he is_, not as he affects to be in the presence of a european, and they can claim credit for some knowledge of the subject. i venture to predict that there is severe disillusionment in store for those who still believe in the genuineness of turkish "clean-fighting" and "chivalry," when the british prisoners in turkey return. strange indeed must be this turkish conception of chivalry to sanction the enslavement and slaughter of women and children in hundreds of thousands, instead of protecting them and their honour as the ordinary code of chivalry demands. a reuter telegram from cairo published in _the daily chronicle_ of february 13, 1917, contained the following- "it is learnt on reliable authority that the british, french, and russian prisoners who are employed on the construction of the new line are treated most roughly by the germans and turks, and that a large number are falling ill from dysentery and filling the military hospitals at aleppo. those who have not been attacked by dysentery have fallen victims to other diseases, resulting from bad food, rough treatment, and overwork. "one of the tricks adopted by the germans and turks, in order to throw dust in the eyes of the british regarding the treatment of prisoners, was the honour paid to general townshend, who was returned his sword and accorded the best treatment possible. they brought him to constantinople, and made him write a letter of thanks for the good treatment he and his men had received at the hands of the turks. "general townshend did not know at the time he wrote this letter what misery and hardship were awaiting his unhappy troops." i may here quote in support of my contention one of the foremost living european authorities on near eastern affairs, and one who certainly will not be suspected of anti-turkish prejudices--i mean colonel sir mark sykes, m.p. addressing a meeting at kew on january 17, 1917 (i quote from _the near east_ of january 19, 1917), sir mark said- "the turk, who in the last ten years had thrown back to the primitive turanian conqueror, was not content with dominating, but was now engaged in exterminating the armenian, the syrian christian, and the arabs, and was even now beginning to bully the jews. the turk had overthrown islam as prussia had overthrown christianity. prussia had replaced god by thor and the cross by his hammer. the turk had replaced mohammed by oghuz and allah by the "white wolf" of the primitive turks. no belief was to be placed in that cloak of chivalry under which in exceptional cases the turk tried to hide his abominable acts.[12] he might treat general townshend well; but how was he treating the thousands of indians and englishmen in his hands? if it were possible that the teuton-turanian federation of violence could win this war it would be twenty generations before mankind regained its liberty." footnotes: [9] since this chapter was written, the following authoritative and important piece of evidence on this much-debated subject has appeared in _the weekly dispatch_ of march 4, 1917, from the pen of general sir o'moore creagh, v.c.-" ... i have experience of the turk. he is a merciless oppressor, whose real character is often hidden behind a pleasant manner, and who is ready to cut your throat with a sort of savage courtesy. appeal to his fanaticism, and in the trenches he has no fear of death; but he is very subject, in case of reverse, to cowardly panic, which to a considerable extent detracts from his worth as a soldier.... "i know some of our men who have met the turk both on the tigris and in gallipoli speak of him as a clean fighter. certainly when he meets his match he fights fairly enough, but when he is an easy victor he is remorseless and merciless; and robs, murders, and ravishes with the unrestrained savagery which lies at the base of his character. the british prisoners taken by the turk in the present war have been disgracefully treated, and, as we know, denied clothing, medicine, and the ordinary necessaries of life, starved, and even refused shelter in extremes of heat and cold. the people who are always ready to praise the turk as a clean fighter should remember that he has a lot to answer for in the present war." [10] see appendix, p. 188. [11] see sir edwin pears's article in _the contemporary review_, october 1916. (i note this with the deepest regret, for armenians are under a heavy debt of gratitude to sir edwin pears for his generous and authoritative defence of their cause in the past.) [12] in reply to a question by colonel yate in the house of commons on february 12, 1917: "mr. hope said repeated representation had been made to the turkish government to allow u.s. representatives to visit the camps, but up to now without success. efforts, however, would be continued. information had reached the government that the conditions under which officers were interned were fairly satisfactory, but the condition of other prisoners was deplorable."--_evening standard._ _truth_ says, in its issue of february 21, 1917: "i have in my possession a letter written last autumn by a british army officer, one of the defenders of kut, who was then at a place called vozga, 160 miles from tigris valley railhead. the unfortunate prisoner complains bitterly of the privations which he and others have to endure at the hands of the turks." iv anglo-russian friendship a vital necessity for peace and progress in asia--moslems and turkish rule--armenians progressive and democratic by temperament the exaggerated panegyrics on the virtues of the turk, while the turk is at war with england and her allies and turkish emissaries are busy making all the mischief they can among loyal subjects of the british empire, exploiting religion as a weapon of squalid intrigue, point to the existence of influences which have been at work ever since turkey joined the war, to screen from public view and to palliate the enormity of turkish perfidy in making common cause with england's enemies in the hour of england's difficulty. these same influences seem to regard with disfavour the growth of anglo-russian friendship and would apparently not be sorry to see some hitch or other occur that would weaken or endanger the permanence of that friendship. this may be an unfounded assumption, and i hope it is. but if these pro-turkish and anti-russian influences exist in fact, and gain enough strength to exercise any influence on the course of events after the war, it will be a calamity for the smaller nations of the near and middle east, and in fact for all asia. it will be a hindrance and a deterrent to the tranquillity and development that has been so long denied to these regions. close and cordial friendship between england and russia are almost as indispensable a condition of life and growth and progress to these backward countries as light and heat. it is scarcely for me to say that it is also necessary for the future peace of asia and the world. the unnatural and unfounded mutual distrust that shadowed anglo-russian relations throughout almost the whole of the past century has been chiefly responsible for the woes and miseries of the peoples of the near east, moslems as well as christians. it has kept back the clock of progress and civilization for at least fifty years. we have felt its effect in our daily lives and regard any prospect of its return with the utmost apprehension and regret. pan-turanian intrigues under the cloak of pan-islamism will not end with the war. they will be continued after the war by their protagonists, whose chief concern is, not the interests of the mohammedan religion, but the unscrupulous exploitation of religious sentiment for personal ends, and the disturbance of the tranquillity and ordered government which in the present chaotic state of these countries are only possible under the strong and just arm of british, russian, or french protection. any weakening in anglo-russian friendship would give these intriguers their chance, of which they would not be slow to take the fullest advantage, with injurious consequences to the countries concerned and to the general interests of peace. the best elements of islam, and specially the peasant populations which form the vast majority of the moslem world, know and have proved by their loyalty that they have nothing to fear from britain, russia and france, who have always not only respected, but fostered their religious interests and given them, in addition, the inestimable blessings of freedom, justice, security and prosperity such as they could never expect to enjoy under any other rã©gime. it is idle to pretend that any subject race loves any form of domination for its own sake. but many races and countries in asia and africa are so situated that independence is beyond the bounds of practicability. any change would result in an exchange of one domination for another. some forms of domination are sincerely welcomed because, as against the evil of domination, they have not only conferred upon the peoples under their rule benefits and blessings which they themselves could not possibly have achieved, but have allowed them freedom of development on their national lines. such in varying degrees is the nature of british, french, russian, and i may add, dutch dominion over the alien races under their rule. what has turkish domination been to its subject races? an unmitigated curse to christian, moslem and jew alike, with this difference, that while the moslem and jew have been reduced by merciless taxation and robbery to extreme poverty, the christian races have been bled almost to death. the turks have deliberately fostered the criminal propensities of large sections of their people and encouraged their free indulgence to check the growth and progress of the moral and civilizing elements in their dominions. if some of the moslems of india, egypt or tunis, whose sympathy with the turks on religious grounds every one will understand and respect, would live under turkish rule for a few months, i have no doubt they would be completely cured of their love for the turk as such, hasten back to their homes and beg the british and the french to remain in their countries for ever. similarly, if it were possible for the most rabid pro-turks in this or any european country to live some time under the turk, disguised as armenians or syrians, they would also be cured and more than cured of their admiration for the turk; then only would they come to understand his real nature. the following account of the experiences of some indian pilgrims at kerbela at the outbreak of war, which appeared in _the times_ of june 6, 1916, bears out my contention- "the bombay government have published the story of an indian moslem pilgrim, zakir husain, who recently escaped from kerbela (baghdad vilayet), whither he went on pilgrimage with his mother and sister in the summer of 1914. "zakir husain states that after the outbreak of war all routes homewards were blocked, and the many indian pilgrims at kerbela were subjected to the utmost discomfort and cruelty. the turkish authorities issued orders that the goods and women of indians were the legal property of those who plundered them. their houses were searched, their goods taken, and dozens of indians were arrested and deported to the aleppo side, while their families and children were left in kerbela. "throughout these fourteen months," he continued, "we never got meals more than once a day. we could not get any work, and consequently we had to beg from door to door in order to get a few scraps of bread to eat, and the state of the women and children was worse even than that of the men. for a man to be an indian was considered a sufficient reason by turks to torture and imprison him. we protested that we were moslems, but they never paid heed. they themselves are no moslems, and do not act according to the precepts of islam. according to what i heard, the indians in nejef, kazimain, and baghdad have also been treated in the same cruel way as we were; hundreds have been deported and their houses pillaged." the following from _the times_ of december 26, 1916, is another illustration of the way turks treat moslems of another race who refuse to become the blind slaves of their political madness- "emir faisal, commander of the arabian forces in the vicinity of medina, has telegraphed to mecca stating that the turks have hanged and crucified and employed every species of barbarity against the population of medina." turn now from that picture to the following appeal made to armenians by one of their principal tiflis daily papers, _mschak_ (labourer), of may 16, 1915- "to-day the moslem benevolent society is organizing a collection for building and maintaining a shelter for the children of the (moslem) refugees. war causes suffering to the population of the country without distinction of race or creed. moslems as well as christians have to face the effects of the war, therefore the scheme of the moslem benevolent society to establish a shelter for the children of moslem refugees is deserving of all sympathy and support. we are convinced that the armenian community also, having in mind the universal idea of humanity, will take part in the collection and do their duty as a humane people and good neighbours." these incidents, small in themselves, bring into strong relief the difference between the mentality and degree of civilization of the two races. the armenian appeal on behalf of refugee moslem children at a time when one half of their own race was in the throes of the most ferocious of the numerous attacks made upon its existence, is also incidentally a reply, more trenchant than the most eloquent argument in words, to those pro-turks who have from time to time expressed fears for the rights of the turks, kurds, tcherkesses, kizilbashis, etc., in an autonomous armenia. such a fear is either due to ignorance of the characteristics of the races concerned, or to prejudice. it is inconceivable that any armenian government would tolerate, much less impose upon orderly and good citizens, an injustice which armenians have themselves endured and struggled against for generations, and which is, for that reason, abhorrent to their very nature. a study of the armenian church organization will prove to the most sceptical that the armenian temperament is essentially democratic. in the smallest village the candidate for priesthood must be elected by a vote of the inhabitants before he can be ordained by the bishop of the diocese. the armenian deputies in the russian state duma as well as the late members of the ottoman parliament are and were supporters of the progressives. armenians who have risen to positions of influence in the service of foreign countries have invariably used their influence in the cause of progress. general loris melikoff as minister of the interior had actually prepared a scheme for the reform of the government of russia when his imperial master, the czar alexander ii, died, and the scheme was shelved. nubar pasha, the famous egyptian-armenian statesman, for many years prime minister, was largely responsible for the abolition of the _corvã©e_ in egypt, and the introduction of many other reforms. the writer of nubar pasha's biography in the _encyclopã¦dia britannica_, referring to his substitution of mixed courts in place of the "capitulations," says (eleventh ed., vol. 19, p. 843), "that in spite of the jealousies of all the powers, in spite of the opposition of the porte, he should have succeeded, places him at once in the first rank of statesmen of his period." prince malcolm khan, for some years persian minister in london, sowed the first seeds of constitutional government in persia, for the defence of which another armenian, yeprem khan, laid down his life while leading the constitutional struggle against mohamed ali shah. the first constitution of the ottoman empire, known as the midhat constitution, was largely the work of midhat pasha's armenian under-secretary, odian effendi. these are but a few outstanding instances. it must appear inconceivable to right-minded men that a race with such a past record, achieved under all sorts of handicaps, will either establish a rã©gime of tyranny over other races or prove incapable of self-government after a transition period under european advisers, as is alleged by some. v armenia as a peace problem--views of the "manchester guardian" and the "spectator"--can armenians stand alone among the kurds?--american opinion and the future of armenia although the allies have declared in their reply to president wilson that one of their aims is "the liberation of the peoples who now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of the turks," no official or authoritative statement has yet been made by the allied governments as regards the precise future status of armenia. mr. asquith in his guildhall speech spoke of "reparation and redemption." m. briand in a letter to m. louis martin, senator of the var, published in the _courier du parlement_ (paris) of november 12, 1916, says: "when the hour for legitimate reparation shall have struck, france will not forget the terrible trials of the armenians, and, in accord with her allies, she will take the necessary measures to ensure for armenia a life of peace and progress." m. anatole france, in his speech at the great "homage ã  l'armã©nie" meeting in the sorbonne in april 1916, used these words: "l'armã©nie expire, mais elle renaitra. le peu de sang qui lui reste est un sang prã©cieux dont sortira une postã©ritã© hã©roã¯que. un peuple qui ne veut pas mourir ne meurt pas. aprã¨s la victoire de nos armã©es, qui combattent pour la libertã©, les alliã©s auront de grands devoirs a remplir. et le plus sacrã© de ces devoirs sera de rendre la vie aux peuples martyrs, a la belgique, a la serbie. alors ils assureront la suretã© et l'independance de l'armã©nie. penchã©s sur elle, ils lui diront: 'ma soeur, lã¨ve toi! ne souffre plus. tu es dã©sormais libre de vivre selon ton genie et foi!'"[13] m. paul deschanel, the president of the french senate, and m. painlevã©, minister of public instruction, spoke in more or less similar terms. the most recent authoritative reference to armenia--and one which is of special importance, coming as it does from a member of the inner cabinet or war council--is mr. arthur henderson's statement in his conversation with the correspondent of the _new york tribune_, reported in _the times_ of january 8, 1916, as follows: "speaking of the part of turkey in the war, mr. henderson said that though armenian atrocities were not much talked about here, they had undoubtedly made a deep impression on the minds of the working population, who, he thought, were determined that never again should a christian nation be under the yoke of the turk." these are comforting words indeed to armenians, as were those of mr. asquith at the guildhall. nothing could give the armenian people more comfort and hope for the future than this assurance of the british working man's sympathy--of which they never had any doubt--and his determination to see them freed from the turkish yoke once and for all. but here again mr. henderson--no doubt for very good reasons--gave no intimation of the intentions of the british or allied governments concerning the new status of armenia after its liberation from the turkish yoke. it has been suggested that american opinion would favour annexation by russia as a means of putting an end to turkish atrocities and misgovernment of armenia. this reading of american opinion is not supported by president wilson's statement in his historic speech to the senate that "no right anywhere exists to hand peoples from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property." all the allied countries, and probably all neutrals, are determined to see the end of the turkish reign of terror in armenia. but _annexation_ by russia or any other great power, before the blood is dry of hundreds of thousands of armenians sacrificed for their faith and passionate adherence to their ideal of nationality, must seem particularly unjust to all fair-minded men in all countries, especially the great american democracy, who themselves put an end to misgovernment of a much milder kind in cuba, but did not annex it. indeed, having herself, jointly with her allies, solemnly laid down the "recognition of the principle of nationalities" as one of the terms of peace stated in the allied note to president wilson, it seems unthinkable that russia, on her part, would entertain the intention of _annexing_, and especially of annexing a country and people who have paid a terrible price largely on account of their sympathy with and support of the allied cause, and rendered services the value of which russia herself has generously recognized. it is argued in some quarters that the armenian highlands are a strategic necessity to russia. there is a "scrap of paper" ring in such an argument, and i for one cannot believe that the justice-loving russian people would allow such considerations to override a solemn pledge and the principle of common justice. an allied protectorate with russia acting as their mandatory would place these strategically important regions under practically as effective a russian control as outright annexation, while it would have the additional advantages of giving real effect to the "recognition of the principle of nationalities," and avoiding injustice, injury and affront to the national sentiment of a people which has endured such grievous sufferings and sacrifices to uphold that sentiment. as i write, two important references to the future of armenia have appeared in the press. one in the _manchester guardian_--that old and constant champion of wronged and suffering humanity--quoted by _the times_ of december 30, 1916, as follows: "another word remains--armenia--a word of ghastly horror, carrying the memory of deeds not done in the world since christ was born--a country swept clear by the wholesale murder of its people. to turkey that country must never and under no circumstances go back...." the other reference is made by the _spectator_ in its issue of december 30, in a leading article entitled "the allied terms." it says- "the process of freeing nationalities from oppression must be applied organically to the turkish empire. the armenians, or what remains of the race, whose agonized calls for help and mercy have been heard even through the din of the present war, will probably have to be placed under the tutelage of russia. they could not stand alone among the kurds." if by "russian tutelage" the _spectator_ means the setting up of a self-governing armenia under russian suzerainty, that would amount, in my opinion, to the approximate realization of the hopes and aspirations of the armenian people, provided that by "armenia" is understood the six vilayets and cilicia; provided also that great britain and france retained the rights of protecting powers as in the case of greece. anything short of this, any parcelling out of armenia, either by annexation or "tutelage" of different parts under different powers, would not only be irreconcilable with the "recognition of the principle of nationalities" which the allies have solemnly declared to be one of their principal aims and terms of peace; it would imply an outrage upon the ideal of nationality which is the ruling passion of armenians everywhere. lynch, the great armenian authority, has called the armenians "the strongest nationalists in the world." this ideal of nationality has grown stronger, more alive and resolute than ever by their services and unimaginable sufferings and sacrifices in the war. "the little blood that is left them" has become doubly and trebly precious to the survivors. they rightly feel that they have established, and more than established, their title to autonomy and a strong claim upon the whole-hearted support of the allied powers to enable them to stand on their feet again and make a fair start on the road to nationhood. if armenia is cut up and parcelled out without regard for this fervent living sentiment of armenian nationalism, and their high hopes and expectations are dashed to the ground, it will conceivably engender in all armenians a deep sense of wrong and injustice, an intense discontent with the new order of things, that are not likely to conduce to that contentment and that smoothness of relations between the governors and the governed that are the essentials and the fundamental preliminary steps towards setting these much-troubled regions on the road towards good government, progress and civilization. the "principle of nationalities" and of "government by the consent of the governed" will be applied all along the line: belgium, alsace-lorraine, serbia, poland, bohemia, transylvania, arabia, syria, palestine, will have restored to them or will be granted the forms of government most acceptable to the peoples concerned. these true and righteous principles, which will herald the dawn of universal justice and morality in the treatment of their weaker brethren by the great powers of europe, will cease to operate only when armenia comes to be dealt with. armenia alone, who has suffered the most tragic, the most grievous and heartrending calvary, shall be denied an easter. why? because the armenian people have lost too much blood; because they have paid too high a price for their fidelity to their faith, the preservation of their distinctive national life and their strong support of the allied cause. that would be an unspeakably cruel and bitter climax to the unending nightmare of turkish tyranny, the great tragedy and martyrdom of the armenian people. it will be nothing less than a confirmation of the death sentence passed by abdul hamid and the young turks on the ideal of armenian nationality. let those who speak lightly of _annexation_ by russia put themselves in the place of the tens of thousands of armenians who have lost wife and children, sons, brothers, fathers, near or distant relatives, both in massacre as well as in what they understood to be a sacred struggle for liberty, to say nothing of their complete economic ruin. they would be much more or much less than human if they did not feel a deep and smarting sense of wrong at seeing all their appalling sacrifices and important services result in a mere exchange of the _kaimakam_ for the _chinovnik_. it is far indeed from my purpose to put the two types of official and the respective systems of government they represent on the same level. they differ as day from night. in my opinion and to my knowledge the vast majority of armenians will welcome russian suzerainty with sincere satisfaction. but, after the ordeal of blood and fire through which they have passed, they must feel, as i believe they do feel with ample justification, that they have a right to a voice and a liberal measure of participation in the government of their own country. i cannot do better than quote here a passage from mr. gladstone's great speech on the treaty of berlin, which is applicable to armenia, and than which there could be no wiser, more just or authoritative guidance for the formation of a sound and just view on the armenian and kindred problems- "my meaning, sir, was that, for one, i utterly repelled the doctrine that the power of turkey is to be dragged to the ground for the purpose of handing over the dominion that turkey now exercises to some other great state, be that state either russia or austria or even england. in my opinion such a view is utterly false, and even ruinous, and has been the source of the main difficulties in which the government have been involved, and in which they have involved the country. i hold that those provinces of the turkish empire, which have been so cruelly and unjustly ruled, ought to be regarded as existing, not for the sake of any other power whatever, but for the sake of the populations by whom they are inhabited. the object of our desire ought to be the development of those populations on their own soil, as its proper masters, and as the persons with a view to whose welfare its destination ought to be determined." it may be argued that things have changed since 1878. the answer to that is that principles are immutable. the only change is the cruel reduction of the armenian population. i ask, first of all: "is it fair and right and just that we should suffer massacre and persecution for generations, and when the time for reparation comes, should be penalized because so many of us have been massacred?" secondly, it should not be forgotten that although the armenian element of the population has been reduced, the turks and kurds have also suffered very considerable losses. thirdly, the armenians are much more advanced intellectually to-day than they were forty years ago, while their neighbours--turks, kurds, and others--are stagnating in the same primitive state as they were forty--or, for that matter, four hundred--years ago. another circumstance which adds materially to the chances of success of an autonomous armenia is the existence of a number of nourishing armenian communities of various sizes in other countries--in the russian caucasus and the russian empire, persia, the united states, egypt, the balkans, france, great britain, india, java, etc.--which are at the present time looking forward with enthusiasm and readiness for sacrifice, to "do their bit" in the sacred work of the reconstruction of their stricken and beloved motherland. coming to the _spectator's_ contention that "they (the armenians) could not stand alone against the kurds," i can assure the _spectator_ that there is no cause whatever for apprehension on that score, if only the russian government and army authorities will agree to allow the armenians to organize under their guidance and supervision, immediately after the war, a number of flying columns from among discharged armenian volunteers and soldiers in the regular army, for the specific purpose of carrying out a "drive" from one end of the country to the other and disarming the kurds. the armenian volunteers, of whom i speak in another chapter, have had a good deal of fighting to do with the kurds during the war and have proved more than their match, in many cases against superior numbers. the prevailing erroneous belief that the armenians "could not stand alone among the kurds" has its origin in the fact that for centuries (up to 1908) armenians have been an easy prey to the kurds by reason of their being prohibited to possess or carry arms on pain of death, while the kurds were supplied with arms from the government arsenals, and encouraged and supported in every way by the central government to harass the armenians. what chance would the bravest people in the world have under such circumstances? since 1908, when the prohibition of carrying arms by christians was relaxed, it is a well-known fact, attested by european travellers, that kurds never attacked armenian villages which they knew to be armed. zeytoon and sassoon have demonstrated beyond question that when armenians have met turks on anything like equal terms, they have proved their match. these isolated, compact communities of fearless mountaineers were never entirely subjugated by the turks until the outbreak of the present war, when the zeytoonlis were overwhelmed by turkish treachery and the sassoonlis died fighting to the last man and woman (_see_ blue-book, pp. 84 and 87). in 1905 the tartars, who are nearly twice as numerous as the armenians in the caucasus, made a sudden attack upon the latter in the hamidian style. but thanks to the equity of russian government, armenians in the caucasus were as free to carry arms as tartars, so the tartars soon regained their "humane sentiments" and offered peace to stop further bloodshed. i would recommend those who entertain any fears of armenians being able to defend themselves against kurds or tartars to read villari's _fire and sword in the caucasus_ and moore's _the orient express_. at all events europe will not be taking any risk in giving the armenians the opportunity of proving that they can "make good" in spite of the kurds, and also, as we hope, can gradually civilize the kurds and other neighbouring backward races.[14] as far as i know (in fact i have no doubt about it), armenians are prepared to take the risk of "standing alone among the kurds", provided that the entente powers afford them the necessary assistance during the first few years of reconstruction and initiation, and above all, provided that they enjoy the whole-hearted and benevolent good-will of russia, for which, it is as certain as anything human can be, their great protector and neighbour will reap a rich harvest in the future--as rich a harvest as that which britain is reaping to-day for her act of justice and statesmanship in south africa. footnotes: [13] "armenia is dying, but she will be born again--the little blood that is left to her is the precious blood from which will arise a heroic posterity. a people that refuses to die will not die. after the victory of our armies, which are fighting for justice and liberty, the allies will have great duties to fulfil. and the most sacred of these duties will be to bring back to life the martyred peoples, belgium and serbia. then they will assure the security and independence of armenia. bending over her they will say to her: 'rise, sister! suffer no more. henceforth you are free to live according to your genius and your faith!'" [14] armenians have from time to time opened schools for kurdish children, but their efforts were not successful, mainly owing to the unfriendly attitude of the turkish authorities. vi armenia's services in the war i have spoken earlier in these pages of the services of the armenians to the allied cause in the war. what are these services? the armenian name has been so long and so often associated with massacre that it has given rise to the general but utterly unfounded belief by those who have not gone deeper into the matter, that armenians are devoid of physical courage and allow themselves to be butchered like sheep.[15] where this belief is not based upon ignorance of the facts and circumstances, it is, i am bound to say, a particularly dastardly piece of calumny upon a people who have groaned for centuries under a brutal tyrant's heel, with an indomitable spirit that has ever been and is even to-day the turk's despair. the struggle that has gone on for five or six centuries between armenian and turk symbolizes, perhaps better than any event in history, the invincibility of the spirit of christianity and liberty and the ideal of nationality against overwhelming odds of ruthless tyranny, the savagery of the dark ages and the unscrupulous and mendacious exploitation of religious passion. that struggle has been as unequal as can well be imagined, but we have not permitted the forces of darkness to triumph over the spirit of light and liberty, though the price paid has come very near that of our annihilation. nevertheless, we have been able, in this world-wide struggle, not dissimilar to our own long struggle in the moral issues involved, to render services to the cause of the allies, which is the cause of right and justice, and therefore our cause also, quite out of proportion, in their effect, to our numbers as a race or our contribution of fighting men as compared with the vast armies engaged, although that contribution has been by no means negligible. on the eve of turkey's entry into the war the young turks employed every conceivable means--persuasion, cajolery, intimidation, the promise of a large autonomous armenia, etc.--to induce the armenian party leaders to prevail upon the russian armenians to join themselves in a mass rally to the turkish flag against russia. they sent a number of emissaries to russian armenia with the same object. the turk must have a peculiar understanding of human nature, and not much sense of humour, to have the _naã¯vetã©_ to make such overtures to armenians after having persecuted and harried and massacred them for centuries. all the armenian leaders promised was a correct attitude as ottoman subjects. they would do neither more nor less than what they were bound to do by the laws of the country. they could not interfere with the freedom of action of their compatriots in the caucasus who owed allegiance to russia. they kept their promise scrupulously in the first months of the war. armenian conscripts went to the dã©pã´ts without enthusiasm. how could it be otherwise? what claim had the turks upon the sympathy and support of their armenian subjects? is sympathy won by tyranny, or loyalty bred by massacre? they (the armenians) were placed in a most difficult position. they were naturally reluctant to fight against the russians, and the position was aggravated by the fact that the russian caucasian army was largely composed of russian armenians. but in spite of these sentimental difficulties, mobilization was completed without any serious trouble. soon, however, armenians began to desert in large numbers; the young turks had joined the war against their wish and advice; they had not their heart in the business, and, last, but not least, they were harried, ill-treated and insulted by their turkish officers and comrades at every turn: there were exceptions, of course, but that was the position generally in the closing months of 1914. let me add that there were large numbers of turkish deserters also, and that the armenian leaders did all they could to send the deserters of their own nationality back to the ranks, doing so forcibly in some cases. then came the defeat of the turks at sarikamysh and the ejection of djevdet bey and his force from azerbaijan. on his return to van, djevdet bey told his friends: "it is the armenians much more than the russians who are fighting us." the massacres and deportations began soon after the collapse of the turkish invasion of the caucasus and northern persia, and it is only after it was seen clearly that the turks were determined to deport or destroy them all that the armenians in many places took up arms in self-defence. there was no armed resistance before that, and the turkish and german allegations of an armenian revolt are a barefaced invention to justify a crime, a tithe of which not one but a hundred revolts cannot justify or palliate. this is proved beyond all question by mr. toynbee's concise and illuminating historical summary at the end of the blue-book on the treatment of armenians by the turks during the war. there was no revolt. but when the armenians were driven to self-defence under the menace of extermination, they fought with what arms they could scrape together, with the courage of desperation. in shahin-karahissar they held out for three months and were only reduced by artillery brought from erzerum. in van and jebel-mousa they defended themselves against heavy odds until relieved by the russians and the armenian volunteers in the first case, and rescued by french and british cruisers in the second. the turkish force sent against the insurgents of jebel-mousa was detached from the army intended for the attack on the suez canal. of course ill-armed, poorly equipped bands without artillery, wanting in almost all necessaries of modern warfare, brave as they may be, cannot possibly maintain a prolonged resistance against superior forces of regulars well supplied with artillery, machine-guns and all that is needed in war. nevertheless, some of these bands seem to have succeeded in holding out for many months, and it is believed in the caucasus that there are groups of armed armenians still holding out in some parts of the higher mountains behind the turkish lines.[16] it will be remembered that some weeks ago--i do not recall the date--a constantinople telegram reprinted in _the times_ from german papers stated that there were 30,000 armed armenian rebels in the vilayet of sivas. this is an obvious exaggeration, and it may simply mean that a considerable number of armenians were still defending themselves against the menace of massacre. when the russian army entered trebizond a band of some 400 armed armenians came down from the mountains and surrendered themselves to the russians. quite recently a band of seventy men cut through the turkish lines and gained the russian lines in the neighbourhood of erzinjian. the turks have repeatedly declared that the "armenian revolt" threatened to place their army between two fires. the particle of truth that there is in this assertion is, as may be judged by the facts so far known as cited above, that the armenian resistance to massacre and deportation proved to be more serious than they had anticipated, and that they had to detach large numbers of troops and in some cases artillery and machine-guns to keep these "rebels" in check. it is consequently undeniable that armenian armed resistance to deportation and massacre has been a considerable hindrance to the full development of turkish military power during the war and has, in that way, been of material, though, indirect assistance to the allied forces operating against the turks. to this may be added the demoralizing effect that the deplorable state of affairs created by the turks in their dominions must have exercised on the morale of their people. such in general outline have been the services of the turkish armenians to the allied cause. it is not my purpose here to endeavour to appraise the possibly ill-concealed, but not by any means ostentatious or provocative, sympathy of the armenians for the allies, upon the sinister designs of the young turks. i will content myself with the description of a significant cartoon that appeared early in the war in the turkish comic paper _karagã¶z_ in constantinople. the cartoon depicted two turks discussing the war. "where do you get your war news from?" asked turk number one. "i do not need war news," replied turk number two; "i can follow the course of the war by the expression on the faces of the armenians i meet. when they are happy i know the allies are winning, when depressed i know the germans have had a victory." the following extract from a dead turkish officer's notebook, reproduced in the _russkaia viedomosti_ (no. 205), throws some light on the turkish estimate of the value of armenian support in the war. "if our armenians had been with us," wrote this turkish officer, "we would have defeated the russians long ago."[17] the services of the russian armenians to the allied cause, but principally, of course to the russian cause during the war, have been of a more direct and positive character and of far-reaching importance. they may be divided into two distinct parts, namely, military and political; and in order the better to explain the full meaning of the armenian "strong support of the russian cause" (in the words of _the times_), i will deal with each of the two parts separately. the armenian population of russian armenia and the caucasus numbers, roughly, 1,750,000 souls, and there are probably another 100,000 to 200,000 armenians scattered over the other parts of the empire. they are liable to military service as russian subjects, and it is estimated that they have given to the russian army some 160,000 men. apart from this not negligible number of men called to the colours in the ordinary course of mobilization, the armenians, as a result of an understanding with the authorities, organized and equipped at their own expense a separate auxiliary volunteer force under tried and experienced guerilla leaders, such as andranik, kã©ri and others, to co-operate with the caucasian army. this force contained a number of turkish armenians, mostly refugees from previous massacres. some twenty thousand men responded to the call for volunteers, though i believe not more than about ten thousand could be armed and sent to the front. the greatest enthusiasm prevailed. armenian students at the universities of moscow and petrograd and educational institutions in the caucasus vied with each other in their eagerness to take part in the fight for the liberation of their kinsmen from bondage. several young lady students offered to enlist, but i believe all but two or three were dissuaded from taking part in actual fighting. boys of fourteen and fifteen years ran away from home and tramped long distances to join the volunteer battalions. it is recorded that an armenian widow at kars, on hearing that her only son had been killed in battle, exclaimed, "curse me that i did not give birth to ten more sons to fight and die for the freedom of our country." the volunteer force was not large, but it was a mobile force well adapted to the semi-guerilla kind of warfare carried on in armenia, and the men knew the country. they seem to have done good work as scouts in particular, though they took part in many severe engagements and were mentioned once or twice in russian _communiquã©s_ as "our armenian detachments." generous appreciation of the services and gallantry of the volunteers as well as of armenians in the army has been expressed by russian military commanders, the press, and public men. high military honours were conferred upon the volunteer leaders, and his imperial majesty the czar honoured the armenian nation by his visit to the armenian cathedral in tiflis, demonstrating his satisfaction with the part played by armenians in the war.[18] there are, of course, many armenian high officers in the russian army, including several generals, but so far they have not had the opportunity of producing in this war outstanding military leaders of the calibre of loris melikoff and terkhougasoff. general samsonoff, "the russian kitchener," was killed early in the war in east prussia in his gallant and successful attempt to relieve the pressure on paris. the political effect of the strong and enthusiastic support of the russian cause by armenians has been to keep in check the discontented and fanatical section of the tartars and other moslems of the caucasus, who would have been disposed to make common cause with the turks whenever a favourable opportunity should present itself to do so without much risk to themselves. the tartars and other moslem elements of the caucasus are as a whole genuinely loyal to russia, but the existence of a minority who would welcome the success of the turkish invasion cannot be denied. some of the ajars did, in fact, join the turks during their invasion of ardahan. all things considered, therefore, those who have any knowledge of the racial and political conditions in the caucasus will not, i think, regard it as in any sense an exaggeration to assert that the whole-hearted support of the armenians--and i may also add, though in a lesser degree, the georgians--has contributed very materially to the success of russian arms in the caucasian theatre of the war. the absence of that support, or even mere formal or lukewarm support, would not only most probably have had serious consequences for the caucasus, it would have left the whole of persia at the mercy of the turks; and who can say what the consequences of such a catastrophe would have been on arabia, mesopotamia, afghanistan and even the northern frontiers of india itself? nearly all the able-bodied armenians in france, between 1000 and 1500 strong, joined the french foreign legion quite early in the war. some armenians came from the united states to fight for france. only some 250 have survived, i understand, most of whom are proud possessors of the military cross. propaganda in neutral countries has played an important part during the war. the just cause of the allies has had no stauncher supporters or better propagandists than the hundred and twenty-five thousand or more armenians in the united states, while the great tragedy of armenia has incidentally added to the armoury of the allies a melancholy but formidable moral weapon. footnotes: [15] pierre loti, the well-known french writer, who was an ardent turkophile before the war, after adding his quota to the current, and, one is constrained to say, cheap, comments on the lack of courage and numberless other failings of the armenians, adds the following p.s. in his _turquie agonisante_ (pp. 94-95) after a longer sojourn in the country and closer contact with realities. (i give the translation from the french.)-"before concluding i desire to make honourable, sincere and spontaneous amends to the armenians, at least as regards their attitude in the ranks of the ottoman army. this is certainly not due to the protestations which they have inserted in the constantinople press by the power of gold." [this is a curious admission by pierre loti; one of the stock cries of the turkophiles is that the turk is above "bakshish."] "no, i have many friends among turkish officers; i have learned from them, and there can be no doubt, that my earlier information was exaggerated, and that, notwithstanding a good number of previous desertions, the armenians placed under their orders conducted themselves with courage. therefore, i am happy to be able to withdraw without _arriã¨re pensã©e_ what i have said on this subject, and i apologize." of all british games and sports armenians in different parts of the british empire, the dutch colonies and persia have manifested a natural predilection for rugby football, in which physical courage comes into play more than in most other games. in recent years the armenian college of calcutta won the calcutta schools' cup three years in succession, which gave it the right to retain the trophy. i am glad to see in the march issue of _ararat_ that the boy scouts of the same college, under scoutmaster dr. g. d. hope, have won the king's flag, presented by his majesty to the troop having the largest number of king's scouts in india and burmah. [16] i may here point out that--though it is stated in the admirable historical summary in the blue-book (p. 649) that "the number of those who have emerged from hiding since the russian occupation is extraordinarily small"--this number has been growing very considerably of late, as may be seen from mr. backhouse's telegram to the chairman of the armenian refugees (lord mayor's) fund, dated tiflis, november 27, 1916, published in the newspapers. [17] compare an armenian officer's evidence, blue-book, p. 231, " ... they laid the blame for this defeat upon the armenians, though he could not tell why." [18] in an article on "the armenian massacres" in the april _contemporary review_, mr. lewis einstein, ex-member of the staff of the united states embassy in constantinople, says: "talaat attributed the disasters that befell the turks at sarikamish, in azerbaijan and at van, to the armenian volunteers." vii armenia the battle-ground of asia minor and victim of contending empires no country and people have suffered so severely from the clash of rival empires, both in war and diplomacy, as have armenia and the armenians, so far as is known to the recorded history of the world. her geographical position has made armenia the cockpit of ambitious empires and conquerors, and the highway of their armies in western asia, much as belgium and poland have been the battle-grounds of europe. but whereas in these european battle-grounds the invading armies have generally moved east and west only, armenia has endured the horrors of invasion, time after time, from north, south, east and west. then, again, armenia being a much older country, the record of her suffering from the invading armies of her stronger neighbours, "hacking their way" through her territory, extends over a proportionately longer period than that of belgium and poland. armenia has been invaded and ravaged in turn by babylonians, assyrians, egyptians, hittites, parthians, macedonians, persians, greeks, romans, arabs, tartars and turks. only during the first century b.c. did she succeed in subduing all her neighbours, and establishing a short-lived empire of her own, extending from the mediterranean to the caspian. the analogy between armenia and her european co-sufferers from the ills of aggressive imperialism ceases altogether, however, when we come to the period of turkish domination. the blood-stained history of that rã©gime is well enough known. periodic explosions have reminded europe of the existence of the inferno of unbridled lust, corruption and predatory barbarism which this unhappy people have been fated to endure for centuries. what has not been brought into sufficient relief is the fact that this "bloody tyranny" could have long since been brought to an end, or, at all events, effectively curbed, if it had not been for the jealousies and rivalries of the great modern christian empires. the history of the acts of european diplomacy in regard to armenia and the near east during the last sixty or seventy years is not one of which the diplomats and statesmen concerned can be particularly proud. who can claim for them to-day to have served, in the sum total of their results, either the interests of the christian subjects of the porte, the progress of civilization, the material interests of the great powers themselves, or the supreme interests of peace? mr. balfour says in his famous dispatch to the british ambassador to the united states that "turkey has ceased to be a bulwark of peace," thereby implying, obviously, that turkey had played that part before. mr. balfour is a great authority on political history, and when he avers that turkey has been a "bulwark of peace" she must have filled such a rã´le at some period of her history. but to his christian subjects, at any rate, the turk has never brought peace. he has brought them fire and sword and a riot of unbridled lust, rapacity, corruption and cruelty unparalleled even in the dark ages. the only peace he has brought them has been the peace of death and devastation. he has not even left trees to break the awful silence of desolation which he has spread over this fair and fertile land once throbbing with human life and activity. that is the price paid for whatever part turkey may have played in the past as a bulwark of international peace. professor valran of the university of aix-en-provence estimates the armenian population of turkey in the beginning of the nineteenth century at 5,000,000.[19] the population of the not too healthy island of java was the same at the same period. under the excellent rule of the dutch, the population of that island has grown up to over 35,000,000 during the century. what has become of the armenians, one of the most virile and prolific races of the world living in a healthy country? let the friends and protectors of the turk and his system of government give the answer. in particular let those answer who, with the turks' black and bloodstained record of centuries before them, have, nevertheless, the effrontery to maintain, at this hour of day, that the turk has not been given a fair chance. the blood of the myriads of innocents who have fallen victims to the turks' incurable barbarism throughout these centuries, cries aloud against such a brazen and deliberate travesty of the truth. one of the principal enactments of the treaty of paris was to admit turkey into the comity of the great powers of europe. to-day, after a probation of sixty years, at a fearful cost to her christian subjects, it is at last admitted that turkey has proved herself "decidedly foreign to western civilization." could there be a more crushing condemnation of the judgment of the statesmen responsible for that treaty in regard to the turk? the more one studies the record of the turk, the more one marvels at the unbounded confidence placed in his promises of reform by some of the greatest statesmen of modern times. in vain have i ransacked the history books in search of an instance where the turk carried out, or honestly attempted to carry out, a single one of his numerous promises of reform. every one of them was a snare and a pretence designed merely to oil the wheels of a cunning diplomacy or tide over a momentary embarrassment. whether it was the sultan or grand vizier or ambassador, whenever the turk made a promise to improve the lot of his christian subjects, he had made up his mind beforehand that that promise would never be performed.[20] since the beginning of last century russia has been, by reason of her geographical contiguity, practically the only power which the turk has really feared. in contrast with the near eastern policies of the western powers, russian policy has been almost invariably hostile to the turk since the days of peter the great. of course, this was not always pure altruism on the part of the rulers of russia. but, whatever the motive, russian policy certainly coincided absolutely with the interests of humanity and civilization. and while in the west the policy of "buttressing the turk" (in the words of the bishop of oxford) often met with strong opposition among the democracies of england and france, russian policy in regard to the turk has always enjoyed the unanimous support of the russian people, who being the turk's neighbour and having had several wars with him, knew his true nature from prolonged personal contact. the one departure from russia's traditional policy was count lobanoff's regrettable--and i may say inexplicable--refusal to take joint action with britain and france to put a term upon the butcheries of 1895-96, and adopt such effective measures as would perhaps have put it beyond the power of the turk to indulge again in his diabolical orgies of cold-blooded barbarism. his fear of russia, which acted as a wholesome restraint upon the predatory tendencies of the turk, was weakened by the treaty of paris taking away from russia her effective protectorate over the christian subjects of the porte, and was removed altogether by the treaty of berlin and the cyprus convention. the turk was quick to understand that the western powers would not permit russia to intervene on behalf of his persecuted christian subjects. he saw that conditions were favourable for putting into execution his "policy" of getting rid of his christian subjects, and he forthwith set to work to carry out his foul project. events have proved the treaty of berlin to have been the masterpiece of bismarck's policy of "divide et impera." it created, as it was designed to create, a deep and bitter feeling of mistrust and antagonism between great britain and russia, which gave germany her chance of gaining a strong foothold in the ottoman empire. the appearance of germany upon the scene created new dangers, which have proved all but fatal to the armenian people. the emperor william ii, on his return from his pilgrimage to the holy land, paid a visit to, and fraternized with, the murderer of 250,000 armenians who had died for the sake of the very christ from the scene of whose life the christian emperor had just returned. this, by the way, was in characteristic contrast with king edward's refusal of the sultan's offer of his portrait about the same time. this act of the great and humane english king has touched the hearts of armenians, who cherish a deep and reverent affection for his memory. the result of the emperor william's visit to abdul hamid was the baghdad railway and many other concessions, and no doubt a great scheme of a future germano-turkish empire in the east. i believe it was dr. paul rohrbach, the well-known german writer on near eastern affairs, who suggested some years ago that the deportation of the armenians from their homes and their settlement in agricultural colonies along the baghdad railway would be the best way to make that line pay quick and handsome dividends. some time ago i read in _the near east_ the account of a conversation between an american missionary and a german officer travelling together in anatolia. the german officer confessed that what he had seen was horrible, more horrible than anything he had ever seen before; "but," he added, "what could we do? _the armenians were in the way of our military aims._" supposing that resistance to massacre by armenian men was interpreted by the german agents in turkey as being "in the way of their military aims," what possible excuse could there be for the abominable treatment, the torture, the slaughter, and the driving to misery and death of hundreds of thousands of women and children? were they also in the way of their military aims? while the turks were butchering christians in their hundreds of thousands, the german emperor was presenting a sword of honour to the sultan of turkey and showering honours upon enver pasha at his headquarters. while thousands of christian children and women were being mercilessly slaughtered and driven to death by germany's ally, and their bodies thrown to the wolves and vultures in the mesopotamian deserts, the german government was making provision for the housing and tuition of thousands of turkish youths in the technical schools of germany to fill the places of the "eliminated" armenians. what have christian germans to say to all this? do the johanniter knights, of whom the kaiser is himself grand master, approve of these proceedings? do they think that he who said "inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these little ones, ye have done it unto me" knows of any distinction of race? how can german christians, from their rulers downwards, face god and the son of god in the intimacy of their prayers after sanctioning these black deeds which are the very negation of god and the teaching of christ? do the rulers of germany and turkey and the protagonists of the reventlow doctrine believe that empires, railways, or any other schemes of expansion, built upon foundations of the blood and tears of hundreds of thousands of human beings, will endure and prosper and bring forth harvests of plenty and peace and happiness to their promoters, their children, and their children's children? they are mistaken. my word may count for naught to the rulers and leaders of mighty states; but it is true. we are an ancient people. "we have seen empires come and empires go." we have been ground for centuries in the mill of the ruthless clash of contending empires; but in spite of our long and bitter sufferings our belief to-day is as strong as ever in the existence of another mill, the mill of divine justice, which grinds in its own good time, and may grind slow, but "it grinds exceeding small." who will doubt or deny that violence to women and children and unoffending, defenceless men, "every hair of whose head is numbered," will not be forgiven by their just and almighty creator; that the sacrifice of them for ulterior selfish objects will not be overlooked? political and military acts of the mightiest empires, entailing injustice, violence and suffering to weaker peoples will bring nemesis in their train in due course. the idol with feet of clay, sunk in the blood of innocents, cannot endure. sooner or later it must fall. footnotes: [19] _le sã©maphore de marseille_, november 20, 1915. [20] i am indebted to my friend mr. h. n. mosditchian for the following account of an incident which throws some light on the ways of the turk-"the massacres of sassoon in 1893-1894, first described at the time by dr. dillon in _the daily telegraph_, and the first of the series that drenched armenia with the blood of over 200,000 of her sons and daughters, raised such a cry of horror and indignation throughout the civilised world that great britain, france and russia, through their embassies at constantinople, prepared a scheme of reforms, known as the scheme of the 11th of may 1895, and after much difficulty and long negotiations obtained thereto the approval of abd-ul-hamid, 'the red sultan.' "i was with the patriarch when the hon. m. h. herbert, secretary to the british embassy, brought to the patriarchate the good tidings of the sultan's acceptance of the scheme. upon his special advice, the patriarch sent there and then telegraphic instructions to all the armenian bishoprics in the provinces to chant te deums in the churches and to offer up prayers for the benign and magnanimous padishah! "i was again with the patriarch a day or two after when telegrams began to pour in from the provinces announcing a fresh outbreak of massacres throughout the country. i hastened to the embassies of the six great powers to give them the appalling news and to ask for their immediate assistance. as is well known, they did or could do nothing, and the massacres went on, unchecked and unbridled, assuming every day larger dimensions and a better organised thoroughness...." i called on judge terrell, the american ambassador, also. "i am not at all surprised," said he, "at these fresh massacres. i knew they would be coming, so much so that the moment i heard that the sultan was about to affix his signature to the scheme of reforms, i hastened to the grand vezir and insisted upon his sending telegraphic orders to all the valis to take good care that no american subject was hurt. the grand vezir protested of course that there was no necessity for such orders inasmuch as peace and security reigned supreme in all the vilayets, but i told him that i knew what was going to happen shortly as well as he did, and refused to leave until he had despatched the telegrams in my presence." judge terrell then told me that it had long been known to him that the valis of all the vilayets had received standing orders from the sultan to massacre the armenians (_a_) whenever they should discover any revolutionary movement among them, (_b_) whenever they should hear of a british, french or russian invasion of turkish territory, and (_c_) _whenever they should hear that the sultan had agreed to and signed a scheme of reforms_. viii the blue-book--the epic of armenia's martyrdom, the revelation of her spirit and character--"truth" on the armenians: a digression to realize, even approximately, the unimaginable barbarities that have been committed by the turks during the great armenian tragedy of 1915, it is necessary to read the blue-book itself. but the blue-book is a bulky volume, and the average man or woman has so many calls on his or her attention in these stirring and momentous times, that i fear it will not be read as widely as it deserves to be read in the interests of humanity, christianity, and civilization. i have, therefore, thought it desirable to quote a number of extracts which will give the reader some idea of the nature and magnitude of the horrors chronicled in that fearful epic of a nation's martyrdom, in the hope that they may thereby reach a wider circle of the public. apart from giving the reader a general idea of the atrocities themselves, i have selected and grouped the extracts with the object of calling attention to the incidental or subsidiary morals and lessons they convey, which have received little or no notice in the press reviews. the blue-book reveals the spirit, the character and the ideals which lay hidden under the unattractive outside appearance of the armenians, upon which has been based their mostly superficial judgment of them by european travellers. often under the influence of a sense of indebtedness for an escort of zaptiehs "graciously placed at their disposal by a kindly vali" (in whose harem were probably languishing a dozen or more enslaved women), they have seldom paused to understand the tragedy of the dour, subdued, anxious mien of the armenian peasant seen trudging wearily along in the highways and byways of asia minor. they little realized that the armenian lived under the strain of constant terrorism; that he never knew when the honour of his wife or sister might be violently assaulted; when he might be stabbed in the back; when his cattle might be driven away or his crops burned or stolen. he was afraid even of a too attractive personal appearance, lest he should excite the cupidity and jealousy of his turkish neighbour. if he fell upon his persecutor and slew him in defence of the honour of his womenfolk, it meant the wiping out not only of his family but of his whole village. his own government was his deadly enemy, bent upon his destruction. this has been the tragedy of the armenian's life for generations. it has been little known in the west because armenia is a long way off, and few european travellers have stopped to look below the surface. he has lived with the _yatagan_ hanging over his head, like the sword of damocles, from birth to death. virile, industrious, patient, long-suffering, but never despondent, he has clung to his faith, his soil, his ancient culture, his nationality and ideals of civilization with a tenacity that centuries of "bloody tyranny" have tended only to steel more and more. that he has succeeded in preserving the ideals which have cost his nation such heartbreaking sacrifices is abundantly proved by the blue-book. here is one evidence: "mr. yarrow, seeing all this, said, 'i am amazed at the self-control of the armenians, for though the turks did not spare a single wounded armenian, the armenians are helping us to save the turks'" (p. 70). but of all the tales of calm, dignified heroism in face of death recorded in the blue-book, w. effendi's letter (p. 133, and 504 of the blue-book) written on the eve of his, his young wife's and infant child's deportation to what he knew to be certain death, will ever stand out as an impressive example of the noblest heroism, the highest conception of the teaching of christ and a complete triumph of the spirit, unsurpassed in the annals of christian martyrdom. "may god forgive this nation all their sin which they do without knowing," wrote this true follower of christ, while he was making ready for his and his loved ones' journey to sorrow and death. it recalls the story of st. stephen's martyrdom. w. effendi's letter and nurse cavell's immortal words, "patriotism is not enough," strike me as the two most remarkable utterances delivered spontaneously by heroic spirits in proof of the bankruptcy of the "frightfulness" to which they were on the point of falling victims. there was a short notice in _truth_ of january 31, 1917, in connection with armenia day which contained the following remark: "some people despise these 'eleventh allies' as a mercenary race, but others, like mr. noel buxton, depict them in a much more attractive light." with the reader's indulgence i will digress for a moment to deal briefly with this totally unjustified stigma cast wantonly upon the character of a sorely tried nation. in the unoffensive sense of the word the whole human family may be called "mercenary." i have not met or heard of a race of men in any of the explored parts of the earth, whatever their colour, creed, or degree of civilization, who had any conscientious objection to the acquiring of as much money as they could acquire by legitimate and honourable means. i do not suppose _truth_ itself is dispensing its very helpful "rubber tips" week by week solely for the good of humanity. but if it is asserted that the armenian race puts the love of gold before everything else in life, such an assertion at this juncture is a particularly ill-timed, offensive and unworthy aspersion. a mercenary race, forsooth! if the armenian race had valued gold above its loyalty to its faith and nationality; if it had attached greater value to material prosperity than to spiritual ideals and principles, it would have accepted islam centuries ago--heaven knows the temptation was great--and won a predominant position for itself in asia minor. it would be counted to-day not by two or three, but by twenty or thirty millions. but under the longest and bloodiest pressure endured by any people in history, culminating almost in its extermination, it refused to sell its soul. thousands of armenians could have saved their lives by feigning to accept islam, but, with few exceptions, they refused to commit even that measure of spiritual dishonesty, which would perhaps not have been considered unpardonable under the circumstances. there is scarcely any instance of an armenian woman trafficking her honour for money; which is, perhaps, the most eloquent refutation of the calumny. what good object has _truth_ served by giving currency in its columns to this libel against an oppressed people, almost wiped out because of its christian faith and its sympathy for and support of the allied cause? even if there were the remotest justification for it one would have thought that _truth_ would have shrunk, at this dark and bitter hour, from adding insult to the agony of a people plunged into sorrow and mourning for the loss of half its number. but the assertion that the armenians are a mercenary race is not true. it is part of the propaganda carried on by a very few people who are either blinded by unreasoning prejudice, or have some special purpose to serve, or believe that they are discharging some kind of duty by whitewashing the turk and blackening the armenian. i believe that these admirers of the votaries of "bloody tyranny" on the bosphorus are very few indeed in this country. whoever they are and whatever their motives, conscious of my obligations to the generous hospitality of this country--for which i cannot be too grateful--but taking my stand on the broader ground of humanity, i wish to say to them, "though you are in great britain, you are not of it; though this great, humane and christian country may be your physical home by accident of birth, you will find your congenial 'spiritual home' in the offices of count reventlow and the _tanine_. charity, after all, is a matter between a man and his conscience and his god. if you cannot give your money to a starving woman or child without massacring them morally, while the turk is taking their life, pray spare your money and let the armenian die; it will please the turk and his allies. perhaps it would be more in harmony with your sentiments and political faith to lend your money to your friend the turk. when the war is over he may need a fresh supply of arms, for even the tender limbs of the countless women and children on whom he has practised his 'chivalry' may well have blunted and worn his old stock." there are mercenary armenian individuals as there are mercenary persons in every nation. it may be that, debarred from government posts except when he was indispensable, the town armenian in turkey, like the greek and syrian, has been compelled to direct his energies into commercial channels in a larger proportion than free and independent nations. naturally, also, through generations of ruthless persecution, the armenian nation has thrown up a flotsam and jetsam of indigents wandering far and wide in search of security and the means of earning a living. but to brand the whole armenian race as "mercenary" is malevolent nonsense, or credulity due to a total ignorance of the facts. seventy or eighty per cent. of the armenians in turkish as well as russian armenia are peasants, farmers and artisans. that is approximately true also of the persian armenians. even in the united states the majority of the immigrants have taken to fruit-growing in california. armenians who have the means to give their sons a good education almost invariably make them follow a profession in preference to commerce, as witness the number of armenian university professors, doctors, lawyers and some artists and painters of considerable merit in the united states.[21] probably no people have made the sacrifices made by armenians, in proportion to their means, for the relief of distress during the war. there have been a few exceptions among the very rich whose moral sense has been blunted by luxury and self-indulgence. they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. they belong to that class of cosmopolitan financiers and traders who are no more thrilled by the music of their country's or any country's name; who are unmoved by the cry of starving women and children of their own or any race; whose home is the world and whose god is gold; who are no more the masters but the slaves of money. but this, again, is not peculiar to armenians; very far from it. it is a fraternity that embraces members of every, or almost every, race; and armenians are barely represented upon it. it is palpably misleading as it is inaccurate to assert that these represent the armenian nation. in fact, as far as my knowledge goes, the masses of the armenian people are ashamed of them, because their worship of gold and vanity are alien to the national spirit, and bring discredit upon the nation. for generations armenian educational and religious institutions have been maintained by voluntary grants; and i do not know that any european citizen bears a heavier burden for the needs of his nation than does the individual armenian. it must not be supposed from what i have said that all, or the majority, of rich armenians have been deaf or indifferent to their country's need. that would be a mistake and an injustice. on the whole their response to the call of their afflicted country has been satisfactory, considering that they had obligations to the belligerent countries to which they owed allegiance. i know of one contribution of â£30,000,[22] while ten moscow merchants raised a million roubles between them for their nation's needs. a prominent armenian physician has relinquished a large and remunerative practice at petrograd to superintend personally the administration of an orphanage at erzerum, which he has opened on his own private account. the catholicos's palace at etchmiadzin was converted into a hospital for refugees in the early months of 1915. almost every armenian peasant family in the caucasus have housed and cared for one or more refugees in their humble cottages ever since the influx of their distressed kinsmen from the other side of the frontier in the spring and summer of 1915. i have not marshalled these facts in a spirit of flaunting the virtues of my race--we certainly hold no monopoly of all the virtues, or indeed of all the vices, to which human nature is heir--but i know of no better way to disprove the baseless aspersions assiduously disseminated by some interested people for purposes of pro-turkish propaganda and accepted by the credulous as true. lord bryce has known the armenian people longer and more intimately than any eminent european statesman, historian and diplomatist has ever done before, and his dictum will no doubt be generally accepted as that of a great and final authority. i therefore make no apology for quoting his lordship's most recent utterance on the subject reported in the _journal of the royal society of arts_, february 2, 1917- "having known a very large number of armenians, he had been greatly struck, not only with their high level of intelligence and industry, but also by their intense patriotism. he did not know of any people who had shown greater constancy, patience and patriotism under difficulties and sufferings than the armenians. he personally had always found them perfectly loyal. he had frequently had occasion to give them confidential advice and to trust them with secrets, and never on any occasion had he found that confidence misplaced.... as a proof of their loyalty and devotion to their country he might mention that the armenians living in america had contributed sums enormous in proportion to their number and resources, for they were nearly all persons of small means, for the relief of the refugees who had been driven out by the turkish massacres. no people during the war had done more in proportion to their capacities than the armenians had done for the relief of their suffering fellow-countrymen. a large number of them were also fighting as volunteers in the armies of france, where they had displayed the utmost courage and valour in the combats before verdun." to return to the extracts from the blue-book. group "a" affords a melancholy abundance of indisputable evidence that it was not kurds and brigands alone who did satan's work in armenia, but that the chief culprits were turkish officials, high and low, officers, soldiers, gendarmes and rabble; even a member of parliament took a turn! they not only played the principal part in the vast and revolting carnival of blood, lust and savagery, but they took a delight and pride in the part they played, and laughed at the sufferings and tortures of their victims.[23] group "b" bears evidence of a heroism and fidelity in torture and death, to faith, honour and the ideal of nationality, unsurpassed in the history of mankind, which must redound to the eternal glory of christianity and to the honour of the armenian name. i respectfully suggest for consideration by the heads of the christian churches that a day should be fixed to commemorate annually the martyrdom of this vast number of armenian christians. group "c" contains proofs of the conduct of insurgent armenians in the unequal struggles for self-defence, and it should be remembered that these are but a few instances, mainly of what was seen or heard of by foreigners. the ruined towns and villages, the silent fields and highways of this land of blood and tears, what secrets of desperate heroism in defence of wife and child, mother and sister, these guard will probably never be known. group "c" also contains evidence of the fact that the turks had to employ considerable bodies of troops to overcome the desperate resistance of armenians in many places, such as moush, sassoon, van, etc. a third feature in this group is, that the turks attributed their defeats in the caucasus to the armenians.[24] taken together, these extracts, and the blue-book from which they are taken, form a better mirror of the characteristics of the two races than all that has been written on the subject for a century. they show the radical dissimilarity of their natures, and the vast difference between the respective stages of civilization in which the two races find themselves. was it buddha or confucius who said that the principal difference between man and the rest of the animal world is, that man possesses the feeling of pity for the pain and suffering of his fellow-men or animals? what would they think of this strange race of human beings who delight in torture and murder, sparing neither sex nor age, nor even unborn babes and their mothers; who inflict pain and jeer at their victims? i remember reading in one of mr. lloyd george's speeches not long ago: "it is not the trials one has to go through in life, but the way one faces them that matters," or words to that effect. this is as true of nations as it is of individuals. "in the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men," and of nations. how has the armenian nation conducted itself in this great upheaval and borne the terrible ordeal revealed by the blue-book: an ordeal the horror and magnitude of which it is absolutely beyond the power of the human mind to imagine? the blue-book itself furnishes the answer. from the first day of the war, armenians in all countries understood the nature of the issues involved. they had no doubt on which side lay their sympathies, which were never influenced by the varying fortunes of the war. they were exposed to grave risks and paid a terrible price. could there be a better proof of intellectual rectitude and the sincerity of sentiment? this, i trust, will silence for ever the dastardly reflections often cast upon the honesty of the armenian people. there are some dishonest armenians as there are some dishonest men in all nations. but, whether through prejudice, malice, or ignorance of the facts, to brand as dishonest a whole people who have been on the cross for half a millennium for their religion and patriotism, is unworthy of civilized and right-minded men. there are two other important facts which the blue-book establishes beyond dispute. there was no revolt. indeed, it would have been sheer madness on the part of the armenians to attempt a rising when their able-bodied manhood was with the colours. the second fact the blue-book reveals is, that the armenian party leaders did their utmost to dissuade the young turks from joining the war. when the veil of war has lifted, and europe comes to know more of what took place behind the scenes in constantinople prior to turkey's entry into the war, it will be seen how near the personal influence and eloquence of the armenian deputy zohrab came to turning the scale against the fateful and suicidal decision. this brilliant young jurist, an intimate personal friend of enver and talaat who sought his advice almost daily, was murdered by their orders on the way to diyarbekir. armenians have been charged with a lack of political aptitude as well as with treachery to the ottoman empire. i would specially call the attention of those who hold these views--europeans, moslems, and thinking turks themselves--to the fact that, at a time of crisis, it was the armenians who saw clearly the path of safety for the empire, and showed their loyalty to it, in spite of all they had suffered in the past, by their councils of prudence to which the young turks lent a deaf ear. while on the subject of the blue-book, i cannot refrain from saying that i noted with profound regret the distinction that was evidently made, in many cases, between catholic and protestant armenians on the one hand, and gregorians on the other, in the efforts that were made to save them from massacre or deportation. it is no secret that his holiness the pope and president wilson intervened through their representatives in constantinople, and possibly in berlin and vienna, to stop the massacres. i record this fact with the deepest gratitude. of course no such distinction can possibly have been made by the pope or president wilson, or their ambassadors; it was probably due to the well-meant activities of subordinates or of local european or american residents. no doubt it was better to save catholics and protestants than none at all, but the very idea of any distinction being thought of, under such fateful circumstances, is obviously contrary to the spirit of christianity, and the passages referring to it make sad reading to a christian. footnotes: [21] visitors to the san francisco exhibition will have seen and admired the work of the armenian sculptor haik partigian, whose exhibits, i am told by one who saw them, were among the best, if not the best, of all the exhibits in the sculpture section. russia's great marine painter aivazovsky was an armenian. the recently instituted society of armenian artists is holding its first exhibition in tiflis at the time of writing. [22] it was reported in the tiflis papers, after the above was written, that mr. mantashian, the baku oil king, has made a further donation of â£60,000 for agricultural improvements, and offered thirty thoroughbreds to improve the breed of horses in armenia. [23] some of the most distressing and disgraceful cases of turkish bestiality appeared in doctor (major) aspland's report on the hospital at van, which was under his charge as representative of the lord mayor's armenian relief fund. describing some of the individual cases brought to him for treatment, dr. aspland says-"here is a young woman leaving hospital to-day, who was raped by eight kurds. she has suffered for months, and even now, in spite of operations, will be crippled for the rest of her life. here is _a small girl aged five, similarly treated by turks_, and is now lying in plaster of paris in order to recover from injury to the hip joint."--(_ararat_, october 1916, p. 172.) [24] compare this with the diary of a turkish officer, reported in the _russkaia viedomosti_ (p. 75). ix extracts from the blue-book _group a_ "the archbishop of erzeroum, his grace sempad, who, with the vali's authorization, was returning to constantinople, was murdered at erzindjan by the brigands in the service of the union and progress committee. the bishops of trebizond, kaisaria, moush, bitlis, sairt, and erzindjan have all been murdered by order of the young turk government" (p. 23). "the shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in the various camps was to burn them. fire was set to large wooden sheds in alidjan, megrakom, khaskegh, and other armenian villages, and these absolutely helpless women and children were roasted to death.... and the executioners, who seem to have been unmoved by this unparalleled savagery, grasped infants by one leg and hurled them into the fire, calling out to the burning mothers: 'here are your lions'" (p. 86). "the turks boasted of having now got rid of all the armenians. i heard it from the officers myself, how they revelled in thought that the armenians had been got rid of" (p. 88). "it was heartrending to hear the cries of the people and children who were being burnt to death in their houses. the soldiers took great delight in hearing them, and when people who were out in the streets during the bombardment fell dead the soldiers merely laughed at them" (p. 90). "every officer boasted of the number he had personally massacred as his share in ridding turkey of the armenian race" (p. 90). "mehmed effendi, the ottoman deputy for gendje (ginj), collected about forty women and children and killed them" (p. 94). "of the other children, a girl was taken away and only escaped many months later when the russians came. very reluctantly she poured out her story to the stapletons, from which it appeared that she had been handed round to ten officers after the murder of her husband and his mother, to be their sport" (p. 225). "'see what care the government is taking of the armenians,' the vali said, and she returned home surprised and pleased; but when she visited the orphanage again several days later, there were only thirteen of the 700 children left--the rest had disappeared. they had been taken, she learnt, to a lake six hours' journey by road from the town and drowned" (p. 260). "sister d. a. was told, at constantinople, that turks of all parties were united in their approval of what was being done to the armenians, and that enver pasha openly boasted of it as his personal achievement. talaat bey, too, was reported to have remarked, on receiving news of vartkes's[25] assassination: 'there is no room in the empire for both armenians and turks. either they had to go or we" (p. 261). "a crowd of turkish women and children follow the police about like a lot of vultures, and seize anything they can lay their hands on, and when the more valuable things are carried out of a house by the police, they rush in and take the balance. i see this performance every day with my own eyes" (p. 289). "it was a real extermination and slaughter of the innocents, an unheard-of thing, a black page stained with the flagrant violation of the most sacred rights of humanity, of christianity, of nationality" (p. 291). "when the governor was petitioned to allow the infants to be entrusted to charitable moslem families, to save them from dying on the journey, he replied: 'i will not leave here so much as the odour of the armenians; go away into the deserts of arabia and dump your armenia there'" (p. 328). "p. p., the college blacksmith, was so terribly beaten that a month later he was still unable to walk. another was shod with horse-shoes. at y., mr. a. d. (brother-in-law of the pastor, a. e., who suffered martyrdom at sivas twenty-one years ago) had his finger-nails torn out for refusing to accept islam. 'how,' he had answered, 'can i abandon the christ whom i have preached for twenty-years?'" (p. 378.) "in angora i learned that the tanners and the butchers of the city had been called to asi yozgad, and the armenians committed to them for murder. the tanner's knife is a circular affair, while the butcher's knife is a small axe, and they killed people by using the instruments which they knew best how to use" (p. 385). "the ottoman bank president showed bank-notes soaked with blood and struck through with daggers with the blot round the hole, and some torn that had evidently been ripped from the clothing of people who had been killed--and these were placed on ordinary deposit in the bank by turkish officers" (p. 386). "one girl had hanged herself on the way; others had poison with them. mothers were holding out their beautiful babies and begging the missionaries to take them" (p. 403). "what was the meaning of all this? it was the deathblow aimed at christianity in turkey, or, in other words, the extermination of the armenian people--their extermination or amalgamation" (p. 404). "during the weary days of travel i had as my companion a turkish captain, who, as the hours dragged by, came to look on me with less of suspicion, growing quite friendly at times. arrived at ---the captain went out among the armenian crowd and soon returned with an armenian girl of about fifteen years. she was forced into a compartment of an adjoining railway coach, in company with a turkish woman. when she saw that her mother was not allowed to accompany her, she began to realize something of the import of it all. she grew frantic in her efforts to escape, scratching at the window, begging, screaming, tearing her hair and wringing her hands, while the equally grief-crazed mother stood on the railway platform, helpless in her effort to save her daughter. the captain, seeing the unconcealed disapproval in my face, came up and said: 'i suppose, effendi, you don't approve of such things, but let me tell you how it is. why, this girl is fortunate. i'll take her home with me, raise her as a moslem servant in my house. she will be well cared for and saved from a worse fate--besides that, i even gave the mother a lira gold piece for the girl.' and, as though that were not convincing enough, he added: 'why, these scoundrels have killed two of our moslems right here in this city, within the last few days,' as though that were excuse enough, if excuse were needed, for annihilating the whole armenian race. i could not refrain from giving him my version of the rotten, diabolical scheme, which, however, fell from his back like water" (p. 410). "i learned here, too, of a nurse who had been in one of the mission hospitals, who two days before my arrival there had become almost crazed by the fear of falling into the hands of the human fiends, and had ended her life with poison. were these isolated or unusual instances, it would excite no comment in this year of unusual things, but when we know of these things going on all over the empire, repeated in thousands of instances, we begin to realize the enormity of the crimes committed. i spoke again to the captain: 'why are you taking such brutal measures to accomplish your aim? why not accept the offer of a friendly nation, which offers to pay transportation if you will send these people out of the country to a place of safety?' he replied: 'why, don't you understand, we don't want to have to repeat this thing again after a few years? it's hot down in the deserts of arabia, and there is no water, and these people can't stand a hot climate, don't you see?' yes, i saw. any one could see what would happen to most of them, long before arabia was reached" (p. 411). "crowds of turkish women were going about insolently prying into house after house to find valuable rugs or other articles" (p. 411). "the nation is being systematically done to death by a cruel and crafty method, and their extermination is only a question of time" (p. 432). "women with little children in their arms, or in the last days of pregnancy, were driven along under the whip like cattle. three different cases came under my knowledge where the woman was delivered on the road, and because her brutal driver hurried her along, she died of hã¦morrhage" (p. 472). "i saw one young woman drop down exhausted. the turk gave her two or three blows with his stick and she raised herself painfully" (p. 484). "i saw two women, one of them old, the other very young and very pretty, carrying the corpse of another young woman; i had scarcely passed them when cries of terror arose. the girl was struggling in the clutches of a brute who was trying to drag her away. the corpse had fallen to the ground, the girl, now half-unconscious, was writhing by the side of it, the old woman was sobbing and wringing her hands" (p. 564). "sixteen hundred armenians have had their throats cut in the prisons of diyarbekir. the arashnort (bishop) was mutilated, drenched with alcohol, and burnt alive in the prison yard, in the middle of a carousing crowd of gendarmes, who even accompanied the scene with music. the massacres at benia, adiaman, the selefka have been carried out deliberately; _there is not a single male left above the age of 13 years_; the girls have been outraged mercilessly; we have seen their mutilated corpses tied together in batches of four, eight, or ten, and cast into the euphrates. the majority had been mutilated in an indescribable manner" (p. 21). "five hundred young men were shot outside the town without any formality. during the following two days the same process was carried out with heartless and cold-blooded thoroughness in the eighty armenian villages of ardjish, adiljevas, and the rest of the district north of lake van. in this manner some 24,000 armenians were killed in three days, their young women carried away and their homes looted" (p. 73). "according to turkish government statistics 120,000 armenians were killed in this district" (p. 95). "the immense procession, sinking under its agony and fatigue, forces itself along and moves forward without respite.... no pen can describe what this tragic procession has endured, or what experiences it has lived through, on its interminable road. the least detail of them makes the human heart quail, and draws an unquenchable stream of bitter tears from one's eyes.... each fraction of the long procession has its individual history, its especial pangs.... here is a mother with her six children, one on her back, the second clasped to her breast; the third falls down on the road, and cries and wails because it cannot drag itself further. the three others begin to wail in sympathy, and the poor mother stands stock still, tearless, like a statue, utterly powerless to help" (p. 197). "babies were shot in their mothers' arms, small children were horribly mutilated, women were stripped and beaten. the villages were not prepared for attack; many made no resistance; others resisted until their ammunition gave out" (p. 36). "a little bride and a slim young girl sidled up to our wagon to talk. in reply to our talk they told us that they were 'busy taking care of the babies.' we asked what babies, and they said: 'oh, those the effendis stop here; the mothers nurse them and then go.' we asked if there were many, and were told that every house was full. we were watched too closely to make calls possible. afterwards we found an officer ready to talk, who said: 'we take them off after a while and kill them. what can we do? the mothers cannot take them, and the government cannot take care of them for ever'" (p. 359). "this frightful suffering inspires no pity in the ruthless officials, who throw themselves upon their wretched victims, armed with whips and cudgels, without distinction of sex or age" (p. 414). _group b_ "many armenian women preferred to throw themselves into the euphrates with their infants, or committed suicide in their homes. the euphrates and tigris have become the sepulchre of thousands of armenians" (p. 14). "while the armenian refugees had been mutually helpful and self-sacrificing, these moslems showed themselves absolutely selfish, callous and indifferent to each other's suffering" (p. 42). "many went mad and threw their children away; some knelt down and prayed amid the flames in which their bodies were burning; others shrieked and cried for help which came from nowhere" (p. 86). "several young women, who were in danger of falling into the turks' hands, threw themselves from the rocks, some of them with their infants in their arms" (p. 87). "among the massacred were two monks, one of them being the father superior of sourp garabed, yeghishe vartabed, who had a chance of escaping, but did not wish to be separated from his flock, and was killed with them" (p. 96). "in some cases safety was bought by professing mohammedanism, but many died as martyrs to the faith" (p. 102). "the mother resisted, and was thrown over a bridge by one of the turks. the poor woman broke her arm, but her mule-driver dragged her up again. again the same turks threw her down, with one of her daughters, from the top of the mountain. the moment the married daughter saw her mother and sister thrown down, she thrust the baby in her arms upon another woman, ran after them, crying, 'mother, mother!' and threw herself down the same precipice" (p. 274). "sirpouhi and santukht, two young women of ketcheurd, a village east of sivas, who were being led off to the harem, by turks, threw themselves into the river halys, and were drowned with their infants in their arms. mlle. sirpouhi, the nineteen-year-old daughter of garabed tufenjjian of herag, a graduate of the american college of marsovan, was offered the choice of saving herself by embracing islam and marrying a turk. sirpouhi retorted that it was an outrage to murder her father and then make her a proposal of marriage. she would have nothing to do with a godless and a murderous people; whereupon she, and seventeen other armenian girls who had refused conversion, were shamefully ill-treated and afterwards killed near tchamli-bel gorge" (p. 325). "many began to doubt even the existence of god. under the severe strain many individuals became demented, some of them permanently. there were also some examples of the greatest heroism and faith, and some started out on the journey courageously and calmly, saying in farewell: 'pray for us. we shall not see you again in this world, but some time we shall meet again'" (p. 335). "'no, i cannot see what you see, and i cannot accept what i cannot understand.' so the ox-carts came to the door and took the family away. the wife was a delicate lady and the two beautiful daughters well educated. they were offered homes in harems, but said: 'no, we cannot deny our lord. we will go with our father'" (p. 354). "in a mountain village there was a girl who made herself famous. here, as everywhere else, the men were taken out at night and pitifully killed. then the women and children were sent in a crowd, but a large number of young girls and brides were kept behind. this girl, who had been a pupil in the school at x., was sent before the governor, the judge, and the council together, and they said to her: 'your father is dead, your brothers are dead, and all your other relatives are gone, but we have kept you because we do not wish to make you suffer. now just be a good turkish girl and you shall be married to a turkish officer and be comfortable and happy.' it is said that she looked quietly into their faces and replied: 'my father is not dead, my brothers are not dead; it is true you have killed them, but they live in heaven. i shall live with them. i can never do this if i am unfaithful to my conscience. as for marrying, i have been taught that a woman must never marry a man unless she loves him. this is a part of our religion. how can i love a man who comes from a nation that has so recently killed my friends? i should neither be a good christian girl nor a good turkish girl if i did so. do with me what you wish.' they sent her away, with the few other brave ones, into the hopeless land. stories of this kind can also be duplicated" (p. 355). "the men were finally convinced of the uselessness of their efforts when one of the younger and prettiest girls spoke up for herself and said: 'no one can mix in my decisions; i will not "turn" [change her religion], and it is i myself that say it'" (p. 357). "mr. a. f., a colporteur, had been willing to embrace islam, but his wife refused to recognize his apostasy, and declared that she would go into exile with the rest of the people, so he went with his wife and was killed" (p. 378). "again and again they said to me: 'oh, if they would only kill me now, i would not care; but i fear they will try to force me to become a mohammedan'" (p. 403). "when we consider the number forced into exile and the number beaten to death and tortured in a thousand ways, the comparatively small number that turned moslem is a tribute to the staunchness of their hold on christianity" (p. 413). "if the events of the past year demonstrate anything, they show the practical failure of mohammedanism in its struggle for existence against christianity--in its attempt to eliminate a race which, because of christian education, has been proving increasingly a menace to stagnating moslem civilization. we may call it political necessity or what not, but in essence it is a nominally ruling class, jealous of a more progressive christian race, striving by methods of primitive savagery to maintain the leading place" (p. 413). "the courage of that brave little doctor's wife, who knew she must take her two babies and face starvation and death with them! many began to come to her home--to her, for comfort and cheer, and she gave it. i have never seen such courage before. you have to go to the darkest places of the earth to see the brightest lights, to the most obscure spot to find the greatest heroes. "her bright smile, with no trace of fear in it, was like a beacon light in that mud village, where hundreds were doomed. "it was not because she did not understand how they felt; she was one of them. it was not because she had no dear ones in peril; her husband was far away, ministering to those who were sending her and her babies to destruction" (p. 418). "one woman gave birth to twins in one of those crowded trucks, and crossing a river she threw both her babies and then herself into the water" (p. 420). "and how are the people going? as they came into b. m., weary and with swollen and bleeding feet, clasping their babes to their breasts, they utter not one murmur or word of complaint; but you see their eyes move and hear the words: 'for jesus' sake, for jesus' sake!'" (p. 478). "let me quote from w. effendi, from a letter he wrote a day before his deportation with his young wife and infant child and with the whole congregation-"'we now understand that it is a great miracle that our nation has lived so many years amongst such a nation as this. from this we realize that god can and has shut the mouths of lions for many years. may god restrain them! i am afraid they mean to kill some of us, cast some of us into most cruel starvation and send the rest out of this country; so i have very little hope of seeing you again in this world. but be sure that, by god's special help, i will do my best to encourage others to die manly. i will also look for god's help for myself to die as a christian. may this country see that, if we cannot live here as men, we can die as men. may many die as men of god. may god forgive this nation all their sin which they do without knowing. may the armenians teach jesus' life by their death, which they could not teach by their life or have failed in showing forth. it is my great desire to see a reverend ali, or osman, or mohammed. may jesus soon see many turkish christians as the fruit of his blood. "'may the war end soon, in order to save the moslems from their cruelty (for they increase in that from day to day) and from their ingrained habit of torturing others. therefore we are waiting on god, for the sake of the moslems as well as of the armenians. may he appear soon'" (p. 504). "before the girls were taken, the kaimakam asked each one, in the presence of the principal of the college, whether they wanted to become mohammedans and stay, or go. they all replied that they would go. only miss h. became a mohammedan, and went to live with g. professors e. and f. f. had been arrested with other armenians, but in the name of all the teachers some â£250 to â£300 were presented to the officials, and so they were let free" (p. 370). "the priests were among the first to be sent off. a turk described how k. k. was killed. they stripped him of all his clothes, excepting his underclothing. with his hands bound behind his back, he knelt, with his son beside him, and they finished him off with axes, while he was praying. the same description was given of the execution of l. l.--how they took off his head by hacking down into his shoulders with axes and carving the head out like a bust" (p. 371). _group c_ "but the [armenian] revolutionists conducted themselves with remarkable restraint and prudence; controlled their hot-headed youth; patrolled the streets to prevent skirmishes; and bade the villagers endure in silence: better a village or two burned unavenged than that any attempt at reprisals should furnish an excuse for massacre" (p. 33). "some of the rules for their men [the armenian defenders of van] were: 'keep clean; do not drink; tell the truth; do not curse the religion of the enemy'" (p. 35). "but, enraged as djevdet was by this unexpected and prolonged resistance, was it to be hoped that he could be persuaded to spare the lives of one of these men, women and children?" (p. 39). "not all the turks had fled from the city [van]. some old men and women and children had stayed behind, many of them in hiding. the armenian soldiers, unlike turks, were not making war on such" (p. 41). "our turkish refugees cost us a fearful price.... then, for four days more, two armenian nurses cared for the [turkish] sick ones at night and an untrained man nurse helped me during the daytime" (p. 42). "mr. yarrow, seeing all this, said: 'i am amazed at the self-control of the armenians, for though the turks did not spare a single wounded armenian, the armenians are helping us to save the turks--a thing that i do not believe even europeans would do'" (p. 70). "the turks offered to the georgians the provinces of koutais and of tiflis, the batoum district and a part of the province of trebizond; to the tartars, shousha, the mountain country as far as vladikavkaz, bakou, and a part of the province of elisavetpol; to the armenians they offered kars, the province of erivan, a part of elisavetpol; a fragment of the province of erzeroum, van and bitlis. according to the young turk scheme, all these groups were to become autonomous under a turkish protectorate. the erzeroum congress refused these proposals, and advised the young turks not to hurl themselves into the european conflagration--a dangerous adventure which would lead turkey to ruin" (p. 80). "the turkish regulars and kurds, amounting now to something like 30,000 altogether, pushed higher and higher up the heights and surrounded the main armenian position at close quarters. then followed one of those desperate and heroic struggles for life which have always been the pride of mountaineers. men, women and children fought with knives, scythes, stones, and anything else they could handle. they rolled blocks of stone down the steep slopes, killing many of the enemy. in a frightful hand-to-hand combat, women were seen thrusting their knives into the throats of turks and thus accounting for many of them. on august 5, the last day of the fighting, the blood-stained rocks of antok were captured by the turks. the armenian warriors of sassoun, except those who had worked round to the rear of the turks to attack them on their flanks, had died in battle" (p. 87). "in the first week of july 20,000 soldiers arrived from constantinople by way of harpout with munitions and eleven guns, and laid siege to moush" (p. 89). "the energetic armenian committees have taken care of their own people, and have been unexpectedly generous to the syrians who are quartered in their midst" (p. 107). "he met an armenian officer who had escaped from the turks, who told him of the deportation and massacre of the armenians. he said that the attitude of the turks towards the armenians was more or less good at the beginning of the war, but it was suddenly changed after the turkish defeat at sari-kamysh, as they laid the blame for this defeat upon the armenians, though he could not tell why" (p. 231). "the fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that there was no 'rebellion'" (p. 34). footnote: [25] mr. vartkes was an armenian deputy in the ottoman parliament, who was murdered, together with another deputy, mr. zohrab, when he was being escorted by gendarmes from aleppo to be court-martialled at diyarbekir (see documents 7 and 9).--editor. x great britain and armenia--the late duke of argyll's views--an appeal to britain there is no brighter page in the glorious history of the british empire than the records of the liberties that conduce to the contentment and happiness of peoples--freedom of thought and worship, freedom of speech and association, freedom of movement and habitation, freedom of language, etc.; as well as measures of self-government varying in accordance with local needs and circumstances--granted unstintingly to the great family of nations and races constituting that marvellous commonwealth. this policy of broad, liberal justice has proved, under the stern test of this great war, the highest statesmanship and the strongest bond of empire. freedom, justice, humanity have proved an infinitely stronger impetus to loyalty than "frightfulness," a stronger cement, a superior and better "paying" stock-in-trade of empire by far than the jack-boot and the _yatagan_. the conclusive and practical demonstration of this great fact by the british empire will probably exercise a far-reaching influence for good on the future policies of empires and the liberties of mankind. the british flag has not only carried security, order and justice wherever it has gone, it has scrupulously respected religious and national sentiment everywhere. it has not denied to the peoples under its sway, or attempted to suppress, the sentiments and allegiances which it has itself held sacred. it has maintained the freedom of the seas as i believe no international device could have achieved it. i do not say this to please british readers. i have lived and travelled among small peoples and subject peoples large and small, and that is the impression i have gathered. thus the union jack has become a symbol of freedom and fairplay the world over, and persecuted peoples have long had the conviction, deep down in their hearts, that british influence is continually at work towards their ultimate liberation. if we were to reverse mr. gladstone's famous challenge concerning austria, and ask, _mutatis mutandis_: "can any one put his finger on the map of the world and say, 'here the british empire has wrought evil'?" it may be that count reventlow himself and the author of the "hymn of hate" might find themselves baffled. however opinions may differ as to the justice of some of her wars, the just and liberal treatment of the peoples that have come under british dominion is an indisputable historical fact to which the masses of mankind owe at least as much gratitude as they do to the french revolution. ireland may be singled out, and not without reason, if i may say so, as the one shaded spot on this bright page of the story of the spread of british liberty. to the neutral observer it certainly seems strange that ireland, so near the home of liberty and the stronghold of democratic institutions, should be so long denied the full and free enjoyment of those blessings liberally bestowed upon the more distant parts of the empire. possibly neutral observers do not and cannot understand the difficulties and obstacles that have hitherto proved insuperable. it is outside the scope of my subject and beyond my competence to enter into a discussion of the irish question here, but this much i may say, that ireland should convince rulers in all countries that material prosperity alone "is no remedy." security, order, prosperity, an efficient and equitable administration may palliate but can never heal a political injustice. they can never satisfy the legitimate aspirations for self-rule of a high-spirited and cultured people conscious of a strong, indestructible will as well as the undoubted capacity to govern itself. on the other hand, to compare the wrongs and sufferings of ireland (and poland) with the agony of armenia, as is sometimes done, is to compare a headache, an acute headache if you will, with the black death. it is in keeping with the ill-fortune that has dogged the footsteps of the armenian people for five centuries that armenia should have been the one exception to the rule; the one country which has been denied the blessings and benefits that have accrued to every small people which has come within the sphere of, or whose fortunes have been directly or indirectly affected by, the policy or interests of the british empire. one of the most striking features of what has been said and written in this country on the treatment meted out by the turks to their armenian subjects during the war has been the paucity of reference to the effect, incidental and indirect no doubt, but the real and disastrous effect, nevertheless, of british policy in turkey since the crimean war upon the fate of the armenian subjects of the turk. this is in contrast with what was said and written during previous massacres, and is no doubt attributable to the fact of the country being at war. i am not touching this aspect of the question in the way of a grievance. i well know, and most gratefully recognize what the british government and people have done and are still doing for us during the long and ghastly nightmare through which we are passing. the noble and unremitting efforts of lord and lady bryce, lady frederick cavendish, mr. aneurin williams, mr. t. p. o'connor, miss robinson, mrs. and miss hickson, mrs. cole, mr. noel buxton and his brother the rev. harold buxton, mr. arthur g. symonds, mr. llew williams, the rev. greenland, mr. arnold j. toynbee, and so many other friends of armenia in this country, have placed us under a lasting debt of gratitude to them and to britain. lord bryce's name will live in armenian history as long as armenia lasts. but i do think it is fair, in justice to the people of this great and righteous empire, to one-half of the armenian nation who have fallen as heroes and heroines both in war and martyrdom, and to "the little blood" that is left to the armenian people, that the facts in this connection should be placed frankly and fully before the british public at this juncture, so that it may be able to form an equitable estimate of the reparation due to the armenians, not only for the crimes and ravages committed by the enemy during the war, but also in the light of the obligations and responsibilities incurred by europe in general and great britain in particular for the armenian subjects of the ottoman empire by art. 61 of the treaty of berlin and the cyprus convention. i have said "great britain," but it would be more accurate to say "the british government of the day," for i firmly believe--in fact, who will doubt?--that if the british people had had the slightest suspicion that the treaty of berlin and the cyprus convention had in them the germs of the disaster that has since overtaken the christian subjects of the porte, they would never have ratified those treaties. nor do i suggest, i need hardly say, that the statesmen who are responsible for these diplomatic instruments consciously and deliberately jeopardized the existence of an ancient christian people. lord salisbury's sympathetic utterances in 1895-96 show unmistakably how deeply distressed he was at the grievous turn events had taken, and still more at the powerlessness of the concert of europe to save the armenians from the position of extreme peril in which the concert had placed them in 1878. successive british governments have made frequent attempts to improve the lot of the armenians; but the more they tried the more the turks massacred. there is no fairer-minded public than the british, whose hospitality and the blessings of whose rule i have gratefully enjoyed for many years, as have some thousands of my compatriots in almost every part of the empire. there is also no one more ready and anxious to pay his debt than the briton when he knows what he owes. i have therefore no fear whatever of arousing any resentment by calling the attention of the british public to the existence of this old liability. on the contrary, i am convinced that the fact will be taken note of in good part, and by most even thankfully. i read a press article not long ago--it was, if i remember rightly, a review of mr. llew williams's book, _armenia past and present_ in _the court journal_--which ended with the following question: "if these terrible things are true and we have any responsibility, why are we not told so?" as regards the nature of the responsibilities and obligations, i refer my readers to the appendix, where will be found the texts of art. 61 of the treaty of berlin, art. 18 of the treaty of san stefano--which was torn up and superseded by the treaty of berlin--the full text of the cyprus convention, and lord salisbury's dispatch to sir henry layard containing instructions for the negotiation of that convention. i may here point out that though at first sight there appears to be little difference between the wording of art. 16 of the treaty of san stefano and art. 61 of the treaty of berlin, there is this fundamental difference between the application of the two clauses that, while the former left the russian army in occupation of the armenian provinces until the reforms should be an accomplished fact, the latter was a mere turkish promise to be performed after their evacuation by the russian forces. how the turk performed his promise is well enough known, and forms the darkest page of modern history--probably of all history. those who have the interest and the time for fuller information on the subject i recommend to refer to mr. gladstone's famous speeches on the eastern question and the treaty of berlin, the debates in both houses of parliament on the massacres of 1895-96, canon maccoll's "the sultan and the powers," mr. w. llew williams's "armenia past and present," and last but not least, "our responsibilities for turkey," by the late duke of argyll. this frank and admirable commentary on the bearing of british policy upon the armenian question is now unfortunately out of print. i therefore quote, with apologies, the following lengthy extract for the convenience of those who may have difficulty in procuring a copy. it is an authority that will command general and respectful attention.[26] (the italics are mine.) "nothing can be more childish than to suppose that the significance and effect of such a change as this[27] can be measured or appreciated by looking at the mere grammatical meaning of the words. the words seemed harmless enough. they may even seem to be most benevolent and most wise in the interests of the christian subjects of the porte in armenia. but when we look at the facts which lay behind the words, and at the motives which were at work among the contracting parties, we must see that nothing could have been devised more fatal to their interests. the change which the new words affected in the treaty of san stefano wounded the pride and the most justifiable ambition of russia to be the protector of her co-religionists in provinces with which no other christian power had any natural connection. on the other hand, it delighted the low cunning of the turk, in constituting another 'rift within the lute' which by and by would be quite sure to make the 'music mute' of any effective concert between the powers of europe. the turk could see at a glance that, whilst it relieved him of the dangerous pressure of russia, it substituted no other pressure which his own infinite dexterity in delays could not easily make abortive. _as for the unfortunate armenians, the change was simply one which must tend to expose them to the increased enmity of their tyrants, whilst it damaged and discouraged the only protection which was possible under the inexorable conditions of the physical geography of the country._[28] "but this is not the whole of the responsibility which falls on us out of the international transactions connected with the treaty of berlin. after that treaty had been concluded, we entered by ourselves into a separate, and for a while a secret, convention with turkey, by which we undertook to defend her asiatic provinces by force of arms from any further conquests on the part of russia, and in return we asked for nothing more than a lease of cyprus, and a new crop of turkish promises that she would introduce reforms in her administration of armenia. no security whatever was asked or offered for the execution of those promises. we simply repeated the old mistake of 1856, of trusting entirely to the good faith of turkey, or to her gratitude. but this time the mistake was repeated after twenty-two years' continued experience of the futility of such a trust. as to gratitude, it must have been quite clear to the turks that we were acting in our own supposed interests in resisting the advance of russia at any cost. "no doubt we had occasion to remember, with some natural bitterness, the sacrifice to russia of all that the gallant general williams had done for turkey in his splendid defence of kars. but we ought to have remembered, also, how dreadful had been the account given by that able and gallant man of the detestable government which he was defending. we ought to have remembered how easy were the reforms which he had recommended, if the turkish government had been honest; and how they had all been systematically evaded. we ought, above all, to have considered the inevitable effect of this new treaty of guarantee upon the sharp cunning of the turks. they saw how eagerly it was sought by us, and they must have concluded that, whilst we were clearly not only earnest, but excited, in our opposition to russia, we were comparatively careless and lukewarm about any changes in their own system of government. _they must have seen that the new convention_[29] _practically superseded even the slightest restraints put upon them by the treaty of berlin, and that the christian population of armenia were practically left entirely at their mercy._ "let us look back upon all these transactions as a whole, and try to form some estimate of the position of responsibility in which they have placed us towards the christian populations subject to the ottoman dominion. in 1854-56 we had saved that dominion from destruction by defeating, and locally disarming, its great natural enemy. we had set up that dominion with new immunities from attack, and we had choked off from any protectorate over the christians the only power which would or could exert any such influence with effect. we had done this without providing any substitute of our own, except a recorded promise from the turks. we had provided no machinery whereby bad faith on the part of turkey could be proved and punished. then, twenty years later, in 1876, we had obstinately refused to join the other powers of europe in remedying this great defect, by putting a combined pressure on turkey to compel her to establish effective guarantee for the future. in 1878 we had denounced the treaty in which russia, by her own expenditure of blood and treasure, had imposed on turkey the obligations which we had admitted to be needful, but which we had ourselves declined to do anything to enforce. then, in the same year, at berlin, we had again done all we could to choke off the only power which had the means and the disposition to secure the fulfilment of any promises at all. _particularly in armenia we had substituted for a promise to russia which her power, her geographical position, and her pride might have really led her to enforce, another promise to all the powers which, on the face of it, was absurd--namely, a promise to let all the powers 'superintend the execution' of domestic reforms in a remote and very inaccessible country._ lastly, in the same year, as we had already choked off russia, we now proceeded by a separate convention to choke off also all the other powers collectively, by inducing turkey to give a special promise to ourselves, apart from them altogether. for the performance of this special promise we provided no security whatever, but trusted entirely, as we had done in 1856, to the good faith of a power which we knew had none. _with russia deeply offended and estranged, and the rest of europe set aside or superseded--such were the conditions under which we abandoned the christian subjects of the porte in asia to a government incurably barbarous and corrupt._ "and now, we are astonished and disgusted by finding that the terrible consequences of all this selfish folly have fallen on those whom we had professed, and whom we were bound by every consideration of honour, to protect. surely these years might have brought us a reconsideration of our position. the fever of our popular russophobia had sensibly abated. we had secured our "scientific frontier" in india, and russian expansion had taken a new direction in the far east. new combinations--and some new disseverments--had taken place in europe. the whole position of affairs was favourable to a policy of escape from bad traditions--from obsolete doctrines--and from duties which it was impossible we could discharge. surely we might have asked ourselves, what had we been doing all these years to fulfil those duties? nothing. and yet all along we were not ignorant that the vicious government which we had so long helped to sustain against all the natural agencies that would have brought it to an end long ago was getting no better, but rather worse. we knew this perfectly well, and we have recorded our knowledge of it in a document of unimpeachable authority. in the second year after the treaty of berlin, when the obligations we had undertaken under it were still fresh in our recollection, we had made one more endeavour to recall the ottoman power to some sense of shame, if not to some sense of duty. in 1880 we had a special envoy at the porte, one of our most distinguished public men--mr. goschen; and we had called together at constantinople a meeting of all the ambassadors of the six powers of europe who were signatories of the treaty of berlin. they drew up an identic note, which they all signed and presented to the porte. in that note they declared that no reforms had been, or were even on the way to being, adopted, and that so desperate was the misgovernment of the country, that 'it would lead in all probability to the destruction of the christian population of vast districts.' could a more dreadful confession have been made in respect to the conduct and policy of any christian government? "this identic note commented severely on the calculated falsehoods of all kinds, and on the cunning procrastinations, which characterized the conduct and language of the porte. it concluded by reminding that government, as an essential fact, 'that by treaty engagements turkey was bound to introduce the reforms which had been often indicated,' and that these reforms were to be 'carried out under the supervision of the powers.' "we might as well have addressed our representations to a convict just released from a long sentence, and determined at once to renew his career of crime. and so we had gone on for fifteen more years since 1880, failing to take, or even attempt taking, any effectual measures to protect the helpless populations subject to a government which we knew to be so cruel and oppressive--_populations towards whom we lay under so many responsibilities, from our persistent protection of their oppressors_. at last comes, in 1894, one of those appalling outbreaks of brutality on the part of the turks which always horrify, but need never astonish, the world. they are all according to what bishop butler would have called the 'natural constitution and course of things,' that is to say, they are the natural results of the nature and government of the ottoman turks." such is the nature of great britain's debt to us. it was rashly incurred by her statesmen. successive british governments have made strenuous efforts and run great risks to discharge it. but it has proved undischargeable for forty years, with consequences to us which are well known. this terrible war and the ensuing peace will give great britain both the power and the opportunity to discharge that obligation, and our weapons for enforcing our claim are the honour, the conscience and the never-failing sense of justice of england, scotland, wales, ireland and the british empire. i appeal to these in the name of my sorely-stricken nation, pale, prostrate and bleeding almost to death, to stand by us and fight our battle at the peace conference. and if my appeal reaches a wide enough circle of british and irish men and women, i am confident that my nation will not die, but will live and prosper, and carve out a future that will amply compensate her for the past. footnotes: [26] _our responsibilities for turkey_, by the duke of argyll, k.g., k.t., john murray, 1896, p. 72. [27] the supersession of article 16 of the treaty of san stefano by article 61 of the treaty of berlin. [28] _town topics_ of february 10, 1917, had the following: "the idiotic and ignorant criticism of the navy one hears occasionally, recalls an immortal answer by a harassed first lord, during an earlier armenian atrocity (1895-96)-"'will the right honourable gentleman tell the house definitely whether it is proposed to send a british battleship to armenia?' asked the bore who worried about every country but his own. "'it is not proposed to send any ships there,' replied the minister gravely. 'navigation, i am informed by expert advisers at the admiralty, has not been good in the vicinity of ararat since the cruise of the ark.'" would to god that this intelligence had reached the foreign offices of europe twenty years earlier, before the signing of the treaty of berlin. [29] the cyprus convention. xi an appeal to the coming peace conference gentlemen, this historic conference has come together to draw up a map of a new europe and a new near east which will in no part violate the principle of nationality--the great weakness and inherent injustice of former treaties, which has been largely responsible for the disastrous war now happily come to an end. you have also assembled as a great international tribunal to uphold the sanctity of law and humanity, and to give judgment as to the just reparation that must be made, and as to the penalties to be exacted for all outrages committed during the war against humanity and the laws and usages of civilized warfare. among the multitude of problems, great and small, that await a just and wise settlement at your hands, there is also the armenian question. this question may appear, to some of you at least, a small and insignificant one in the presence of the great and weighty questions of world-wide importance that await settlement. i claim for it without any fear of contradiction that in point of outraged humanity and civilization, measured by the sacrifice of innocence, the magnitude and unspeakable horrors of the martyrdom, destruction and ruin that has been brought upon this people with a calculated, deliberate object, and without the slightest provocation; i maintain that, on these incontestable grounds, this is the greatest wrong that ever demanded justice and reparation at the bar of a great international tribunal. and it is not turkey and germany alone who owe us reparation, although upon their shoulders lies the guilt for the innocent blood that has been ruthlessly shed, the wanton destruction that has been wrought and the untold suffering and sorrow brought upon this people during the war. all the great powers of europe have their share of responsibility for leaving them at the mercy of the turk to be murdered, burned, outraged, enslaved, to provide this or that european statesman the satisfaction of having scored a point against his opponent in the sordid jealousies and rivalries of conflicting interests. in 1877 russian armies, partly under armenian generals, occupied our country, and we hoped and believed that the hour of our liberation from the hideous nightmare of turkish domination had struck. it was a short-lived joy. the congress of berlin assembled soon after, tore up the treaty of san stefano which had given us the blessing of effective russian protection, compelled the liberating russian armies to evacuate our country, and left us once again the sport and prey of our turkish and kurdish tormentors. after the butcheries of 1895-96 great britain was prepared to exact effective guarantees from the sultan abdul hamid, if necessary by force of arms, against a repetition of these unspeakable barbarities; but the russian government of the day, sore at the rebuff administered to it by the treaty of berlin and the cyprus convention, opposed great britain's proposal of taking coercive measures to stay the hand of the great assassin. in 1913 a scheme of reforms proposed by russia formed the subject of discussion by the powers, and was finally agreed to by turkey after it had undergone such modifications and revisions at the instance of the turks, backed by germany, as to render it of little practical value. the war intervened before the scheme could be put into operation, and it remained a dead letter, as had all its predecessors. meanwhile massacre, outrage, rapine, plunder, and all conceivable forms of oppression and persecution went on without respite, though in varying degrees of intensity, culminating in the frightful hecatombs of the last two years. although, of course, such was not their object and intention, the net result of these transactions was to give the turk the opportunity, as events have unfortunately proved, of murdering, burning, drowning, torturing, violating, enslaving and forcibly converting to islam at least 2,000,000 unoffending and defenceless christians within the comparatively short space of forty years. i do not for a moment suggest that the authors of these treaties themselves foresaw such a result of their efforts. but that makes no difference to the result. europe backed "the wrong horse," as lord salisbury had the courage to say, and the stakes were the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent christians--men, women and children--and a sum of human suffering and misery such as the world has probably never seen before. i gratefully acknowledge the efforts made by the successive british, french, russian and italian governments, from time to time, to bring moral or diplomatic pressure upon the turks to treat us with less harshness and inhumanity. but the turk, young and old, knew that coercion would never be used against him. he treated all european representations with amusement and contempt and went his way relentlessly, intent upon wiping out the whole race. he felt more secure from the danger of coercion after the christian emperor william ii, on his return from his pilgrimage to the holy land, paid a visit to and fraternized with the sultan abdul hamid while his hands were still red with the blood of the fearful massacres of 1895-96. that, gentlemen, has been the net result of the solemn promises given by the turks in the treaty of berlin, for which every signatory power has its share of responsibility. since that treaty became the law of europe we have made numerous appeals and representations for the application of art. 61. the reply we received from the ministers of the signatory powers was almost the same every time and everywhere. "insistence on the application of art. 61 will lead to complications; you must wait for a favourable opportunity." gentlemen, that long-looked-for opportunity has at last come. armenia--"the little blood that is left to her"--stands at the bar of this conference, full of hope and expectation that the entente powers will compel turkey in the first place to make full reparation for the untold horrors, outrages and injustices that she has inflicted upon her; that they will compel germany to compensate her for her acquiescence in the atrocities committed by the turks while turkey was under her influence and control; and that they will add their own quota as a debt of honour and conscience in return for a part at least of what she has had to endure as a result of the diplomatic transactions cited above, for which they have their share of responsibility. you cannot give us back our dead, but this conference gives you the opportunity of exacting and making a reparation as generous as our trials and sacrifices have been heavy. "what do you expect this conference to give the armenian people as their adequate reparation and just rights?" i would probably be asked. this is what i should expect the conference to give to my nation, in all justice and equity: the formation of an autonomous armenia, comprising the vilayets of van, bitlis, erzeroum, kharput, diyarbekir and eastern sivas, also cilicia with an outlet on the gulf of alexandretta, say from the port of alexandretta to a few miles south-west of mersina. this state to be an internationally guaranteed neutral state with its ports and markets open to all nations. it would have an organic statute drawn up for it by the protecting powers, england, france, and russia, giving equality before the law to all the different elements of the population with extra-territorial rights and consular courts for europeans for a term of years. russia to act as mandatory of the protecting powers, and during the first few years the executive to consist of a governor-general or high commissioner and a mixed legislative council appointed by the protecting powers. a legislative assembly to be called together as soon as the country regains its normal state. the country being at present in a more or less chaotic state, an army of occupation will be necessary for as many years as will be required to organize and train an efficient gendarmerie from the local population. european advisers and heads of departments would be necessary, but there are large numbers of experienced armenian administrators, magistrates, post and telegraph inspectors, engineers, etc., etc., in the ottoman empire as well as in the caucasus, egypt and the balkans, who would gladly put their services at the disposal of their own country. some would probably come from america, india and elsewhere. adequate financial compensation by turkey[30] and germany would place at the disposal of the executive ample funds to begin the work of rebuilding the ruined towns and villages and reconstruction generally, and to carry on the government of the country until the first year's harvest is sown and gathered and revenue begins coming into the treasury. this is the scheme i would propose in broad outline, it being impossible to go into details here. "but there is not a large enough number of armenians left to form a state," i may be told, as i have been told so often recently. (i may say here, in parenthesis, that the turkish and german delegates cannot advance this objection, as their governments have denied the existence of any massacres.) that is an entirely mistaken assumption, created by the frequent but inaccurate use of the phrase "armenian extermination." the turks did make a final ruthless attempt to exterminate us, and have dealt us a staggering blow as a race; but, gentlemen, they have not quite succeeded in their nefarious design, and it would be a sad day, indeed, for civilization if such a design had succeeded. there are to-day 500,000 turkish armenians in the parts of vilayets in occupation of the russian armies, in the caucasus and northern persia. far from their spirits being broken, these people are animated with the unshakable determination that their beloved country shall rise again from its ashes and their nation revive and enter upon a new era of security and free development. armenians all over the world are animated with the same spirit and determination. of the above half-million 50,000 or 60,000, mostly able-bodied men, are in different parts of the occupied provinces. there are a little over 250,000 refugees in the caucasus and persia, and some 200,000 emigrants and refugees from pre-war massacres; most of them are ready to return to their homes, one potent reason for the readiness of the pre-war emigrants to return being the growing scarcity and dearness of land in the fertile parts of the caucasus. then there are the hundreds of thousands of armenians in concentration camps in northern mesopotamia and syria. how many are alive to return to their devastated homes, i cannot say. perhaps the turkish delegate will be able to inform the conference on that point. then there are still large numbers of armenians--though mostly old men, women and children, so far as our information goes--in anatolia and thrace, and over 200,000 mostly young, intelligent, ambitious men, who have emigrated since the beginning of abdul hamid's reign of terror, to the united states, egypt, the balkans, and different other countries. a not unimportant number of these will return to their native land ready to "do their bit" in the--to them--sacred work of its reconstruction and regeneration with invincible industry. this will give us within a very short time an armenian population of not much under one million souls in the proposed autonomous armenia. it may not form a majority taken as a whole, but it will form the largest coherent ethnological element. in many important centres, such as van, alashgerd, etc., where there are almost no turks left and a much smaller number of kurds than there was before the war, it will form an absolute majority. this is an important fact which the conference should bear in mind. although the armenian element is sadly reduced in numbers, the great majority of the turkish and kindred elements in these occupied provinces have, as is their wont, followed the retreating turkish armies and will probably never return. on the other hand, armenians have for some time past and do still percolate through the turkish lines in groups of various sizes and gain the russian lines. this movement of population will almost certainly continue for some years, tending to increase the armenian and reduce the turkish element in the proposed armenian state, if such a state is set up. similar movements of populations have always taken place whenever any piece of turkish territory has passed under christian rule. i may also remind the congress that when greece achieved her independence, the population of greece proper did not exceed 400,000. another important point bearing on this question of population is the fact, to which most students of near eastern affairs have borne witness, that the armenian race is endowed with extraordinary powers of recuperation, is almost entirely free from the diseases that impede the rapid growth of population, and is one of the most prolific races in the world. their neighbours, on the evidence of travellers and students, are less free from disease and, in spite of polygamy, or perhaps partly because of it, are much less prolific. but apart from mere counting of heads, it is, i believe, generally known and admitted that there is a vast difference between the moral, intellectual, economic, and industrial value of the armenian population as compared with most of its neighbours, the armenians being markedly superior in every field of human activity. they have proved this even under the most trying handicaps, and when they have had a fair field they have easily proved themselves the equals of europeans. in fact, the armenian mind is much more european than asiatic.[31] lord cromer has said that "the armenians with the syrians, are the intellectual cream of near eastern peoples." but apart from all these practical and certainly essential and vital considerations there remains, messieurs, the moral argument which, i feel quite certain, this august conference, representing the will and the conscience of europe, is not minded to ignore. after the massacres and deportations of 1915 talaat bey is reported to have said: "i have killed the idea of armenian autonomy for at least fifty years." whether he said it or not, that was clearly the object--to kill the armenian question by wiping out the armenian race, and incidentally to destroy the roots of christianity in asia minor. is this conference going to condone and justify the barbarous and revolting practice, as a state policy, of the deliberate attempt to murder a whole nation in cold blood, by permitting that infamous policy to succeed in its object? is it conceivable that this historic conference can bring itself to decree that the myriads of our brothers and sisters who have fallen victims to the super-tyrants' fury, for their religion and their nation, as well as those who have fallen in the common struggle for right, have suffered and died in vain? in the name not only of the living, but also of the dead, i appeal to you; i appeal to the heart and conscience of europe to desist from enacting such a flagrant and cruel injustice. m. paul doumer, late president of the french senate, declared in paris not long ago, with a fine sense of french chivalry and outraged humanity, that when the question of armenian population came to be considered at the end of the war, the dead must be counted with the living. who but my martyred nation has the moral right to invoke the memorable and exalted words of the french officer who, at a moment of dire straits for men, looked at his fallen heroes around him and exclaimed "debout les morts!"? i appeal to you, in particular, great and noble-hearted russia, our mighty neighbour and protector. our destiny is indissolubly bound up with yours. without the protection of your mighty sword and your most generous grants to our refugees, the turk would have succeeded in his sinister design. we will remain ever grateful to you, and loyal to the death. we have always proved our unswerving loyalty to you in your hour of peril. we in our turn have rendered services which have been of value to you. your generals gave our men great praise. your foremost newspapers hailed our soldiers and volunteers, and with truth, as the saviours of the caucasus. your great statesmen and ministers declared in the duma that our terrible sufferings were chiefly due to our loyalty to russia. have trust in us. help us to stand on our feet again and rebuild our devastated homes. _leave us freedom to develop and progress according to our own national genius._ some of your newspapers are speaking of a scheme to plant russian colonies in armenia, "to create a dividing zone between the russian and turkish armenians."[32] if this is true, it is an injustice. i am speaking candidly as a friend of russia, and a supporter of my nationality as my birthright. russians will always be welcome amongst us. to show our feelings towards you i may mention the fact that in conversation between themselves armenians do not speak of you as "russians" but as "kã©ri," which means "uncle." but it is manifestly unfair to establish colonies and apportion lands before the repatriation of our numerous refugees, some of whom may be the owners of the land given away. besides, what is the object or the necessity of a "dividing zone" between the turkish and russian armenians? we are all ready to rally to your support again if the need should arise, as we have always done in your righteous struggle against barbarism. such measures, before the blood of our numerous victims is dry on our land, grieve and perplex us. i say again, we welcome your protection, but enable us to say always, as sir wilfrid laurier said of the french canadians, "we are loyal because we are free." with such just and liberal treatment from you, we will not only create in a short time important markets for your trade down to the shores of the mediterranean, but you will have in us a reliable bulwark and counterpoise, on your southern frontier, against the turbulent elements who are a standing menace to that frontier. the stronger you help us to grow, the more secure that frontier of your empire will be. to england, france and italy i appeal jointly with russia, to prevent the congress from finally condemning to death our long-cherished and legitimate aspirations of national regeneration, for which we have paid such a fearful price. in particular i appeal to you to give us an outlet to the sea, not only as an indispensable necessity of our economic life and development, but also as the avenue of western culture which a hard and cruel fate has so long withheld from us. let the radiant sun of liberty and security shine again on our land of sorrow and drive away for ever the stifling miasma of the turkish blight, and there will spring to life, within a generation, a people with a passionate craving for the light and progress of the west--a people morally and mentally equipped and adapted for the assimilation of the new dispensation not only for its own benefit, but also for its dissemination amongst its less advanced neighbours--a well-qualified and willing instrument and leaven of christian civilization. footnotes: [30] a friend of mine, a turkish armenian well acquainted with local conditions, told me that â£50,000,000 would be a conservative estimate of the material loss of the 1,200,000 massacred, deported, enslaved, but in all cases despoiled, armenians. [31] m. j. de morgan says in an article in _la revue de paris_ (may 1, 1916): "les armã©niens sont des orientaux par leur habitat seulement, mais des europã©ens par leurs origins, leur parler, leur religion, leurs moeurs et leurs aptitudes." [32] the _retch_, the organ of the constitutional democrats in russia, has published the following in its issue of july 28, 1916 (o.s.)-"the scheme of settling russian emigrants in the occupied parts of turkish armenia, recently discussed in the duma, is being energetically carried out. this matter has been the subject of a lively discussion between the emigration and military authorities. investigations are in progress, not only in the districts near the frontier, but also further afield, the fertile mush valley being the object of special attention. agricultural battalions have been in course of organization since last autumn and already number 5000 men. more will be found presently. _armenians and georgians are excluded._ the task of these young arms is to cultivate the fields on which investigations have been carried out, under the supervision of agricultural experts, in order to facilitate the provisioning of the army. the question of emigrating the families of these men is also under consideration. "side by side with this scheme there exists another scheme of settling cossacks in turkish armenia, on similar lines to what has already been done in northern caucasus with good results. _those who have conceived these schemes have in view the creation of a sufficiently broad zone inhabited by russians, separating the russian armenians from the turkish armenians._ "armenian refugees are gradually returning to their country and resuming the work of cultivating their lands. they usually settle in the villages that have suffered least, their own villages having been totally ruined. "to avoid confusion, the grand duke nicholas issued a ukase in march last, warning these returned refugees to keep themselves in readiness to vacate these districts on the establishment of russian civil administration. in the same ukase the commander-in-chief of the caucasian army has decreed that the vacant lands in the plains of alashkert, diadin and bayazid may be given in hire up to the time of the return of their rightful owners. _general yudenitch has issued orders, however, prohibiting the settlement in these places of any other immigrants except russians and cossacks._ only those natives are permitted to return who are able to prove ownership of land or property by legal documents. this arrangement makes it impossible for the natives (armenians) to return to their homes because it is ridiculous to speak of title-deeds, when dealing with land in turkey; and as for other documents which prove ownership, these always get lost during flight. "in the above three plains, also in parts of the plain of bassain, the surviving native inhabitants are debarred from returning to their homes and resuming their peaceful occupations." postscript since the foregoing pages were written and before they had left the printer's hands, two momentous events have occurred which must profoundly influence not only the remaining course of the war, but also, and more especially, the settlement of the peace on its termination: two events that together mark the greatest triumph of democracy and civilization the world has seen. the russian revolution and the entry of the great american republic into the ranks of the champions of right and humanity have not only brought peace nearer, they have banished any doubt that may have existed in the minds of sceptics both in belligerent and neutral countries that this war of wars is a struggle between the forces of light and liberty and the powers of darkness and reaction. after watching the course of the struggle for more than thirty months, taking note of the difference between the methods of warfare employed by the opposing groups of belligerents; after ascertaining their respective aims; after long, patient and careful deliberation, the greatest of all the neutral judges came to the conclusion that "civilization itself seems to be in the balance." (it will not be forgotten in the entente countries, i feel sure, that though unlimited submarine "frightfulness" was the immediate _casus belli_, the martyrdom of armenia played an important part in leading president wilson and the people of the united states to that conclusion.) the world's greatest democracy, imbued with a deep-rooted love of peace and abhorrence of war as to which no doubt or suspicion anywhere exists, has broken away from a century-old tradition, which was the very foundation of its external policy, and drawn the sword impelled not by ambition or the furtherance of material interests of any kind, but by honour and the instinctive call of true chivalry to stand by those who have carried on a long and fierce struggle to save the "desperately assaulted" free institutions, principles and ideals which are its own and humanity's most precious and sacred possessions. for the first time in history--i think one can safely say that--a great nation, led by a great and sagacious leader, has gone to war prompted almost entirely with the disinterested motive of upholding its own ideals and the ideals and rights of humanity--truly an event of which the best elements of the human race will always be proud; which will ever stand out as a bright and noble landmark in the history of the world. while these epoch-making events have stamped the cause of the allies with the seal of supreme moral sanction, they have also made assurance doubly sure that the end of the war will confer upon the world a lasting peace based upon _real_ justice and equity. the presence of the delegates of the united states at the peace conference side by side with the representatives of the british empire, france, italy, and free russia will constitute a sure and sterling guarantee to the world that the determining factors in the moulding of its destinies will not be the selfish interests, avowed or veiled, of this or that empire, not the whims and ambitions of despots and ruling castes or the greed of cosmopolitan financiers, but "the pure milk," of the broad interests of justice and peace, the rights of nations great and small and the freedom and welfare of mankind itself. to the armenian people it is a final pledge that the reparation to be demanded and obtained for them, in the terms of peace will be commensurate, in full measure, with the magnitude of the wrongs and sufferings inflicted upon them because, in a vast waste of ancient barbarism and fraud, they formed an oasis embodying the ideals and principles which the democracies of europe and america are struggling to vindicate. if the great and free nations of europe have greeted these auspicious events with the satisfaction and enthusiasm we have witnessed in these last days, it can be readily imagined how intense is the rejoicing they have evoked in the hearts of the most ruthlessly oppressed of all peoples, so long denied the blessings whose advent has been placed beyond all doubt by president wilson's clarion call to democracy and by the declarations of the provisional government of free russia. that the declarations of the provisional government of free and regenerated russia have been received with profound satisfaction by armenians, goes without saying. these declarations added to those already made by the allied governments in regard to their war-aims, and president wilson's "declaration of liberty"--as his inspiring and memorable address to congress has been rightly called--finally ensure the realization of armenia's legitimate aspiration to freedom and self-government. and if the russian people should decide that the new russia shall be a republic, that would open out the vista of a thoroughly democratic, integral and united armenian state free to work out her regeneration according to her own national genius, under the guidance of the protecting powers and with their and america's generous moral and material support. america's interest in armenia and the excellent work of her missions in numerous armenian centres both in armenia itself and throughout asia minor leave no doubt that when the time for reconstruction comes, american aid--moral, material and cultural--will be forthcoming on a scale and in a manner worthy of that great country and the lofty aims for which she entered the war. for, what part of the vast war-stricken area in europe and the near east more acutely and tragically exemplifies the evils which the allies and the united states are determined to put an end to once and for all, and what nobler and more fitting culmination to their gigantic efforts and sacrifices for humanity, than the redemption and re-birth of this thrice-martyred ancient christian people? before concluding, i take this opportunity to call attention to a passage in mr. asquith's speech in the house of commons on the entry of the united states into the war, which brings into strong relief the guilt of the governments of the central powers in the stupendous crime of attempting the murder of a nation, although the occasion of the speech was of course the very antithesis of the attitude of the central powers towards the armenian atrocities. "in such a situation," said mr. asquith, "aloofness is seen to be not only a blunder but a crime. to stand aside with stopped ears, with folded arms, with an averted gaze, when you have the power to intervene is to become not a mere spectator, but an accomplice."[33] i am quoting this striking utterance by one of england's greatest living statesmen also in the hope that it may furnish food for reflection to those pro-turks who have maintained during pre-war massacres, and still maintain, with count reventlow and his followers, that the massacre of his christian subjects by the turk is his own concern, and that nobody has the right or the obligation to intervene and create new conditions that will eliminate the possibility of its recurrence. footnote: [33] _the times_, april 19, 1917. appendix article xvi of the treaty of san stefano as the evacuation by the russian troops of the territory which they occupy in armenia, and which is to be restored to turkey, might give rise to conflicts and complications detrimental to the maintenance of good relations between the two countries, the sublime porte engages to carry into effect, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by armenians, and to guarantee their security from kurds and circassians. article lxi of the treaty of berlin the sublime porte undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the armenians, and to guarantee their security against the circassians and kurds. it will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the powers, who will superintend their application. the cyprus convention turkey no. 36 (1878) correspondence respecting the convention between great britain and turkey, of june 4, 1878. presented to the houses of parliament by command of her majesty 1878. list of papers no. 1. the marquis of salisbury to mr. layard, may 30, 1878. no. 2. sir a. h. layard to the marquis of salisbury, one inclosure june 5, 1878. no. 3. sir a. h. layard to the marquis of salisbury, one inclosure july 1, 1878. no. 1 is the letter which conveys to mr. layard lord salisbury's instructions for entering into the convention (as follows)-the marquis of salisbury to mr. layard. foreign office, may 30, 1878. sir, the progress of the confidential negotiations which have for some time past been in progress between her majesty's government and the government of russia make it probable that those articles of the treaty of san stefano which concern european turkey will be sufficiently modified to bring them into harmony with the interests of the other european powers, and of england in particular. there is, however, no such prospect with respect to that portion of the treaty which concerns turkey in asia. it is sufficiently manifest that, in respect to batoum and the fortresses north of the araxes, the government of russia is not prepared to recede from the stipulations to which the porte has been led by the events of the war to consent. her majesty's government have consequently been forced to consider the effect which these agreements, if they are neither annulled nor counteracted, will have upon the future of the asiatic provinces of the ottoman empire and upon the interests of england, which are closely affected by the condition of those provinces. it is impossible that her majesty's government can look upon these changes with indifference. asiatic turkey contains populations of many different races and creeds, possessing no capacity for self-government[34] and no aspirations for independence, but owing their tranquillity and whatever prospect of political well-being they possess entirely to the rule of the sultan. but the government of the ottoman dynasty is that of an ancient but still alien conqueror, resting more upon actual power than upon the sympathies of common nationality. the defeat which the turkish arms have sustained and the known embarrassments of the government will produce a general belief in its decadence and an expectation of speedy political change, which in the east are more dangerous than actual discontent to the stability of a government. if the population of syria, asia minor, and mesopotamia see that the porte has no guarantee for its continued existence but its own strength, they will, after the evidence which recent events have furnished of the frailty of that reliance, begin to calculate upon the speedy fall of the ottoman domination, and to turn their eyes towards its successor. even if it be certain that batoum and ardahan and kars will not become the base from which emissaries of intrigue will issue forth, to be in due time followed by invading armies, the mere retention of them by russia will exercise a powerful influence in disintegrating the asiatic dominion of the porte. as a monument of feeble defence on the one side, and successful aggression on the other, they will be regarded by the asiatic population as foreboding the course of political history in the immediate future, and will stimulate, by the combined action of hope and fear, devotion to the power which is in the ascendant, and desertion of the power which is thought to be falling into decay. it is impossible for her majesty's government to accept, without making an effort to avert it, the effect which such a state of feeling would produce upon regions whose political condition deeply concerns the oriental interests of great britain. they do not propose to attempt the accomplishment of this object by taking military measures for the purpose of replacing the conquered districts in the possession of the porte. such an undertaking would be arduous and costly, and would involve great calamities, and it would not be effective for the object which her majesty's government have in view, unless subsequently strengthened by precautions which can be taken almost as effectually without incurring the miseries of a preliminary war. the only provision which can furnish a substantial security for the stability of ottoman rule in asiatic turkey, and which would be as essential after the re-conquest of the russian annexations as it is now, is an engagement on the part of a power strong enough to fulfil it, that any further encroachments by russia upon turkish territory in asia will be prevented by force of arms. such an undertaking, if given fully and unreservedly, will prevent the occurrence of the contingency which would bring it into operation, and will, at the same time, give to the populations of the asiatic provinces the requisite confidence that turkish rule in asia is not destined to a speedy fall. there are, however, two conditions which it would be necessary for the porte to subscribe before england could give such assurance. her majesty's government intimated to the porte, on the occasion of the conference at constantinople, that they were not prepared to sanction misgovernment and oppression, and it will be requisite, before they can enter into any agreement for the defence of the asiatic territories of the porte in certain eventualities, that they should be formally assured of the intention of the porte to introduce the necessary reforms into the government of the christian and other subjects of the porte in these regions. it is not desirable to require more than an engagement in general terms; for the specific measures to be taken could only be defined after a more careful inquiry and deliberation than could be secured at the present juncture. it is not impossible that a careful selection and a faithful support of the individual officers to whom power is to be entrusted in those countries would be a more important element in the improvement of the condition of the people than even legislative changes; but the assurances required to give england a right to insist on satisfactory arrangements for these purposes will be an indispensable part of any agreement to which her majesty's government could consent. it will further be necessary, in order to enable her majesty's government efficiently to execute the engagements now proposed, that they should occupy a position near the coast of asia minor and syria. the proximity of british officers, and, if necessary, british troops, will be the best security that all the objects of this agreement shall be attained. the island of cyprus appears to them to be in all respects the most available for this object. her majesty's government do not wish to ask the sultan to alienate territory from his sovereignty or to diminish the receipts which now pass into his treasury. they will, therefore, propose that, while the administration and occupation of the island shall be assigned to her majesty, the territory shall still continue to be part of the ottoman empire, and that the excess of the revenue over the expenditure, whatever it at present may be, shall be paid over annually by the british government to the treasury of the sultan. inasmuch as the whole of this proposal is due to the annexations which russia has made in asiatic turkey, and the consequences which it is apprehended will flow therefrom, it must be fully understood that, if the cause of the danger should cease, the precautionary agreement will cease at the same time. if the government of russia should at any time surrender to the porte the territory it has acquired in asia by the recent war, the stipulations in the proposed agreements will cease to operate, and the island will be immediately evacuated. i request, therefore, your excellency to propose to the porte to agree to a convention to the following effect, and i have to convey to you full authority to conclude the same on behalf of the queen and of her majesty's government- "if batoum, ardahan, kars, or any of them shall be retained by russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by russia to take possession of any further portion of the asiatic territories of the sultan, as fixed by the definitive treaty of peace, england engages to join the sultan in defending them by force of arms. in return, the sultan promises to england to introduce necessary reforms (to be agreed upon later between the two powers) into the government of the christian and other subjects of the porte in these territories; and, in order to enable england to make necessary provision for executing her engagement the sultan further consents to assign the island of cyprus to be occupied and administered by england." i am, etc., (signed) salisbury. no. 2 is the convention itself, as follows-article i if batoum, ardahan, kars, or any of them shall be retained by russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by russia to take possession of any further territories of his imperial majesty the sultan in asia, as fixed by the definitive treaty of peace, england engages to join his imperial majesty the sultan in defending them by force of arms. in return, his imperial majesty the sultan promises to england to introduce necessary reforms, to be agreed upon later by the two powers, into the government and for the protection of the christian and other subjects of the porte in these territories; and in order to enable england to make necessary provision for executing her engagement his imperial majesty the sultan further consents to assign the island of cyprus to be occupied and administered by england. article ii the present convention shall be ratified, and the ratifications thereof shall be exchanged, within the space of one month, or sooner if possible. in witness whereof the respective plenipotentiaries have signed the same, and have affixed thereto the seal of their arms. done at constantinople, the fourth day of june, in the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight. (l.s.) a. h. layard. (l.s.) safvet. no. 3 is the annex to the above convention, consisting of six articles, signed at constantinople on july 1, 1878, by a. h. layard and safvet respectively. the first five articles deal with the manner in which the island of cyprus would be governed, whilst under british occupation. the final article, viz. article vi, is as follows- "that if russia restores to turkey kars and the other conquests made by her in armenia during the last war, the island of cyprus will be evacuated by england; and the convention of june 4, 1878, will be at an end." note (p. 29.) "the turanian movement is not the spasmodic effort of a few enthusiasts. it represents a carefully matured plan most elaborately studied in its philosophical and practical aspects, and carried out on a vast and ambitious scale. the spirit of its teaching has been made to permeate all classes of the purely turkish population, including women; while, in the army, it has been taught in the shape of a patriotic creed, and the force of military discipline has been laid at the service of its promoters. the movement, therefore, no longer expresses the creed of a limited number of nationalist fanatics, represented by the central committee of union and progress, or the extremist section of it, but of practically the whole of the turkish people, backed by the formidable power of the army. thus, the view that would represent the turkish people as unwitting or unwilling tools in the hands of the unionist government can no longer be accepted. the turkish race as a whole, with but few exceptions, stands convicted of indulging in a wanton political dream, for the realization of which it seized the opportunity of the world-war to commit most atrocious crimes. it is true that the initial responsibility lies with the c.u.p., but the whole of the turkish nation has since shared the responsibility by its ready response. this is borne out by the easy success attained by the unionist government in modifying--with hardly a dissentient voice--the system of state education, embracing even the elementary schools, and in misappropriating the _wakfs_ funds. "military officers of the higher grades were instructed to pay periodical visits to the barracks and there deliver lectures of a mixed religious and racial character, prepared by the government. were not the turkish heart a ready soil, such sowings would not have yielded such an early and abundant harvest. in spite of successive admixtures of blood, the turks have retained the original instincts of the wild men of the steppes, and a creed aiming at conquest and domination through destruction and bloodshed found eager response in their souls. islam, sympathetic as it is, despite its militant character, was sacrificed for the realization of this widest of human dreams. there was not enough of 'iron and blood' in its teaching. the turanian creed, framed on the prussian pattern of militarism, appealed a thousand times more to the turks' savage nature; and the proof is that, without any compulsion being employed, it quickly supplanted the religious heritage of centuries. the troops took up readily the heroic turanian songs in place of the usual prayers which had, until lately, been compulsory, but are so no more. the simplest of anatolians willingly accepted the idea that the prophet of later days is enver! the fundamental rules of islam became, for them, the testimony (for the unity of god), reason, character, and the collection of contributions for the government and the war under the turkish banner." (from an article entitled "turanian and moslem" in _the near east_, april 20, 1917.) footnote: [34] by a curious irony of events, at the time these lines were written by the great english statesman, egypt was governed by an armenian prime minister, nubar pasha, while the victorious russian army in the caucasus was under the command of the armenian general loris melikoff, the victor of kars, who later became minister of the interior and one of the most trusted advisers of the czar liberator. it is interesting to note that egypt had an armenian prime minister during the reign of the khalif al-mustansir (1036-94) by the name of badr-el-gamali (probably a variation of bedros gamalian), "who governed wisely and well for twenty years (1073-94)."--_see_ adrian fortescue: _the lesser eastern churches_, p. 237. printed in great britain by richard clay & sons, limited, brunswick st., stamford st., s.e., and bungay, suffolk. armenia: a year at erzeroom, and on the frontiers of russia, turkey, and persia. by the hon. robert curzon, author of "visits to the monasteries of the levant." map and woodcuts. new york: harper & brothers, publishers, 82 beekman street. 1854. preface. almost from time immemorial a border warfare has been carried on between the koordish tribes on the confines of turkey and persia, in the mountainous country beginning at mount ararat toward the north, and continuing southward to the low lands, where the shat al arab, the name of the mighty river formed by the junction of the tigris and the euphrates, pours those great volumes of water into the persian gulf. the consequence of the unsettled state of affairs in those wild districts was, that the roads were unsafe for travelers; merchants were afraid to trust their merchandise to the conveyance even of well-armed caravans, for they were constantly pillaged by the koords, headed in our days by the great chieftains beder khan bey, noor ullah bey, khan abdall, and khan mahmoud. the chains of mountains which occupy great part of the country in question are for months every year covered with snow, which even in the elevated plains lies at the depth of many yards; the bands of robbers constantly on the watch for plunder of any kind prevented the mountain paths from being kept open, so that those who escaped from the long lances of the koords perished in the avalanches and the snowdrifts by hundreds every year. to put a stop, or at least a check, to so lamentable a state of things, the governments of turkey and persia requested the assistance of england and russia to draw up a treaty of peace, and to come to a distinct understanding as to where the line of border ran between the two empires; for hitherto the koordish tribes of turkey made it a virtue to plunder a persian village, and the persians, on their side, considered no action more meritorious, as well as profitable, than an inroad on the turkish frontier, the forays on both sides being conducted on the same plan. the invading party, always on horseback, and with a number of trained led horses, which could travel one hundred miles without flagging, managed to arrive in the neighborhood of the devoted village one hour before sunrise. the barking of the village curs was the first notice to the sleeping inhabitants that the enemy was literally at the door. the houses were fired in every direction; the people awoke from sleep, and, trying in confusion to escape, were speared on their thresholds by their invaders; the place was plundered of every thing worth taking; and one hour after sunrise the invading bands were in full retreat, driving before them the flocks and herds of their victims, and the children and girls of the village bound on the led horses, to be sold or brought up as slaves; the rest having, young and old, men and women, been killed without mercy, to prevent their giving the alarm: their victors frequently coming down upon them from a distance of one hundred to three hundred miles. in hopes of remedying these misfortunes, a conference was appointed at erzeroom, where a turkish plenipotentiary, noori effendi; a persian plenipotentiary, merza jaffer khan; a russian commissioner, colonel dainese; and an english commissioner, colonel williams, of the royal artillery, were to meet, each with a numerous suite, to discuss the position of the boundary, and to check the border incursions of the koordish tribes, both by argument and by force of arms, the troops of both nations being ordered to assist the deliberations of the congress at erzeroom by every endeavor on their part to keep the country in a temporary state of tranquillity. the plenipotentiaries on the part of turkey and persia, and the english and russian commissioners, entered upon their arduous task at the beginning of the year 1842. colonel williams, to whom the duties of the english commission had been intrusted, was too unwell to proceed to erzeroom, and i was appointed in his stead, being at that time private secretary to sir stratford canning, her majesty's embassador at constantinople. colonel williams afterward recovered so much that he was able to set out, and we started together as joint commissioners, in company with colonel (afterward general) dainese, on the part of russia, a gentleman of very considerable talents and attainments. the discussions between the two governments were protracted by every conceivable difficulty, which was thrown in the way of the commissioners principally by the turks. at length, in june, 1847, a treaty was signed, in which the confines of the two empires were defined: these, however, being situated in places never surveyed, and only known by traditional maps, which had copied the names of places one from another since the invention of engraving, it was considered advisable that the true situations of these places should be verified in a scientific manner; consequently, a new commission was named in the year 1848, whose officers were instructed to define the actual position of the spots enumerated in the treaty above mentioned. these commissioners consisted of dervish pasha for turkey, merza jaffer for persia, colonel williams for england, and colonel ktchirikoff for russia. this party left bagdad in 1848, surveyed the whole of that hitherto unexplored region, among the koordish and original christian tribes, which extends to the east of mesopotamia, till they finished their difficult and dangerous task at mount ararat, on the 16th of september, 1852. the results of this expedition are, i hope, to be presented to the public by the pen of colonel williams, and will, i trust, throw a new and interesting light upon the manners and customs of the wild mountaineers of those districts, and give much information relating to the chaldeans, maronites, nestorians, and other christian churches converted in the earliest ages by the successors of the apostles, of whom we know very little, no travelers hitherto having had the opportunities of investigating their actual condition and their religious tenets which have been afforded to colonel williams and the little army under his command. armenia, the cradle of the human family, inoffensive and worthless of itself, has for centuries, indeed from the beginning of time, been a bone of contention between conflicting powers: scarcely has it been made acquainted with the blessings of tranquillity and peace, through the mediation of great britain, than again it is to become the theatre of war, again to be overrun with bands of armed men seeking each other's destruction, in a climate which may afford them burial when dead, but which is too barren and inhospitable to provide them with the necessaries of life; and this to satisfy the ambition of a distant potentate, by whose success they gain no advantage in this world or in the next. it is much to be deplored that the emperor of russia, by his want of principle, has brought the christian religion into disrepute; for throughout the levant the christians have for years been waiting an opportunity to rise against the oppressors of their fortunes and their faith. the manner in which the czar has put himself so flagrantly in the wrong will be a check to the progress of christianity. that the step he has now been taking has been the great object of his reign, as well as that of all his predecessors since the time of peter the great, will be illustrated in the following pages. the accession of a christian emperor to the throne of constantinople will be an event of greater consequence than is generally imagined; for the sultan of roum is considered by all mohammedans in india, africa, and all parts of the world, to be the vicegerent of god upon earth, and the caliph or successor of mohammed; his downfall, therefore, would shatter the whole fabric of the mohammedan faith, for the sultan is the pride and glory of islam, and the pale crescent of the east will wane and set when kurie eleison is chanted again under the ancient dome of st. sofia. what an unfortunate mistake has been made in not waiting for a real and just occasion for pressing forward the ranks of the cross against the crescent! then who would not have joined a righteous cause? who would not have given his wealth, his assistance, or his life, in the defense of his faith against the enemies of his religion? i feel that, in laying this little book before the public, i am committing a rash act, for i am perfectly aware that it has many imperfections. i was prevented from visiting several important places in armenia by an illness so severe, brought on by the unhealthy climate, that i have not been able to take an active part in life since that time. the following pages were written in a very few days, at a time when other occupations prevented me from giving them that attention which should always be afforded to a work that is intended for the perusal of the public. nevertheless, i consider that, as the countries described are so little known, and as it is not improbable that events of great importance may take place within their boundaries, i should be open to greater blame in withholding any information, however humble, than in presenting to the reader a meagre account of those wild and sterile regions, whose climate and manners are so different from those which are generally described in the works of oriental travelers. these sketches, slight as they are, may perhaps be found useful to the members of any expedition which the chances of war may occasion to be sent into those remote countries, by giving them beforehand some intimation of the preparations necessary to be made for their journey through a district where they would encounter at every step difficulties which they might not have been led to expect in a latitude considerably to the south of the bay of naples. contents. chapter i. the "bad black sea."--coal-field near the bosporus.--trebizond from the sea.--fish and turkeys.--the bazaars.--coronas.--ancient tombs.--church of st. sofia.--preservation of old manners and ceremonies.--toilet of a person of distinction.--russian loss in 1828-9.--ancient prayer.--varna.--statistics of wallachia.--visit to abdallah pasha.--his outward appearance.--his love of medical experiments.--trade of trebizond page 17 chapter ii. departure from trebizond.--a rough road.--turkish pack-horses.--value of tea.--the pipe in the east.--mountain riding.--instinct of the horse.--a caravan overwhelmed by an avalanche.--mountain of hoshabounar.--a ride down the mountain.--arrival at erzeroom 35 chapter iii. the consulate at erzeroom.--subterranean dwellings.--snow-blindness.-effects of the severe climate.--the city: its population, defenses, and buildings.--our house and household.--armenian country-houses.--the ox-stable 45 chapter iv. narrow escape from suffocation.--death of noori effendi.--a good shot.--history of mirza tekee.--persian ideas of the principles of government.--the "blood-drinker."--massacre at kerbela.--sanctity of the place.--history of hossein.--attack on kerbela, and defeat of the persians.--good effects of commissioners' exertions 61 chapter v. the boundary question.--koordish chiefs.--torture of artin, an american christian.--improved state of society in turkey.--execution of a koord.--power of fatalism.--gratitude of artin's family page 81 chapter vi. the clock of erzeroom.--a pasha's notions of horology.--pathology of clocks.--the tower and dungeon.--ingenious mode of torture. --the modern prison 99 chapter vii. spring in erzeroom.--coffee-house diversions.--koordish exploits.--summer employment.--preparation of tezek.--its varieties and uses 105 chapter viii. the prophet of khoi.--climate.--effects of great elevation above the sea.--the genus homo.--african gold-diggings.--sale of a family.--site of paradise.--tradition of khosref purveez.--flowers.--a flea-antidote.--origin of the tulip.--a party at the cave of ferhad, and its results.--translation from hafiz 110 chapter ix. the bear.--ruins of a genoese castle.--lynx.--lemming.--cara guz.--gerboa.--wolves.--wild sheep.--a hunting adventure.--camels.--peculiar method of feeding.--degeneration of domestic animals 125 chapter x. birds.--great variety and vast numbers of birds.--flocks of geese.--employment for the sportsman.--the captive crane.--wild and tame geese.--the pious and profane ancestors.--list of birds found at erzeroom 132 chapter xi. excursion to the lake of tortoom.--romantic bridge.--gloomy effect of the lake.--singular boat.--"evaporation" of a pistol.--kiamili pasha.--extraordinary marksman.--alarming illness of the author.--an earthquake.--lives lost through intense cold.--the author recovers page 145 chapter xii. start for trebizond.--personal appearance of the author.--mountain pass.--reception at beyboort.--misfortunes of mustapha.--pass of zigana dagh.--arrival at trebizond 155 chapter xiii. former history of trebizond.--ravages of the goths.--their siege and capture of the city.--dynasties of courtenai and the comneni.--the "emperor" david.--conquest of trebizond by mehemet ii. 166 chapter xiv. impassable character of the country.--dependence of persia on the czar.--russian aggrandizement.--delays of the western powers.--russian acquisitions from turkey and persia.--oppression of the russian government.--the conscription.--armenian emigration.--the armenian patriarch.--latent power of the pope.--anomalous aspect of religious questions 178 chapter xv. ecclesiastical history.--supposed letter of abgarus, king of edessa, to our savior, and the answer.--promulgation and establishment of christianity.--labors of mesrob maschdots.--separation of the armenian church from that of constantinople.--hierarchy and religious establishments.--superstition of the lower classes.--sacerdotal vestments.--the holy books.--romish branch of the church.--labors of mechitar.--his establishment near venice.--diffusion of the scriptures 194 chapter xvi. modern division of armenia.--population.--manners and customs of the christians.--superiority of the mohammedans page 209 chapter xvii. armenian manuscripts.--manuscripts at etchmiazin.--comparative value of manuscripts.--uncial writing.--monastic libraries.--collections in europe.--the st. lazaro library 213 chapter xviii. general history of armenia.--former sovereigns.--tiridates i. receives his crown from nero.--conquest of the country by the persians and by the arabs.--list of modern kings.--misfortunes of leo v.: his death at paris 218 list of illustrations. map of armenia to face title-page. ruined armenian church near erzeroom in title-page. general view of erzeroom to face page 45 erzeroom. view from the house of the british commissioners. to face page 50 koordish gallows in page 95 fundook ,, 120 ruined tower in the castle of tortoom to face page 145 boat on the lake of tortoom ,, ,, 149 quarantine harbor, trebizond ,, ,, 165 armenia. chapter i. the "bad black sea."--coal-field near the bosporus.--trebizond from the sea.--fish and turkeys.--the bazaars.--coronas.--ancient tombs.--church of st. sofia.--preservation of old manners and ceremonies.--toilet of a person of distinction.--russian loss in 1828-9.--ancient prayer.--varna.--statistics of wallachia.--visit to abdallah pasha.--his outward appearance.--his love of medical experiments.--trade of trebizond. fena kara degniz, "the bad black sea." this is the character that stormy lake has acquired in the estimation of its neighbors at constantinople. of 1000 turkish vessels which skim over its waters every year, 500 are said to be wrecked as a matter of course. the wind sometimes will blow from all the four quarters of heaven within two hours' time, agitating the waters like a boiling caldron. dense fogs obscure the air during the winter, by the assistance of which the turkish vessels continually mistake the entrance of a valley called the false bogaz for the entrance of the bosporus, and are wrecked there perpetually. i have seen dead bodies floating about in that part of the sea, where i first became acquainted with the fact that the corpse of a woman floats upon its back, while that of a man floats upon its face. in short, at constantinople they say that every thing that is bad comes from the black sea: the plague, the russians, the fogs, and the cold, all come from thence; and though this time we had a fine calm passage, i was glad enough to arrive at the end of the voyage at trebizond. before landing, however, i must give a passing tribute to the beauty of the scenery on the south coast, that is, on the north coast of asia minor. rocks and hills are its usual character near the shore, with higher mountains inland. between the bosporus and heraclea are boundless fields of coal, which crops out on the side of the hills, so that no mining would be required to get the coal; and besides this great facility in its production, the hills are of such an easy slope that a tram-road would convey the coal-wagons down to the ships on the sea-coast without any difficulty. no nation but the turks would delay to make use of such a source of enormous wealth as this coal would naturally supply, when it can be had with such remarkable ease so near to the great maritime city of constantinople. it seems to be a peculiarity in human nature that those who are too stupid to undertake any useful work are frequently jealous of the interference of others who are more able and willing than themselves, as the old fable of the dog in the manger exemplifies. i understand that more than one english company have been desirous of opening these immense mines of wealth, on the condition of paying a large sum or a good per centage to the turkish government; but they are jealous of a foreigner's undertaking that which they are incapable of carrying out themselves. so english steamers bring english coal to constantinople, which costs i don't know what by the time it arrives within a few miles of a spot [1] which is as well furnished with the most useful, if not the most ornamental, of minerals, as newcastle-upon-tyne itself. beyond sinope, where the flat alluvial land stretches down to the sea-shore, there are forests of such timber as we have no idea of in these northern regions. here there are miles of trees so high, and large, and straight, that they look like minarets in flower. wild boars, stags, and various kinds of game abound in these magnificent primeval woods, protected by the fevers and agues which arise from the dense jungle and unhealthy swamps inland, which prevent the sportsman from following the game during great part of the year. the inhabitants of all this part of turkey, circassia, &c., are good shots with the short, heavy rifle, which is their constant companion, and they sometimes kill a deer. as their religion protects the pigs, the wild boars roam unmolested in this, for them at least, "free and independent country." the stag resembles the red deer in every respect, only it is considerably smaller; its venison is not particularly good. trebizond presents an imposing appearance from the sea. it stands upon a rocky table-land, from which peculiarity in its situation it takes its name--trapeza being a table in greek, if we are to believe what dr. ---used to tell us at school. there is no harbor, not even a bay, and a rolling sea comes in sometimes which looks, and i should think must be, awfully dangerous. i have seen the whole of the keel of the ships at anchor, as they rolled over from one side to the other. the view from the sea of the curious ancient town, the mountains in the background, and the great chain of the circassian mountains on the left, is magnificent in the extreme. the only thing that the black sea is good for, that i know of (and that, i think, may be said of some other seas), is fish. the kalkan balouk, shield-fish--a sort of turbot, with black prickles on his back--though not quite worth a voyage to trebizond, is well worth the attention of the most experienced gastronome when he once gets there. the red mullet, also, is caught in great quantities; but the oddest fish is the turkey. this animal is generally considered to be a bird, of the genus poultry, and so he is in all outward appearances; but at trebizond the turkeys live entirely upon a diet of sprats and other little fish washed on shore by the waves, by which it comes to pass that their flesh tastes like very exceedingly bad fish, and abominably nasty it is; though, if reclaimed from these bad habits, and fed on corn and herbs, like other respectable birds, they become very good, and are worthy of being stuffed with chestnuts and roasted, and of occupying the spot upon the dinner-table from whence the remains of the kalkan balouk have been removed. on landing, the beauty of the prospect ceases, for, like many oriental towns, the streets are lanes between blank walls, over which the branches of fig-trees, roofs of houses, and boughs of orange and lemon trees appear at intervals; so that, riding along the blind alleys, you do not know whether there are houses or gardens on each side. the bazaars are a contrast, by their life and bustle, to the narrow lanes through which they are approached. here numbers of the real old-fashioned turks are to be seen, with turbans as large as pumpkins, of all colors and forms, steadily smoking all manner of pipes. i do not know why europeans persist in calling these places bazaars: charchi is the turkish for what we call bazaar, or bezestein for an inclosed covered place containing various shops. the word bazaar means a market, which is altogether a different kind of thing. the bazaars of trebizond contain a good deal of rubbish, both of the human and inanimate kind. cheese, saddles, old, dangerous-looking arms, and various peddlery and provisions, were all that was to be seen. many ruined buildings of byzantine architecture tottered by the sides of the more open spaces, some apparently very ancient, and well worth examination. in the porches of two little antiquated greek churches i saw some frescoes of the twelfth century, apparently in excellent preservation; one of portraits of byzantine kings and princes, in their royal robes, caught my attention, but i had not time to do more than take a hasty look at it. the tomb of solomon, the son of david, king of georgia or immeretia, standing in the court-yard of another greek church, under a sort of canopy of stone, is a very curious monument; and in two churches there are ancient coronas, which seemed to be of silver gilt, eight or ten feet in diameter, most precious specimens of early metal-work, which i coveted and desired exceedingly. they were both engraved with texts from scripture, and saints and cherubim of the grimmest aspect, so old, and quaint, and ugly, that they may be said to be really painfully curious. while on this subject i may remark that i am not aware where the authority is to be found for introducing the quantities of coronas which are now hung up in modern antique churches in england. i never saw one in any latin church, except at aix-la-chapelle; there are, i presume, others, but they certainly never were common nor usual any where in europe. all those i know of are greek, and belong to the greek ceremonial rite. i have never met with an ancient gothic corona, and should be glad to know from whence those lately introduced into our parish churches have been copied. on the other side of the town from the landing-place, a mile or so beyond the beautiful old walls of the byzantine citadel, is a small grassy plain, with some fine single trees. this plain is situated on a terrace, with the open sea on the right hand, on a level of fifty or more feet below. the view from hence on all sides is lovely. the glorious blue sea--for it is not black here--on the right hand; the walls and towers crumbling into ruin behind you, the hills to the left, at the foot of which, built on the level grass, are several ancient tombs, whether mohammedan or christian i do not know; they are low round towers, with conical roofs, like old-fashioned pigeon-houses, but rich in color, with old brick, and stone, and marble. parasitical plants, growing from rents and crevices occasioned by time, are left in peace by the turks, who, after all, are the best conservators of antiquity in the world, for they let things alone. there are no churchwardens yet in turkey; there are no tasty architects, with contemptible and gross ignorance of antiquity, architecture, and taste, to build ridiculous failures for a confiding ministry in london, or a rich gentleman in the country, who does not pretend to know any thing about the matter, and falls into the error of believing that if he pays well he will be well served, and that a man who has been brought up to build buildings must know how to do it: and this knowledge is displayed in the production of the british museum, the national gallery, and other original edifices. the spleen aroused in writing these words is calmed by the recollection of the ruins of the fortified monastery, as it would appear to have been, before my eyes at the further end of this charming open plain; a byzantine gate-house stands within a ditch surrounding a considerable space, in which some broken walls give evidence of a stately palace or monastery which once rose there; but there still stands towering to a great height the almost perfect church of st. sofia--the holy wisdom, not the saint of that name, but the deity to whom the great cathedral of st. sofia is dedicated at constantinople. this church is curious and interesting in the extreme; it is most rich in many of the peculiarities of byzantine architecture outside, and within there are very perfect remains of frescoes, in a style of art such as i have hardly seen equaled, never in any fresco paintings. the only ones equal to them are the illuminations in the one odd volume of the mãªnologia in the vatican library, and some in my own. there are several half figures of emperors in brilliant colors, in circular compartments, on the under sides of some arches, and numerous other paintings, of which the colors are so vivid that they resemble painted glass, particularly where they are broken, as the sharp outlines of what is left betoken that they would be still as bright as jewelry where they have not been destroyed by the plaster, on which they are painted, giving way. the position, beauty, and antiquity of this christian relic in a mohammedan land, give a singular interest to the church of st. sofia at trebizond. i longed to give this place a thorough examination. perhaps a portrait of some old comnenus would present itself to my admiring eyes. many likenesses of by-gone emperors, cã¦sars, and princesses born in the purple, might be recovered in all the splendor of their royal robes and almost sacred crowns and diadems, to gladden the hearts of antiquarians enthusiastic in the cause, and who, like myself, would be ten times more delighted with the possession of a portrait, or an incomprehensible work of art of undoubted byzantine origin, than with the offer of the hand, even of the illustrious anna comnena herself. her portrait, after the lapse of 600 years, would be most interesting; but i do not envy the cã¦sar who obtained the honor of an alliance with that princess of the cã¦rulean hose. at this point, feeling myself entangled with the reminiscences of byzantine history, i must branch off into a little episode relating to the singular preservation of ancient manners and ceremonies still in use, or, at least, remaining in the year 1830 in wallachia and moldavia. the usages and the etiquette of those courts, together with the names and the costumes of the great officers of state, are all derived from those of the christian court of constantinople before the disastrous days of mohammed the second. now that those fertile lands are overrun by the descendants of the avars, and the fierce tribes of northern barbarians, who so often in the middle ages carried fire and sword, tallow and sheepskins, almost to the walls of the city--tãªn bolinâ· eis tãªn bolin--from whence comes stamboul, i may be, perhaps, excused if i put in a few lines relating to another country, but which, i think, are interesting during the present state of the affairs of the turkish empire. in the year 1838 i left constantinople on my way to vienna. i went to varna, and from thence proceeded up the danube in a miserable steamer, on board of which was a personage of high distinction belonging to a neighboring nation, whose manners and habits afforded me great amusement. he was courteous and gentlemanlike in a remarkable degree, but his domestic ways differed from those of our own countrymen. he had a numerous suite of servants, three or four of whom seemed to be a sort of gentlemen; these attended him every night when he went to bed, in the standing bed-place of the crazy steamer. first they wound up six or seven gold watches, and the great man took off his boots, his coat, and i don't know how many gold chains; then each night he was invested by his attendants with a different fur pelisse, which looked valuable and fusty to my humble eyes. each morning the same gentlemen spread out all the watches, took off the fur pelisse, and insinuated their lord into a fashionable and somewhat tight coat, not the one worn yesterday; but on no occasion did i perceive any thing in the nature of an ablution, or any proof that such an article as a clean shirt formed a part of the great man's traveling wardrobe. varna is situated on a gentle slope a short distance from the shores of the black sea, and three or four miles to the south of a range of hills, between which and the town the unfortunate russian army was encamped during the war of the year 1829. i say unfortunate, and all will agree with me, if they take into consideration a fact which i write on undoubted authority. when the russians invaded turkey in 1828, they lost 50,000 men by sickness alone, by want of the necessaries of life, and neglect in the commissariat department: 50,000 russians died on the plains of turkey, not one man of whom was killed in battle, for their advance was not resisted by the turks. in the next year (1829) the russians lost 60,000 men between the pruth and the city of adrianople. some of these, however, were legitimately slain in battle. when they arrived at adrianople, the troops were in so wretched a condition from sickness and want of food that not 7000 men were able to bear arms: how many thousands of horses and mules perished in these two years is not known. the turkish government was totally ignorant of this deplorable state of affairs at adrianople till some time afterward, when the intelligence came too late. if the turks had known what was going on, not one single russian would have seen his native land again; even as it was, out of 120,000 men, not 6000 ever recrossed the russian frontier alive. since the days of cain, the first murderer, among all nations, and among all religions, he who kills his fellow-creature without just cause is looked upon with horror and disgust, and is pursued by the avenging curse of god and man. what, then, shall be thought of that individual who, without reason, without the slightest show of justice, right, or justifiable pretense, from his own caprice, to satisfy his own feelings, and lust of pride, and arrogance, destroys for his amusement, in two years, more than 100,000 of his fellow-creatures? shall not their blood cry out for vengeance? had not each of these men a soul, immortal as their butcher's? had not many of them, many thousands of them perhaps, more faith, more trust in god, higher talents than their destroyer? better had it been for that man had he never been born! the following prayer is translated from one at the end of an ancient bulgarian or russian manuscript, written in the year 1355: "the judge seated, and the apostle standing before him, and the trumpet sounding, and the fire burning, what wilt thou do, o my soul, when thou art carried to the judgment? for then all thy evils will appear, and all thy secret sins will be made manifest. therefore now, beforehand, endeavor to pray to jesus christ our lord. oh, do not thou reject me, but save me." the fortifications of varna are very flat and low, though they are said to be of great strength; but, as the town is built of wood, i should think there would be little difficulty in setting it on fire by the assistance of a few shells or red-hot shot, from ships at sea or batteries on the land. from all such fortresses i am delighted to escape: the bastions, ditches, and ramparts keep me in, though they are intended to keep others out. there is nothing picturesque in a modern stronghold, as there are no battlements and towers, or any thing pleasing to the eye; only, whichever way you turn, you are sure to be stopped by a green ditch with a frog in it; i therefore only remained long enough at varna to see that there was nothing to be seen. the principality of wallachia contains 1,500,000 inhabitants liable to taxation, 800 nobles, and 15,000 strangers, subjects of various powers. it is governed by a prince (gika), who reigns for life. the civil list amounts to- 50,000 austrian ducats yearly. all the officials are paid by the government. the revenues of the principality are derived from tribute, which amounts to 300,000 ducats yearly. the salt-works, which yield 150,000 ,, ,, domains of the prince 30,000 ,, ,, the customs 70,000 ,, ,, ------ total 550,000 ,, ,, the expenses are, yearly: ducats. civil list of the prince 50,000 the ottoman porte for tribute 30,000 salaries of officials 150,000 troops, 4000 men 100,000 ten quarantine stations on the danube 20,000 hospitals 5,000 schools 12,000 post 30,000 repair of roads 8,000 ------ total 405,000 the capital of wallachia is bucharest, containing 12,000 houses and 80,000 inhabitants, of whom 10,000 are strangers. there is one metropolitan, who lives at bucharest, and has a revenue of 10,000 ducats; and three bishops, of rimnik, argessi, and buzeo, who have 8000 each. the salary of the first minister is 3600 ducats yearly. there are three ranks of nobles. the highest consists of sixty individuals, who have the right of electing the prince; the second numbers 300, and the third 440. the prime minister is called the bano; the commander-in-chief, spathar; the minister of the interior, the great dvornic; the minister of justice, the great logothete. the greatest family is that of brancovano, the revenue of its chief being 12,000 ducats. the titles of the great officers of state, and the principal people about the court of the hospodar, are derived from the institutions of the byzantine emperors. these nobles are divided into three classes. the following is the order of their precedence: 1st class. 1. bano marshal of the palace. 2. dvornic lord chamberlain. 3. spathar commander-in-chief. 4. logothete chief secretary. 5. postemic foreign minister. 6. aga inspector of police. 2d class. 1. clochiar commissary general. 2. paharme cup-bearer. 3d class. 1. serdar commander of 1000 men. 2. pitar inspector of the ovens. 3. consepist registrar general. it is in the power of the government to raise any of these nobles a step after a service of three years. before the year 1827 these officers were paid by contributions raised on the subjects of the prince, who were then exempted from any other taxes. the bano had one hundred and twenty men, the dvornic one hundred, the paharme twenty-five, and so on; from these they took as much as they could, one man averaging three ducats a year in value to his lord. the treaty of adrianople contains an article insuring the independence of the interior administration of the country. on the 18th of may, 1838, an order was brought from constantinople by baron rukman, in which it was stated that the general assembly are to insert a clause in the constitution, which obliges them to have leave of the russians before any alteration whatever is made in the regulation of the interior. the army can not be increased, or any differences made in the administration of the quarantine, &c., without permission from russia, which is in direct contradiction to the treaty of adrianople. sentence of death is abolished by the constitution, but great offenders are sent to the mines for life. having accomplished our little tour to wallachia, we will recross the sea to trebizond, and return to the inspection of that ancient city, so famous in the romance of the middle ages. the pasha and governor, abdallah pasha, resides in the citadel, a large space of ruinous buildings, surrounded by romantic walls and towers, in the same style as those of constantinople. as in duty bound, we proceeded in great state to pay a visit of ceremony to the viceroy. as our long train of horsemen wound through the narrow streets, and passed under the long dark tunnel of the byzantine gateway, we must have looked quite in keeping with the picturesque appearance of that ancient fortress. from the gloomy gate we emerged into a large, ruinous court or space of no particular shape, but surrounded by tumble-down houses, with wooden balconies festooned with vines. i was struck with the absence of guards and soldiers, who are usually drawn up on these occasions in a wavy line, to do honor or to impose upon the awe-stricken feelings of the elchi bey. we passed through another court, if i remember right, till we found a number of servants and officials waiting our arrival at an open door, and, having dismounted, with the assistance of numerous supporters we scrambled up a large, dark, crazy wooden stair, at the top of which, on a curtain being drawn aside, we were ushered into a large, lofty room, where we beheld the pasha seated on the divan, under a range of windows, at the upper end of the selamlik, or hall of reception. then commenced the regular exercise of formal civilities, bows, and inquiries after each other's health, carried on in a thorough mechanical manner, neither party even pretending to look as if he meant any thing he said. we smoked pipes, and drank coffee, and made a little bow to the pasha afterward, in the most orthodox way, till we were bored and tired, and wished it was time to come away; but this sort of visit was a serious affair, and i don't know how long we sat there, with the crowd of kawasses and chiboukgis staring at us steadily from the lower end of the hall. what the pasha looked like, and what manner of man he was, it was not easy to make out, seeing that to the outward eye he presented the appearance of a large green bundle, with a red fez at the top, for he was enveloped in a great furred cloak; he seemed to have dark eyes, like every body else in this country, and a long nose and a black beard, whereof the confines or limits were not to be ascertained, as i could not readily distinguish what was beard and what was fur. every now and then his excellency snuffled, as if he had got a cold, but i think it was only a trick; however, when he lifted up his voice to speak, the depth and hollow sound was very remarkable. i have heard several turks speak in this way, which i believe they consider dignified, and imagine that it is done in imitation of sultan mahmoud, who, whether it was his natural voice or not, always spoke as if his voice came out of his stomach instead of his mouth. abdallah pasha paid us his compliments in this awful tone, and, till i got a little used to it, i wondered out of what particular part of the heap of fur, cloth, &c., this thoroughbass proceeded. i found, to my great admiration, that the pasha knew my name, and almost as much of my own history as i did myself; where he had gained his very important information i know not, but an interest so unusual in any thing relating to another person induced me to make inquiries about him, and i found he was not only a man of the highest dignity and wealth, possessing villages, square miles and acres innumerable, but he was a philosopher; if not a writer, he was a reader of books, particularly works on medicine. this was his great hobby. in the way of government he seemed to be a most patriarchal sort of king: he had no army or soldiers whatever; fifteen or sixteen kawasses were all the guards that he supported. he smoked the pipe of tranquillity on the carpet of prudence, and the pashalik of trebizond slumbered on in the sun; the houses tumbled down occasionally, and people repaired them never; the secretary of state wrote to the porte two or three times a year, to say that nothing particular had happened. the only thing i wondered at was how the tribute was exacted, for transmitted it must be regularly to constantinople. rayahs must be squeezed: they were created, like oranges, for that purpose; but, somehow or other, abdallah pasha seems to have carried on the process quietly, and the multitudes under his rule dozed on from year to year. that was all very well for those at a distance, but his immediate attendants suffered occasionally from the philosophical inquiries of their master. he thought of nothing but physic, and whenever he could catch a piedmontese doctor he would buy any quantity of medicine from him, and talk learnedly on medical subjects as long as the doctor could stand it. as nobody ever tells the truth in these parts, the pasha never believed what the doctor told him, and usually satisfied his mind by experiments in corpore vili, many of which, when the accounts were related to me, made me cry with laughter. they were mostly too medical to be narrated in any unmedical assembly. trebizond is not defensible by land or sea, nor could it be made so from the land side, as it is commanded by the sloping hills immediately behind it. from there being no bay or harbor of any kind, its approach is dangerous during the prevalence of north winds, which lash the waves against the rocks with fury. inns are as yet unknown; there are no khans that i know of, of any size or importance as far as architecture is concerned; but large stables protect the pack-horses which carry the bales of goods imported from constantinople for the persian trade, the bulk of which has now passed out of the hands of the english into those of the greek merchants. the steamer running from constantinople is constantly laden with goods, and much more would be sent if additional steamers were ready to convey it. our party was received under the hospitable roof of mr. stephens, the vice-consul, whose court-yard was encumbered with luggage of all sorts and kinds, over which katergis or muleteers continually wrangled in setting apart different articles in two heaps, each two heaps being reputed a sufficient load for one horse. this took some days to arrange, and our time was occupied with preparations for the journey through the mountains. chapter ii. departure from trebizond.--a rough road.--turkish pack-horses.--value of tea.--the pipe in the east.--mountain riding.--instinct of the horse.--a caravan overwhelmed by an avalanche.--mountain of hoshabounar.--a ride down the mountain.--arrival at erzeroom. at last we were ready; the russian commissioner traveled with us, and we sallied out of the town in a straggling line up the hill, along the only road known in this part of the world. this wonder and miracle of art extends one mile, to the top of a little hill. it is said to have cost â£19,000. it ascends the mountain side in defiance of all obstacles, and is more convenient for rolling down than climbing up, as it is nearly as steep as a ladder in some places. when you get to the top you are safe, for there is no more road as far as tabriz. a glorious view rewards the traveler for his loss of breath in accomplishing the ascent. from hence the road is a track, wide enough for one loaded horse, passing through streams and mud, over rocks, mountains, and precipices, such as i should hardly have imagined a goat could travel upon; certainly no sensible animal would ever try to do so, unless upon urgent business. pleasure and amusement must be sought on broader ways; here danger and difficulty occur at every step; nevertheless, the horses are so well used to climbing, and hopping, and floundering along, that the obstacles are gradually overcome. in looking back occasionally, you wonder how in the world you ever got to the spot you are standing on. the sure-footedness of the horses was marvelous; we often galloped for half an hour along the dry course of a mountain torrent, for these we considered our best places, over round stones as big as a man's head, with larger ones occasionally for a change; but the riding-horses hardly ever fell. the baggage-horses, encumbered with their loads, tumbled in all directions, but these unlucky animals were always kicked up again by the efforts of a posse of hard-fisted, hard-hearted muleteers, and were soon plodding on under the burdens which it seems it was their lot to bear for the remainder of their lives. if this should meet the eye of any london cab-horse--for what may we not expect in these days of march of intellect and national education?--let him thank his lucky star that he is not a turkish pack-horse, made to carry something nearly as heavy as a cab up and down rocks as inaccessible as those immortalized in the famous verse- "commodore rogers was a man exceedingly brave--particular; and he climb'd up very high rocks, exceedingly high--perpendicular." thus saith the poet; what commodore rogers would have said if he had been of our party, i don't know. those ladies and gentlemen who, leaning back in easy carriages, bowl along the great roads of the simplon, may imagine what traveling there may have been over the alps before the roads were made, while the nature of the ground is such, in two or three places, that, unless at an incredible expense in engineering, and a prodigious daily outlay to keep them clear of snow, no road ever could be made; yet this is the only line of communication between constantinople and persia. through these awful chasms and precipices all the merchandise is carried which passes between these two great nations. the quiet manchester stuffs, accustomed to the broad-wheel wagons of europe, and the rail-ways and canals of england, must feel dreadfully jolted when they arrive at this portion of their journey. how the crockery bears it is easily understood by those who open the packages of this kind of ware at the end of the journey, when cups and saucers take the appearance of small geological specimens, though some do survive, notwithstanding the regular custom of the muleteers to set down their loads every evening by the summary process of untying with a jerk a certain cunning knot in the rope which holds the bales in their places on each side of the pack-horse: these immediately come down with a crash upon the ground, from whence they are rolled along and built up into a wall, on the lee side of which a fire is lit and the muleteers sleep when there is no khan to retire to for the night. on this journey i for the first time learned the true value of tea. one of the kawasses of the russian commissioners had a curious little box, covered with cowskin, tied behind his saddle; about twice a day he galloped off like mad, his arms and stirrups, &c., making a noise as he started like that of upsetting all the fire-irons in a room at home. in about half an hour we came up with him again, discovering his whereabouts by seeing his panting horse led up and down by some small boy before a hovel, into which we immediately dived. there we found the kawass kneeling by a blazing fire, with the cowskin box open on the ground beside him, from whence he presently produced glass tumblers of delicious caravan tea, [2] sweetened with sugar-candy, and a thin slice of lemon floating on the top of each cup. this is the real way to drink tea, only one can not always get caravan tea, and, when you can, it costs a guinea a pound, more or less; but its refreshing, calming, and invigorating powers are truly remarkable. in former days, in many a long and weary march, i found a pipe of great service in quieting the tired and excited nerves; having no love for smoking under ordinary circumstances, these were the only occasions when a long chibouk did seem to be grateful and comforting. that this is pretty universally acknowledged i gather from the habit of all the solemn old turks in egypt and hot climates during the fast of ramadan, who invariably take a good whiff from their pipes the moment that sunset is announced by the firing of a gun in cities, or on the disappearance of its rays toward the west in the country. supper does not appear to be looked forward to with the same impatience as the first puff from the chibouk. no pipe, however, possesses the agreeable qualities of a cup of hot good tea made in this way; no other beverage or contrivance that i know of produces so soothing an effect, and that in so short a time. in a few minutes the glasses, and the little teapot, and two canisters for tea and sugar-candy, retired into the recesses of the cowskin box; the poor horses, who had had no tea, were again mounted, and on we rode over the rocks and stones, one after the other, in a long line, the regular tramp, tramp, tramp, interrupted every now and then by the crash of one of our boxes against a rock, and the exclamations of the katergis as its bearer wallowed into a hole or tumbled over some horrible place, from whence it seemed impossible that he should ever be got up again. however, he always was, and at last we hardly took notice of one of these little accidents, and notwithstanding which we generally got through the mountains at the rate of about thirty miles a day. on the second day from trebizond we arrived at the snow; the hoods with which we had provided ourselves were pulled over our heads. i tied my bridle to the pommel of my saddle, put my hands in my pockets, and nevertheless galloped along--at least the horse did, and all the better for my not holding the bridle. in mountain traveling this is perhaps the most necessary of all the whole craft and art of horsemanship, not to touch the bridle on any occasion, except when you want to stop the horse; for, in difficult circumstances, a horse or mule goes much better if he is left to his own devices. in some dreadful places, i have seen a horse smell the ground, and then, resting on his haunches, put one foot forward as gently as if it was a finger, cautiously to feel the way. they have a wonderful instinct of self-preservation, seeming quite aware of the perils of false steps, and the dangers by which they are surrounded on the ledges of bleak mountains, and in passing bogs and torrents in the valleys below. at beyboort we were received by the governor, a bey, who gave us a famous good dinner or supper, whereof we all ate an incredible quantity, and almost as much more at breakfast next morning. at gumush hanã©, where there are silver mines, a good-natured old gentleman who was sitting by the roadside gave me the most delicious pear i ever tasted. this place is famous for its pears. being situated in a deep valley, the climate is much better than most parts of the country on this road. here we put up in a good house, slept like tops, and waddled off next morning as before. i had an enormous pair of boots lined with sheepskin, which were the envy and admiration of the party: they were amazing snug certainly, and nearly came up to my middle. if they had been a little bit larger, i might have crept into one at night, which would have been a great convenience; they were of the greatest service on horseback, but on foot i had much difficulty in getting along, and was sorry i had neglected to inquire how jack the giant-killer managed with his seven-league boots. before arriving at beyboort we passed the mountain of zigana dagh, by a place where a whole caravan accompanying the harem of the pasha of moush had been overwhelmed in an avalanche, over the icy blocks of which we made our way, the bodies of the unfortunate party and all the poor ladies lying buried far below. beyond gumush hanã© rises the mountain of hoshabounar, which is a part of the chain that bounds the great plain of erzeroom. this was the worst part of the whole journey: we approached it by interminable plains of snow, along which the track appeared like a narrow black line. these plains of snow, which look so even to the sight, are not always really so; the hollows and inequalities being filled with the snow, you may fall into a hole and be smothered if you leave the path. this path is hardened by the passage of caravans, which tread down the snow into a track of ice just wide enough for a single file of horses; but while you think you are on a plain, you are, in fact, riding on the top of a wall or ridge, from whence, if your horse should chance to slip, you do not know how deep you may sink down into the soft snow on either side. at the top of the mountain we met thirty horses which the pasha of erzeroom had sent for our use. we had above thirty of our own, so now there were sixty horses in our train. the russian commissioner and i left all these behind, and rode on together with two or three guards, accompanied by the chief of the village where we were to sleep. at last we came to the brow of the hill--we could not see to the bottom from the snow that was falling--it was as steep as the roof of a house, and the road consisted of a series of holes, about six inches deep, and about eighteen inches apart, the track being about sixteen inches wide. to my surprise, the chief of the village, a man in long scarlet robes, immediately dashed at a gallop down this road, or ladder, as they call it; the russian commissioner followed him; and i, thinking that it would not do for an englishman to be beat by a russian or a turk, threw my bridle on my horse's neck and galloped after them. never did i see such a place to ride in! down and down we went, plunging, sliding, scrambling in and out of the deep holes, the snow flying up like spray around us, to meet its brother snow that was falling from the sky. it was wonderful how the horses kept their feet; they burst out into perspiration as if it had been summer. i was as hot as fire with the exertion. still down we went, headlong as it seemed, till at last i found myself sliding and bounding on level ground, and, rushing over some horses which were standing in an open space, i discovered that i was in a village, and was presently helped off my panting horse by the gentleman in the red pelisse, who showed the way into a cow-stable, the usual place in which we put up at night. thus ended the most extraordinary piece of horsemanship i ever joined in. it was not wonderful, perhaps, for the rider, but how the horses kept their feet, and how they had strength enough to undergo such a wonderful series of leaps and plunges, out of one hole into another, appeared quite astonishing to me. the next day we proceeded to erzeroom, and at a village about two hours' distance we were met by all the authorities of the city on horseback. some horses with magnificent housings were sent by the pasha for the principal personages, and we rode into the town in a sort of procession, accompanied by perhaps 200 well-mounted cavaliers caracoling and prancing in every direction. chapter iii. the consulate at erzeroom.--subterranean dwellings.--snow-blindness.--effects of the severe climate.--the city: its population, defenses, and buildings.--our house and household.--armenian country-houses.--the ox-stable. we were hospitably entertained at the british consulate till the pasha could get a house prepared for us to occupy during our stay; but, as mr. pepys says, "lord, to see!" what a place this is at erzeroom! i have never seen or heard of any thing the least like it. it is totally and entirely different from any thing i ever saw before. as the whole view, whichever way one looked, was wrapped in interminable snow, we had not at first any very distinct idea of the nature of the ground that there might be underneath; the tops of the houses being flat, the snow-covered city did not resemble any other town, but appeared more like a great rabbit-warren; many of the houses being wholly or partly subterranean, the doors looked like burrows. in the neighborhood of the consulate (very comfortable within, from the excellent arrangements of mr. brant) there were several large heaps and mounds of earth, and it was difficult to the uninitiated to discriminate correctly as to which was a house and which was a heap of soil or stones. streets, glass windows, green doors with brass knockers, areas, and chimney-pots, were things only known from the accounts of travelers from the distant regions where such things are used. very few people were about, the bulk of the population hybernating at this time of the year in their strange holes and burrows. the bright colors of the oriental dresses looked to my eye strangely out of place in the cold, dirty snow; scarlet robes, jackets embroidered with gold, brilliant green and white costumes, were associated in my mind with a hot sun, a dry climate, and fine weather. a bright sky there was, with the sun shining away as if it was all right, but his rays gave no heat, and only put your eyes out with its glare upon the snow. this glare has an extraordinary effect, sometimes bringing on a blindness called snow-blindness, and raising blisters on the face precisely like those which are produced by exposure to extreme heat. another inconvenience has an absurd effect: the breath, out of doors, congeals upon the mustaches and beard, and speedily produces icicles, which prevent the possibility of opening the mouth. my mustaches were converted each day into two sharp icicles, and if any thing came against them it hurt horribly; and those who wore long beards were often obliged to commence the series of turkish civilities in dumb show; their faces being fixtures for the time, they were not able to speak till their beards thawed. a curious phenomenon might also be observed upon the door of one of the subterranean stables being opened, when, although the day was clear and fine without, the warm air within immediately congealed into a little fall of snow; this might be seen in great perfection every morning on the first opening of the outer door, when the house was warm from its having been shut up all night. erzeroom is situated in an extensive elevated plain, about thirty miles long and about ten wide, lying between 7000 and 8000 feet above the level of the sea. it is surrounded on all sides with the tops of lofty mountains, many of which are covered with eternal snow. the city is said to contain between 30,000 and 40,000 inhabitants, but i do not myself think that it contains much more than 20,000; this i had no correct means of ascertaining. the city is said to have been, and probably was, more populous before the disasters of the last russian war. it stands on a small hill, or several hills, at the foot of a mountain with a double top, called devã© dagh, the camel mountain. the original city is nearly a square, and is surrounded by a double wall with peculiarly-shaped towers, a sort of pentagon, about 20 towers on each side, except on the south side, where a great part of the walls is fallen down. within these walls, on an elevated mound, is the smaller square of the citadel, where there are some curious ancient buildings and a prison, which i must describe afterward; a ditch, where it is not filled up with rubbish and neglect, surrounds the walls of the city; and beyond this are the suburbs, where the greater part of the population reside. beyond this, an immense work was accomplished as a defense against the russian invaders. this is an enormous fosse, so large, and deep, and wide, as to resemble a ravine in many places. it was some time before i was aware that this was an artificial work. as there are no ramparts, walls, or breastworks on the inner side of that immense excavation, it can have been of no more use than if it did not exist, and did not, i believe, stop any of the russians for five minutes. they probably marched down one side and up the other, supposing it to be a pleasing natural valley, useful as a promenade in fine weather, and the prodigious labor employed on such a work must have been entirely thrown away. the palace of the pasha, that of the cadi and other functionaries, are within the walls of the town. the doorways are the only parts of the houses on which any architectural ornaments are displayed; many of these are of carved stone, with inscriptions in turkish beautifully cut above them. there are said to be seventeen baths, but none of them are particularly handsome, though the principal apartment is covered with a dome, like those in finer towns. the mosques amount, it is said, to forty-five: i never saw half so many myself. many of them are insignificant edifices. the principal one, or cathedral, as it may be called, is of great size, its flat, turf-covered roof supported by various thick piers and pointed arches. the finest buildings are several ancient tombs: these are circular towers, from twenty to thirty feet in diameter, with conical stone roofs, beautifully built and ornamented. there must be twenty or thirty of these very singular edifices, whose dates i was unable to ascertain; they probably vary from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, judging from a comparison of their ornamental work with saracenic buildings in other parts of the world. the most beautiful buildings of erzeroom are two ancient medressã©s or colleges, or perhaps they may be considered more as a kind of alms-houses, built for the accommodation of a certain number of mollahs, whose duty it was to pray around the tomb of the founder, adjoining to which they are erected. one of these stands immediately to the left hand on entering the principal gateway of the town; above its elaborately-sculptured door are two most beautiful minarets, known by the name of the iki chã­fteh. these are built of an exceedingly fine brick, and are fluted like ionic columns, the edges of the flutings being composed of turquoise-blue bricks, which produces on the capitals or galleries, as well as on the shafts, the appearance of a bright azure pattern on a dark-colored ground. the roof of this very beautiful building has fallen in, but the delicacy of the arabesques, cut in many places in alto-relief in a very hard stone, would excite admiration in india, and equals the most famous works of italy. the other medressã© is in a still worse condition, a great cannon-foundry having been erected in the middle of it. the whole building is broken, smoked, and injured; still, what remains shows how fine it must have been. there are one or two greek churches and two armenian churches here, both very small, dark, cramped places, with immensely thick walls and hewn-stone roofs. they appear to be of great antiquity, but can boast of no other merit. adjoining the principal one, in which is a famous miraculous picture of st. george, they were building a large and handsome church, which is now completed, in the basilica form, with an arched stone roof. cut stone being very expensive, and indeed, from the want of good masons, very difficult to procure, the priests bethought themselves of a happy expedient to secure square hewn stone for the corners, door-way, windows, &c., of the new cathedral. they told their flock that, as the ancient tomb-stones were of no use to the departed, it would be a meritorious act in the living to bring them to assist in the erection of the church. they managed this so well, that every one brought on his own back, or at his own expense, the tombstones of his ancestors, and those were grieved and offended who could not gain admission for the tomb-stones of their families to complete a window or support a wall. the work advanced rapidly during the summer, and any large, flat slabs of stone were reserved for the covering of the roof. it promised to be, and i hear now is, a handsome church, strong and solid enough to resist the awful climate, and the snow which lies there for months every year. the armenian inscriptions and emblems on the stones have a singular effect; but i think, under the circumstances, the priests were quite right to build up with the tombstones of the dead a house of prayer for those about to die. in course of time a house was ready for our reception: though not so large as those of some of the great authorities, it was one of the largest class of houses in erzeroom, and a description of its arrangements will convey an idea of what most of the others were. it was situated in a very good position on the top of a hill, close to the house of the russian commissioner, and on the same side of the town as those of the english and russian consuls. from its small, doubly-glazed windows we looked, over a narrow valley covered with houses, on the walls and tower of the citadel, which stood on the hill directly opposite. the walls and towers, and the principal gateway of the town, with its two graceful minarets, to the left hand, and a distant prospect of the great plain and the river euphrates, and the mountains over which we had traveled, to the right, completed our view, which was, perhaps, the best enjoyed by any house in the place. our house, like most of the others, was built with great solidity, of rough stone, with large blocks at the corners; the roof was flat, and covered with green turf. the windows were small, like port-holes, but the door was a large arch, through which we rode into the gloomy, sepulchral-looking hall, out of which opened the stables on the right hand, the kitchen, and offices, and some other rooms on the left, while in front a dark staircase of square stones and heavy beams looked as if it had tumbled through the ceiling, and gave access to the upper floor. there was a little garden or yard under the windows, where we planted vegetables, and in one part of which several english dogs, two persian greyhounds, and an armenian turnspit, walked about in the daytime. the railing between this and the garden part of the yard was a triumph of art, accomplished by a turkish guard, who turned his sword into a plow-share when not wanted to look terrific. we had also nineteen lambs, who grazed on the top of the highest part of the house, where they were carried up every morning, except occasionally when there was such a wind that they would be in danger of being blown away. we had i know not how many sheep with large tails; these took a walk every day with a shepherd, who led out all the sheep belonging to the inhabitants of that part of the town. every house having a few, they are marked, and all come home every evening to their respective houses, and go out again the next morning, and eat what they can get upon the mountains. our household contained, besides ourselves and servants, one white persian cat, with a spot on his back, and his tail painted pink with hennah (this race, with long, silky hair falling to the ground as it walks along, comes from van); five pigeons, and one hen, the rest having fallen victims to the rapacity of mankind; and a lemming, [3] who lived in a brass foot-tub and ate biscuits. this last beast was sadly frightened by a mouse which i put into his habitation one day, and which made use of his back to jump out, after receiving a severe bite in the tail. he generally slept all day, and took a small walk in the tub in the evening. all the building except the hall and stable had a garden on the roof, that part only being two stories high. the kitchen and some of the other rooms were lit by a skylight, the earth at the back of them being on a level with their ceilings. the walls of the upper floor were not exactly over those below, but were supported by immense beams, some of which had given way, and the principal room leaned over to the left frightfully. those rooms which are lit by windows have two rows of them one above the other, except the dining-room and ante-room, which had only one row, too high from the floor to look out of, but very convenient for looking into, from the upper garden and the terrace of the next house. the rooms had all white-washed walls, wooden flat ceilings curiously carved and painted. on the floors there was blue cloth instead of carpets, and divans of red cloth. a few chairs, and some lumbering deal tables, with covers on them, at which we wrote, concluded our list of furniture and "genuine effects." the great difficulty was the eating and drinking part of the arrangements. every thing except bread and meat came on horses from constantinople, and about one third of the bottles brought from thence were usually broken. glass, for the windows, was a curious and expensive luxury, oiled paper being generally used, with a little bit of real glass to peep out of in each, or sometimes only in one window. wood also was very dear, as there were no trees within a distance of thirty hours. the climate is not too cold for the growth of timber, i should think, for there were a few poplars in the yards near the houses, but the people are too improvident to plant trees, and, except some prodigiously large cabbages, horticulture is not much practiced near the town. the country houses of armenia are constructed somewhat differently from those of the towns. when a man wishes--i can not call it to build a house, or erect a house, or set up a house, as none of these terms are applicable--but when a house is to be constructed, the following is the way in which it is set about. a space of ground is marked out, perhaps nearly an english acre in extent; then the whole space is excavated to the depth of about five feet: one part of the excavation is set apart for the great cow-stable; this may be fifty or one hundred feet long, and nearly as wide. having got so far, some trees are the next requisite; these trees being cut down, the trunks are chopped into lengths of eight or nine feet, the general height of the rooms, and are placed in two or four rows, to be used as columns down the great stable; the larger branches, without being squared or shaped, are laid across from pillar to pillar as beams; the smaller branches are laid across these, the twigs on the top, till the entire trees are used up; the twigs are sometimes tied up in fagots, sometimes not: over this is spread some of the earth that was excavated from below; this is well trodden down, then more earth is added, and on the top of all is laid the turf which formed the surface of the soil before it was moved. round the stable, in no particular order, smaller rooms are formed; if they are large, their roofs are supported by columns like the stable. in a large house there are often two stables. the space of ground taken up by a rich man's house is prodigious, the turfed roof forming a small field. the lesser rooms in this subterranean habitation are divided from the stable and from each other by rough stone walls well filled up with clay or mud; their ceilings are contrived by laying beams across each other, two along and two across, in the form of a low pyramid, so that the ceiling is a kind of low square dome: the smaller rooms form store-rooms and apartments for the women. each room has a rough stone fire-place opposite the door; and in the roof, generally over the door, there is one window about eighteen inches square, glazed with a piece of oiled paper. outside, these windows look like large mole-hills, with a bit of plaster on one side surrounding the oiled paper, or glass, which transmits the light. inside, the window is perceived at the end of a funnel, widening greatly toward the room, and contrived so as to throw the light to the centre of the apartment, opposite the fire-place, where a fire of tezek, or dried cow-dung and chopped straw, is constantly smouldering. over the chimney-piece hangs an iron lamp of simple construction, which, with the help of the fire, produces a dim light in the long nights of winter. there is a divan, usually covered with most beautiful koordish carpets, which last forever, on each side of the fire-place; and large wooden pegs, projecting from the walls, serve to hang up guns, pistols, cloaks, and any thing else. some of these rooms are rather roughly pretty in appearance; the floors are covered with tekkã¨, a thick gray felt, and, among smart people, persian carpets are laid over the felt, their beautiful colors producing a rich and comfortable effect. about half way up the chimney is a wooden door or damper, which is opened and shut by means of a string; and when it is very cold weather, and they want to be snug and fusty down below, this door is shut, and the room becomes as hot as an oven; the chimney does not rise more than two feet above ground, and has a large flat stone on the top to keep the snow from falling in, as well as the lambs and children; the smoke escapes by apertures on the sides just below the coping-stone. the chimneys look like toadstools from the outside, rising a little above the snow or the grass which grows upon the roof. these subterranean habitations are constructed, not on the side of a hill, but on the side of a gentle slope; and all the earth excavated for the house is thrown back again upon the roof in such a manner that on three sides there is often no sign of any dwelling existing underneath. the entrance is on the lower side of the slope, and there the mound is often visible, as it is raised four or five feet above the level of the hill-side. there are no fences to keep people off the roof, which has no appearance different from the rest of the country. it is often only the dirt opposite the doors, the cattle, and people standing about, which gives information of a small village being present, particularly during the eight months of snow, and ice, and intense cold, when no one stirs abroad except for matters of importance. when a house is ruined and deserted, these holes are sometimes rather dangerous, as the horse you are riding may put his foot into an old chimney and break his leg, there being very frequently no appearance of a habitation below, while you are passing through the open, desolate country, of which the roof seems to be a part. there are stories, perhaps founded on fact, of hungry thieves lifting the flat stone off the top of the chimney, and fishing up the kettle in which the supper was stewing over the fire below with a hooked stick--a feat which would not be at all difficult if the cook was thinking of something else, as sometimes will happen even in the best-regulated families. the most curious and remarkable part of the house is the great ox-stable, which often holds some scores of cattle. out of this stable they do not stir, frequently, during the whole winter season, and it is the breath and heat of these animals which warm the house; besides which, they manufacture all the fuel for the establishment: they are fed upon straw, bruised to small bits by the sledge which is driven round the threshing-floor to separate the corn from the husk after harvest time. in one corner of this huge, dim stable, near the entrance door, a wooden platform is raised three feet from the ground; two sides of it are bounded by the stone wall of the house, in one of which, opposite the door, is the fire-place; the other two sides of the square platform have open wooden rails to keep off the cows. this original contrivance is the salemlik, or reception-room, where the master sits, and where he entertains his guests, who, as they stumble into the obscure den from the glare of the sun shining on the snow outside, are received with a yell by all the dogs, who live under the platform. this place is fitted up with divans and carpets; arms and saddles hang against the walls; the horses of the chief are tethered nearest to the rails, the donkeys and cows further off. among the horses there is always an immense fat tame sheep; this is a universal custom in every stable in turkey, under or above ground. among some of the koordish tribes, a young wild boar is kept in the stable with the horses--a remarkable custom among mohammedans, who consider the whole race of swine as unclean beasts; this is the only case in which they are tolerated. a small flock of other sheep are sometimes scampering about, or kept from doing so, among the cows; chickens peck in the litter, and several grave cats have their allotted places on the divans of the chief, his wife, and others of his family. a vacant, that is, cowless space, is left between the steps leading up to the platform and the entrance door of the house; this part answers to the entrance hall, as man and beast pass through it on coming in or going out, immediately before the eyes of the master of the house. from hence a sloping passage, about six feet wide, leads to the open air; it has an outer door at the upper end, and an inner door below: this passage may be from ten to twenty feet long. the outer door is a common strong wooden one, but the inner doors all over the house are as singular as the rest of the arrangements. the house-door is of the usual size for the cows and horses to pass through, the others are not more than five feet high; they are constructed in the following manner: the bare wooden valve is first covered with ketchã© or felt, and on the inside the skin of a sheep, with its legs and arms on, just in the shape in which it came off the animal when it was skinned, being dyed red, is nailed over the felt. on the other side of the door, down the middle, is a long square pipe or box, in which hangs a heavy log of wood, attached to a cord fixed to the upper part of the door-case, which keeps the door shut, as it swings to again after it has been opened, and keeps out the drafts, and keeps in the warm air generated by cows, fires, and lamps, so that the atmosphere is always temperate within, while the cold is such without that men are frozen to death if they stand still even for a short time in the rigorous climate of an armenian winter. chapter iv. narrow escape from suffocation.--death of noori effendi.--a good shot.--history of mirza tekee.--persian ideas of the principles of government.--the "blood-drinker."--massacre at kerbela.--sanctity of the place.--history of hossein.--attack on kerbela, and defeat of the persians.--good effects of commissioners' exertions. the first aspect of affairs at erzeroom was not very satisfactory in any way. the cold and dismal weather was enough to prevent all enjoyment out of doors, and in-doors we had little cause of rejoicing. on first taking possession of our house, my companions had the narrowest possible escape of death from suffocation. the grooms in the stable below the drawing-room had lit an immense fire of charcoal, not for any particular object beyond that common to all servants of all countries, that of wasting their master's goods, which they had not to pay for themselves. the fumes from the charcoal penetrated the ceiling, when, most fortunately, the russian commissioner came in, and, finding his two english friends in a half-stupefied state, helped them out of the room on to the terrace, where they both fell down fainting on the snow, and were only recovered after some time and difficulty. if the russian commissioner had not arrived so opportunely, they would soon have perished. i did not participate in this risk, because i was laid up at the consulate with an attack of fever, which effectually prevented my moving to my own house. another misfortune occurred almost at the same period. noori effendi, the turkish plenipotentiary, died suddenly of apoplexy in his bath; he had been embassador in london and at vienna. all prospect of getting on with our affairs was put off by this unfortunate circumstance. subsequently, enveri effendi, formerly secretary to noori, was appointed in his place, but he did not arrive for some time after the death of his former chief. mirza jaffer, an old acquaintance of mine when he was embassador from persia to the porte, was too unwell to leave tabriz, and mirza tekee was appointed persian plenipotentiary instead. on his arrival within sight of erzeroom from persia, all the great people, except the pasha and the commissioners, went out on horseback to meet him, and accompany him on his entry into the town. there was a great concourse and a prodigious firing of guns at full gallop, which, as the guns are generally loaded with ball cartridge, bought ready made in the bazaar, though intended as an honor, is a somewhat dangerous display. unable to resist so picturesque a sight, i had ridden out on the persian road, though i did not join the escort, and, having returned, i was walking up and down on the roof of the house, watching the crowds passing in the valley below, and looking at the great guns of the citadel, which the soldiers were firing as a salute. they fired very well, in very good time, but i observed several petty officers and a number of men busily employed at one gun, the last to the left hand near the corner of the battery. at length this gun was loaded. a prodigious deal of peeping and pointing took place out of the embrasure, and, just as i was turning in my walk, bang went the cannon, and i was covered with dust from something which struck the ground in the yard in a line below my feet. on looking down to see what this could be, i saw a ball stuck in the earth: the soldiers had all disappeared from the ramparts of the citadel, and i found they had been taking a shot at the british commissioner. a very good shot it was too, exactly in the line, but the ball, not being heavy enough, had fallen a little short, so i was missed. they had manufactured a ball with a large stone, wound round with rope to make it fit the gun, to shoot at the frank, and that was the occasion of all the peeping and crowding of the men round the gun which i had observed. as mirza tekee is now no more, and he was beyond all comparison the most interesting of those assembled at the congress of erzeroom, i will give a short account of his history. mirza tekee was the son of the cook of bahman meerza, brother of mohammed shah, and governor of the province of tabriz. the cook's little boy was brought up with the children of his master and educated with them; being a clever boy, as soon as he was old enough he was put into the office of accounts, under the commander-in-chief, the famous emir nizam, who was employed in drilling the persian army in the european style. tekee became vizir ul nizam, or adjutant general, in course of time, under the old emir nizam, and also amassed great wealth; and as the shah did not like the idea of paying the expenses of his plenipotentiary--"base is the slave that pays"--he sent mirza tekee to erzeroom with many flattering speeches and promises, none of which he intended to fulfill. the cunning old prime minister, hadji meerza agassi, who was sedulously employed in feathering his own nest, was jealous of mirza tekee, and very glad to get him safe out of the way. the turks and persians, as every body knows, hate each other religiously, which seems always to be the worst sort of hatred. the soonis and the shiahs are, as it were, protestants and papists in the mohammedan faith; and if these two countries are ever reconciled for a time, the smouldering flame is sure to break out again at the first convenient opportunity, and it will do so to the end of time. in 1845, the turks, who disliked mirza tekee with more than common aversion, from his dignified bearing and stately manners, gave out various accusations against him and some members of his household. a fanatical mob of many thousand indignant soonis surrounded all that quarter of the town, attacked the persian plenipotentiary's house, which was besieged for some hours, and volleys after volleys of rifle-shots were fired at the windows, while from within mirza tekee only permitted his party to fire blank cartridges. izzet pasha, a drunken old gentleman of eighty, who had succeeded kiamili pasha as governor of erzeroom through the intrigues of enveri effendi, sat on horseback and looked on, and took no part in the disturbance, though he had all his troops, amounting to several thousand men, under arms. for this conduct he was turned out of his government, and was succeeded by bahri pasha, who in 1847 was shot dead by one of his own servants, of the name of delhi ibrahim--accidentally or not, does not appear. colonel williams did every thing in his power to assist mirza tekee, and risked his life in the affray; but he received no assistance from the pasha or any of the authorities, who made no attempt to quell the riot. the turks swore they would have blood, and that one of the persians must be given up to them as a sacrifice. a poor man, who had called that morning to say that he was going to tabriz, and would be happy to carry any letters or messages there, was thrown out of the window and torn to pieces by the mob. another persian, a gentleman, secretary to mirza tekee, was killed by a butcher the same day, in another part of the town, where he was walking in ignorance of the disturbance that was going on. the mirza's house was pillaged, the roof and doors broken in, and every thing destroyed that the mob could get hold of. he himself was only saved by barricading a strong room in a back part of the house, where he and his servants defended themselves for many hours, till the turks dispersed of their own accord. the sultan afterward sent him â£8000 in repayment of his losses in this disgraceful outrage. in june, 1847, after he had signed the treaty of peace and commerce between turkey and persia with enveri effendi and the british and russian commissioners, he returned to tabriz. on the death of the emir nizam, he succeeded to his office of commander-in-chief. during the last illness of mohammed shah, bahman meerza had been intriguing in hopes of succeeding to the throne; but being unsuccessful, and being also found out, he escaped to teflis, where he still resides, and is protected by the czar, who keeps him in terrorem over the present shah, who may be dethroned any day, in which case bahman meerza is all ready to reign in his stead. when mohammed shah, who had done nothing all his life but shoot sparrows with a pistol, departed from this world, mirza tekee marched the persian army to teheran, and seated the young prince noor eddin upon the throne. noor eddin shah gave him his sister in marriage: she is said to have been much attached to her husband, who also succeeded to the immense territorial possessions of hadji meerza agassi, the late prime minister of persia. the hadji had been tutor to mohammed shah, and became one of the most famous of the grand vizirs of that most blundering of dynasties. as a matter of course, when he became rich enough he was robbed by his master, having been himself the greatest extortioner on record for many years. the shah had allowed him to keep an enormous treasure in gold, silver, and jewels, with which he retired to kerbela, where he died in the odor of sanctity in 1850. mirza tekee was now seated on the highest pinnacle of the temple of prosperity. the extent of the possessions which the shah had handed over to him from the plunder of the hadji was so great as to be hardly credible, and, by a judicious squeezing, the towns, villages, and domains would have yielded the revenue of a petty king. however, all prime ministers are detested--that is, in human nature; first, there is the opposite party in politics, some of whom think differently as to the form and manner in which the taxes should be levied in europe, the villages racked in persia. all--whatever they may think on political subjects--feel sure they ought to be in place, rather than the party then in power; if to these are added all thieves, rogues, revolutionists, and those sorts of people, who have a natural antipathy to all government, law, or possession of wealth in the hands of any man except the one individual himself, he being more jealous of his friend than of any other person, a great mass of the population are not only opposed to the minister for the time being, but are in constant readiness to pull down whatever is above them, good, indifferent, or bad. it is said that the great enemy of mirza tekee at court was the shah's mother, a lady who in persia and turkey enjoys an extraordinary degree of power, wealth, and dignity. in turkey, the sultana validã© has the right to build a royal mosque, and to use a caique like that of her son; she is above the law, and can do any thing she likes. if she likes to do good, she can do much good; if she likes to do evil, she can do much evil. between those who were jealous of the power and who hated the strong government of mirza tekee, a powerful party was created, who got hold of the weak mind of the young shah, who owed every thing in this world to his minister; his destruction was agreed upon, and he was given leave to go to koom, where he had an estate. so secretly were affairs managed that his suspicions do not seem to have been aroused; his young wife followed him, with all her train, looking forward to the pleasure of living with her husband for a while in the quiet and retirement of a beautiful country; but when she arrived within sight of the town of koom, a messenger came out to meet her, and the news that he brought was that mirza tekee had been killed by the order of her brother the shah, whose emissaries had seized him unexpectedly in the bath. he made a desperate resistance, but he was overpowered; they opened his veins and held him down till the grand vizir had bled to death. no crime whatever was alleged against him: he was murdered foully by the shah, who thus destroyed one of his best and most honest subjects at the instigation of some of the most infamous and worst. this happened in the year 1851. there is nothing, however, very unusual in this termination of the life and fortunes of the prime minister of persia, only it is usually done under more extenuating circumstances. the singular ideas which they entertain of the principles of government are summed up in the notion that it is better to be in the hands of one furious ogre than at the mercy of a hundred tyrants. for this reason the tribes of the kuzzulbash admire a truculent shah, such as aga mohammed shah, and they like a grand vizir who lets nobody rob and plunder except himself. when he is fat and fit for killing, the blood-drinker on the throne cuts off his head, or strangles him, as the case may be, and then takes possession of his property, throwing a sop to the mob occasionally by allowing them to sack the great man's house. i do not use the above-mentioned epithet as a term of reprehension or abuse, for hunkiar is one of the recognized titles of the sultan of turkey and of other eastern sovereigns. the treaty of hunkiar skellessi, which made so great a sensation in its day, was so called from the name of a place on the asiatic shores of the bosporus. the name means the "blood-drinker's stairs"--an appellation at this time equally suited to either of the "high contracting powers." the plenipotentiaries and commissioners being assembled, every thing was in the greatest danger of falling to pieces on the outset, by the very first dispatches which we received, as these related to a frightful massacre which had just taken place at kerbela, where 22,000 persians were reported to have been killed by the turks. kerbela, in the pashalik of bagdad, is a turkish fortified place, containing the tomb of hossein, the brother of hassan, and son of ali, the great saint of the shiah, or persian form of the mohammedan religion. not only do an immense number of persians habitually reside there, but every one who has the power strives to retire there in his latter days, that he may lay his bones in the neighborhood of the golden dome which covers the ashes of hossein. those who die at a distance are so anxious at least to be buried at kerbela, that the great article of commerce in that direction consists of the dead bodies of persian men and women, which are brought by thousands every year, from all parts of the dominions of the shah, by endless caravans of horses, mules, and camels, many hundreds of which unlucky animals pass their whole lives from year to year in carrying these horrid burdens, which infect the air in all the villages through which they pass. so great is the sanctity of kerbela, that, in the estimation of the sect of ali, it even may be said to surpass that of mecca, for they, among mohammedans, are those who "by their traditions have made the law of none effect." the history of the death of hossein is so interesting an episode in the history of this country, that i am tempted to give a short account of it, for the benefit of those who may not be well acquainted with the history of the successors of mohammed, and upon whose fortunes so much of the welfare and also the policy of the various nations of the east, from the seventh century to the present time, depends--premising that the principal cause of the rancorous hatred which always has existed, and still exists in full force, between the sooni turks and the shiah persians, is principally founded upon events connected with the death of the imaum hossein, and the feeling is kept up in full vigor in persia by a sort of drama, representing the following history, which is enacted before the shah, and in every town in persia, every year, at the annual feast of noo rooz, which continues for ten days. in one of the acts of this most curious ceremony, a frank embassador is brought before the audience, who intercedes for the life of hossein and his followers with the general of the army of yezid. who he can have been there is no means of knowing, but he may possibly represent an embassador from the greek emperor of constantinople, who may have been passing on his way to the court of the caliph. however this may be, his presence produces a kindly feeling toward europeans in the minds of the persian populace. on the death of ali (a.d. 661), his eldest son, hassan, was proclaimed caliph and imaum in irã¡k; the former title he was forced to resign to moawiyah; the latter, or spiritual dignity, his followers regarded as inalienable. his rival granted him a pension, and permitted him to retire into private life. after nine years, passed for the most part in devotional exercise, he was poisoned by his wife jaadah, who was bribed to perpetrate this execrable crime by yezid, the son of moawiyah. on the death of moawiyah (a.d. 679), his son yezid, who succeeded, having provoked public indignation by his luxury, debauchery, and impiety, hossein was persuaded by the discontented people of irã¡k to make an attempt for the recovery of his hereditary rights. the inhabitants of cufa and bassorah were foremost in their professions of zeal for the house of ali, and sent hossein a list of more than 124,000 persons, who, they said, were ready to take up arms in his cause. hossein did not take warning from the inconstancy and treachery which these very persons had shown in their conduct toward his father and brother. assembling a small troop of his personal friends, and accompanied by a part of his family, he departed from medina, the place of his residence, and was soon engaged in crossing the desert. but while he was on his journey, yezid's governor in irã¡k discovered the meditated revolt, capitally punished the leaders of the conspiracy, and so terrified the rest that they were afraid to move. when hossein arrived near the banks of the euphrates, instead of finding an army of his devoted adherents, he discovered that his further progress was checked by the overwhelming forces of the enemy. determined, however, to persevere, he gave permission to all who pleased to retreat while there was yet time; to their disgrace, many of his followers left him to his fate, and he continued his route to cufa, accompanied only by seventy-two persons. but every step increased his difficulties, and he attempted to return when it was too late. at length he was surrounded by the troops of the caliph in the arid plains of kerbela, his followers were cut off from their supply of water, and, when he offered to negotiate, he was told that no terms would be made, but that he should surrender at discretion. twenty-four hours were granted him for deliberation. hossein's choice was soon made: he deemed death preferable to submission, but he counseled his friends to provide for their safety either by surrender or escape. all replied that they preferred dying with their beloved leader. the only matter now to be considered was how they could sell their lives most dearly; they fortified their little encampment with a trench, and then tranquilly awaited the event. that night hossein slept soundly, using for a pillow the pommel of his sword. during his sleep he dreamed that mohammed appeared to him, and predicted that they should meet the next day in paradise. when morning dawned he related his dream to his sister zeinab, who had accompanied him on his fatal expedition. she burst into a passion of tears, and exclaimed, "alas! alas! my brother! what a destiny is ours! my father is dead! my mother is dead! my brother hassan is dead! and the measure of our calamities is not yet full!" hossein tried to console her. "why should you weep?" he said; "did we not come on earth to die? my father was more worthy than i; my mother was more worthy than i; my brother was more worthy than i. they are all dead; why should not we be ready to follow their example?" he then strictly enjoined his family to make no lamentation for his approaching martyrdom, telling them that a patient submission to the divine decrees was the conduct most pleasing to god and his prophet. when morning appeared, hossein, having washed and perfumed himself, as if preparing for a banquet, mounted his steed, and addressed his followers in terms of endearing affection that drew tears from the eyes of the gallant warriors. then, opening the koran, he read the following verse: "o god, be thou my refuge in suffering, and my hope in affliction." but the soldiers of yezid were reluctant to assail the favorite grandson of the prophet; they demanded of their generals to allow him to draw water from the euphrates, a permission which would not have been refused to beasts and infidels. "let us be cautious," they exclaimed, "of raising our hands against him who was carried in the arms of god's apostle. it would be, in fact, to fight against himself." so strong were their feelings, that thirty cavaliers deserted to hossein, resolved to share with him the glories of martyrdom. but yezid's generals shared not in these sentiments. they affected to regard hossein as an enemy of islã¡m. they forced their soldiers forward with blows, and exclaimed, "war to those who abandon the true religion, and separate themselves from the council of the faithful!" hossein replied, "it is you who have abandoned the true religion; it is you who have severed yourselves from the assembly of the faithful. ah! when your souls shall be separated from your bodies, you will learn too late which party has incurred the penalty of eternal condemnation." notwithstanding their vast superiority, the caliph's forces hesitated to engage men determined on death; they poured in their arrows from a distance, and soon dismounted the little troop of hossein's cavalry. when the hour of noon arrived, hossein solicited a suspension of arms during the time appointed for the meridian prayers. this boon was conceded with difficulty, the generals of yezid asking "how a wretch like him could venture to address the deity;" and adding the vilest reproaches, to which hossein made no reply. the persian traditions relate a fabulous circumstance, designed to exalt the character of hossein, though fiction itself can not increase the deep interest of his history. they tell us that while he was upon his knees, the king of the genii appeared to him, and offered, for the sake of his father ali, to disperse his enemies in a moment. "no," replied the generous hossein, "what use is there in fighting any longer? i am but a guest of one breath in this transitory world; my relatives and companions are all gone, and what will it profit me to remain behind? i long for nothing now save my martyrdom; therefore depart thou, and may the lord recompense and bless thee!" the genius was so deeply affected by the reply that his soul exhibited human weakness, and he departed weeping and lamenting. when the hour of prayer was past, the combat was renewed. one of hossein's sons, and several of his nephews, lay dead around him; the rest of his followers were either killed or grievously wounded. hitherto he had escaped unhurt, for every one dreaded to raise a hand against the grandson of mohammed; at length a soldier, more daring than the rest, gave him a severe wound in the head. faint with the loss of blood, he staggered to the door of his tent, and with a burst of parental affection, which at such a moment must have been mingled with unspeakable bitterness, took up his infant son, and began to caress him. while the little child was lisping out an inquiry as to the cause of his father's emotion, it was struck dead by an arrow in hossein's arms. when the blood of the innocent, bubbling over his bosom, disclosed this new calamity, hossein held up the body toward heaven, exclaiming, "o lord! if thou refusest us thy succor, at least spare those who have not yet sinned, and turn thy wrath upon the heads of the guilty." parched by a burning thirst, hossein made a desperate effort to reach the banks of the euphrates, but, when he stooped to drink, he was struck by an arrow in the mouth, and at the same moment one of his nephews, who came to embrace him for the last time, had his hand cut off by the blow of a sabre. hossein, now the sole survivor of his party, threw himself into the midst of the enemy, and fell beneath a thousand weapons. the officers of yezid barbarously mangled the corpse of the unfortunate prince; they cut off his head, and sent it to the caliph. the escort who guarded it on its way to the court of yezid, halting for the night in the city of mosul, placed the box which contained it in a mosque; one of the sentinels, in the middle of the night hearing a noise within, looked through a chink in the door, and saw a gigantic figure, with a venerable white beard, take the head of hossein out of its box, kiss it with reverence, and weep over it, a crowd of venerable personages following his example, and weeping bitterly at the same time. fearing that some of his partisans had gained admittance, and that they would carry away the head which he was guarding, he unlocked the door and entered the mosque, upon which one of the figures he had seen approached, and, giving him a blow upon the cheek, exclaimed, "the prophets have come to pay obeisance to the head of the martyr: whither dost thou venture with such disrespect?" in the morning he related what had happened to his commander, the impression of the hand and fingers of the ancient prophet being still visible on his cheek. the head of hossein, and that of his brother hassan, repose under a mosque of the highest sanctity at cairo: it is called the mosque of hassanen. another mosque in the same city covers with its dome the remains of sittã©, or the lady zeinab, their sister, who was famous for her beauty: her shrine is now visited with great devotion by the ladies and women of her faith. the headless body of hossein was buried upon the spot where he fell, while above it afterward arose the present place of pilgrimage, so much resorted to by the shiah sect. the persian fanatics of kerbela had long declined paying the accustomed taxes to the turkish government. their insolent behavior had been a constant source of anger and difficulty to successive pashas of bagdad. at last the present pasha was determined to enforce the law: after sending various letters to the town requesting payment of taxes and arrears, which were treated with ridicule and contempt, he gave orders to a general called aboullabout pasha, who appears to have been a sooni of the most orthodox kind, to march an army of several thousand men to compel the people of kerbela to acknowledge the rule of the sultan. aboullabout pasha arrived accordingly, and pitched his camp in a grove of palms not far from the walls of the city. he brought four guns with him, and a number of topgis, or gunners, to work these instruments of destruction, if the persians in the town did not choose to obey his commands. these impertinent fanatics treated the turkish pasha and his army with derision; rode out in the cool of the evening to look at the encampment, called the turks grandsons and great grandsons of dogs, whom they would soon pack off to their kennels at bagdad and constantinople. it seems that, trusting in the sanctity of the golden dome, they did not imagine that the turks would dare to advance to extremities, particularly as several royal princesses and members of the family of the shah had taken up their abode in the vicinity of the tomb of the imaum. however, the four guns and the topgis advanced to a position near the walls, and the pasha sent a civil note to the insurgents within, to say that he would trouble them to pay his little bill; at the very notion of which the persians were seized with fits of laughter, they were so much amused at the idea of paying away their money to the turks. after several demands for their surrender, the town was blockaded, and the persians made various sallies on the turkish lines, in which they were always repulsed, and, all warnings being disregarded, the four guns at last proceeded to business. the walls tumbled down immediately, the turks walked in, the persians ran away, making very little effectual resistance, and fire and the sword, plunder and outrage of all kinds, took place in every quarter of the devoted city. when the turkish troops entered the town, aboullabout pasha, who took it all in a religious point of view, had his carpet spread upon a bastion close above the breach, and having cursed hassan and hossein, sitti zeinab and ali, offered ten shillings a piece for the heads of any of their followers; and then went quietly to prayers for the rest of the morning, without making any effort to stop the horrors and excesses which occur when a city has been taken by storm. the accounts of the shocking outrages and barbarities committed by the brutal soldiery are not fit to be repeated. when the town was pillaged, and every thing had been seized that they could lay their hands upon, those who had not been fortunate in lighting upon any treasure, or any thing worth taking away, bethought themselves of the manner in which profit and amusement might be combined, by cutting off every one's head that they could meet with, and taking it up to the pious old pasha, who continued praying on his carpet on the bastion. when persian heads became difficult to find, not being particular, a great many turks were shot and decapitated by their fellow-soldiers, for the sake of their heads, the fraternal feeling of nationality and sooniism not being calculated to resist the offer of one ducat per head. if this had been suffered to continue, it is probable that the state of affairs would have resembled that of the celebrated battle between the two kilkenny cats, who ate each other up entirely with the exception of a small piece of fluff. when the massacre was stopped, 22,000 persons were reported to have been slain. this was very much exaggerated, no doubt, and it does not appear that a very correct account could be made out. a most curious and interesting report was afterward drawn up on this subject by colonel farrant, who was deputed by the british government to proceed to kerbela for the purpose of pacifying the contending parties, and inquiring into the truth and extent of this terrible disaster. this was the first subject which the congress assembled to discuss measures of amity and mutual confidence between turkey and persia had brought before them--one not precisely calculated to insure that calmness of debate and general good-will which all wanted to establish. in course of time matters calmed down; things were what is called explained. we were all wonderfully civil to each other, and the turkish and persian followers of their respective plenipotentiaries did not express their private opinions of each other's merits till they got home and shut the door. gradually they became more used to one another's ways, and the commissioners worked like special constables to keep the peace--and very hard work they had; and it is wholly and entirely owing to their exertions that the koordish tribes upon the frontiers, and the wild spirits on both sides who were ready to back them up, were kept down for more than ten years, during which time commerce has been enlarged, the roads have been safe, and the christian and agricultural population from bussora to mount ararat have enjoyed a tranquillity and prosperity unknown in the memory of man. chapter v. the boundary question.--koordish chiefs.--torture of artin, an american christian.--improved state of society in turkey.--execution of a koord.--power of fatalism.--gratitude of artin's family. one of the most important of the affairs which were to be settled at erzeroom was the geographical position of the boundaries between the two empires, for along the whole line there ran a broad belt of a kind of debatable land, upon which every man felt it his duty to shoot at every other man whom he did not get near enough to run through with his long spear, or knock upon the head with his mace, these ancient style of weapons being still in use among the koords. for the purpose of gaining local information, many of the chiefs and principal persons of the wild districts in question were brought up to erzeroom to be examined before the plenipotentiaries and commissioners. some of these were most original individuals. the following extract from a letter, written upon the spot, will give a faint idea of two or three of these singular chieftains. extract of a letter. "erzeroom, august 11th, 1843. "one day passes much like another at erzeroom, and though there seldom occurs any thing new to me, perhaps, as it would be all new to you, you may like to hear how i pass my time, so i will give you a sort of journal of the proceedings of yesterday, that you may see how i occupy myself in this outlandish place. first of all, i got up in the morning, ate my breakfast, and then walked about the terrace on the top of the house. at eleven o'clock a messenger came from enveri effendi, to ask us to go to his house at one. so at one o'clock we went; the russian commissioner, with his suite, came also. at the door of enveri effendi's house i saw a fine mare, with very peculiar housings. it was held by a negro, and a bedouin arab was sitting on the ground near it. the head-stall was made of a red silk garter, which went over its head, and was attached to the bit by a piece of green leather strap; the saddle was a common arab saddle, but the housings, made of wadded red silk, ended in two immense tassels, one on each side of the horse's tail, and almost as large; the shovel-stirrups were beautifully embossed and inlaid with silver, and there was a heavy mace of the same workmanship under the right flap of the saddle. this curious horse belonged to sheikh thamir, the chief of the chaab tribe, and ex-sovereign of all the land at the mouths of the euphrates. all the time that i was examining the horse and talking about its accouterments, the turkish guard were presenting arms, and they looked very much relieved when i turned round and went into the house. "the staircase of this palace is like a chicken-ladder, and the hall at the top, where the servants wait, like a little barn or stable in england. here, as i was kicking off my goloshes, i was seized by enveri effendi himself, who had come up behind me. this was considered as an excellent good joke by the chaoushes, servants, &c., who stood in a row to receive us; so we went into the selamlik (or reception room) together, and there i was introduced to three of the most picturesque people i have ever seen. the first was osman pasha, late governor of zohab; the second, sheikh thamir, whose horse i had been looking at outside; the third was yclept abdul kader effendi, chief secretary to the government of bussorah. these persons were dressed in flowing robes of various colors; they had long beards, and enormous turbans of cashmere shawl. all three were remarkably ugly, strange-looking men, and i can not describe to you the peculiar way in which their clothes were put on, and the wild and almost magnificent appearance they presented. there were, besides these and ourselves, b---pasha and four other gentlemen, in the modern turkish dress. the three commissioners and their two dragomans sat on the divan under the window, all, except myself, with their legs sticking out, like people waiting for an operation in a hospital. enveri effendi sat on a cushion on the floor, in the right-hand corner, and the others were ranged on the two sides of the room. as we were fourteen people, on a sudden fourteen servants rushed into the room with pipes; then one brought coffee on a tray, the brocade covering of which was thrown over his left shoulder; and then came a man bringing to each of us a cup, well frothed up, and in a zarf, or outer cup, of a different kind, according to the rank of the person to whom it was presented. enveri effendi and the three commissioners had cups of enameled gold, the rest of the pashas, &c., of silver. when this ceremony was concluded, the door was shut, the servants disappeared, a curtain was drawn across the door, and two chaoushes, with muskets, put to guard it outside. then enveri effendi lifted up his voice, and, after swinging himself about, and grunting two or three times, he told us that the gentlemen in the turbans had brought up a number of old firmans, teskerã¨s, and other papers relating to the lands between zohab and the persian gulf; that he had examined them, and that now he begged the commissioners to put any questions they chose to the worthies before them respecting the lands, &c. "then we all looked at each other for a little time, then they all looked at me. then i took up my parable, and desired the dragoman to ask osman pasha who he was. 'i am osman pasha,' said he; 'and i and my family have been sovereigns (or hereditary governors rather) of zohab for seven generations.' having asked him a great many questions, and written down his answers, which made him somewhat nervous, i turned to sheikh thamir. 'what is your fortunate name?' said i; upon which sheikh thamir opened his eyes, then he opened his mouth, then he looked at abdel kader, then he shut his mouth again, and said nothing. so i asked him again who he had the honor to be. upon this, abdel kader, who appeared to be his mentor or adviser, came and sat down by him, and said, 'he is sheikh thamir.' sheikh thamir upon this shouted out, at the top of his voice, 'yes, i am sheikh thamir, the son of gashban, who was the son of osman, who was the son of--' 'thank you,' i said, 'i only wanted to know from your own lips who you were, but am not particular as to the names of all your respected ancestors.' however, sheikh thamir was not to be stopped in this way when he had once begun, so he shouted out a long string of names, and when he got to the end he said he was sheikh of the sheikhs of the great tribe of chaab, and commander of the district of ghoban, which his ancestors had held before him for one or two hundred years--or more, or less, as i pleased. in answer to other questions, which abdel kader always accompanied with his own notes and commentaries, he said, 'i have no papers; we do not understand such things. what do i know? i am an old man. i am forty-five years of age; let me alone.' in course of time i did let him alone, and a difficult thing it was to draw out any information from this wild desert chief. every now and then somebody else put in a word. at about four o'clock the meeting broke up. we returned home and dined, and in the evening went out riding. passing some tents, which the pasha has set up at the other side of the town, near a tank--the only place where there are any trees near erzeroom, and they are only about a dozen poplars--i saw a number of people, so i went up to the tents, and found sabri pasha, the commander of the troops, an egyptian pasha, who is come to buy horses for mohammed ali--he has bought some hundreds; bekir pasha, some other military pashas, namik effendi, &c., two little sons of sabri pasha, dressed in a very odd way, with petticoats of different colored silks in stripes; he said it was the dress of the girls in albania, but i never saw any thing like it in that country. here we stayed and chatted with the turks. the tents are superb; the principal one was 100 feet long, with an open colonnade round it, and lined inside with silk; rich persian carpets were spread on the ground. i have never seen so beautiful a tent. when the moon rose i went away, a man carrying a meshaleh, a thing like a beacon, on the top of a pole, with old cotton dipped in pitch burning in it; it is the best light there is for out-of-doors, as it never blows out, and gives much more light than any torches or lanterns. "when i got home i paid my respects to the kid, who came out to meet me; and to the little cow, eighteen inches high, who sat in the door and would not get out of the way; and having drank tea, i went to bed." on another occasion certain men represented to me that a christian oda bashi, or chamberlain of a khan or inn, had been unjustly seized and tortured by the authorities, to make him confess to a robbery that had taken place in his khan, which in reality had been perpetrated by two turkish soldiers; but the oda bashi being a christian, neither his evidence nor that of any other christian could be taken in opposition to that of a mohammedan, according to the turkish law. the case was brought before me, and i took some interest in it. i had no authority whatever to deal with such questions as these, and it was only by representations to the pasha that i was enabled to obtain justice for the unlucky oda bashi. finding the case taken down at the time from the word of mouth of some of those who moved in it, i thought it might be interesting as a picture of manners in an out-of-the-way country, and i subjoin it without making any alterations in the language of this piece of justiciary business. case of artin, oda bashi, an armenian. "erzeroom, august 2d and 12th, 1843. "a merchant, named mehemed, brought his merchandise to the khan ghengã© aga khan, where he slept. two soldiers slept near him. in the morning his goods were gone; he accused the soldiers (who were the only people who had been near him) of the robbery; they denied it, and were let off by the judge at the mekemmã©, before whom they had been taken. a turkish woman, named zeilha, saw the two soldiers bury something, upon which she told the merchant that his goods were buried at such a place by the soldiers. he went there, and found half the goods; the soldiers, therefore, were again taken up, when they confessed to the theft of half the goods, but said that the oda bashi, an armenian, named artin, had taken the other half. artin was accordingly taken before the tribunal of the kiaya; the pasha ordered him to be tortured on his declaring himself ignorant of the theft. a tass (metal drinking-cup) of hot brass was put about his head; afterward a cord was tied round his head, two sheep's knuckle-bones were placed upon his temples, and the cord tightened till his eyes nearly came out. as he would not confess, his front teeth were then drawn one at a time; pieces of cane were run up under his toe-nails and his finger-nails. various tortures have been inflicted on him in this way for the last twelve days, and he is now hung up by the hands in the prison of the seraskier, where he will be kept and tormented till he confesses or dies. this is the deposition of his wife mariam, who begs me to interpose to save her husband, who, she declares, slept at home, and not in the khan, on the night when the robbery took place." according to the turkish law, two witnesses of unimpeachable character are sufficient to convict any man of any crime, on their accusing him before the cadi. only in the case of adultery four male witnesses are required. a woman's evidence is never taken, nor is that of a christian or a foreigner held good in any case against a mohammedan. these two soldiers, however, being convicted thieves, their evidence was not valid according to the law, and the oda bashi seems to have been taken up and tortured by an entirely arbitrary act of the pasha. i went to the palace, and these are the words of kiamili pasha, the governor and viceroy of erzeroom. "you are mistaken; the man has not been tortured; i have proof that he was at the khan that night; he has been found guilty by the court (mekemmã©) on proper evidence, and sent to me to receive the punishment due to his offense. as i wished to recover the goods stolen for the benefit of their owner, the merchant mehemed, i threatened the oda bashi that if he did not tell what he had done with his share of the property, it was in my power to inflict these tortures upon him. "after this he desired to be allowed to speak to the two soldiers who had possession of the other half of the goods. i consented, and sent him to the prison at selim pasha's palace, where they were confined. as i would not trust to the report of selim pasha's people, i sent a confidential man of my own, who was put in a place where he overheard all that passed. the oda bashi said to the soldiers, 'if you will say i am innocent, i will share my portion of the stolen goods with you, and you will gain by this, as your share has been taken from you, and i shall get off freely. do this, and nobody will know.' "the oda bashi was brought back to his prison: when i asked him what he had said to the soldiers, he told me quite another story. then i spoke to him in his own words, whereat he was astonished, but he kept silence. he is still in prison, and i am thinking what to do with him; but he has not been tortured in any way; and as you seem to take an interest in his case, i will set him free, and give him to you, to show my friendship for you." i replied, "i am glad to hear that the man has not been tortured, for in england we consider torture to be an act of unnecessary cruelty; but your story alters the case. the man is certainly guilty, and as i only asked for justice in this case, and i wish in all things to see justice done, i will not have the man; let him be punished according to the law, only do not torture him. "the other day you hung a koord opposite my windows; he was a murderer, and you did right: it is by acts like these that a country such as this can be kept in order, and that protection is assured to those who do well." "i am sorry," said the pasha, "that they hung the koord before your windows. i told them not to hang him before the house of the persian plenipotentiary, where there is a gibbet; but to take him to any place where the koords resorted, and as there are many coffee-houses near you, that is the reason probably why they hung him there. his story is a curious one: i have been looking after him for the last three years; he has robbed and murdered many people, though he was so young a man, but he had always escaped my agents. at last, a few days ago, he stole a horse, in a valley near here, from a man who was traveling, and whom he beat about the head and left for dead. he brought the horse to erzeroom and offered it for sale, when the owner, who had recovered, saw him selling the horse, and gave him up to the guard. he was brought up for judgment before me, when i said to him, who are you? after a silence, the man said, 'there is a fate in this, it can not be denied. i am * * * *, whom you have been searching for these three years. my fate brought me to erzeroom, and now i am taken up for stealing one poor horse. i felt when i took that horse that i was fated to die for it. my time is come. it is fate.' and he went to be hung without any complaint." i said he deserved it, and hoped others would take warning by his death. "i hope they will," the pasha said, "but among the koords of this country there are so few who do not deserve punishment, that if you see two persons you may be sure that one has stolen something. you can not see two people together here but that at least one has been a thief." "well," i answered, "the british commissioners are two people whom your excellency has often seen together, but i hope, in our case, when we leave the pashalik of erzeroom, we may be convicted of having stolen nothing but your good opinion;" and so i took my leave. in the evening, hearing that the wife of the oda bashi was in my house, i said to paolo cadelli, my servant, that my desire to liberate the armenian was changed; that he had not been tortured, but he was a thief. "how!" said paolo, in a great state of excitement; "a thief he may be, but tortured he certainly was, for in the morning did i not go forth into the bazaar to get wrappers (pestimal) of persian silk? i went to the bezestein, and there did i not see the chief of the criers of the bit bazaar? he is my friend. did i not get from him the embroidery, the cloth of gold which you have, which is in your room? and we went, did we not go together, to the court of the palace of the pasha? it is opposite, is it not opposite to the entrance of the bezestein? do not the soldiers present arms to you there when you go in? yes. there i went, and i saw the armenian, a poor devil--quite a poor devil--sitting down like a monkey, altogether quite stupid with fear and martyrdom. they had martyred him; they had drawn his teeth; his finger-ends and toes were black, by reason of the canes they had run into them; his thighs had been torn by pincers; he was half dead. he said to the people, 'what can i do? i am innocent; kill me; but i can not restore goods which i have not got.' ah! he is a christian. is he not a christian--an armenian? that is what these turks do. they have not tortured the soldiers who are guilty. certainly they have not, but this man has been tortured because he is an armenian. they are turks, my master (padrone); are they not turks? they are all turks; that is what they do;" and with many ejaculations paolo went away to cool down his indignation in the open air. i was surprised at this account. yesterday, august 5, * * * pasha came to breakfast, and i begged him to find out the truth. in the afternoon i was at enveri effendi's house; * * * pasha was there, and he said the man had not been tortured; that the account given me by kiamili pasha was correct; that the man was out of prison, but that the pasha would seek for him and send him to me. i heard that, after i went to the pasha, the pasha sent for the kiaya, and finding the oda bashi had been tortured, he found great fault with him, and ordered the man to be released the next day. he is sentenced, as he understands, to pay the half of the value of the goods stolen. while i was with the pasha, the tophenkyi bashi was enraged with this poor victim for getting the assistance of the franks, as he thought that we were come to the pasha on his account, whereas our visit was on public business in no way connected with this affair. it appears that while we were sitting on the divan in the pasha's hall of audience, the tophenkyi bashi was employed during the same time in inflicting additional torments on the unfortunate oda bashi; he snapped his pistol at his head, and informed him that the pasha had given orders that he was to be hanged in the course of the day. the oda bashi, after we had rescued him from his various tormentors, presented himself before me. he was a good-looking man, about thirty-five years of age, with a black beard, and respectably dressed in blue, in the style usually adopted by the armenian christians. he said he had been tortured by the order of the kiaya bey; the bones were put to his temples, some of his teeth drawn, his nails pierced, his left thigh torn with pincers; he was hung up by the arms by ropes, but the hot cup was not placed upon his head. he showed me the marks of the pincers and other scars about his body--evident proofs of the truth of his assertion. the two soldiers who were convicted of having stolen the goods (the oda bashi being entirely ignorant of the whole transaction) were to be brought before the council on the following monday. they are now in prison, and will be sentenced to pay the other half of the value of the stolen goods. this information the oda bashi received from the merchant mehemed, the owner of the lost property. he has not heard any other particulars about the soldiers. from the above account it appears that much injustice may probably be carried on by the inferior officers of the government which never gets to the ears of the pasha, small officials being notoriously more tyrannical than greater men. the pasha himself appears to be a kind-hearted, well-intentioned man in a general way; but, in cases where his own interest is not directly concerned, he does not look into the affairs of the pashalik with sufficient keenness to prevent his subordinate officers from practicing various acts of oppression and extortion, according to the fashion of the good old times, when turkey, like the united states of america, was a land of liberty, where every free and independent citizen had the right to beat his own nigger; for, according to some doctors of the law, pashas, vizirs, &c., might cut off a few heads every day for no given reason, but just for amusement. the sultan had the privilege of destroying fourteen lives per day of his faithful subjects, who might have committed no crime; after that number, some reason was expected to be shown for the further use of the sword and bow-string on that day. now the case is altered: fewer crimes are committed in turkey than in london, and the turkish pashas endeavor to stop such practices as are considered discreditable on the part of the inferior officers; though they have to contend with great difficulties in a country where it is hardly possible to get at the truth, and where the inferior officers have for generations been accustomed to plunder those below them, directly they are out of sight of the higher authorities; trusting to the want of communication, the slight knowledge of writing, and the many obstacles in the way which prevent the poor man's story getting to the ears of the pasha or the sultan, who, in these days at least, are anxious to remedy such abuses, and to distribute justice with a tolerably impartial hand. i had great satisfaction in hearing afterward that, owing to my exertions in this and other cases--the good cause being taken up warmly by colonel williams, after i was gone--all torture was authoritatively abolished in the pashalik of erzeroom; and i am in hopes that, except in some snug little dungeon in the rocky castle of a half independent koordish chief, this horrible custom is almost extinct. the koord above mentioned was hanged in so original a manner that i must shortly describe it, as it took place immediately under my window. what we called at school a cat-gallows was erected close to a bridge, over the little stream which ran down the horse-market, between my house and the bottom of the hill of the citadel. the culprit stood under this; the cross-beam was not two feet above his head; a kawass, having tied a rope to one end of the beam, passed a slip-knot round the neck of the koord, a young and very handsome man, with long black hair; he then drew the rope over the other end of the beam, and pulled away till the poor man's feet were just off the ground, when he tied the rope in a knot, leaving the dead body hanging, supported by two ropes in the form of the letter v. hardly any one was looking on, and in the afternoon the body was taken down and buried. i shall always consider this case as a remarkable instance of the power of fatalism over the mind of an ignorant and superstitious man. this koord was entirely the cause of his own execution: no one knew him by sight at erzeroom, and there was not the slightest necessity for his declaring his name to the pasha, and confessing that he had committed murders and outrages of all kinds among the villages of koordistaun. his punishment for stealing a horse would not have been very severe, and, but for his voluntary admission that he was a notorious malefactor, for whom the police had long been on the look-out, he might have been alive to this day, to rob and murder, till somebody shot him, or he became too old for the exertion. fatalism, in other cases, has a powerful influence over the true believers in the armies of islam. the soldier goes to battle with the firm belief that, if his hour is not come, the cannon of the enemy can have no power over him; and that if his hour is arrived, the angel of death will call him, whether he may be seated on his divan, or walking in full health in his garden at home: just as readily does he bow his head to fate in one place as in another. by this institution of the koran, the wonderful genius of mohammed has gained many a victory by the hands of his trusting and believing followers for the caliphs and sultans of his creed. some of the reforms of sultan mahmoud, by treating lightly many of the ancient prejudices of the osmanlis, have shaken the throne under his feet. the progress of infidelity, which has begun at constantinople, is the greatest temporal danger to the power of the turkish empire. the turk implicitly believes the tenets of his religion; he keeps its precepts and obeys its laws; he is proud of his faith, and prays in public when the hour of prayer arrives. how different, alas! is the manner in which the divine laws of christianity are kept! the christian seems ashamed of his religion; as for obeying the doctrines of the gospel, they have no perceptible effect upon the mass of the people, among whom drunkenness, dishonesty, and immorality prevail almost unchecked, except by the fear of punishment in this world; while in turkey not one tenth part of the crime exists which is annually committed in christendom. a few days after this occurrence, as i was sitting in the summer chamber at the top of the house, i heard a most extraordinary shuffling and screeching behind the curtain which hung over the door; the curtain shook about, and numerous subdued voices and noises were heard, which sounded like cocks and hens suffering from strangulation. i shouted out to know what in the world was going on; after a while the kawass drew aside the curtain, and along the floor advanced a most strange and incomprehensible procession of several women and men, crawling on their hands and knees, each with a cock or a hen in their hands, whose fluttering, and screaming, and crowing now broke forth in full chorus; one or two got away, and flew about the room, as its owner, making use of her hands to walk with, was unable to hold the terrified fowl. this procession advanced to the divan, and, without saying a word, the foremost woman seized hold of one of my legs, which was inadvertently sticking out, and, holding on to my ankle, kissed my foot, and burst out into a string of exclamations in armenian, no one word of which made any impression on my understanding. being horribly alarmed, i kicked as well as i could, and, having escaped into the remotest corner of the divan, i begged to know what all this portended; and on the chickens being caught, and comparative silence obtained, i found that these were the family of the poor oda bashi, who had brought the chickens as a present, and came with tears to thank me for saving their father, brother, or husband. they were really pained, poor people, when i would not accept the cocks and hens, for, though of little value, it looked like receiving a bribe for justice; and, after a long explanation of my strange notions, they walked off in smiles upon their hind legs, the cocks crowing triumphantly on their way down stairs. chapter vi. the clock of erzeroom.--a pasha's notions of horology.--pathology of clocks.--the tower and dungeon.--ingenious mode of torture.--the modern prison. in the citadel--a place which might, with great ease, be rendered very strong, but which now is deserted and disused, having, i believe, been knocked to pieces in the russian war--there are still two or three curious ancient tombs and some other incomprehensible old buildings. the building containing the prison, which was in constant use in the good old times, and the tower, from whence the flag of turkey is displayed, possessed an old clock, which had been out of order for many years before the russians carried it away, but which was the wonder and admiration of all koords, armenians, and strangers from the mountains, to whom time was "no object," and who considered this old clock, with its dial and hands, as some sort of talisman beyond the comprehension of ordinary folks. erzeroom was indeed lifted up in the estimation of those unsophisticated herdsmen and robbers, as the only place they ever heard of where any thing in the nature of a clock was to be seen. it might happen that some few of those who not only were possessed of such an outlandish article as a watch, but who were in some measure initiated into the uses of that strange production, would expatiate learnedly in the coffee-houses on the wondrous properties of the great talisman in the tower of the citadel, which, in all probability, from its great size and exalted position, was considered as the father of all the little watches of the sheikhs and chiefs among the tribes. as for the clock not going, that signified but little. talleyrand said that speech was accorded to man for the purpose of enabling him to conceal his sentiments. the big clock had doubtless his reasons for holding his tongue, and telling no lies; i believe his reputation was increased by his silence, as is the case among many other distinguished characters besides the clock of erzeroom. now it came to pass, once upon a time, that the great pasha or viceroy of the wide realms of this great pashalik chanced to be a philosopher; he knew that clocks, though they might have been made to sell, besides this very primary quality, also ought to go, but no artificer in the land of armenia was competent to accomplish this desirable end. whenever a frank traveler--not that there ever were any travelers by profession in those days--but whenever a frank doctor or hakim made his appearance in those regions, he was always received with distinguished civility by the pasha, who, after the preliminaries of coffee, kef enis ayi--"may your powers of enjoyment be in good order!"--always ended with an expression of his desire that the frank would immediately set about the repairs of the clock. "sir, your excellency," said the poor man, "i am a doctor; i am not a watchmaker or a mechanic. i don't understand clocks; it is not in my power to set the clock right; it is not in my line of business. i am very sorry, but, o effendim, i fear i am unable to meet your wishes in this point." "dog of a frank," quoth the pasha, "great-grandfather's uncle to all dogs, more particularly those of frangistaun, is it not thy base profession to meddle with the bowels of mankind? canst thou not expel ginns, and evil spirits, and other things, which have taken up their abode in the innermost recesses of the bodies of true believers, which thine eye can not penetrate, while, nevertheless, thou turnest their livers upside down, and their souls inside out; and all this by the accursed aid of thy wretched frankish incantations; shooting thine arrows at them, or rather sending down their throats certain wicked and diabolical contrivances, which are known by the barbarians of thy benighted country by the name of pills? dost thou pretend to see all that is going on in the stomach of a follower of the prophet, and wilt thou tell me with the same breath that thou canst not administer to the disorganized constitution of a clock? hath not a clock a pulse, when he is alive and in good health? go thou, feel his pulse, and see whether it is fast or slow; whatever thou mayest want, thou shalt have; my hakim bashi shall assist you, only cure the clock. all franks make clocks: i have it from authority: do not pretend that thou canst not set the clock going again, for surely thou canst restore it to life, and make it strike, and do all that it ought to do. behold, thou art a frank! guards! take the frank up into the tower, and make him mend the clock; and if the unbelieving dog will not mend the clock, then put him into the dungeon down below till he confesses that he is ready to do as he is commanded by the pasha of the true believers." in this way every audience concluded. the unlucky frank, having been exalted to the top of the tower, and exhorted to repair the rickety old clock, which had lost half its works, was debased into the dungeon, there to remain till further notice. having often heard this story of the good old times, i one day proceeded to the citadel to see the tower where the clock had been, and to examine the dungeon, where i should have been sent if i had arrived at erzeroom fifty or sixty years ago. this dungeon really was a dungeon: any thing so terrible as an abode for a human being i never saw before. the pozzi at venice were rather pleasant and agreeable places of retirement, compared with the abode of many a poor frank, in whose education the art and craft of clockology had been unfortunately omitted. at the foot of that which had been the clock-tower was a range of small low rooms, of which two were particularly belonging to the prison: the outer room of the two was larger than the other; this was appropriated to the guards, who kept watch and ward, and who fed, or did not feed, the wretched prisoners under their care. the inner room was small and low, and had one window, through which the light and air had to struggle with the opposition of heavy crossed and re-crossed iron bars. the window looked into the castle yard, but the room was so dark that i could hardly see my way. "a horrible place for the poor prisoners," said i to my guides; "little chance of their escape from these thick walls, and heavy bars, and low, strong roof; they must have been safe enough here." "oh effendim," said the kawasses, "this is not the prison. here is the prison at your feet, down below." "where?" said i. "look down," they replied, "on the middle of the floor; there is the entrance; you can not see the dungeon itself, for it is, perhaps, a little dark." in the centre of the floor of this dismal cell was a heavy wrought-iron grating, square, made of great bars, about six inches apart, seemingly of enormous weight, lying on the ground, and fastened down with two or three huge rusty padlocks on one side, and some lumbering old hinges on the other. this iron grate was opened and raised up for my especial edification, and there appeared under it the mouth of a narrow well cut in the rock, perhaps two feet and a half in diameter, which sank down into the darkness far below. "now," said my informants, "if you stand on this side, and look steadily till your eye is accustomed to the gloom, you will be able to distinguish something white a good way down; that is a square stone, like a table, in the middle of the vault, upon which the jailers let down the provisions for the prisoners, as they can see on that stone when the things arrive at the bottom." this was the old dungeon, the common prison not many years ago; but, i believe, since the reign of hadji kiamili pasha, few or none had been consigned to this horrible abode. the shape of it below, i understood, was that of the inside of a bottle; it was between twenty and thirty feet deep; vermin, dirt and filth, and foul air, formed its only furniture; and into this awful hole many and many an innocent man had been let down: some to be brought up again to pay a ransom of all that they possessed, some to linger there for years, and some to die and rot unnoticed if no food was provided for them by government, when their bones, if not their flesh, gave token to the next inhabitants of what they were to expect, unless their interest or their wealth was greater than that of the poor wretch whose remains lay there before them. an ingenious and horrible species of torture was sometimes added to the discomforts of this dread abode: a large piece of raw flesh was thrown down into the dungeon; the vermin, and the effluvia which it produced, added to other miseries, made the existence of the wretched prisoner almost intolerable. the modern prison is bad enough: it consists of a number of cells opening on a small paved court-yard. the prisoners, being just shoved through the door, have to shift for themselves inside, where a kind of pandemonium exists; the stronger koords bullying and tyrannizing over the weaker felons, who have neither fire nor candle during the intense cold of a great part of the year: so i was told; but i was not there in the winter, and hope these unhappy wretches may be allowed a little tezek occasionally to keep their dirty bodies and souls together. chapter vii. spring in erzeroom.--coffee-house diversions.--koordish exploits.--summer employment.--preparation of tezek.--its varieties and uses. when the snows of winter have melted, and the air becomes more temperate, the population of erzeroom begin to revive. the women and children, who, like the bears, lemmings, and marmottes, have hybernated all the winter, now peep with red eyes out of their subterranean habitations; those streets situated upon hills, as most of them are, become torrents of melted snow, which cut deep ravines through the frozen mass which is piled up many feet on each side; narrow paths are gradually dug out from the low doors of the armenian man-burrows toward the central river of the street; the winking children creep out to blink their eyes at the sun, and enjoy the fresh air; fusty cows, who have been buried for eight months, come slowly staring out; every now and then a more adventurous infant is carried away by the stream, and its body quickly devoured by the ravenous dogs at the outskirts of the town; wolves, it is said, though i never saw one, prowl about, and eat the dog that ate the child, that came out to see the weather so mild, in the street by the house that (not) jack built. women now scream to each other in shrill voices, as they pitch down large wooden spadefuls of half-melted snow upon the heads of those who are passing in the street; knots of tartars, circassians, and lazes, and koords, in iron-heeled boots and white woolen trowsers, tell lies to each other at the doors of the coffee-houses, which are answered with dignified exclamations of wullah! billah! nobody believing his neighbor's lie, but considering straightway how he can invent a deliberate falsehood to lay before the other liars in his turn. every now and then one of these stories is true, when a cadaverous-looking koord, hung round with arms and leaning on his lance, with the black ostrich feathers at the top, being a practical man with very little imagination, coolly relates the history of the sacking of a defenseless village, where murder unresisted, rapine, sacrilege in the burning of the mosque, and spearing the children who run shrieking from the flames of their homes, bear with it the impress of truth, with the conviction on the part of any honest man (if there should be one in the party) that, although the rest are liars, the only truthful narrator is a brute of that atrocious kind, that the falsehoods of the rest are trifles, like chaff before the wind, in comparison with the real and true experiences of this infernal child of hell. such as this are the koords; their only virtue is that they are not cowards; but, although they subscribe to a nominal adherence to the mohammedan religion, the most liberal imaum would be ashamed to own them. the yezedis, who worship the devil, are angels in comparison. yet they are superstitious to a curious degree, as the foregoing anecdote of the koord who was hung through giving evidence about himself testifies. at the commencement of the summer the whole city of erzeroom is engaged, even to desperation, in making tezek; you hear, smell, and see nothing else. how are you off for tezek? tezek katch, chok tezek, tezek var bourda chok, chok, evet, tezek effendim, katch gooroosh: in short, no one cares for any thing except tezek, and he who has most tezek is the greatest man, and he who has but little tezek he is naught--no one cares for him, or, indeed, for any thing else except the one absorbing topic of tezek. the cows, and bulls, and oxen having reappeared on upper earth, the augean stable is cleared out. tezek, the only fuel of erzeroom, consists of the production into which the said oxen have converted their food for many months; it is trodden down hard, and is dug out by zealous armenians, and brought exultingly to the tops of the houses; it is mixed with a good deal of the chopped straw with which horses, and oxen, and sheep are fed while in the subterranean stables; more chopped straw is added, mixed with water; and, except the higher class of grandees, such as the pasha, the commander-in-chief, and the author, all true men were employed on the tops of their houses, treading the chopped straw into the tezek with their naked feet, their full turkish trowsers being pulled up and tied with a belt round their waists. with a stick to lean upon, they are there all day, trotting about, up to their knees in tezek, shouting to each other; mohammed bringing some more water to pour upon it; hassan staggering up the ladder with more tezek of the genuine unadulterated kind from the recesses of the stable; bekir with a great basket of chopped straw; and then all set to with a will, and tread steadily for an hour or two, as sailors do round a capstan, for the dear life; and when they get very hot they wipe their brow with a tezeky sleeve, and their sleeve with a fold of a tezeky trowser, so that they become altogether tezekious before the sun sets upon their labors, and veils his nose, if not his eyes, under the clouds which hang over the eternal snows in the dreaded passes of the mountains of hoshabounar. the tezek being trodden into a stiff clayey state, about six or seven inches thick, is left alone for a day or two to dry; amateurs, however, scrambling up to the top of the house to see how it is going on, to pick a bit off, and look at it cunningly, and smell it, to find whether it has the true flavor. there are armenians who are knowing in tezek, who understand the thing; and over a remarkably good batch a knot of the fancy will sit on little stools, and smoke their pipes, and discuss the question scientifically; telling tales of former celebrated heaps, and of hadji such a one, who was famous in that line, and of one bokchi bashi, who had an astonishing talent in the preparation of inimitable tezek. when it is all ready, it is dug out in square blocks, and carried down the ladders again carefully in open baskets, and piled up in the inner treasuries below, and stored for the fuel of the future winter. it is better for being old, when it resembles peat turf. it gets somewhat dusty in a year or so, and then rivals that sort of snuff called irish blackguard in its capacity for making you sneeze, if you venture to move a clod of it to put upon the fire; it then burns clear and clean, without flame, and is very hot; but when more fresh--though that is not the word--more new, i may say--it produces a thick stifling smoke, very odoriferous, and not generally appreciated by those who do not love tezek for itself, or who are not at that time maneuvering to make you purchase an astounding bargain of the precious fuel of their own particular manufacture. erzeroom is not alone in the production of this article of merchandise. from thence through the whole of tartary as we call it, or turkistaun as they call it, this fuel is in universal use as far as the great wall of china. great care is taken sometimes in the production of it for various artistic purposes. in thibet it is called arghol, and in the very remarkable travels of m. huc, it is related that that which comes from sheep and goats is more valuable for the purpose of smelting iron and other metals, as it gives a greater heat, and, instead of leaving any ash, melts into a vitreous mass of a bluish green color. i never saw any of this myself, though it may have been used at erzeroom, for this place was lately famous for the workmanship in iron and steel by seven brothers, whose productions are valuable under the name of yedi kartasch, as manton added a value to those guns to which his name was affixed. the tezek of oxen and cows ranks next; that of horses and donkeys last, from the quantity of smoke produced by it; that of the oxen, with the slightest possible flavor of donkey, was certainly most fashionable at erzeroom. chapter viii. the prophet of khoi.--climate.--effects of great elevation above the sea.--the genus homo.--african gold-diggings.--sale of a family.--site of paradise.--tradition of khosref purveez.--flowers.--a flea-antidote.--origin of the tulip.--a party at the cave of ferhad, and its results.--translation from hafiz. the atmospheric peculiarities of this climate are such, that the weather, as a general rule, may be considered as on the way from bad to worse. earthquakes more or less severe are often felt. a severe one occurred in the year 1843, and in the same year the town of khoi was almost entirely destroyed by one of these awful convulsions of nature. a circumstance occurred on that occasion which was very remarkable, if true. a dervish or fakir of distinguished sanctity felt himself about to die, and, calling his friends and disciples around the couch of skins on which he lay, he prophesied that a terrible disaster was about to fall upon the town of khoi; that the lives of many would fall into the hands of monkir and nakir on that day; but that those faithful believers who accompanied his body to the tomb would be permitted to escape from the sword of the avenging angel for his sake. the old man died, and, being held in universal reverence, the greater part of the inhabitants of khoi followed his corpse to the burial-ground, which was situated at some distance from the town. while absent on this pious errand, a tremendous earthquake suddenly reduced the city to ruin. so complete was the destruction that hardly a house was left standing, and many of those who had remained at home perished in the fall of their habitations, while those who had accompanied the body of the dervish to the grave were saved from the disaster, as he had prophesied. this is a wonderful story; i heard it at the time, and was very much struck with the peculiar circumstances of the case. its accuracy would be difficult either to prove or to disprove, but the history as i have narrated it was current at the time when the earthquake happened. pillars of dust, like those of sand seen in the deserts of africa and arabia, are supposed to be the works of evil spirits, and often stalk like giants across the plain. the deep narrow valleys and ravines which slope down from the elevated plateau of erzeroom, are unhealthy and pestilential in the extreme, while the inhabitants of the upper country enjoy good health enough. here the corn returns about five-fold to the labor of the sower: one being retained for seed, four bushels is the extent of the profit of the husbandman for one which he had sown. the summer, though very short, is hot and parching, the thermometer being usually about 84, though it rises occasionally, i think, to nearly 90. the cold in winter is commonly 16 degrees below zero of fahrenheit, and is often colder. the mercury in my thermometer, which was not calculated for such a climate, quietly retired into the ball in the autumn, and never came out again while i remained at erzeroom. the great height of the town above the sea was exemplified in a practical manner to me on my first arrival. i was in a state of constant wrath about the tea: the tea was excellent, of the very best quality, but the decoction thereof was always a failure. in vain was the kettle placed upon the fire by my side; in vain did the semavar, the best of tea-urns, boil and steam. double, double, toil and trouble! the fire burned and the caldron bubbled, but the tea was vapid. as for the eggs, i don't know how long it took to boil them till the white was fixed. the reason of all this only occurred to me one day when i put my finger into some almost boiling water, which by no means scalded me--for water boiled at 196â° of fahrenheit, as we were between 7000 and 8000 feet above the level of the sea; and, consequently, though boiling and steaming away, it was not hot enough to produce the effects of water boiling at the heat of 212â°, which is the temperature at which it boils in london. nature has provided a kettle of her own, in a hot spring at elijã©, near which place i was informed that there was a rock against which iron stuck of its own accord--a rock of loadstone; but i never had an opportunity of verifying this report. the natural history of the highlands of armenia is particularly interesting, and rich in flowers hardly known to europeans, and in the prodigious quantities of birds which breed on the plain of erzeroom, and in the valleys and water-courses of the neighborhood. the quadrupeds are not numerous; the climate is too rigorous for those not provided with thick furs to protect them from the tremendous cold. the fish consist only of a sort of barbel, which is found in the high waters of the euphrates, and of three kinds of trout, swarming in the lesser streams and rivulets which flow down from the snowy mountain-tops. to commence with the highest order of mammalia: some extraordinary specimens of the genus homo are to be met with in many parts of the east, generally in the character of frank doctors. erzeroom was not wanting in productions of this kind. the character of these adventurers is in every instance precisely alike: they are all sharp and so-called clever men, speaking several languages correctly, with a smattering of general knowledge, but understanding nothing perfectly, and all wanting in the same two qualities--judgment and principle, the consequence of which want is, that not one in a hundred succeeds in life, and, after passing through a series of strange changes of fortune, they usually die unlamented, as poor as when they began their erratic career. the adventures of one old gentleman, with whom i was acquainted here, was so extraordinary and uncommon, that a history of them would fill a volume. after this man's death, it appeared that he was not himself, but somebody else; and his true name being the same as that of a person i had met, many years before, at wadi halfa, or at assouan, high up the nile, made me suspect that these two persons were the same. one half of this character certainly died in a khan at erzeroom; but as i do not know whether the other half is dead, or whether the two were really one or not, i must forbear the strange narration of their lives, for fear something might meet the eyes of their friends or relations--if they had any--who, perhaps, may be under the pleasing delusion that their respected relative was an honor to their name. i must, however, relate a little anecdote of the egyptian half of my acquaintance. at assouan, below the cataracts, i saw an extraordinary-looking boat, built of bits of hard wood, like iron-wood, each about two feet long, caulked or cemented in the seams with reeds and mud, precisely in the manner in which the ancient boats are represented in the hieroglyphics. this strange vessel was of large size, and was navigated by a crew of blacks, of a tribe with which i was not acquainted. the proprietor of the ship was dressed in a much worn and old-fashioned turkish dress; his cabin was carpeted with lion-skins; his cushions were the skins of some small deer, stuffed. he was very civil, and spoke in the french language to me, while he gave his orders to his servants in a dialect which bore little resemblance to arabic, but which belonged to some distant region of the interior of africa, where he had been living many years. his personal servants were the handsomest negroes i had ever seen: though they were dressed as men, i found they were girls; one, who was beautiful, was his wife. he was an interesting personage, and appeared on friendly terms with his black attendants, who looked forward with great glee to the wondrous sights which they were to see at cairo. after listening to some curious stories of the manners and customs of the black nations of the interior, unknown to europeans, he showed me three or four strongly-made iron-bound chests, which, on being opened, proved to be full of gold, to the amount of some thousands of pounds; some was in nuggets, but most part of it was in the form of rings the size of bracelets, and others the size of large heavy finger-rings, all of pure gold. these rings were passed as money, and were of the exact form of those used for the same purpose by the ancient egyptians, and of the rings found in celtic and british tombs. independent of their intrinsic value, they were exceedingly curious; and he said gold might be procured in great quantities in the mountains beyond darfoor. here, then, is an opening for some future diggings, and an object to promote discoveries in the centre of africa. my informant was a european, of the same nation and the same name as the person whom i met at erzeroom, but i now doubt whether the two were or were not the same. some time afterward i made inquiries at cairo about this singular adventurer, when i heard that he had sold his strange vessel, his wife, his servants, and his crew, to their astonishment and dismay, for they did not consider themselves as slaves, and he had taken his departure for europe with his gold rings and the produce of the sale of his confiding family. it may not be generally known that erzeroom is supposed to be the site of the terrestrial paradise. the reason of this supposition is deduced from the fact of so many great and famous rivers taking their rise in this exalted region. about three hours from erzeroom, passing the ancient monastery of kuzzul vank, on the way to tortoom and kars, a rocky top of a mountain rises about two thousand feet above the plain, and consequently about ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. standing on one spot upon this mountain, the traveler can see the sources, beneath his feet, of the euphrates, the araxes, and the river which falls into the black sea in the pestilential neighborhood of batoum; one river falling into the persian gulf, one into the caspian, and one into the black sea. the traditions of the country relate that the flowers of paradise bloomed in luxuriant splendor in this now barren region till the days of khosref purveez. this mighty persian monarch, "the great king," was encamped upon the banks of the euphrates, on the plains of erzeroom, when a messenger arrived from the prophet mohammed, then an insignificant pretender, offering this magnificent sovereign protection if he would give up the religion of his fathers and embrace the faith of islam. khosref purveez, in derision, threw the letter from the prophet into the waters of the river, when nature, in dismay, withered all her trees and flowers, and the bounteous stream, which formerly bestowed wealth and abundance to the country on its shores, shrank into its bed, and, refusing to fertilize the earth, cold, and frost, and barrenness have been ever since the consequence of the impiety of the persian king: not only this, but the days of his ancient empire were numbered; and in the days of yesdijird, a few years after this event, the blacksmith's apron, the victorious standard of persia, fell into the hands of the mohammedan general, at the great battle of kudseah, where the sun of persia set to rise no more. among the rocks, not far from erzeroom, is an artificial cavern, hewn out of the mountain side by ferhad, the successful rival of khosref in the affections of the beautiful shireen. it was here--or others say at beysittoon--that ferhad threw himself from the precipice on hearing the false intelligence that shireen was dead; and that famous beauty herself died on seeing the remains of the mighty khosref, who had been murdered by his own son schiroueh out of jealousy and love for her. from the tops of the mountains surrounding erzeroom the snowy summit of mount ararat can be seen--another monument in the history of the cradle of the human race, and at its feet the town of nackchevan was built by noah, on his descent from the ark. this was the first city built by man after the flood, according to armenian, and i think also mohammedan, tradition. some slight remains of paradise are left, even to our days, in the form of the most lovely flowers, which i gathered on the very hill from whence the three rivers take their departure to their distant seas. though one of them has a latin scientific name, no plant of it has ever been in europe, and by no manner of contrivance could we succeed in carrying one away. this most beautiful production was called in turkish, yedi kartash kanã© (seven brothers' blood), in latin, ravanea, or philipea coccinea, a parasite on absinthe, or worm-wood. this is the most beautiful flower conceivable: it is in the form of a lily, about nine to twelve inches long, including the stalk; the flower and stalk, and all parts of it, resembling crimson velvet; it has no leaves; it is found on the sides of the mountains near erzeroom, often in company with the morena orientalis, a remarkable kind of thistle, with flowers all up the stalk, looking and smelling like the honeysuckle. another beautiful flower found here has not been described. it grows among rocks, and has a tough carroty root, two feet or more in length; the leaves are long grassy filaments, forming a low bush, like a tussock of coarse grass; under the leaves appear the flowers. each plant has twelve or twenty of them (like large white-heart cherries on a stalk), in the form of a bunch of grapes, eight or ten inches long; these flowers are merely colored bladders holding the seed. an iris, of a most brilliant flaming yellow, is found among the rocks, and it, as well as all the more remarkable flowers of this country, blooms in the spring soon after the melting of the snow--that is to say, about june. pirã© otou, a herb, which is sold here in powder (anthemis rosea, aut carnea), instantly kills fleas and other insects, and would be invaluable to travelers in warm climates. we possessed a certain little dog called fundook (a nut), who held the important position of turnspit in our kitchen: he was a wise dog, with a look of dignity about him like a dog in office, and one that had something on his mind and knew more than he would say. he turned out his elbows and turned in his toes, and sat at the door in a solemn attitude when not employed on the business of the nation. in the pursuit of his vocation he became sadly vexed with fleas, and his dignity suffered from the necessity of scratching with his hind leg, just like a common, vulgar dog. commiserating his condition, one of the grooms went to the expense of five paras (one farthing sterling), with which he purchased two good handfuls of powdered leaves of pirã© otou, the effect of which was magical: in one minute every flea was dead, and fundook swaggered into the kitchen quite a renovated dog. it may not be generally known that the tulip owes its origin to the blood of ferhad, which was sprinkled on the ground when he threw himself from the rocks in despair, on hearing of the death of his glorious shireen. in this story we see how one beautiful idea is copied and admired by mankind in the most distant regions, times, and circumstances, for this is the same tradition as that of the anemone, which, in classic lore, arose from the blood of adonis while venus was weeping for his loss. upon a day we gave a party at the cave of ferhad; this was a rare function; parties were not common at erzeroom. "when the orient sun arose, and shed his golden beams o'er the snowy peaks of the mountains of the east, apollo on that day must have reined in his steeds in wonder at the unwonted stir that was taking place at erzeroom, as aurora withdrew the purple veil of night from the features of fair mother earth, refreshed with the slumbers she had enjoyed under the guardianship of endymion. she of the rosy fingers doubtless started up in beautiful surprise at the bustle and the activity displayed beneath her gaze. phoebus, not resisting the pleasure of curiosity, gazed down in all his glory on the armenian plain, where horses neighed, and cattle lowed, and hasty marmitons laded ox-eyed oxen with bright coppers from the kitchen shelves; wains were there laden with wide tubs of cooling snow; cooks, in a perspiration, swore deep oaths; the voice official of fundook was heard yelping and barking in the morning breeze, and under sol's first rays a caravan set forth in long, dark outline, winding o'er the plain of erzeroom." for the rest, see homer, unpublished edition, cap. x. all the rank and fashion of the place were present; the rank rode on horseback, the fashion followed in a cart drawn by four oxen--this would sound better if it were called an araba--and therein was contained all the beauty of the city of erzeroom. the distance may have been ten miles; some of the party got there in three quarters of an hour, and others arrived in an hour and three quarters. among the distinguished guests were two philosophers, one of whom, having lately arrived in these unknown regions, was remarkable for the glorious colors of his waistcoat. this effulgent garment having been admired, the answer was returned in the following mysterious sentence, as i well remember, in a language unknown, as far as my knowledge is experienced, in any nation upon earth: "zã©st mon vamme, gui ma tonnã© ze chilet." our admiration of the chilet gave way before the announcement that the carriage and four was approaching the cave, and all sallied forth to receive the lovely damsels that it bore. through many a quag, o'er many a rock, and many a jolt had those oxen drawn the araba for many a weary hour before they lay down in front of our cave; and now it was the happy lot of those who got there first to hand out of their carriage the admired beauties of armenia. the carriage stopped, and we were in readiness, our feelings of politeness screwed up to the most perfect tone- when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing: wasn't that a dainty dish to set before a king? but the birds did not come out--there was much to be done before that desired object was concluded: first, out came a cushion, then a feather-bed, and then a pretty girl; then another cushion, then another lovely damsel; then three or four more cushions, and another feather-bed, and then the prettiest little girl of all jumped upon the ground, half laughing and half smothered; for such dainty goods would have broken all to bits on those rough roads, if they had not been packed so carefully. the mother of the three graces accompanied them, and, the party being assembled, the great business of life commenced in earnest. dolmas, and kieuftã©, and cabobs soon graced the board--not that there was any board, but it sounds well. "viands," that is, chickens, lamb stewed with quinces, and all manner of good things, appeared and disappeared, to the wonder of certain hungry koords who happened to be passing, and who would have been run through with the spits, if not devoured by fundook, our brave ally, if they had made a row. corks from foreign bottles of champagne popped in brisk salute. cooks and kawasses, grooms, arabagis, eiwasses, and heiwans followed the good example set them by their lords, and, "fruges consumere nati," did their best to follow the end of their creation. then, and on that occasion only, did many a lantern-jawed, hook-nosed koord imbibe the unknown potations of frangistaun. then, in glorious generosity, did the trusty marmiton dispense the bones of slaughtered lamb, drumsticks of fowl, and crust of pie, whereof repletion dire denied the power to partake. by staggering chiboukgis pipes were next produced, and fragrant coffee, served on salvers bright; and, on soft persian carpets now reclined, the party enjoyed the scene before them, passing an agreeable afternoon in each other's society, accompanied, i thought, with some little flirtations between some of the company, which, i suspect, left pleasing recollections on their minds; for though i can not boast that any thing came of it that day, yet not long afterward two marriages were declared between some of those who assisted at the dinner in the cave of ferhad; and the most anxious chaperon will acknowledge that that was as much as could be expected under the circumstances, seeing that there were but two unmarried ladies of the company. afterward i found among my papers the following doleful ditty, purporting to be a translation of hafiz, on the fertile persian subject of ferhad and shireen; and as the reader is not obliged to read it unless he likes to do so, i subjoin it in memory of the day that i, for my part, passed so pleasantly with many agreeable companions in this unfrequented spot. the accompaniment to the air having been kindly undertaken by fundook, the minstrel thus begins: hafiz, who pass'd his sunny hours by the sweet stream of mosellay, singing of vineyards and of flowers to pass the fleeting time away, tells how the blood of ferhad's wound had stain'd fair nature's mantle green, sprinkling with ruddy spots the ground before the feet of fair shireen. the tulip from his blood arose beside her path in that sad hour. displaying how its leaves inclose a goblet in each opening flower. then to the lips the goblet press, whose rim contains forgetfulness. the vine, the glorious vine, arose, unscathed by crime, unchanged by woes, exulting in her charms; waving her tendrils in the breeze, and clasping the rough, rugged trees in her encircling arms. with clustering grapes upon her brow, still as she binds each willing bough their welcome aid she gains; on them she leans, but they confess the power of her loveliness, and glory in their chains. fill up the bright and sparkling bowl, that cures the body, heals the soul. no--be it not refused- hail to the vine! whose purple juice was sent on earth for mortals' use, but not to be abused. still to the lips the goblet press, whose rim contains forgetfulness. forgetfulness, alas! 'tis this that mortals hold the height of bliss in this sad world of care; for memory through life retains a catalogue of griefs and pains, but little else is there. then to the lips the goblet press, whose rim contains forgetfulness.--hafiz. chapter ix. the bear.--ruins of a genoese castle.--lynx.--lemming.--cara guz.--gerboa.--wolves.--wild sheep.--a hunting adventure.--camels.--peculiar method of feeding.--degeneration of domestic animals. of four-footed beasts, the most illustrious is the bear, of which there are a good many in the wooded sides of the mountains in the neighborhood of kars. near the strange, unearthly lake of tortoom, i saw the fresh footprint of a real ursa major--a thundering old bear he must have been. he had only just departed, and the mark of one of his paws was large enough to hold more than both of mine. in another place i came upon the ruins of one of the string of genoese castles which, in former days, reared up their lordly towers at distances of not more than eight or ten hours apart the whole way from trebizond to teflis. their splendid ruins have been my admiration on many an imposing rock, frowning over an unknown valley. even the names of most of these are lost, while we only know of the history of their founders that once upon a time there were such merchant princes. in the bottom of a broken turret a bear had taken lodgings, but he was not at home when i called. others, not far off, on another hill, had given a small party, and had been amusing themselves by rolling about a piece of rock about five feet in diameter--a game of roulette, on a large scale, which showed their wondrous strength. the mud from their paws upon the stone was wet when i came up to join the party, but, perhaps luckily for me, they declined the honor of my acquaintance, and the society had broken up. some sturdy peasants of lazistaun, hearing of my partiality for strange creatures, brought me two young bears one day, who lived in our house for some time. they were very sensible, the she bear keeping her brother in remarkable order. they became very tame. they were, in some respects, different from the european bear, and of a light cinnamon color. i sent them to england. they were great favorites with the sailors on board ship, and arrived safely at the tower stairs, when some white paint being left out for the beautification of the vessel, the poor bears ate it all up, and not only died of the unwholesome feast, but the poison was so strong as to bring the fur off their skins, so that they could not be stuffed and immortalized in a glass case. after the bear the next animal is the lynx, the fur of whose belly is of the highest value in turkey, while that of the back is worth very much less. these animals are not rare in armenia, and enveri effendi prided himself on a splendid robe of this valuable fur, which he paid for by selling the skins of the backs of the lynxes at constantinople for more than he had given for the precious under-fur at erzeroom. the lynx is famed for the quickness of his sight, but enveri effendi had a sharper eye than he in all affairs relating to his own benefit. in the spring of the year, soon after the women and children, the lemmings come out, and sit upon their hind legs, and wipe their eyes with their fore-paws, and seem to wonder quietly at those who pass by, taking a header, or summerset, down their holes if you stop suddenly to look at these curious little beasts. a soft, cozy, fat little quadruped, called cara guz (black eyes), about the size of a young guinea-pig, and much of the same shape--only his color is gray, and he has a most wonderfully soft coat--comes out, too, about this time. he is so fat that he can not walk very fast, and is easily taken, and in his captivity prefers almonds and raisins to any other bill of fare which i was able to put before him. this little fellow eats his breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and supper slowly and respectably, without testifying any alarm for mankind. i could not make out his scientific name; he is probably some kind of little marmotte, and he falls readily into the manners and habits of the society in which providence has placed him. after cara guz, the gerboa comes out of his hole, and hops about on his long tail and hind legs; a miniature kangaroo, in whose acquaintance i have rejoiced in the burning deserts of africa as well as in the frozen regions of the highlands of erzeroom. in this country the number of quadrupeds is very limited; the fox is occasionally seen, as well as the gray beaver (kondooz), badgers, and wolves. at the melting of the snow the wolves come even into the towns, and devour the dogs with which every town is amply supplied. there are awful stories of their carrying off the little, peeping, blear-eyed children, who creep out of their holes in the beginning of spring, and who are occasionally washed away in the torrents of melted snow--the only washing attended to hereabouts. wolves are not very unfrequently started out of the inside of one of the numerous dead horses, whose overworked bodies have been frozen into the consistency of flint during the winter, and which form savory banquets for the famished wolves when the snow and ice recede, and display these dainty morsels to their haggard eyes. the wild sheep frequent the inaccessible rocks of the lower mountains, where a scanty herbage may be browsed beneath the line of perpetual snow. no two animals can be more different, both in appearance and habits, than the wild and tame sheep. the wild sheep of armenia (ovis gemelli) is in size, shape, and color like the doe of the fallow-deer, only it has two short horns bending backward, like those of a goat. the strength and agility of this most nimble creature are astonishing; they are more difficult of approach than the chamois of the alps. i have usually seen them in pairs, but was never able to get a shot. i brought three skins and several heads of this rare animal to europe, out of which one stuffed specimen was made up in the british museum; it is, i believe, the only one extant. the method employed to hunt this sheep is to climb to the highest summit of a mountain, and then, cautiously approaching the edges of the cliffs, to peep down with a telescope into the gorges and ravines below, where, if you have luck, you may see the sheep capering about on the ledges of the precipice, jumping, standing on a stone on their hind legs to reach a little tuft of herbage, and playing the most curious antics, for no perceptible reason, unless it is that they find their digestion improved by taking a considerable deal of exercise. in these gymnastics the hunter must participate to a great extent in following the tracks of the jumpingest creatures (excepting fleas) that he can ever have to deal with. it requires much activity, and a good head for looking over a height, to attempt to come up with them, and many a sad accident has occurred to the adventurous sportsman in this pursuit. i myself have been in some awkward situations: once particularly, having let myself down by the roots of a kind of juniper on the ledge of a tremendous precipice, i found there was no way further down, and, what was of more consequence, no way up again, for the roots of the stunted tree were above my reach. a hunter--a laz, or a native of lazistaun--was with me, and when we had done watching the two sheep scampering off out of shot below, we looked at the place we were on, and then in each other's faces in blank dismay. we were in the same scrape as the emperor maximilian got into in the tyrol, near ... only there being no angels about in the mountains of lazistaun, we had no expectation of being assisted by a spirited or a spiritual goatherd, as he was. after a good deal of pantomime, which would have puzzled any bird who might be wondering at our maneuvers--for we did not understand each other's language--we took off our boots, all our outer clothes, and our arms and rifles, and tied them in a bundle; then i planted myself firmly, with my face to the wall of the cliff, sticking my rifle into a crevice to give me more steadiness, and the hunter climbed carefully up my back on to my shoulders till he got hold of the roots of the tree; the tree shook, and plenty of stones and dirt fell upon my head, while the hunter scrambled into the trunk, and he was safe. he sat down a while to rest, and then hauled up the clothes and guns with our shawls that we had taken off from round our waists; a gentle qualm came over me at this moment, for fear he should be off with my, to him, very valuable spoils, and leave me in peace upon the shelf. but he was a true man, as a hunter generally is; so, after a variety of signs and gesticulations to each other as to how it was to be done, he lugged me up, first by the shawls, and then by hand, until i could reach the roots of the tree. here there was only room for one, so he climbed higher, and, after some wonderful positions, struggles, kicks, and scrambling, i got back among the roots, then up the trunk of the old gnarled juniper, or whatever it was, and at last upon a slope, partaking much of that character which, in the states of the free and independent slave-dealers over the water, is called slantindicular. here we both lay down. as for me, i was quite faint with giddiness and hard kicking, with nothing under me to kick at; but soon we picked up our effects, put on our boots, &c., scrambled, slid, and climbed about again after some more sheep; but, by reason of their having two pair of legs each, and each pair better adapted to present circumstances than our one pair each, they always got away, and we came down the mountain muttonless and hungry for that day, not sorry to find a famous good supper in the tent, in our encampment by the trout stream, in the valley of tortoom. one more quadruped nearly concludes the short catalogue of the mammalia of erzeroom--the capricorn, many specimens of whose enormous horns are nailed up over the doors of houses in the city; but i never saw this last animal at erzeroom, alive or dead. innumerable camels accompany the caravans from hence to persia, looking very much out of place in the deep snow. they are the arabian camel with one hump, and i had no notion that my old acquaintance of arabia could bear the tremendous cold of erzeroom. great quantities of corn and meal are brought here from the more prolific countries of the neighborhood. this is the staple merchandise of the city, which is the only place on the road between persia and turkey where caravans can recruit their thousands of jaded horses, and procure provisions for their journey. in this consists the political importance of an otherwise worthless and infertile spot. the number of camels, horses, mules, and beasts of burden assembled sometimes at erzeroom is immense, and they have here a peculiar method of feeding the camels by opening their mouths with the left hand, and with the other shoving down the poor beast's throat a ball of dough about the size of a cricket ball. one peculiarity of the domestic animals in this fearful climate is, that they are dwarfed and dwindled in size to an extraordinary degree. a bull used to run about the lower regions of my house, which was barely eighteen inches high; the sheep were so small that grown up mutton looked like lamb. the same occurred with fruit; none at all grew at erzeroom, but we had from villages some miles off, on the edges of the plain, plums the size of damsons, apricots the size of walnuts, and other fruits in proportion. chapter x. birds.--great variety and vast numbers of birds.--flocks of geese.--employment for the sportsman.--the captive crane.--wild and tame geese.--the pious and profane ancestors.--list of birds found at erzeroom. i now enter upon a subject to which i fear i have neither time nor power to do justice. the number of various kinds of birds which breed on the great plain of erzeroom is so prodigious as to be almost incredible to those who have not seen them, as i often have, covering the earth for miles and miles so completely that the color of the ground could not be seen; particularly at one period, when the whole country had a rosy appearance, from the countless flocks of a sort of red goose, which i take to be the ruddy sheldrake--a splendid bird, though not good to eat. it is about the size of a small goose or a muscovy duck, almost entirely clothed in various shades of red. troops of the two varieties of the wild gray goose form whitish spots in the animated landscape, their wild cries and noises sounding in every direction. so closely covered was the plain with this prodigious multitude of every kind of wild fowl, that i have galloped among them for some distance, the birds getting up about one hundred yards in a circle round my horse, and settling again behind me with loud cries, while the air rustled with the beating of innumerable wings of those birds which had been disturbed by my approach. the sportsman may imagine what shooting there is at erzeroom, for when one genus has reared its young and flown away to far and distant lands, another takes its place. quails are at one time almost as thick as flies; and numerous varieties of small birds, among which the horned lark and the red-winged finch flew in clouds. that beautiful variety, the rosy starling, has been often shot, as well as the merops, and so many other little fowls of varied plumage, that i must refer the reader to the accompanying list, for it would fill a book to give even a slight description of them all. on the banks of the river i used to shoot all sorts of waders, particularly spoonbills, and that most delicate of birds, the egret or white heron, famous for its plumes. i must own to being a bad shot, having been more accustomed to the rifle, but these white herons afforded me great practice; as they flapped along, i shot numbers of them, as well as many and many a quaint fellow with long legs, whom i brought home merely to make out who he was, and to write down his name. later in the year i risked my neck by riding as hard as i could tear over the rocky, or rather stony, plains at the foot of the mountains after the great bustard. i have more than once knocked some of the feathers out of these glorious huge birds, as they ran at a terrible pace, half flying and scrambling before my straining horse, but i never succeeded in killing one, though i have constantly partaken of those which had fallen before more patient gunners, who stalk them as you would a deer, and knock them over with a rifle or swan-shot from behind a stone or bank. i had more success with the great cinereous crane, which runs much faster than a horse. i shot one at full gallop with a rifle, in a place overgrown with reeds. this was a mighty triumph, for, though my game was about five feet high, he was so very long in the legs and neck, that the body offered but a small mark to be brought down under such circumstances, and the pace he was going at the time, and i after him, was, as they say, "a caution." this is a bird with whom it is requisite to be wary: if he is down, and not killed outright, like the heron and the stork he makes a dart with his sharp, long bill at the eyes of his enemy, and its strength is such that it might easily, i should think, penetrate the brain; at any rate, the eye would be picked out at once, and that would suffice for that time. a man brought in a crane which he had winged, and we turned him out into the yard with the poultry, where he stalked up and down with a proud, indignant air. he soon became pretty quiet, and ate his corn with the rest, while he had a deep bucket of water for his own use, into which he used to poke his head continually. one day a stupid, heavy servant went into the yard, and, not knowing that the bucket was placed there for the stork, he took it up to carry it away, when the bird flew at him and pecked at his face, but, missing his eye, seized him tightly by the nose, and there he held him for a good while. the poor man halloed loud enough, but those who came to his assistance could not help him at first for laughing; and though he kept beating at the crane with the bucket, which he held in his hand, his long neck enabled him to keep so far off that he escaped all the frantic attempts of his prisoner to reach him. the man's nose was swelled and very sore for some time, and he never got over the ridicule which attached to him for his perilous adventure with the crane. it was touching to watch this crane: when the time for its emigration arrived, a flock of its magnificent companions every day used to fly high up in the air, in a wheeling circle, above its head. this circle of flying birds has a very striking effect. the cranes above called to their friend to join them for their distant journey to a happier climate, and the poor helpless crane below, stretching its long neck up toward the sky, answered the appeal in a singularly mournful cry. various kinds of partridge exist, and the lesser bustard, called, in turkish, mesmeldek, is an excellent bird for the table. they have a curious method of catching the mesmeldek in some of the steppes in southern russia. at the commencement of winter, parties of horsemen gallop out upon the plains before sunrise, at which hour the wings of these birds are frozen to their sides, and, the hunters stretching out their horses in a line, the birds are driven by them into the villages, and secured, before the warmth of the sun releases their wings and restores their powers of flight. great flocks of the lesser bustard have been driven in this manner occasionally into odessa. hawks and stately falcons hover over head, and prey upon their defenseless brethren at their ease. storks build upon the chimneys; and among the sticks of which their huge nest is formed, the sparrows make their nests, stealing, when they can, any food, which the old birds bring for their young. here, as in all other parts of the world, this impertinent race of little birds dispute possession of the house with mice and other intruders; but at erzeroom they are hardly put to it sometimes for want of twigs to perch upon, and they sit usually, instead, upon the iron bars of the windows in the town. here i have often watched them chirping in the cold, as they sat by the dozen on the bars of my window, dressing their feathers, and jabbering to each other, like true koordish sparrows, about the corn that they stole from my chickens yesterday, and how, with case-hardened consciences, they intend to steal as much more as they can get to-day. this is a subject on which i could dilate to any length, but at present i must conclude with the following list of the various tribes of birds who, in thousands and millions, would reward the toil of the sportsman and the naturalist on the plains and mountains of the high lands of armenia; merely adding to this brief notice of the birds of this country the following veracious anecdote, as perhaps hitherto naturalists may not all of them be aware of the origin of the separation of the wild and tame goose: in former days, two geese agreed to take a long journey together: the evening before they were to set out, one said to the other, "mind you are ready, my friend, for, inshallah, i will set out to-morrow morning!" "and so will i," replied he, "whether it pleases god or not!" the sun rose the next day, and the pious goose, having ate his breakfast, and quenched his thirst in the waters of the stream, rose lightly on the wing, and soared away to a distant land. the impious bird also prepared to follow him; but, after hopping and fluttering for a long while, he found himself totally unable to rise from the ground; and his evolutions having been observed by a fowler who happened to be passing that way, he was presently caught, and reduced to servitude, in which his race have ever since continued, while the descendants of the religious goose still enjoy that freedom in which they were originally created. list of birds found at erzeroom. raptores (birds of prey). vultur fulvus fulvous vulture. aquila fulvus fulvous eagle. aquila eagle. accipiter fringillarius sparrow-hawk. falco tinnunculus kestril. ,, osalon hobby. ,, subbuteo merlin. ,, rufipes orange-legged hobby. ,, peregrinus peregrine falcon. ,, peregrinus falcon. milvus ater common kite. buteo ater (?) common buzzard (?). ,, ater marsh buzzard. circus pallidus white hen harrier. ,, rufus marsh hen harrier. noctua indica small indian owl. strix indica another owl. insepores (or perchers). deutirostres. lanius excubitor great strike (or butcher-bird). ,, collurio red-backed strike. collurio minor small strike. musicapa grisola spotted fly-catcher. ,, luctuosa pied fly-catcher. turdus merula blackbird. ,, torquatus ring-ouzel. ,, pilaris fieldfare. ,, musicus song-thrush. petrocinela saxatilis rock-thrush. cinclus aquaticus water-ouzel (or dipper). oriolus galbula golden oriole. motacilla alba white wagtail. ,, flava yellow wagtail. saxicola rubicola stonechat. ,, rubetra whinchat. ,, ã¦nanthe wheatear. sylvia trochilus willow wren. ,, hippolais willow wren. salicaria phragmitis sedge-warbler. ,, cetti(?) sedge-warbler(?). curruca cineria whitethroat. ,, atricapilla blackcap. phoenicura ruticilla redstart. ,, tilkys black redstart. ,, succica bluebreast. erythaca rubecula redbreast. troglodytes europã¦us wren. rudytes melanocephala wren. anthus arboreus tree-pipit. ,, pratensis pipit-lark. ,, rufescens pipit-pipit. fissirostres. hirundo riparia saced martin. ,, rustica swallow. cypselus murarius swift. caprimulgus europã¦us goat-sucker. conirostres. alanda arvensis skylark. ,, arborea woodlark. ,, calandra calandre. ,, brachydactila little lark. ,, penicillata horned lark. ,, rupestris rock lark. ,, rupestris (?) (an albino variety). ,, rupestris albino lark. parus major great titmouse. ,, coeruleus blue titmouse. emberiza citrinella yellow-hammer. ,, hortulana ortolan. ,, miliaria common bunting. ,, cia meadow bunting. fringilla coelebs chaffinch. ,, montefrengilla mountain-finch (or brambling). ,, nivalis (?) snow-finch (?) ,, sanguinea bloody-finch. pyrgita domestica house-sparrow. ,, petronea stone-sparrow. carduelis communis goldfinch. pyrrhula communis (?) (a variety of the bullfinch). linaria montuim mountain linnet (or twite). ,, cannabina greater redpole. coccothraustes chloris greenfinch. ,, vulgaris hawfinch. loxia curvirostra crossbill. sturnus vulgaris common starling. pastor roseus rosy-pastor. corvus modedula jackdaw. ,, frugeleus rook. ,, cornix hooded or royston crow. pica candata magpie. garrulus melanocephalus black-headed jay. coracias garrula roller. tenuirostres. upupa epops hoopoe. merops apiaster bee-eater. alcedo ispida kingfisher. scansores (or climbers). yuux torquilla wryneck. cuculus canorus cuckoo. cuculus (?) cuckoo. rasores (allinaceous birds). otis tarda great bustard. ,, tetrax small bustard. pterocles arenarius sand-grouse. perdix saxatilis red or greek partridge. ,, cineria gray or english partridge. coternix vulgaris quail. columba ã¦nos stock-dove. ,, turtur (?) turtle-dove (?). grall㦠(or waders). charadrius morinelles dotterel. ,, minor small ring-plover. ,, major large ring-plover. ã�dienenuus crepitans stone-curlew. ,, crepitans stone-curlew. vanellus cristatus crested lapwing. ,, keptuschka crested lapwing. ,, keptuschka crested lapwing. grus cineria gray crane. ardea alba white heron. ,, cineria gray heron (two sorts very large). ,, cineria night heron. ,, cineria black heron. ,, cineria black and gray heron. botaurus stellaris bittern. nycticorax europã¦us night heron. ciconia alba white stork. platolea leucorodia white spoonbill. scolopax rusticola woodcock. ,, major double snipe. gallinago media common snipe. ,, minima jack-snipe. ibis falcinellus marone ibis. ,, falcinellus (?) marone ibis. limosa melanolensa tringa subaiquata curlew tringa. ,, minuta small tringa. ,, variabilis changeable tringa. ,, pugnax ruff and reve. ,, pugnax ruff and tringa. totanus hypolencos common sandpiper. ,, ochropus green sandpiper. ,, glotis green shankpiper. ,, calidris red shankpiper. himantopus melanopterus stilts. rallus crec corn-crake. ,, crec corn-rail. ,, crec corn-rail. zapornia pusilla corn-rail. fulica atra coot. gallinula chloropus water-hen. glareola limbata pratin cole. ,, torquata austrian cole. palmipedes (web-footed birds). podiceps cristatus crested grebe. ,, rubricollis red-necked grebe. ,, auritus eared grebe. larus ridibundus laughing gull. ,, argentatus (?) herring gull (?). sterna hirundo common tern. ,, leucoptera common tern. ,, nigra black tern. pelicanus onocrotalus pelican. carbo cormoranus cormorant. anas boschas wild duck. ,, boschas wild duck. cygnus ferus wild swan. anser ferus gray-leg goose. ,, albifrons white-fronted goose. fuligula rufina red-headed pochard. ,, rufina common pochard. ,, cristata tufted duck. querquedula cinerea summer teal. querquedula crecca common teal. dafila caudacuta pintail duck. chaulelosmus strepera gadwall. rynchapsis clypeata black-headed shoveler. tadorna rutila ruddy sheldrake. ,, vulpanser common sheldrake. mergus albellus smew. for this list of birds i am indebted to the kindness of my friend mr. calvert, of erzeroom, to whom i take this opportunity of expressing my best thanks for a communication so interesting to lovers of natural history. chapter xi. excursion to the lake of tortoom.--romantic bridge.--gloomy effect of the lake.--singular boat.--"evaporation" of a pistol.--kiamili pasha.--extraordinary marksman.--alarming illness of the author.--an earthquake.--lives lost through intense cold.--the author recovers. between the days of arrival and departure of the tatars, or couriers, to constantinople, and the struggles to keep the peace and explain the simplest transaction with our colleagues, we found time for various expeditions to the neighboring countries on all sides. the most remarkable of these was that to the deep, unfathomable lake of tortoom, about three days' journey off. our main object in going there was to fish, and we encamped for that purpose on the upper streams of the batoum river and other places. in the valley of the castle of tortoom the trout abounded, and were of that unsophisticated nature that, fishing one hour in the dawn and one hour before sunset with two fly-rods, we caught every day enough to feed our camp, and to send a horse-load (no small quantity) in the evening to our friends at erzeroom. this was one day's march, and the horses, traveling all night, brought the fish, though in the hot weather, in great perfection to the city in the cool of the morning. we were not aware, till it was too late, of the deadly nature of the malaria in these rocky valleys, where the precipice shot up clear and straight to the height, sometimes, we used to judge, of above a thousand feet. on our way through one of these romantic dells, we all rode, bag and baggage, over a bridge, to be compared only to the bridge of al serat, over which the souls of the judged will have to pass from the temple of jerusalem, over the valley of jehoshaphat, till they reach the other world, which bridge is as narrow as the edge of the cimeter of mohammed. the fright i was in is not to be described when i saw the first horseman, who was at the time filling his pipe, walk his horse unconcernedly over this bridge, which was composed of two pine-trees thrown over a torrent which roared and tumbled thirty feet below. however, being afraid to show i was afraid, i rode over too, and certainly thought myself a bold fellow when i got safe to the other side. to ride safely over such a bridge, a horse ought to be brought up to practice on a tight-rope. i would not attempt to walk over such a place nowadays in england. we passed a village in one lovely valley, in a grove of peach-trees, where we found that every soul, or rather every body, was dead; only one man survived the fever which had killed the rest. of all the strange and gloomy scenes that i have witnessed, none have left a deeper impression on my mind than that of the black, unfathomable lake of tortoom. mountains of dark rock fall sheer down in awful precipices right into these deep, still waters on each side. no fish are to be found in this dead sea, though perhaps they may retreat there in the winter from the mountain rills. if the lake was a strange place, the boat which we discovered on the shore was in character with the scene. it was the only vessel on its waters, and its builder probably never studied naval architecture in the dock-yards of the maritime powers. it was formed out of the trunks of two trees; but as no description would so well convey a notion of its form, i refer the curious to the accompanying sketch. the standing figure in it represents a valorous kawass, who fired his pistol in the air for the sake of the echo, and, on the smoke clearing off, he found that the entire pistol had evaporated too; nothing visible remained in his hand; it had burst all to pieces. but, fortunately, neither he nor any of the party were hurt by the fragments, which fell into the waters of the dark and silent lake. october 1, 1843. this day i was riding on the road toward bayazeed and persia. hearing some shots, i turned toward the hills lying between the town of erzeroom and the mountains, and there i saw two or three tents pitched, and a number of officers, servants, and people attending on kiamili pasha, who was shooting at a mark with a pistol. he is the most wonderful shot i ever heard of: he always fired at a distance of about 250 paces, or yards. any one who will take the trouble to step this distance in a field or park will see how far it is to shoot with a rifle, and how entirely out of all usual calculations in pistol practice. i went into the pasha's tent. he received me, as usual, with great kindness, and, after pipes and coffee, i begged him to go on with his shooting. the way he set about it was this: he sat on one of the low, square rush-bottomed stools which are always found in turkish coffee-houses, but which must have been brought from constantinople probably by the pasha, as those kind of stools are not usually met with in erzeroom. he did not rest his elbow on his knee, but pressed it steadily against his side, took a deliberate but not very slow aim, and sent the ball through a brown pottery vase filled with water, about fifteen inches high, which stood on the other side of a valley, on a level with the tent, and full 250 yards off. i think the pasha broke two while i sat with him, and made a hole which let the water out of another. his pistols were a pair of very slightly rifled dueling-pistols, about nine inches in the barrel, made by egg, great george street, london. i was so much astonished at the pasha's shooting, that i asked him to give me one of the pieces of the vase, which i took home with me, and talked to my friends about it. i felt perfectly well when we went to dinner, when suddenly it appeared to me that what i was eating was burning hot, and had a strange, odd taste. i believe i got up and staggered across the room, but here my senses failed me, and i remained insensible for twenty-seven days. an attack of brain fever had come upon me like a blow, as sudden and overwhelming as a flash of lightning. on the 27th of october i awoke in the morning, but, as i suppose, went to sleep for a while; in the afternoon i fairly came to my senses, and saw my servant sitting on the scarlet-cloth divan under the window looking at me. i felt something strange, and still, and gloomy in the air, and was rather bewildered with the sensation. this was soon to be accounted for: the servant, seeing that i was alive, came forward toward the bed, while a low rumbling noise made itself heard. this noise became louder; flakes of plaster fell from the ceiling; the room trembled, and was filled with a fine dust, with which i was nearly choked. my man exclaimed, "the earth moves--are you not afraid?" as he spoke, the noise which we had heard increased, and an immense beam, made of the trunk of a whole tree, which was immediately above my bed, split with a report like a cannon. the earthquake shook the house terribly; it creaked and trembled like a ship in a heavy gale of wind; the noise increased to a roar, not like thunder, but howling and bellowing, with a low rumbling sound, while the air was as still as if nature was paralyzed with dread; every now and then a tremendous crash gave notice of a falling house. the one opposite our house, belonging to a poor widow, was entirely destroyed; and, in the midst of a most fearful uproar, the two rooms, one on each side of my bed-room, fell in, while the air was darkened altogether, as in an eclipse, with clouds of dust. so great was the noise of the earthquake all around, that neither my attendant nor i distinguished the particular crash when the two rooms adjoining us fell in. some of the minarets, and many of the houses of the city, were demolished; parts of the ancient castellated walls fell down. the top of one of the two beautiful minarets of the old medressã©, the glory of erzeroom, called usually eki chifteh, disappeared. those who were out, and able to witness the devastation, and to hear the awful roaring noise, said they had never seen or heard any thing more tremendous than the scene before their eyes. it is difficult to express in words the strange, awful sensation produced by the seeming impossible contradiction of a dead stillness in the midst of the crash of falling buildings, the sullen, low bellowing, which perhaps sounded from beneath the ground, and the tremendous uproar that arose on all sides during the earthquake. i have not met with an account of this strange phenomenon in the descriptions of other earthquakes, and do not know whether it is a usual accompaniment to these terrible convulsions of nature. the earthquake accomplished its mission: in the midst of terror and destruction, it restored one poor creature to life. i regained my senses and my faculties on the 27th, as suddenly as i had lost them on the 1st day of this month. god give me grace to make a good use of the life which was restored to me under such awful circumstances! on that day the doctor, who had some difficulty in getting to my room through the ruins of the ante-room, took the ice off my head, and in a few days i recovered sufficient strength to move my limbs, which i could not do at first. as soon as it appeared that there was any probability of my recovery, my kind friends agreed that the best chance of regaining my health lay in removing, as soon as i could bear the journey, to a better climate. during great part of the year, and naturally in the winter, the cold was so severe that any one standing still for even a very short time was frozen to death. dead frozen bodies were frequently brought into the city; and it is common in the summer, on the melting of the snow, to find numerous corpses of men, and bodies of horses, who had perished in the preceding winter. so usual an event is this, that there is a custom, or law, in the mountains of armenia, that every summer the villagers go out to the more dangerous passes, and bury the dead whom they are sure to find. they have a legal right to their clothes, arms, and the accouterments of the horses, on condition of forwarding all bales of merchandise, letters, and parcels to the places to which they are directed. during the whole month of december the pasha had caused four mules to be exercised every day with a takterawan, or litter, which he provided for my conveyance to trebizond. two mules, led by one man, carried the litter; the other two followed tamely, led by another man, close behind, to be ready to take the places of the others if they were tired or disabled. from morning to night, the men and the mules, and the takterawan, stumped along through the snow, till they dared to face the storm and the immense cold, and could climb up and down the icy rocks like goats. as soon as i was able, i was sent out in the litter to try how i could bear it, and to settle various contrivances for keeping out the cold, and enabling me to bear the motion of the mules. one day colonel williams rode out on the persian road to see whether it was passable for dr. wolf, who was then staying at erzeroom, and who wished to continue his journey to bokhara, when he met a number of horses, each laden with two frozen bodies of persian travelers, one tied on each side of the pack-horse. an unfortunate piedmontese doctor had been lost in a snow-storm a short time before, and his body was found afterward near a small monastery, three or four miles from erzeroom, where he had wandered, bewildered with the falling snow; and a whole party, with one or two ox-carts, who left a village in the morning on their way to another a short distance off, never arrived there; they were found huddled together, oxen, horses, men, and women, in a snow-drift, dead, and frozen hard and stiff, some weeks afterward. the cold was so tremendous at this time that the mountains were impassable, and no one was able to move beyond a short distance from the town. chapter xii. start for trebizond.--personal appearance of the author.--mountain pass.--reception at beyboort.--misfortunes of mustapha.--pass of zigana dagh.--arrival at trebizond. on the 27th of december, all preparations being completed, i started on my journey over the mountains to trebizond. kiamili pasha had prepared an order to all and sundry, great and small, upon the road, to give me every assistance, and, with this and a powerful firman from the sultan, i had authority to do whatever i pleased in that part of the world. about twenty attendants accompanied me, besides a certain levy from every village i passed, who were to march to the next village every day to clear the roads, move the snow, and pick us out of it when we tumbled in, &c. these villagers were all armed with the peculiar dagger of circassia, called a cama, a most efficient tool as well as weapon, and a short, heavy rifle, generally beautifully made, with which they hit objects at very long distances, 400 yards not being considered out of shot. my personal appearance must have been remarkable: i had a long beard, and so thin a face that my nose was translucent, if not transparent. i had a persian cap upon my head, and over other garments a toilet of my own invention, which vested me with a dignity peculiar to myself: this was a large eider down quilt, of bright green silk, in the middle of which i had caused a hole to be made, through which i put my head; the two ends of the quilt hung down before and behind, like a chasuble or a poncho; round it i tied a girdle. my general appearance must have been rather striking to the beholder, and was probably considered by the natives on the road as the official costume of an elchi bey. i was so weak that when i was bundled into the takterawan i could not turn round, and was nearly smothered in my own feathers, till somebody turned me on the right side upward, when i was able to bid adieu to all the principal europeans and others who had kindly assembled to see me off. a number of people accompanied me for some distance out of the town; and colonel williams came as far as elijã¨, about three hours in the snow, which ended my first day's march. on the next day, december 28th, we got to meymansoor, a village at the foot of the first mountain pass, called hoshapoona, a terrible place at all times, but frightful in the depth of winter, and under the circumstances i was in. only two or three days before it had been rendered practicable, by driving a thousand horses, belonging to the caravans which were snowed up at the foot of the pass, up and down the road to make a track. this road is what is called a scala; that is, a series of holes, each about a foot deep, sometimes two feet, about eighteen inches in diameter, and the same in distance from one another. from long practice, the horses put their feet very cleverly into these holes without tripping over the intervening ridges of hardened snow. men on foot usually step on the ridges, which is like walking on the rounds of a ladder for a few hundred miles, the probabilities of not breaking your leg if you slip into the hole before or behind you being very slight. as in many places this road was slantindicular, going up and down at an angle of 45â°, i was reclining in the litter alternately on my head and on my heels--mostly on my head going up hill. my mules were held upon their feet by as many men as could stand on each side, where the road was wide enough; most of it was a ledge on a precipice, about eighteen inches wide, when the men supported my equipage with ropes, a strong body hopping and stumbling behind and before, at the rate of about one mile an hour. my glass windows were smashed with the least possible delay, but we repaired them the next day with oiled paper. at the top of the pass we came upon a party of persians, who were going the other way toward erzeroom; they were seated in a row, on the ledge of the precipice, looking despairingly at a number of their baggage-horses which had tumbled over, and were wallowing in the snow many hundred feet below. they did not seem to be killed, as far as i could see, as the snow had broken their fall. the drift covered the precipitous rock from the bottom to within twenty or thirty feet of the top, and they slid down this till they popped into a deep hole in the snow, like a well, in the valley below. it did not appear that there was any probability of their getting up again. the poor persians crammed themselves into nooks and little hollows on the ledge to make room for us to pass. i presume their horses were frozen to death before we had left them very long. this was an awful spot altogether. we had started before light in the morning, and arrived in a dreary mountain valley, at a hovel called zaza khan, in the evening. during one part of the day, the danger to the takterawan was so great that i was plucked out, and a tall, good-natured man, called beyragdar (the standard-bearer), carried me like a baby in his arms, one or two others supporting him, across a tremendous ledge. i was light enough to carry, but was such a great bundle of fluff that he could not see over me, and another man helped him along, and showed him where to put his feet. we were very fortunate in a fine sunny day for our journey over this tremendous mountain. on the last day of the year 1843 we arrived at the town of beyboort. though i had sent two horsemen on to say that i was coming, no one came out of the town to meet me, and on proceeding to the palace or house of the bey, the governor of the place i was refused admittance, though he had received orders before to pay me every attention. i at last was taken in by the cadi, in whose comfortable house i was kindly entertained. the next day we met a tatar, a government courier, on the road from trebizond. i sent letters by him to erzeroom, complaining of my reception by the bey of beyboort; and so rapidly were matters conducted by my friend the pasha, that the bey was turned out of his government, and another bey appointed to succeed him, before i and my party arrived at trebizond. this was sharp practice, and doubtless had a good effect. the chiefs of the other villages, and the one town of gumush khannã¨, treated me always with great kindness and civility. on the 2d of january, at a hovel called khaderach khan, i met a rich persian merchant coming from constantinople with his wife and family. he had been eighteen days on the road from trebizond, which is thirty-two hours of tatar-posting; from hence, at this rate, he would be six months on his journey to teheran, to which place he was bound. he was a remarkably gentleman-like man, as most persian gentlemen are. he had a great train of servants and attendants, well dressed and well armed, each with a silver tass, or drinking-cup, slung over his shoulder, and a handsome cama dangling by a narrow strap from the front of his girdle, and his waist squeezed till he could hardly shut his mouth, in true circassian style. he had numbers of curious contrivances for comfort and convenience: little fire-places, hanging to the stirrup, for hot coals, to light the caleoons, &c. his son, a smart youth, spoke french, and we passed a very pleasant hour together, though i had turned him out of the best hole in the hovel, into which beyragdar laid me down softly in the corner; and i was so much exhausted that i knew nothing of the confusion i had made till i had had a cup of blazing hot russian tea, with a slice of lemon in it instead of cream, and had taken the diversion of wondering at an odd sort of partridge which one of my men had knocked over with a stone, for which act i presented him with the sum of 5 1/2d. sterling. at kalã© khan i had given leave to one mustapha, my kawass bashi, or captain of the kawasses, to go and see his family, who lived in a village a short distance off the road; he had not seen them for a long time, and went on his way rejoicing. at a place called porda bakchelari, where i was resting on the 3d, he made his appearance again; he was so altered in looks that i did not know him at first; so much so, that i asked him who he was, and what he wanted with me. his history, poor fellow! was as follows: when he arrived at his village, he rode up to the door of his own house, thinking to give a happy surprise to his wife and children, whose names he called out as he stopped his horse in the little street. no one answered, when he called again, and knocked loudly at the door several times. at last an old woman put her head out of the door of another house, and screamed to him to know what he was making such a noise about. "i want such a one," said he, naming his wife. "what, eyesha?" said the old woman; "who are you? you must be a stranger to this place not to know that she died of the fever and was buried two weeks ago." "and where is hassan?" said the poor kawass, asking for his eldest son. "oh, he died three months ago." "and the two little ones?" he asked. "they were buried, i forget how long it is since," said the old woman; "the fever got into that house; the people are all dead. you had better not go in, stranger, for it has been locked up by the cadi, and the owner, mustapha aga, lives a long way off at erzeroom. inshalla! he will come some day, and the cadi will deliver the key to him." mustapha kawass never dismounted from his horse in his native village; he turned slowly away, and rode back to the track of the mules and horses of my followers till he caught us up at bakchelari khan. "allahkerim!" (god is merciful!) said his companions, when he had told us this sad history. his family was swept from the face of the earth; there was not a servant left, not one old well-remembered face to greet him in his visit to the village where he had passed his childish days. he had heard nothing of the fever or of the infliction which had fallen upon his house, and suddenly he found himself alone in the wide world. we were all grieved for him, but what could we do? every one looked grave as we plodded on again through the snow and ice, and smoked the pipe of reflection in silence on our weary way. on the 7th we got into a fix near a place called madem khanlari, in the pass of zigana dagh, a worse place than even hoshabounar: we had been all day scrambling about in rocky ledges, and crossing torrents and snow-drifts, each of which seemed impassable till we went at it with a will: a number of villagers, with axes and ropes, came with us, and worked valiantly in clearing the ice off the narrow shelves of rock, and leading the horses through the most difficult places, where they could hardly stand; sometimes the horses were almost lifted by the men. by the greatest care and exertion, none as yet fell over the precipices. my takterawan was surrounded by a posse of zealous, active mountaineers, clinging to each other, and putting the mules' feet into the holes which they cut for them with their axes. at last we got to a place where there was a sudden turn at the narrow edge of a gorge or cleft of rock: the length of the litter, with one mule before and another behind, made it impossible to turn without going over. somehow, by the help of a number of men, the front mule was carried by main force round the corner, till we were in such a position that the hinder mule was being dragged over the precipice by the poles of the takterawan, to which it was harnessed. without a drawing it is difficult to describe the position we had got into; but it may be partly understood by the fact that, out of whichever side of the takterawan i looked, there was nothing under me, for perhaps two hundred feet, till you arrived at a brawling torrent, which kept itself alive by violent exercise, in jumping, leaping, and tumbling over the rocks and cascades at the bottom of the ravine, so that it was the only thing not frozen hard and still in the dead landscape of thick ice, and snow, and shattered rock, and the clean, smooth precipice towered up from the little merry stream to hundreds of feet above our heads, where an edge of snow and a fringe of icicles shone in the bright sky upon the topmost margin of the cliffs. some of the men now sat down, with their legs hanging over the precipice; they were supported by other men, while, in their turn, they held the legs of the mules, who were beginning to get frightened, or perhaps choked, and gave utterance to curious exclamations. my friend beyragdar made a bridge of his long body, by leaning over from the inner angle of the road to the side of the takterawan. as for me, beyond peeping like an old rat out of a cage, i could not move, so i lay still till i was pulled out by two men over beyragdar's back, handed like a bundle over the foremost mule, and stuck upon a horse a little farther on. the mules were, somehow or other, saved and released from the shafts of the takterawan, which i never saw again; they could get it no further, and the rest of the journey i made on horseback, supported by a man on each side when the road was wide enough, by one when it was too narrow for two, and, when there was only room for the horse alone, beyragdar carried me in his arms till we got to the strada reale, good two feet wide, when i was put upon a horse again. in this way, by slow degrees, we scrambled on our way, till, on the 10th of january, after fifteen days' journey through the intense cold of the mountains, i arrived, in better health and strength than when i started, at the edge of the table-land, from whence i saw the blue waters of the sea, and at 11 o'clock a.m. i was seated in my room in the quarantine station at trebizond. chapter xiii. former history of trebizond.--ravages of the goths.--their siege and capture of the city.--dynasties of courtenai and the comneni.--the "emperor" david.--conquest of trebizond by mehemet ii. trebizond, so famous in the middle ages as the residence of magicians, enchanters, and redoubted heroes of chivalry, is better known in the pages of romance than for any facts of historical importance which occurred there during many centuries. the only person who might probably have been able to throw much light upon the ancient history of this byzantine city was that veracious chronicler, the cid hamet bengenelli, who, in his account of the renowned and valorous knight of the rueful countenance, records of don quixote that "the poor gentleman already imagined himself at least crowned emperor of trebizond by the valor of his arm; and wrapped up in these agreeable delusions, and hurried on by the strange pleasure he took in romances of chivalry, he prepared to execute what he so much desired." two real events, however, occurred at trebizond which i shall endeavor to describe--the only ones which stand out with any prominence in the records of the dukes, counts, and governors who held this province in their languid rule. in the third century the goths, a band of desperate barbarians, who came originally from prussia, were established in a curious out-of-the-way kingdom, situated on the cimmerian bosporus, the inlet which gives access to the sea of azof from the black sea. trebizond, the capital of a roman province, had been founded in the days of xenophon by a grecian colony, and now owed its wealth and splendor to the munificence of the emperor hadrian, who had constructed an artificial harbor for its shipping, while the town was defended on the land side by a double line of walls and towers, some part of which probably exist at the present time among the fortifications afterward erected by the christian emperors and the turks. in those troublous times the country was in disorder, and the wealthy patricians had sent their treasures into the town for greater security, the garrison having been re-enforced by an additional body of 10,000 men. a numerous fleet of ships was in the harbor, which, perhaps, were timidly seeking refuge from the pirates of the euxine within the encircling quays of the harbor of hadrian. the riches of the inhabitants, the balmy climate, and the soft manners of the greeks, had enervated the spirits of the commanders of the troops; the fashionable triflers were sunk in luxury and ease; feeling secure within the impregnable walls of the imperial fortress, they gave themselves up to feelings of indolent disdain of foreign enemies; and the brilliant officers and scornful senators, in flowing robes, passed their days in feasting and attending upon the ladies, to the neglect of discipline and vigilance, trusting that the lofty walls and mighty towers were sufficient bulwarks to keep off the barbarians whom they despised. about the year 260 of our era, the goths, who had made several roving expeditions on the shores of circassia, had plundered, with various success, the temples and cities on the coasts of the black sea. these indomitable savages embarked on board a fleet of small flat-bottomed boats, each containing only a few men, who inhabited a sort of house with a shelving roof, built of wood, in the centre of the boat. an innumerable shoal of these floating houses spread over the surface of the waves, trusting to the winds for the course they should pursue, and to the ravage of the villages on shore for food. this swarm of rapacious pirates arrived in the course of one of their forays in the neighborhood of trebizond; they landed in numbers under the walls, from the summits of which the fair damsels and silken warriors looked down with pitying scorn on the uncouth behavior, badly-made garments, and coarse appearance of the roving goths, and, having satisfied their curiosity and expressed their contempt for the horde of barbarians who had arrived in the strange fleet of little boats, they retired to the arcades surrounding the courts of the palaces; some went to the forum in the centre of the town, to hear the news and laugh at the uncouth appearance of the goths. the ladies and gentlemen, changing their morning dresses for a lighter and richer evening costume, assembled in the marble halls of many palaces, charmed with the excitement of a new subject for ridicule in the persons and dresses of the goths, and a new theme for conversation in the refined assemblies of the polished nobles and lovely damsels of the luxurious city of trebizond. i can imagine the conversation of a pleasant little party assembled in the triclinium of the prefect of the city. the gentlemen, in studied attitudes, reclining on the divans or couches placed against the wall, behind the marble tables; the ladies, in graceful robes, seated at their feet; while pages, with wreaths of flowers round their heads, in short tunics of white silk, brought up dishes of blackbirds stewed in wine; tarts sweetened with honey, which could be eaten with impunity by natives, while strangers lost their senses if they ventured on the dangerous condiment. "eudocia, dearest, did you go up those horrid steps upon the wall, to look at those people outside? did you ever see such creatures?" "oh, yes, lais, i did. poor barbarians! why do they tie their legs up with leather thongs in that funny way? and what skimpy tunics they wear! i think they must be made of sheepskin! there was one of them--a great personage, no doubt, in his own nasty little country--who had made himself a toga of a blanket. did not you see him, xenophon? you were with us." "well--aw--why, yes, i think i did," says xenophon; "but what heavy axes they carry! what long, straight swords they wear! they say their hilts are gold; i dare swear they are brass. our legionaries would make short work of them." "well," says lais, "i wish you would send those ugly people away, for one can not take a drive in the hippodrome since they have been here these two days, and the new silver harness for my white oxen is so pretty. but, eudocia, did you see the lady? i hear she is a princess--a princess, who travels in a punt! dear me, a great lady she must be!" "i never heard of her," says eudocia; "do tell me all about her. what is she like? is she tall or short? pretty or ugly? or what? let us have a description of your barbarian lady." "why," answers lais, "she is awfully tall, and she has light hair, plaited in two long tails like ropes, and much of the same color, which hang down on each side of her face in front, and reach to her knees. she is dressed in a long and very full gown, with innumerable plaits, coming high up round her throat. her gown is confined round her waist by a girdle of gold and jewels, and she has a golden fillet round her head. this gown was light blue, and was so long i could not see her feet; but those of the maidens with her were of such a size, eudocia, that four of our feet might walk about in their shoes, which were of gold stuff, coming up to the ankle, and worked with pearls--as heavy as lead, i should imagine." "but was the princess pretty?" again inquires eudocia. "xenophon says she is, but i don't believe him. she has strange-colored eyes, i was told--the color of her gown, and is not pale and smooth as marble, but with rosy cheeks and a throat as white as snow; but she looked very stupid, and solemn, and proud. what she can have to be proud of, poor creature! i can not conceive; she has not the black eyes and bright smile of our girls." "that is a curious wool the men wear on their caps," saith xenophon; "it is curly, and of a light bluish-gray color. the barbarians seem to think it is very fine. i have not seen any thing like it: it is made of the skin of a peculiar breed of lambs, to be met with nowhere out of their country." "what in the world can they want so many fagots for?" asks another young lady. "i am sure the days are hot enough in the summer; perhaps they have no firewood in their own miserable regions; they have been doing nothing but cut bushes and make fagots of them on the hill-side above the citadel ever since they have been here." "ah," says xenophon, "except the amusement of burning a few villages, though that could hardly repay them the trouble, for all the goods worth carrying away have been brought within the walls. however, here comes the little cup-bearer with the chian and falernian wine. never mind these outer barbarians; let us go to supper." so they went to supper, and, affecting classic tastes, sang verses on heroic themes from homer, accompanied by music on the lyre and the double pipe. the goths went to supper too outside, under the trees, and ate great pieces of beef cut from oxen roasted whole. the night was very dark, but the guards and the citizens lit up their rooms gayly within the city, which resounded with laughter, songs, and merriment. the night advanced, and so did the goths; each man bore a fagot, which he threw into the ditch below the wall. thousands were piled upon those below, others were thrown on them; the heap of fagots rose, the upper ones were level with the battlements. where were the city guards? where were the legionaries and the 10,000 auxiliary troops? they were sleeping off the fatigues of the evening feast; they were any where but where they should be--upon the walls. down from the towers and the bastions poured a stream of fierce determined warriors; they closed the gates on that side, for fear the garrison should get out; but the alarm was spread; the legionaries, who were awakened by the cry, made off through the opposite side of the fortifications and escaped into the country. those who were not quick enough were stabbed in the back and slain in heaps; fire and the sword commenced their fearful reign, blood ran in the streets, the massacre was horrible. the most holy temples, says the historian, the most splendid edifices, were involved in a common destruction. the booty that fell into the hands of the goths was immense. the wealth of the adjacent countries, which had been deposited in trebizond as a secure place of refuge, was added to the spoil. the number of captives was incredible; those who were left alive were gathered together by the goths. lais and eudocia became the handmaids of the gothic princess. xenophon and 2000 able-bodied dandies were driven down to the port by 200 goths, who made them chain each other to the oars of the galleys, on board of which the enormous plunder of trebizond was embarked by the forced labor of the citizens, one or two being cut in half with a sweep of the long gothic sword, to encourage the others if they did not hurry in their work under the burning rays of the sun. the cimmerian bosporus received the fleet of galleys laden with the treasures, and rowed by the slaves, of the noble city of trebizond, now smouldering in a heap of smoking ruins. thus ended the first episode in the history of trebizond. for more than a thousand years the history of trebizond remains enveloped in the mists of obscurity and insignificance; various dukes, princes, and counts succeeded each other in a long line of inglorious pride. in the thirteenth century the chivalrous house of courtenai, by the assistance of the heroes of the crusades, mounted the throne of constantinople, and the ancestors of the earl of devon produced three emperors, who reigned in succession over the oriental portion of the roman empire. the ancient dynasty of the comneni, being expelled from the dominions over which they had presided for centuries, fled for refuge into various lands. alexius, the son of manuel and grandson of andronicus comnenus, obtained the government of the duchy of trebizond, which extended from the unfortunate sinope to the borders of circassia. he seems to have reigned in peace. the acts of his son, who succeeded him, are as unknown as his name, which has not even descended to posterity. the grandson of alexius was david comnenus, who, with an assurance and presumption which is almost ludicrous, took upon himself the style and title of emperor of trebizond. puffed up with vanity and self-conceit, this feeble prince enjoyed for a short period the imperial dignity which he possessed only in name. the erection of this quaint and ridiculous christian empire appears to have made a great sensation among the knights and troubadours of the fifteenth century. the geographical knowledge of those days was confined to few, and the empire of trebizond, like that of prester john, whose extent and situation were equally apocryphal, formed the theme of many a fabulous adventure and many a romance, which served to beguile the evening hours by the firesides of the castles and convents of england and france. fairies and wizards, ogres and giants, peopled the realms of fancy in this distant empire. lovely princesses were rescued from the thraldom of paynim castellans, and followers of mahound and termagaunt, by valiant christian knights armed with cross-hilted swords, and lutes, and talismans, the gift of benignant fairies, whose existence was only to be found in the imaginations of the unknown but delightful authors of the romances of chivalry, and the poems and ballads of the trouveurs and troubadours. the truths were not so agreeable as the fictions of "the good old times." as it happens to be in my power to do so, i present the reader with a portrait of the mighty emperor, as he appeared on the occasion which i am about to describe. his dress consisted of a tight gown of scarlet silk; round his neck, down the front of his gown, and round the bottom of it, were bands of gold about four inches wide; these were edged with pearls, and ornamented with large rubies and emeralds in rows down the centre of each band of gold. on his arms, above the elbows, were golden armlets, and round his wrists gold bracelets, all set with colored precious stones. his girdle, of the same pattern, and about three inches wide, had a hanging end about two feet long, which the byzantine emperors, for some undiscovered reason, seem always to have carried over the left arm. in his right hand he bore a golden sceptre, about three feet long, with a largish cross at the top, set with enormous pearls. on his head he wore a close golden crown, of which the top (that part made of velvet in the crown of england) was also of metal, like a helmet. from this crown a fillet set with pearls hung down on each side of his face to his beard, which was of some length. scarlet silk hose and golden sandals completed the imperial costume, except that he rejoiced in two round ornaments of gold and jewels, each the size of a plate, which were affixed to his robe on the outside of the thigh. the costume of the empress was very similar, only her crown was open at the summit. she, contrary to female custom, wore no girdle, while over her shoulders hung a mantle of a dark color, embroidered all over with gold. the emperor wore no mantle, although this garment is usually considered as an essential part of the royal costume. such was the appearance of david comnenus, emperor of trebizond, when he gave audience to the embassadors from foreign powers, seated on a golden throne at the summit of a high flight of steep golden steps, surrounded by his court and his officers (conspicuous among whom appeared the lictors with silver axes, for, as in the third century the romans affected the usages of the greeks, in the fifteenth century the greeks followed the customs of the cã¦sars--so prone is human nature to revere the ancient ceremonies of by-gone days), puffed up with vanity at his own glorious position, and placed in awful majesty upon his golden throne in the chamber of audience, whose walls were painted to look like porphyry, and the ceilings colored with figures on a gold ground in imitation of mosaic, an ornament too expensive for the resources of the empire. the chamberlains and heralds with a loud voice announce the arrival of an envoy from the high and mighty lord the soldan mehemet ii.; upon which the twelve lictors round the throne lifted up their voices, and cried out, "semper bibat imperator:" the letter v not being found in the greek alphabet, vivat was spelt with a beta, b; and being pronounced as it was spelt, the sense of the exclamation was a good deal compromised. the solemn envoy from the soldan stalked into the hall, followed by a grisly retinue clothed from head to foot in armor, partly composed of steel plates inlaid with sentences from the koran in gold letters, and partly completed with flexible chain mail. their helmets had conical summits, almost like a low church steeple, while instead of plumes they displayed a rod of steel, from which fluttered a small crimson flag from the summits of their casques. the letter from the soldan, inclosed in a bag of brocade, was handed to the important emperor, who, on breaking the seal, read the following words: "wilt thou secure thy treasures and thy life by resigning thy kingdom, or wilt thou rather forfeit thy kingdom, thy treasures, and thy life?" but a short time before, such was the terror occasioned by the name of the redoubted sultan mehemet ii., who had just planted the victorious crescent over the cross of st. sofia, that ismael beg, the mohammedan prince of sinope, who derived an enormous revenue from the copper-mines in his principality, immediately surrendered his dominions on a summons of a like import with the above, although at that period sinope was defended with strong fortifications, 400 cannons, and 12,000 men. david comnenus descended from his golden throne in the year 1461, and with his family was sent, apparently as a prisoner, to a distant castle, where, being accused of corresponding with the king of persia, he and his whole race were massacred by the orders of his furious conqueror. with him ended the illustrious dynasty of the comneni, and the history of the independent state of trebizond, which has since those times remained a remote, and till lately an almost unexplored province of the turkish empire. chapter xiv. present condition of armenia. impassable character of the country.--dependence of persia on the czar.--russian aggrandizement.--delays of the western powers.--russian acquisitions from turkey and persia.--oppression of the russian government.--the conscription.--armenian emigration.--the armenian patriarch.--latent power of the pope.--anomalous aspect of religious questions. the description of armenia and the adjacent districts in the foregoing pages will have sufficed to give a general idea of the many difficulties to be encountered by those whose business leads them through this inhospitable region, where they meet with impediments at every step, from the lofty mountains traversed by roads accessible only to mules and horses, the extreme cold of the high passes and elevated plains, the impossibility of obtaining provisions, and the savage character of the koords and other wandering tribes who roam over this wild country. if a traveler, accompanied by a few followers, and assisted by firmans from the sultan, finds this journey arduous in the extreme, how much more so must it prove to the general in command of an army, with many thousand men to provide for, with artillery and heavy baggage to encumber his march, on roads inaccessible to carriages or wheeled vehicles of any kind! and if to these is added an enemy on the alert to cut off supplies, to harass the long, straggling line of march, and to attack the passing army in narrow defiles from behind rocks, and from the summits of precipices, where they are safe from molestation, it will be understood that the difficulties presenting themselves to military operations in these regions are almost insuperable. it is the inaccessible nature of circassia, even more than the bravery of its inhabitants, which has enabled them to resist the overwhelming power of russia for so many years. on the approach to erzeroom these difficulties increase. from georgia, persia, and trebizond, there is no other city or entrepã´t where an army could rest to lay in stores and collect supplies for a campaign, with the exception of erzeroom, which is the centre or key to all these districts. if it was strongly fortified, as it should be, or was, at any rate, in the occupation of an active, intelligent government, the power who possessed it would hold the fate of that part of asia in its hands. no caravans could pass, no mercantile speculations could be carried on, and no large bodies of troops could march without its permission. they would, in all probability, perish from the rigors of the climate if they were not assisted, even without the necessity of attacking them by force of arms. at this moment, the greater part of the artillery of the turkish army is, i believe, buried under the snow in one of the ravines between beyboort and erzeroom, from whence it has no chance of being rescued till next summer. it was the impassable character of this country, and the treacherous habits of the robber tribes of koordistan, which made the retreat of xenophon and the ten thousand through the same regions the wonderful event which it has been always considered. while this is the nature of the elevated lands and mountains, the valleys which surround the snowy regions are absolutely pestiferous: in many of them no one can sleep one night without danger of fever, frequently ending in death. the port, or roadstead, of batoum is so unhealthy as to be utterly uninhabitable to strangers during all the hot season of the year. i wish to draw attention to these circumstances, in order to explain the almost impossibility of dispossessing any power which had already obtained a firm footing in this district; and it is in order to fix herself firmly in this important post that russia is now advancing in that direction, with a perfect knowledge of the advantages to be derived from this barren and unfruitful region, while she has the advantage of being able to send supplies to her forces by the caspian sea; for, once within her grasp, persia is no longer independent; and, fettered as she is by her russian debt, and what, in private affairs, would be called her heavy mortgage on her only valuable provinces on the shores of the caspian--geilaun and mazenderaun--she must sink into the state of a vassal kingdom, subject to the commands of her superior lord the czar. the sum she owes to russia is said to be about two millions sterling; far more than she could ever raise at a short notice, while she would receive no assistance in war from any of the neighboring sooni tribes, whose religious feelings are so much opposed to the sheahs; therefore, unless supported by great britain, persia is now almost at the mercy of russia. russia is altogether a military power, and, as in the dark ages, the czar and his nobles affect to despise the mercantile class, and, instead of doing what they can to promote industry and commerce, by opening communications, making roads and harbors, establishing steamers on rivers, and giving facility to the interchange of various commodities, the productions of distant quarters of her own enormous empire, she throws every obstacle in the way of her internal trade, and by heavy import duties, exactions of many oppressive kinds, and the universal plunder and cheating carried on by all the government officials in the lower grades of employment, she has paralyzed both her foreign and domestic resources. the czar prefers to buy his own aggrandizement with the blood of his confiding subjects, to the more honorable and less cruel course of enriching his empire by the extension of his commercial relations abroad, and the development of the peaceful arts, industry, science, and general improvement of the nations subjected to his rule. if it was not for this utter disregard of commerce, and the undivided attention of the russian government to every thing connected with military glory, the navigation of the great rivers would have poured many more roubles into the treasury of st. petersburgh than will be gained by any territorial accessions previous to the taking of constantinople. even under present circumstances, it is wonderful that a canal has not been made from tzaritzin, on the volga, to the nearest point upon the don, a distance of not more than thirty miles, for by this means the silk of the northern provinces of persia would be brought with the greatest facility into the black sea. in a mercantile point of view, russia would gain more by the construction of that canal than by the conquest of armenia, for it would enable her to develop the great resources of geilaun and mazenderaun, virtually belonging to her at this moment. the trade which in former times enriched the famous cities of bokhara and samarkand would be carried by caravans through khiva, either now, or soon to be, the head-quarters of a russian governor; from thence they would, with any encouragement, pass on their rich bales of merchandise to the russian posts of karagan, or krasnovodsk, on the eastern shores of the caspian, or to asterabad on the south, and at these ports, now unknown to european navigators, ships might be laden which would discharge their cargoes at liverpool, st. petersburgh, or new york. i have said above that russia has but little to gain by her territorial conquests in asiatic turkey until she takes constantinople. i say this because, if things are permitted by the western powers to continue as they have done for some years, the czar will most certainly be enthroned in the capital of the byzantine emperors, principally by the assistance of england and france. it is a question only of time: for that the patriarch of constantinople will give his blessing to the christian emperor under the dome of st. sofia sooner or later, and before many years have passed, i have hardly any doubt; and when once fairly seated on that throne, the powers of europe will not shake him in his seat. the acquisition of the crimea, with the strong naval arsenal of sevastopol, gave the czar the command of the black sea. the wonderful business of navarino, where the english and french admirals fought his battle for him, and crippled his enemy and their own ancient ally for many a year, was the next important step. the third seems to be taking place at this moment, if indeed sufficient advantages have not been gained already to suffice for the present emergency. it matters little whether russia does or does not retain the provinces of wallachia and moldavia, which she has several times occupied before; she has almost drained the treasury of her enemy, now straining every nerve to avert the impending evil. turkey will hardly be able to support the expenses of the war for any length of time from her own resources. even if a diplomatic peace is concluded, it will, in fact, amount only to a truce, during which the czar will have time to strengthen his position, and prepare his forces for another and a more vigorous assault on the first convenient opportunity which occurs, from any dissension which may arise between the leading powers of the west; and the sultan, having received nothing from his ancient allies but fair words, will be less able to defend himself than he is at present. the greatest of blessings in this world is peace, and every thing should be done to avoid the breaking out of war, with all the horrors and sufferings which are brought upon mankind by that dreadful scourge. i think it was the duke of wellington who said that, next to a defeat, the most awful of all calamities was a victory. every endeavor should be made to secure the happiness of peace. to those, however, who have no further means of information than what they read in newspapers, it would seem that, while we might have put out the candle, we have waited till the chimney is on fire, if not the house itself, and then who can tell how far and wide the conflagration may extend? if england and france had shown a determined front, and informed the czar that, being bound by treaty to preserve the integrity of the turkish empire, they should consider the passage of the pruth by one russian armed man as a violation of that treaty and a declaration of war, and that they should act accordingly without delay, in all probability no war would have commenced, no blood would have been shed, no ruinous expenses would have been incurred. war having commenced, heavy and exhausting sums of money have been drawn from the treasury of the sultan. when the ice set in upon the baltic, what was to prevent the allied fleet from taking possession of the stores of corn, and occupying or destroying the city of odessa? sevastopol, impregnable by sea, is not--or was not two years ago, and, i believe, at this day is not--defensible on the land side. the bay of streleskaia offers a convenient landing-place about three miles in the rear of the fortifications of the arsenal, where a turkish army might be brought in two days from constantinople to try its fortunes with the russian force; or, if that was not judged expedient, sevastopol could have been blockaded till some advantageous terms were gained for our ally. failing this, a french army, convoyed and assisted by their own and our fleets, would have settled the question without doubt, and may do so still; but, unless an indemnity for the expenses of the war is exacted from russia for her most unjust and unjustifiable aggression, very little advantage will be gained for turkey, a great step will have been accomplished by the czar, and the possession of the crimea almost insures him the possession of constantinople some day, perhaps at no very distant period. the restoration of the crimea to the turkish empire would, i imagine, be the only means of checking the advance of russia in that direction. this, accompanied by a forced treaty, releasing persia from her usurious debt, would restrain the encroachments of the czar within certain bounds for some years to come. the present aspect of affairs in the east becomes more alarming every day. if negotiations are protracted till the ice of the baltic melts in the spring or early summer, things will assume a much more grave appearance, and it will depend on many circumstances over which we have no control where the conflagration then may spread and where the war will end. it is impossible to look back upon the history of russia for the last 150 years without admiration and astonishment at the enormous strides which have been made by the giants of the north since that period. when peter the great acceded to the throne of muscovy, there was no maritime outlet to his empire excepting in the icy shores of the northern ocean. the ground on which the metropolis of st. petersburgh now stands was not in the possession of russia till the year 1721. since the year 1774 russia has acquired, quite in the memory of man, a territory from turkey equal in extent to the whole empire of austria, and much larger than the present possessions of the turks in europe. the following table of the progress of the russian arms in the east will show at a glance how rapidly and steadily she has extended her power, her grasping hand, and her outstretched arm in that direction; and it can not be expected that, when she has rested and strengthened herself, and consolidated her resources in her newly-acquired territories, she will be prevented by any slight obstacle from further aggrandizement. russian acquisitions from turkey. country to the north of the crimea 1774 the crimea 1783 country round odessa 1792 country between the sea of azof and the caspian, at the same period as the crimea 1783 besarabia 1812 russian acquisitions from persia. mingrelia, on the black sea 1802 immeritia, the same year 1802 akalzik 1829 georgia 1814 ganja 1803 karabaugh 1805 erivan, mount ararat, and etchmiazin 1828 sheki 1805 shirvan 1806 talish, on the caspian 1812 few of these conquered or deluded nations have been able to bear the intolerable oppression of the russian government, arising from the insolence of the petty employã©s, and more particularly the dreadful scourge of the conscription, by the aid of which, at any moment, children are remorselessly torn forever from their parents, whose sole support they were; families are on a sudden divided; one half sent off no one knows whither, never to meet again; none of these unhappy slaves knowing whether it will be their lot to become soldiers or sailors, but, in either case, they are driven off, like beasts, in flocks, by cruel, savage tyrants, who steal, as a matter of course, the money provided by the superior government for the food of the despairing conscripts, while they--brutal and drunken though they may be--are distinguished for their love of home, and the affection and respect they bear for their parents. the nogai tatars abandoned the christian religion, and took refuge in the territories of the khan of the crimea, becoming mohammedans in hopes of obtaining the protection of the milder rule of turkey. in 1771 a still more extraordinary event took place. the kalmuks, a people who had emigrated from the frontiers of china, unable to endure the insults and oppressions of the russian tyranny, made up their minds to return to the dominions of the celestial empire, from whence their ancestors had originally come. they fought their way through all the hostile tribes intervening between them, and their whole nation arrived safely under the wing of the emperor of china, who afforded them protection, and gave them great tracts of land for the pasture of their flocks and herds. the embassador of the empress catharine, who had been dispatched to desire the surrender of the fugitive tribe, and--as at this day in turkey--to demand a "renewal of treaties" between the two countries, received the following answer from the court of pekin: "let your mistress learn to keep old treaties, and then it will be time to apply for new ones;" an answer which might have been given in our day to prince menschikoff, who was lucky in meeting with a milder reception at constantinople than his predecessor received from the stout old mandarin at pekin. in the year 1829, kars, bayazeed, van, moush, erzeroom, and beyboort (which is coming very near) were occupied by the russians, who evacuated that portion of the turkish empire on the conclusion of the treaty of adrianople. trusting to the protestations of a christian emperor, sixty-nine thousand christian armenian families were beguiled into the folly of leaving mohammedan dominions, and sitting in peace under the paternal protection of the czar. over their ruined houses i have ridden, and surveyed with sorrow their ancient churches in the valleys of armenia, desecrated and injured, as far as their solid construction permitted, by the sacrilegious hands of the russian soldiers, who tried to destroy those temples of their own religion which the turks had spared, and under whose rule many of the more recent had been rebuilt on their old foundations. the greater part of these armenians perished from want and starvation; the few who survived this sharp lesson have since been endeavoring, by every means in their power, to return to the lesser evils of the frying-pan of turkey, from whence they had leaped into the fire of despotic russia. by the treaty of turkomanchai, 1828, the czar became possessed of persian armenia, of which the capital is erivan. in this district are contained the two great objects of armenian veneration, etchmiazin and mount ararat. this noble snowy mountain takes the place, in the estimation of the armenians, that mount sinai and mount zion do among the followers of other christian sects. the foolish legends which disgrace the purity of true religion usually relate to the object of local tradition which may be met with in the neighborhood of the monastery; consequently an attack of indigestion in an armenian monk generally produces a vision of some nonsensical revelation about noah's ark, which is still supposed to remain, hidden to mortal eye, under the clouds and snows of mount ararat. etchmiazin is an ancient fortified monastery, within whose walls resides the patriarch of the armenian church, the spiritual head of that body, and who is looked up to indeed as the temporal chief of that scattered nation whose industrious children are settled in india, constantinople, and in many other parts of the world, so that those who live and thrive abroad are much more numerous and more wealthy than those who reside in armenia itself. the possession, therefore, of the person and residence of the patriarch is a fact of no small importance in the history of russian advancement. to undertake a pilgrimage to etchmiazin is a meritorious act among the professors of the armenian faith; and the influence exercised over the patriarch is diffused, through the obedient medium of bishops, priests, and deacons, through all parts of turkey, and many of the cities of india, to an extent which would surprise those who never have troubled themselves with the affairs of the armenian jeweler or silversmith in an eastern bazaar, for they are almost invariably dealers in jewels and precious metals; or serafs, bankers, among the native population; a position which renders their influence of no small consequence in every city where they reside. by these means, among others, the political interest of the czar is nourished and extended on the persian gulf, at bombay, bushire, madras, and many another place, in the same manner as the sway and power of the roman pontiff is upheld, and that by no weak and trembling hand, in ireland, england, london, and the house of commons. and yet we pretend that there is no such power as the see of rome; we ignore the existence of the pope, and sneer at the prince of a petty italian state supported by french bayonets, who is in that rotten and decaying state that we or our children are to see his end. but my belief is, that the power of rome is by no means in a falling state, nor would it be so even if the rule of some band of miscreants usurped for a little while the misgovernment of the eternal city. the power of the pope is now, at this moment, one of the greatest upon the earth; and as irreligion and dissent increase, so will the most wonderfully clever institution of the temporal power of the roman church increase. its minute and marvelous organization, the perfect understanding and subordination of the inferior to the superior officer, its fixed and certain purpose, give the pope the command over such a united and well-disciplined army of trained and fearless soldiers as never could be brought together by cã¦sar, or napoleon, or our own old duke. the peace of europe in this direction arises not from the slightest want of power or means on the part of the see of rome, but from the jealousy of the body in whose hands the election of the supreme pontiff lies. for many years they have elected a good old monk, who has passed his whole life in a state of supreme ignorance of the world in general, and the whole art of government in particular. in his hands the mighty power at his command remains inert--a slumbering volcano. but should the ivory chair of st. peter ever sustain the weight of a young and energetic man of genius, with some years of life before him, no one would laugh at the tottering state of rome. as for the petty principality of a state in italy, i have been told, in the pope's own ante-room, that it is a burden to him. his extended sway does not depend on the doubtful loyalty of half a dozen regiments of italians, or on the more honest obedience of two or three thousand swiss guards, but on the hearts and hands of many millions, who look up to him as their spiritual superior at all times, and their temporal superior, whom they are bound to obey in opposition to all other sovereigns, when any thing occurs "ad majorem dei gloriam," and for the advancement of the church of rome. a power such as this, which in our trafficking and money-making country is thought little of--a power such as this lies dormant in the hands of the grand lama of thibet, whose followers form almost half of all mankind--in those of the patriarch of constantinople--and to an inferior degree in those of the patriarch of etchmiazin. they are all paralyzed and quiescent from the same cause, namely, that the chiefs of these mighty institutions are old, ignorant men, whose minds have not the energy, or their hands the power, to work the tremendous engine committed to their care. that the czar is perfectly aware of the uses to be made of the religious feelings of the inhabitants of other governments to further his own ends, we see from the numerous magnificent presents ostentatiously forwarded by him to churches in greece and turkey, where the monks and priests by these means are gained over to his interests. from his generous hand, extended to the borders of the adriatic, about â£5000 are annually dropped into the poor-box of that truculent specimen of the church militant, the vladica of montenegro. but the czar is not an aged monk; he is not wanting in energy or strength; and he will not fail to pull the strings which hang loosely in the hands of the armenian patriarch. if he pulls them evenly and well, he will advance his interests far and wide, even in the dominions of other princes, who may hardly be aware of the influence exercised in their states from a source so distant and unobtrusive. the danger in his case is, that he may use too great violence, and break the strings from too severe a tension, raising the storm against himself which he intended to direct against others. however this may be, the power of which he holds the reins is one which may be used for the advancement of the greatest or the most ignoble ends. for the most sublime and glorious actions, the most heroic and the most infernal deeds that have ever been accomplished by mankind, have been occasioned by the awakening of religious zeal, or by the fanaticism of religious hatred, from the earliest days, when the pen of history was first dipped in blood. nothing can be more anomalous than the present aspect of religious questions. the christian emperor of russia is at this moment exciting the minds of his subjects to make war upon the infidel; and his armies march under the impression that they undertake a new crusade. yet this crusade is carried on in direct contradiction to truth, justice, honor, and every principle of the christian religion, whose pure and sacred precepts are violated at every turn. on the other hand, the mohammedan, or infidel, as he is called, displays, under the most difficult and insulting circumstances, the highest christian virtues of integrity, moderation, and strict adherence to his word in treaties granted by himself or his predecessors; at the same time, the armies of the upright sultan are commanded by a christian renegade who has abjured his faith, and yet he fights against the christian power in a righteous cause. the terrible revolution which is the cause of such awful scenes of bloodshed and atrocities in china is carried on under the name of our merciful and just savior, whose mild religion these rebels against their sovereign affect to follow. the savage atrocities of the holy inquisition, the cruel massacres by the spaniards in america, were perpetrated by men who made a cloak of the benevolent precepts of the gospel for the perpetration of the most brutal crimes. those times we thought were past, but human nature is the same; and where the light of true christianity has penetrated, we find a period of wonderful intelligence and appreciation of the truths of the doctrines of our lord in some places; in others, where a nominal christianity alone prevails, actions are committed by men in the highest stations which would disgrace the records of the dark ages. chapter xv. ecclesiastical history.--supposed letter of abgarus, king of edessa, to our savior, and the answer.--promulgation and establishment of christianity.--labors of mesrob maschdots.--separation of the armenian church from that of constantinople.--hierarchy and religious establishments.--superstition of the lower classes.--sacerdotal vestments.--the holy books.--romish branch of the church.--labors of mechitar.--his establishment near venice.--diffusion of the scriptures. the ruins of ani to this day attest the magnificence and antiquity of former dynasties which long since reigned and passed away in the highlands of armenia. in the time of cyrus, according to moses of chorene, the historian of that country in the sixteenth century, greek statues of jupiter, artemis (diana), minerva, hephã¦stion, and venus, were brought to ani and placed in the citadel of that town. here the treasures and the sepulchres of the ancient kings were preserved in a fortress deemed by them impregnable. i will not pause to disentangle the records of armenia before the time of our savior, for even during the life of our lord the annals of armenia become remarkably interesting as connected with his holy faith, and the rise and progress of christianity in the countries immediately adjoining the sacred soil of palestine. abgarus, king of edessa, and sovereign of great part of armenia, with the adjoining countries, is said by eusebius, bishop of cã¦sarea, the early historian of the church, who flourished in the fourth century, to have written a letter to our savior, requesting him to repair to his court and to cure him of a disease under which he labored. the following is a translation of the letter which abgarus is said to have written to our lord: "abgarus, king of edessa, to jesus the good savior, who appeareth at jerusalem, greeting: "i have been informed concerning thee and thy cures, which are performed without the use of medicines or of herbs. "for it is reported that thou dost cause the blind to see, the lame to walk, that thou dost cleanse the lepers, and dost cast out unclean spirits and devils, and dost restore to health those who have been long diseased, and also that thou dost raise the dead. "all which when i heard i was persuaded of one of these two things: "either that thou art god himself descended from heaven; "or that thou art the son of god. "on this account, therefore, i have written unto thee, earnestly desiring that thou wouldst trouble thyself to take a journey hither, and that thou wilt also cure me of the disease under which i suffer. "for i fear that the jews hold thee in derision, and intend to do thee harm. "my city is indeed small, but it is sufficient to contain us both." in the history of moses of chorene, this letter begins with the words "abgar, the son of archam," but the substance of it is the same as the above, which is taken from the pages of eusebius, who lived a century earlier than moses of chorene. this author ascribes the answer to st. thomas the apostle, who was deputed to write an answer to the above in these words: "happy art thou, o abgarus, forasmuch as thou hast believed in me whom thou hast not seen. "for it is written concerning me, that those who have seen me have not believed on me, that those who have not seen me might believe and live. "as to that part of thine epistle which relates to my visiting thee, i must inform thee that i must fulfill the ends of my mission in this land, and after that be received up again unto him that sent me; but after my ascension i will send one of my disciples, who will cure thy disease, and give life unto thee and all that are with thee." these two letters are generally considered to be forgeries, although they are mentioned by some of the earliest historians of the church. some years ago i was informed, while at alexandria, that a papyrus had been discovered in upper egypt, in an ancient tomb; it was inclosed in a coarse earthenware vase, and it contained the letter from abgarus to our savior, written either in coptic or uncial greek characters. the answer of st. thomas was said not to be with it. i was told that the manuscript afterward came into the possession of the king of holland, but i have no means at present of ascertaining the truth of the story, or the antiquity of the papyrus of which it forms the subject. the seeds of the christian faith were sown in armenia by the apostles st. bartholomew and st. thomas. according to tertullian (adv. judã¦os, c. 7), a christian church flourished there in the second century. st. blaise and other bishops suffered martyrdom in different parts of armenia during the persecution of diocletian, about the year 310. to st. gregory, the illuminator, is due the honor of having established christianity in this region, and he is known by the title of the apostle of armenia. toward the middle of the third century, having been himself a convert from paganism, he first preached the doctrines of our lord among the mountains of his native land. he had received his education at cã¦sarea in cappadocia, where he was baptized. the zeal with which he was animated gave irresistible force to his words, and the people flocked to him in great multitudes, and were baptized by his hands. the king tiridates, a violent persecutor of the christians, touched by the piety and virtues of st. gregory, embraced the christian faith, and, with his queen and his sister, received the sacrament of baptism in the 16th year of his reign, a.d. 274, and became the first christian king of armenia. st. gregory was consecrated bishop by st. leontius, bishop of cã¦sarea, in cappadocia, and continued his labors in propagating the faith all over armenia, georgia, and the nations living on the borders of the caspian sea. from this circumstance it became the custom for the primate of armenia to receive his consecration from the archbishop of cã¦sarea, which continued to be the practice for several centuries. st. gregory died in the year 336, in a cave to which he had retired, desiring to end his days as an anchorite, according to a custom much observed in the fourth century. in those disturbed and unsettled times, the religion of our savior alternately rose and prospered, or was oppressed by the persecutions of various governors under the emperors of rome. numerous heresies distracted the minds of the priesthood, and confused the doctrines of the armenian church. about the year 390 rose the most celebrated man in the history of this country: his name was mesrob maschdots. this personage was born in the town of hatsegatz-avan, in the province of daron: he had been secretary to the patriarch narses, and to the prince varastad, who was dethroned by the romans in the year 382. in the year 390, in conjunction with the armenian patriarch sahag, he occupied himself in the extinction of the idolatry which still prevailed, and was the first person who arranged the forms of the armenian liturgy. before this time the armenian language had no written character; the inhabitants of the eastern districts used the persian alphabet, while those of the west wrote in the syriac character. mesrob either restored the ancient armenian letters according to the historian moses of chorene, who gives a long miraculous account of the event, or he invented an entirely new alphabet--a solitary instance, i believe, of such an undertaking having been accomplished by one man. the present armenian letters were adopted by the commands of bahram schahpoor over the whole of that country in the year 406. the first complete version of the bible was now arranged and promulgated by mesrob, and written on parchment in his new characters; numerous copies of it were distributed to the churches and monasteries of armenia, and the important circumstance of their being now able to read the holy scriptures in their own language tended to preserve their faith, and to unite them as a nation during the continual troubles and adversities which they have suffered ever since. this great benefactor to his country died in the year 441. the armenian hierarchy had till now been a branch of the greek church, but, unable to read their liturgy, troubled with diversities of opinion, and oppressed first by one neighboring tyrant and then by another, this helpless nation finally settled down into the heresy of eutyches, and, under the guidance of their patriarch, separated themselves from the church of constantinople. they believe that the body of our savior was created, or else existed without creation, a divine and incorruptible substance, not subject to the infirmities of the flesh. this schism took place about the year 535. the armenian era commences in the year 552, from which epoch their manuscripts and calendar are dated. the custom continues to the present day. by the council of tibena in 554, they were confirmed in their persistence in the eutychian heresy. the council of trullo, 692, and the council of jerusalem, 1143, condemned the errors of the armenians. in the fourteenth century, pope john xxii. sent a dominican friar, called bartholomew the little, into that distant region, with several colleagues, to preach the doctrines of the church of rome. bartholomew was consecrated bishop (of nakchevan?), and since that time the archbishop of that province has, with all his dependencies, continued a member of the roman church. the thunders of the lateran have often since been directed against the perseverance of these distant heretics, but they have been of no avail. the patriarch of armenia resides at etchmiazin. he is styled catholicos, and holds under his sway forty-seven archbishops, of whom the greater part are titular, having no jurisdiction or dignity beyond their titles; many of these reside in the monastery, and form a sort of court around their spiritual lord the patriarch. they seem to hold the same position as the monsignores of the court of rome. above the titular and actual archbishops are three patriarchs, whose seats are at jerusalem, constantinople, and diarbekir. the number of bishops and episcopal sees is very considerable, but i have not been able to enumerate them. the monasteries are also very numerous, and are scattered all over the mountains of armenia, the islands of lake van, and other places in persia, georgia, and turkey. the ancient monasteries of their own land are of a peculiar construction, remarkable for the diminutive proportions of the churches and the small size of the monastic buildings, as well as their massive strength and the great squared stones of which they are built. they are little fortresses, and seem always to have been very poor, though some are larger and more wealthy, comparatively, than the generality. they have been erected to resist the incursions of the saracens, knights templars, koords, turks, and persians, who, from time to time, overran this abject principality. their massive strength alone has saved them from being pulled down and utterly destroyed; the time necessary for such an operation could not be spared during the inroad of a chappow, or plundering expedition. nothing worth stealing remains in the various monasteries which i have visited. a few dirty and imperfect church-books, some faded vestments and poor furniture for the altar, and the cells of three or four peasant-monks, were all the wealth that they displayed. very few appear to have contained a library--none that i have seen. their manuscripts were written in former days at edessa, etchmiazin (which is a more extensive fabric), teflis, ooroomia, tabriz, and other cities, and not usually in these outposts among the mountains. the little monastery of kuzzul vank possesses one ancient manuscript of the holy scriptures, written in the year, as far as i can remember, 422, which, if it refers to the armenian era, would be 974; it is written in uncial letters, on vellum, in a small, thick quarto form. ignorance and superstition contend for the mastery among the lower classes of armenia, whose religion shows that tendency to sink into a kind of idolatry which is common among other branches of the church of christ in warmer climates. the following anecdote will explain my meaning in advancing such a charge. one of my servants had a bad toothache; he was a roman catholic of smyrna; he made a vow to present an offering to the shrine of st. george at smyrna if his toothache was cured by the mediation of that saint, but the pain still continued. a friend of his at erzeroom advised him to vow a silver mouth to st. george of erzeroom; "for," he said, "st. george of smyrna is a roman saint, and, of course, he can have no authority here; but our st. george is an armenian, and he will hear your prayer." the advice was taken: a silver mouth was vowed to st. george of erzeroom, and the toothache ceased immediately, the servant firmly believing that he had been cured by this saint, who, he considered, was another person, and not the same as st. george of smyrna, and that his picture here was more powerful in working miracles than the others. in the same manner, the pictures or images of our lady of loretto, guadaloupe, or del pilar are believed to be endowed with peculiar powers, and are, in fact, worshiped for their own merits, and not for what they represent. a curious episode in the history of armenia took place in the time of shah abbas the great, who established a colony of the natives of that province at julfa, a village near isfahaun. he gave them many privileges and immunities, which a remnant of their descendants enjoy still. the forms and ceremonies of their worship resemble those of the greek church, from which they are derived. their vestments are the same, or nearly so: and here i will remark that the sacred vestures of the christian church are the same, with very insignificant modifications, among every denomination of christians in the world; that they have always been the same, and never were otherwise in any country, from the remotest times when we have any written accounts of them, or any mosaics, sculptures, or pictures to explain their forms. they are no more a popish invention, or have any thing more to do with the roman church, than any other usage which is common to all denominations of christians. they are, and always have been, of general and universal--that is, of catholic--use; they have never been used for many centuries for ornament or dress by the laity, having been considered as set apart to be used only by priests in the church during the celebration of the worship of almighty god. these ancient vestures have been worn by the bishops, priests, and deacons of that, in common with the hierarchy of every other church. in england they have fallen into disuse by neglect; king charles i. presented some vestments to the cathedral of durham long after the reformation, and they continued in use there almost in the memory of man. the parish priests of the armenian religion are, i believe, permitted, if not obliged, to marry, as is the case in the greek and russian churches; but they can not, so long as their wife survives, be promoted to any of the higher orders of the hierarchy. bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs are elected out of the monastic bodies who take the vows of celibacy; their fasts are long and rigorous, their food simple, and their style of life severe; their time is almost entirely taken up with the services of religion, and, as a general rule, their ignorance is extreme. in their doctrine of the holy trinity, they believe that the holy spirit proceeds from the father alone; that christ descended into hell, from whence he reprieved the souls of sinners till the day of judgment; that the souls of the righteous will not be admitted to the beatific vision till after the resurrection, notwithstanding which they invoke them in their prayers. they make use of pictures in their churches, but not of images; they use confession to the priests, and administer the eucharist in both kinds. in baptism they plunge the child three times in water, apply the chrism with consecrated oil prepared only by the patriarch. they also touch the child's lips with the eucharist, which consists of unleavened bread sopped in wine. the holy scriptures contain more books than those of the western churches. in the old testament, after the book of genesis, occurs the testament of the twelve patriarchs, the sons of jacob; then the history of joseph and of his wife asenath; the book of jesus the son of sirach. after these the order of the scriptural books succeeds as with us. in the new testament, after st. paul's second epistle to the corinthians, we find the epistle of the corinthians to st. paul, which is followed by st. paul's third epistle to the corinthians. the remainder of the new testament is the same as ours. the testament of the twelve patriarchs, and the book of jesus the son of sirach, are well known; but i am not aware that the book of asenath has been printed in any european language. this curious book was translated into italian, from an ancient armenian manuscript of the bible in my possession, by an armenian friend, and translated from the italian into english by myself: this i presume to be the only copy of the book of asenath in the english language. it is a work of considerable length, and is interesting, not only from the place it holds in the estimation of a numerous body of christians, but also from the picture it presents of the manners and customs of egypt, at some remote period when it was written. several passages in it indicate that it must have been composed when what may be called the classic style of life was still in use. whether it was included among the number of the sacred books collected by mesrob i do not know: in that case it would date as far back as the fourth century after christ, a period prolific in apocryphal books, several of which were forged about that time to support the authority of the various heresiarchs who promulgated their opinions in many countries of the east, and who, being unable to produce texts from the accepted books of the sacred scriptures which would prove the truth of their doctrines, invented others more suitable to their own purposes, and written more in accordance with their views. the epistle from the corinthians to st. paul, and the answer from the great apostle, is of a higher class, and bears much resemblance to his other epistles. it has been published among lord byron's works. he took a few lessons in armenian from father pasquale aucher, a monk of the monastery of st. lazarus, at venice, a man of extraordinary learning, who speaks most of the european languages, as well as turkish, armenian, and other oriental tongues. he translated these epistles into english, with the assistance of lord byron. the roman catholic branch of the armenian church has done much more for literature and civilization than the original body. few catholics are found in armenia itself, excepting at erzeroom and other cities, where a remnant remain, while at constantinople a great number of the higher and wealthier armenians give their adherence to that creed. their minds are more enlarged, they are less oriental in their ideas, being usually considered as half franks by their more eastern brethren. their churches bear a great resemblance to those of other catholics, but they retain their own language in their ritual, with many of the forms and ceremonies of the oriental church. the armenian patriarch, with his long beard, and crown instead of a mitre, is one of the picturesque figures to whom attention is drawn in the ceremonies of the holy week at rome, where there is a college for the education of priests of their nation. they have another college at constantinople, and several handsome churches; but the most important establishment of this branch of their religion is that of the convent or monastery on the island of st. lazarus, near venice. this society, as they themselves call it, was founded by mechitar, an armenian, who was born at sebaste, in lesser armenia, in 1676. he received holy orders from the bishop ananias, superior of the convent of the holy cross, near sebaste. he afterward studied in the convent of passen, near erzeroom, and at another on the island on lake van. his wish was to remain in the great monastery of etchmiazin, to which place he traveled, but, finding no opportunities of study at the seat of the patriarch, he proceeded to constantinople, where he afterward founded a small society, of a monastic kind, at pera, in the year 1700. in the year 1708 he established a church and monastic society at modon in the morea, then under the government of venice; but the turks having taken that place, his companions were made prisoners and sold for slaves. he, with some others, escaped to venice, where he received a grant, in the year 1717, from the signory, of a small deserted island in the lagunes, originally the property of the benedictine order, who established a hospital for lepers there in 1180. in this island he set up a printing-press about the year 1730, for the production of armenian religious books; and he had the satisfaction of seeing his convent increase in comfort, wealth, and respectability before his death, which took place on the 27th of april, 1749. so high was the character of this establishment for usefulness and good conduct, that in 1810, when other monastic establishments were suppressed at venice, the abbot of st. lazaro received a peculiar decree, granting him and his community all the privileges of their former independence. so high also has been the character of this society since that time, that it has been usual for the pope to confer upon each new abbot the title and dignity of archbishop, although he has no province or bishops under him. the service they have rendered to their countrymen is very great: they have at present five printing-presses, from whence every year proceed numerous volumes of religious and historical character, as well as school-books, and a newspaper in the armenian language. these are mostly sold at constantinople, and among the scattered societies of their nation. the funds produced from this source enable them to establish a considerable school or college at venice, and to send literary missionaries, as they may be called, to collect manuscripts and historical notices among the barren mountains of armenia. of these they make good use, compiling, from imperfect and mutilated fragments, authentic histories of their country; printing the almost hitherto lost and unknown works of ancient armenian authors, and distributing copies of the holy scriptures among their brethren in the wasted and benighted land of their fathers. they printed the armenian bible in the year 1805; and, entirely by their energy, the small spark which alone glimmered in the darkness of armenian ignorance in the east has gradually increased its light into a feeble ray, which now, seen faintly through the mist, draws every now and then the attention of some one endowed by nature with more intelligence than the rest, and incites him to inquire into those truths the rumors of whose existence had only reached him hitherto. slowly enough, but we trust surely, the good work prospers: when curiosity and interest are awakened, the mind turns naturally to the sources from which information may be gained. the holy gospels, the new testament, and, in some places, the whole bible, may now be procured at a comparatively trifling expense; the leaven, once introduced, sooner or later will leaven the whole mass; truth and common sense will dissipate the clouds which ignorance and superstition have gathered over the face of the land, and the light of true religion will arise to set no more. chapter xvi. modern division of armenia.--population.--manners and customs of the christians.--superiority of the mohammedans. the country which was called armenia in ancient times is now divided into two portions; the smaller of the two belongs to persia, but the larger part is contained in the turkish province or pashalik of erzeroom. it does not possess any communication with the sea, and is a wild and mountainous district. although not of any high importance for mercantile productions, it has continually been an object of jealousy to the neighboring empires of persia and byzantium--or, in our time, persia and turkey--from the high road between those empires necessarily passing through it; the power of cutting off supplies, and permitting the passage of caravans laden with the rich productions of other lands, being vested in the hands of the military governor of erzeroom. the number of inhabitants of this pashalik is estimated at 1,000,000; there were probably more in earlier times. the principal cities are--erzeroom, the capital, containing about 30,000 souls. the population of kars is considered to be about 20,000, van 20,000, moosh and beyboort about 8000 each. the turkish governor of the pashalik has generally an armed force of 25,000 regular soldiers; but it would be easy for him, with sufficient funds, to raise a more considerable force of irregular cavalry, and infantry armed with rifles, the use of which weapon is well understood by the hardy mountaineers and hunters, whose manners in some respects resemble those of the tyrolese. the greater half of the population are mohammedan turks or osmanlis, followers of osman. the word turk is never used in this country, and is more generally applied to the turkomans and some of the tribes on the persian border, who are of calmuc or tartar origin, and a completely different sort of people from those whom we call turks. the christian population consists of a small number of greeks, nestorians, and roman catholics, the greater part being descendants of the ancient possessors of the soil, and professing the christianity of the armenian church, which i have attempted to describe above. their manners and customs are the same as those of the turks, whom they copy in dress and in their general way of living; so much is this the case, that it is frequently difficult to distinguish the turkish from the armenian family, both in armenia and at constantinople; only the armenian is the inferior in all respects; he would be called in china a second-chop turk. he is more quick and restless in his motions, and wants the dignity and straightforward bearing of the osmanli. more than 100,000 armenians are settled at constantinople. these are not so ignorant, and are, even in appearance, different from those of their original country, who are a heavy and loutish race, while the citizens are thin, sharp, active in money-making arts, and remarkable for their acuteness in mercantile transactions. each turkish village elects its cadi, a sort of mayor; an armenian christian village elects its elder, who is called the ak sakal, or white beard; he is the responsible person in all transactions with government, and sometimes holds an arduous post. the women live in a harem, like the turkish women, separate from the men. the mistress of the house superintends the kitchen, the making of preserves, and salting winter stores; they wear the yashmak, or turkish veil, at constantinople, where the armenian ladies are celebrated for their beauty, and their fine eyes, and black, arched eyebrows. in armenia, the women, when they go out, wrap themselves up in a large piece of bunting, the same kind of stuff that is used in europe for flags; being of wool, it takes a fine color in dyeing. the ample wrappers of the women are sometimes of a bright scarlet, sometimes a brilliant white or blue. the effect of this veil is much more pleasing than those of constantinople or egypt. the armenians are not bad cooks: some of their dishes are excellent; one of mutton stewed with quinces leaves a very favorable impression on the recollection of the hungry traveler. the country people live underground in the peculiar houses which i have described; they are an agricultural peasantry, tilling the ground, and not possessing large herds of sheep or cattle, like the turkomans, koords, or arabs; they are a heavy-looking race, but are hardy and active, and inured from youth to exercise and endurance, but even in these respects they are excelled by the mohammedan mountaineers. the superiority of the mohammedan over the christian can not fail to strike the mind of an intelligent person who has lived among these races, as the fact is evident throughout the turkish empire. this arises partly from the oppression which the turkish rulers in the provinces have exercised for centuries over their christian subjects: this is probably the chief reason; but the turk obeys the dictates of his religion, the christian does not; the turk does not drink, the christian gets drunk; the turk is honest, the turkish peasant is a pattern of quiet, good-humored honesty; the christian is a liar and a cheat; his religion is so overgrown with the rank weeds of superstition that it no longer serves to guide his mind in the right way. it would be a work of great difficulty to disentangle the pure faith preached by the apostles from the mass of absurdities and strange notions with which christianity is encumbered, in the belief of the villagers in out-of-the-way places, among the various sects of christians in the dominions of the sultan. this seems to have been the case for many centuries, and it has produced its effect in lowering the standard of morality, and injuring the general character of those nations who are subjects of turkey and not of the mohammedan religion. for, of two evils, it is better to follow the doctrines of a false religion than to neglect the precepts of the true faith. chapter xvii. armenian manuscripts.--manuscripts at etchmiazin.--comparative value of manuscripts.--uncial writing.--monastic libraries.--collections in europe.--the st. lazaro library. armenian manuscripts are of extreme rarity, not only in europe, but in armenia itself, at constantinople, or any other place. the unsettled state in which that distracted province has from time immemorial been sunk, has prevented the development of the peaceful arts, and few of the monastic establishments of that country had wealth, or leisure, or convenience to copy and illuminate their books. the few fine manuscripts which i have met with seem to have been written for some armenian princes, and were the works of scribes supported by exalted personages, who wrote under the shadow of their protection in the metropolitan cities, or in the patriarchal monastery of etchmiazin. i was prevented by illness when in the neighborhood from visiting etchmiazin, but there are preserved (or rather neglected) there, i have been given to understand, more than 2000 ancient manuscripts. these are completely unknown, unless within these few years they have been examined by any russian antiquarian; no other traveler has been there who was competent to overlook a dusty library, so as to give any idea, not of what there is, but even what it may be likely to contain. this, as my bibliographical friends are well aware, is a peculiar art or mystery depending more on a general knowledge of the first aspect of an old book than a capacity to appreciate its contents. a book written on vellum implies a certain antiquity immediately recognizable by the initiated. if it does not appear to be ancient, it is then more than probable that it contains the works of some author of more than ordinary consideration, to have made it worth while to go to the expense and labor of a careful scribe and a material difficult in those days to procure. an illuminated manuscript on vellum, if not a prayer-book, secures additional attention; independent of its value as a work of art, it must be of some consequence to have made it worth illuminating. a large manuscript, as a general rule, is worth more than a little one, for the same evident reason that its contents were considered at the time when it was written to have been of some importance, and deserving of more labor, time, and care, than if it was just written out cheaply by a common scribe. uncial writing--that is, a book written in capital letters--is much more ancient than one written in a cursive hand, and the most ancient volumes were generally large square quartos. it is curious that this should be the case in almost all nations and languages surrounding the mediterranean, though their customs may be so different in other respects. manuscripts on paper, again, are sometimes of remarkable interest, from their containing the works of authors then considered trivial and inferior, but now of much more value than the more ponderous tomes of the middle ages. the majority of the volumes in an ancient monastic library are worn-out, imperfect church-books, which have been cast aside from time to time, and committed to the care of the mice and spiders, who alone frequent the shelves or the floor of that dusty lumber-room. it is uncommon to find a manuscript in more than one volume, unless it may be the works of st. chrysostom, or another of the fathers of the church. in this case the volumes are hardly ever found together, and a complete set of three or four volumes is beyond hoping for, carelessness and neglect having been for centuries the librarians of the monastery. these and other circumstances combine to make a cursory examination of one of these original hoards of by-gone literature a task for which the learned student of some abstruse science, or dead or dying language, is totally incompetent. the translator of an almost forgotten tongue, the laborious compiler of unpublished history, requires that the musty chronicles, the splendid illuminated volumes bound in gold and velvet, the crabbed, ill-written works of antique lore, should be laid upon the table before him, so that, in the undisturbed silence of his study, surrounded with lexicons and modern books of reference, he may bit by bit extract the pith, and winnow off the chaff, from the venerable manuscripts of distant lands and other times. the bibliographical traveler, who is to provide these precious relics for his careful use, who is to drag them from their dark recesses, where they have been lying undisturbed 500 or 1000 years, has an entirely different task to fulfill. the professor would require months to look over each book one by one, to brush away the cobwebs, to ascertain by difficult and uncertain passages what the subject of those manuscripts might be which had lost many pages at the beginning and end, and to satisfy himself at last that it was worthless--a conclusion to which another would arrive at the first glance. this power of immediately appreciating the value of ancient manuscripts in the manner above mentioned will be understood by those who are aware that such is the usual jealousy of the ignorant monks for that which they can neither use nor understand themselves, that it hardly ever happens that a stranger is permitted to take more than a general survey of the worm-eaten and dusty mass which lies in heaps upon the floor, or is piled in the corners of the room which they call their library, but which they probably have never entered on any other occasion. such as i have described are the libraries at etchmiazin, the monastery on lake van, those near ooroomia, and the few places where more than the church-books are still remaining. in england, the bodleian library contains about twenty volumes of armenian manuscripts; the british museum not so many, i believe; the royal library at paris has about 200, which were collected by the emissaries of louis xiv. some of these are of considerable antiquity and beauty. in private collections very few are to be found. in my library there are about a dozen, of which two are the most splendid that i have met with in the east, or in any country. i possess also a number of loose leaves of the highest antiquity, which are so far curious that they display the progress of the art of writing almost since the days of mesrob to the present time. but, with the exception of the unknown treasures of etchmiazin, the convent of st. lazaro at venice not only preserves, but makes good use of, the finest collection of armenian manuscripts extant. their number is about 1200, of which 100 are on vellum; the rest are written partly on ancient paper made from cotton, and partly on paper such as we use at present. three volumes on charta bombycina are among the most ancient that i have met with that are written on that material: one contains commentaries on the psalms and the epistles, by ephraim syrius and st. chrysostom, written in the year of the armenian era 448, anno domini 999; the second is a small book of prayer, containing the date of a. d. 1178; the third is the romance of alexander the great: this curious volume is illustrated with numerous drawings, richly gilt and colored; it was written in the thirteenth century. they have three copies of the gospels, and one ritual written in uncial letters (one of these ancient copies of the gospels is illuminated with several large miniatures in a style resembling greek art), as well as several others of inferior interest. the library also possesses six or seven richly illuminated copies of the scriptures, some splendid books of prayer, and a great number of other armenian manuscripts, containing records of the history or the works of authors who were natives of that country, from which have been printed many volumes whose pages illustrate manners and events which were completely forgotten before the monks of st. lazaro rescued them from oblivion. chapter xviii. general history of armenia.--former sovereigns.--tiridates i. receives his crown from nero.--conquest of the country by the persians and by the arabs.--list of modern kings.--misfortunes of leo v.: his death at paris. the general history of armenia contains but little that is interesting. it presents the picture of a line of sovereigns who have seldom been able to support their own authority, and who have constantly abdicated, embraced monastic vows, or been driven from the throne by rebellions of their subjects, and invasions of neighboring conquerors more talented and more powerful than themselves. many of the armenian kings seem to have lived almost on the charity of other states; the lines of their dynasties have been so often interrupted, and the changes from kings to governors, dukes, and counts have been so frequent, that their history is most intricate; and, from the boundaries of the so-called kingdom of armenia having never been the same for many years together, it is difficult to understand from the scattered notices which history has transmitted to us who should be considered as the head of the state, or which of the many vassal princes, under the great empires of the east, has the better claim to the title of sovereign of this ancient kingdom. at the time of our savior, abgarus, king of edessa, seems to have exercised sovereignty over great part of armenia, on the southern and western sides. tiridates i. is the first person styling himself king of armenia after this period. he conquered the country from rhadamistus, by the assistance of his brother vologeses, king of parthia. the romans, however, who did not approve of the erection of an independent kingdom in those regions, sent an army against tiridates, commanded by corbulo, who forced tiridates to abdicate, on condition of his proceeding to rome to receive his crown from the hands of the emperor nero. he was received with the highest honors by the roman emperor, who advanced as far as naples to meet him. tiridates won his good graces by the artful manner in which he flattered nero on his skill in driving a chariot. they became great friends: the armenian king received large sums of money from the emperor, with which he returned to his own country, and repaired his dismantled fortresses. he changed the name of his capital from artaxarte to neronia, in compliment to his imperial protector, and died in the year 75 a.d., after a reign of eleven years. to him succeeded several princes who were vassals to the roman empire, but whose actions do not seem to offer any thing of interest. tiridates ii. had received his education at rome, and, assisted by the emperor, he was placed upon the throne of armenia, by the general consent of the nobles of his country, in 259. he, as i have mentioned in the ecclesiastical sketch of this history, embraced christianity, and died in the year 314. other unimportant princes succeeded, among whom john nustaron governed armenia, under the emperor maurice. the persians conquered the country in the reign of the emperor phocas, but it was soon retaken by heraclius. pasagnates revolted against the emperor constantine ii., who defeated him, and placed sabarius, a persian, on the throne, who also rebelled, and was beat in the year 658. justinian ii. concluded a treaty with the caliph abdolmalek, by which the two sovereigns divided between them the revenues of armenia, iberia, and cyprus; and the same emperor, justinian ii., placed sablas on the armenian throne. this prince, being established in this mountainous kingdom, organized an army, and, having attempted to extricate his country from the power of the caliph, was defeated by him in 687, and the arabs became masters of armenia. the emperor constantine copronymus retook this province, and established paulus as viceroy. paulus was conquered by the forces of the caliph, but he afterward re-established himself upon the throne. after his reign, armenia was governed by several dukes and counts, some of whom ruled over a larger, and some over a smaller, portion of the country. during this period constant battles and disturbances took place between the adherents of the caliphs and the christian emperors in this distracted province. the patriarch of constantinople made every endeavor to break down the religious subjection of the armenians to their heretical patriarch. but the history of the numerous princes who succeeded each other, after periods of short and doubtful power, on the throne of parts only of armenia, is so complicated and so doubtful, that i shall not attempt to speak of them, and proceed to the time of the first generally acknowledged king of modern times. the name of this monarch was philaretes branchance. after resisting the forces of the emperor michael ducas, he submitted to his successor, nicephorus botoniates, by whom he was supported through the rest of his reign. he flourished about the year 1080. constantine was succeeded by his brother taphroc, or taphnuz. under these two sovereigns appear numerous petty princes, who were feudatories to the king. leo, who was long a prisoner under the turks, lived in 1131. theodorus, or thoros, after a stormy reign, died in 1170. thomas, son of the sister of thoros. milo, brother of thoros. under this reign the power of the knights templars was formidable. they had acquired large possessions in armenia; and their numerous preceptories were in fact fortified castles, from which they defied the power of their suzerain. milo waged war with the templars, and succeeded in banishing many of their followers from his dominions. he died in 1180. rupinus was made prisoner by bohemond, prince of antioch. he died in 1189. leo i., or livon, concluded a treaty, by which he freed armenia from the tribute which it had paid to the prince of antioch, instead of which he voluntarily paid homage to the pope celestinus iii. he lived in perpetual war with the formidable body of knights templars, with various success, and died in 1219. isabel, daughter of leo. in the reign of this princess the kingdom of armenia became tributary to the turkish sultans of iconium. aiton, or otho, sent embassadors to st. louis, king of france, in the island of cyprus. he made a visit to mangou, khan of tartary, whom he converted to christianity, and in alliance with whom, assisted by his brother, houlagou khan, he made war against the mohammedans, and, having destroyed the castles of the assassins, penetrated into the dominions of the sultan of aleppo, their further progress being stopped by the death of mangou khan, which occasioned the return of houlagou to his own country. the saracens or mohammedans, on this change of affairs, in their turn overran armenia, where they committed dreadful cruelties; and aiton, having abdicated the crown in 1270, retired into a monastery, under the name of macarius, where he died in the year 1272. leo, the son of aiton, mounted the throne of his father in 1270, and was in constant war with bondochar, sultan of egypt, who massacred 20,000 persons in armenia. he was excommunicated for outrages committed upon the patriarch of antioch. after a reign of trouble and disaster, he died in 1288. aiton, or otho ii., the son of leo, with many of his nation, embraced the roman faith, and demanded the assistance of pope boniface viii. against the infidels who menaced his power. no effective assistance having been afforded him, he abdicated the throne, took the habit of a capuchin friar, and, under the name of brother john, died in the year 1294. thoros, or theodorus, despairing of success against the incursions of the neighboring nations, also became a capuchin friar. he died in 1296. sembat, or penibald, the brother of aiton and thoros, usurped the throne in the absence of his brothers; he was dethroned by another brother, constantine, and died in 1298. constantine sent his remaining brothers to constantinople, with a recommendation to the emperor to take care of them. the year of his death is uncertain. leo iii. was murdered in the year 1307. chir ossim, with the assistance of pope john xxii., made an advantageous truce or treaty with the kings of sicily and cyprus, with whom he was at war. this was accomplished through the mediation of the genoese, who at this time appear to have been the principal traders in constantinople, persia, and armenia. he died in 1320. leo iv. lived in continual war with the saracens. this king sent embassadors to philippe de valois, king of france, to beg assistance against the incursions of the saracens. he married first constancia, daughter of frederick, king of sicily, and secondly the daughter of the prince of tarentum, niece to robert, king of naples. having provoked the jealousy of his countrymen by promoting numerous frenchmen to high offices of government, he was assassinated in the year 1344. after his death guy de lusignan was elected king of armenia. he died in 1344. constans, or constantius, apparently his son, succeeded guy de lusignan, and was killed by the saracens in 1351. he had dispatched embassadors to implore assistance against the infidels to the courts of the pope, the king of england, and the king of france. constantine, the next king, appears to have lived in continual troubles with his own subjects, as well as in constant alarm at the increasing inroads of the neighboring powers on both sides. the annals of his stormy reign are almost silent, and it is not known when he died. to such a state of misery and confusion was the kingdom of armenia now reduced, that the existence of another king, who was probably his successor, is only known by the witness of a rare coin, which bears as legend drago . rex . armen . agapi. in the year 1368 the nobles of armenia elected peter i., king of cyprus, king; but he was at rome at that period, and never took possession of his precarious honor. the records of the armenian sovereigns are now drawing to a close. about this period, leo v., of the family of lusignan, was seated on his trembling throne. he was famous only for his misfortunes. menaced on every side, his provinces and castles, one by one, fell before the victorious inroads of the turks. the genoese alone, who, in pursuit of trade, had fortified many strong places in armenia, held out gallantly against the common foe, and the mohammedan invaders were unable to gain possession of the town of curco, or corycus, in cilicia, which was defended by the soldiers of the intrepid merchants. after a constant series of disasters and defeats, the unhappy king escaped with his life to the island of cyprus, from whence he passed to italy, and afterward to castile, where he implored in vain for assistance from those christian princes to reinstate him in the kingdom of his ancestors, which had fallen into the power of the infidel, and which, from that period to the present day, has continued to form one of the great pashaliks, or provinces of the turkish empire. from castile he took refuge in france, where he was received with distinguished favor and hospitality by king charles v., who assigned for his residence the hotel of st. ouen, near st. denis. about the year 1378 leo passed over to england, in the hopes of effecting peace between king richard ii. and the king of france, with whom he was then at war, and inducing the two sovereigns to embark in a crusade against the turks for the recovery of the holy land, and for his own restoration to his kingdom. his overtures, like all his other acts, were unsuccessful; but from richard, king of england, he received magnificent presents, and a pension of 20,000 marcs, which munificence was imitated by the king of france in an annual allowance of 6000 livres. leo, king of armenia, was of small stature, but of intelligent expression and well-formed features. he lived in great magnificence, being richer from the presents of the christian monarchs than he had been in his own beleaguered kingdom. the last of his royal line, he died, leaving no successor, at paris, in the year 1393. his body was carried to the tomb clothed in royal robes of white, according to the custom of armenia, with an open crown upon his head and a golden sceptre in his hand. he lay in state upon an open bier hung with white, and surrounded by the officers of his household, clothed all of them in white robes. he was buried by the high altar of the church of the celestines, where his effigy was to be seen upon a black marble tomb under an archway in the wall, and on the tomb was written cy gist le tres noble et tres excellent prince, lyon de lusignan, quint roi latin du royaulme d'armenie, qui rendit l'ame a dieu a paris le xxix. jour de novembre, l'an de grace mcccxciii. the end. notes [1] since this was written, the coal-field of eraglã© has been opened under the direction of english engineers, and the coals are sent to constantinople. [2] caravan tea is tea which is brought by caravans, over land, from china, through the great deserts of tartary: it is much superior to the tea which comes by sea. [3] those who take an interest in natural history should read the accounts of the extraordinary migrations of the lemmings, which occur periodically in norway, after a fixed number of years. the golden maiden and other folk tales and fairy stories told in armenia a. g. seklemian introduction alice stone blackwell initial letters ella dolbear cover design elizabeth geary the helman-taylor company cleveland and new york 1898 introduction. a distinguished english student of folk-lore has written: "armenia offers a rich and hitherto almost untouched field to the folk-lorist, the difficulty of grappling with the language--the alphabet even of which was described by byron as 'a very waterloo of an alphabet'--having hitherto baffled european collectors." so far as i can learn, the two volumes of armenian folk-tales collected by bishop sirwantzdiants have hitherto been accessible to english and european readers only through the medium of a rare and more or less imperfect german translation. the late ohannes chatschumian had begun a compilation of armenian folk-lore for miss alice fletcher; but the work was cut short by his early death. prof. minas tcheraz, of king's college, london, has published from time to time during the last eight years, in his paper "l'armenie," a series of interesting articles on the folk-lore and fairy tales of the armenians, under the title "l'orient inedit." he gathered these stories from the lips of the poorer classes in constantinople, as mr. seklemian did in erzroom. prof. tcheraz says: "the lowest strata of the population, having received no instruction, and not having changed perceptibly since the earliest centuries of our planet, keep still intact the traditions of the past. it is above all from the talk of the women of the common people, born in constantinople or from the provinces, that these things are to be learned. gifted with strong memories and brilliant imaginations, they still preserve all the legends bequeathed from the past." but the files of "l'armenie," like the books of bishop sirwantzdiants, are inaccessible to the general public. mr. seklemian has therefore rendered a real service to students of folk-lore who are unacquainted with the oriental languages, by bringing these curious and interesting tales within their reach. many things combine to give especial value to armenian folk-lore. among these are the great antiquity of the armenian race, and its singular tenacity of its own ideas and traditions. armenia was the seat of one of the most ancient civilizations on the globe. its people were contemporary with the assyrians and babylonians. they are of aryan race, and of pure caucasian blood. their origin is lost in the mists of time. according to their own tradition, they are descended from togarmah, a grandson of japhet, who settled in armenia after the ark rested on ararat. in the earliest days of recorded history, we find them already occupying their present home. they are referred to by herodotus. xenophon describes their manners and customs much as they still exist in the mountain villages. the bible relates that the sons of sennacherib escaped "into the land of armenia," (2 kings xix., 37; isaiah xxxvii., 38.) ezekiel refers to armenia, under the name of togarmah, as furnishing tyre with horses and mules, animals for which it is still famous; and "the kingdom of ararat" is one of the nations called upon by jeremiah to aid in the destruction of babylon. in the famous inscriptions of the achemenidæ, at persepolis and at behistun, the name of armenia occurs in various forms. the armenians, according to their own histories and mythology, enjoyed four periods of national independence, under four different dynasties, extending over about 3,000 years. the ruins of ani and other great cities still testify to their former power and splendor. it is now many centuries, however, since they lost their political independence, and their country has been little more than a battle-ground for rival invaders. geographically, armenia is the bridge between europe and asia. in the early centuries, the armenians acted the part of horatius and "kept the bridge," defending the gate of europe against successive invasions of the uncivilized hordes of asia. their resistance was finally beaten down by superior numbers, and now for hundreds of years the armies of europe and asia have been marching and counter-marching across that bridge, slaughtering and devastating as they went, till it is a wonder that any armenians are left, as a distinct race. yet no race has ever retained its own characteristics more clearly. this persistency of the armenian type is perhaps the most remarkable instance of race-survival in history, except that of the jews. good observers say that it is due in large measure to the comparatively pure family life of the armenians in the interior of turkey, and especially to the virtue of the armenian women. tradition relates that christianity was preached in armenia early in the first century, by the apostles thaddeus and bartholomew. it is historic fact that about a. d. 276 the king and the whole nation became christian, under the preaching of st. gregory, called "the illuminator." the armenian church is thus the oldest national christian church in the world. as a christian nation whose lot has been cast beyond the frontiers of christendom, the armenians have had to suffer continual persecution,--in the early times from the persian fire-worshippers, in later centuries from the mohammedans. since the withdrawal of the crusaders, to whom they alone of asiatic nations gave aid and support, the armenians have been at the mercy of the surrounding heathen peoples. their country has been invaded successively by the caliphs of baghdad, the sultans of egypt, the khans of tartary, the shahs of persia, and the ottoman turks. all these invasions were accompanied by great slaughter and fierce barbarities; but the armenians have held steadfastly to their faith for more than 1,500 years. they have clung not only to christianity, but to their own peculiar form of christianity. at many periods of their history they could have obtained a measure of protection if they would have conformed either to the roman catholic or to the greek church; but they have remained a distinct national communion of eastern christians. this tenacity is one of the most marked features of the armenian character. it gives an additional interest to their folk-lore and to their customs, many of which have come down substantially unchanged from the farthest antiquity. intensely wedded to christianity as the nation has become through perpetual persecution, there are yet a multitude of curious pagan rites, dating back before the dawn of recorded history, which still prevail among the common people, especially in the villages that nestle in remote nooks among the caucasus mountains. when the armenians adopted christianity, the old pagan festivals could not be rooted out; they were only baptized, so to speak, with christian names. on february 26th, in armenia, every young man who has been married within the year brings a load of aromatic shrubs, and a huge pile is made of them in the church-yard. in the evening, after a religious service in the open air, the clergyman advances with a taper, and sets fire to the heap. all the villagers, men, women and children, dance around the great bonfire, and the boys and young men show their courage and agility by leaping over it. when the flames have died down, each person carries home a glowing brand, and places it on his hearthstone for good luck. this festival is now celebrated in commemoration of the bringing of the infant christ to the temple; but it is an old pagan rite in honor of mihr, the god of fire. in summer, a festival is held in commemoration of the subsiding of the deluge. local traditions of a flood lingered in the region around mt. ararat long before the introduction of christianity. on "the day of our father noah," it is everybody's object to "baptize" everybody else by pouring water over him. even a bishop will be drenched without ceremony, if he ventures to show himself on the street. it is considered necessary that every one should be baptized before sunset. after the sun goes down, hundreds of tame doves are let loose, in honor of noah's dove, and they play and "tumble" in the air, while all the people are out rowing on the river, or walking along its banks and sprinkling each other with water. this festival is a great delight to the armenian boys. "fortune day" is more especially the day of the armenian girls. it is now celebrated on the fortieth day after easter, in honor of christ's ascension; but it is much older than christianity. on the previous evening, the village girls assemble, and go in silence and mystery to fill a jar with water from seven springs. a single spoken word would break the spell. the jar is set for the night in some secret place under the open sky, where it can be "watched by the stars." the young men of the village try their best to find it, or to coax from the girls the secret of its hiding place, but in vain. next morning the girls bring out the jar in triumph, wreathe it with flowers, and carry it in procession to a grassy place outside the village. everybody drops into it some small object easily identified--a ring, a coin, a snail-shell, etc. a little girl about four years old, dressed in white, blindfolded and veiled, takes her stand beside the jar. she represents fortune. an older girl begins to sing a verse of poetry, and the whole choir of girls joins in. the little girl then takes out of the jar one of the things that have been dropped into it, and holds it up. the verse that has been sung is supposed to predict the fortune of the owner. this ceremony is repeated till everything has been taken out of the jar. afterwards the villagers dance in a circle, hand-in-hand. on this occasion every girl weaves herself a cross of flowers, which is hung on the wall of her home, near the fireplace, and is carefully saved until the next "fortune day." the brightest point in armenian history is the "holy war" of the fifth century. in a. d. 450, a vast persian army invaded armenia to force the armenians to embrace fire-worship. the battle was fought on the plain of avarair, under mt. ararat. the much smaller force of the armenians was defeated, and their leader, vartan, was killed; but the obstinate resistance offered by rich and poor,--men, women and children, convinced the king of persia that he could never make fire-worshippers of the armenians. eghishe (elisaeus), an armenian bishop and historian who wrote in the fifth century, relates that even the high priest of fire saw it to be impossible, and said to the persian monarch, "these people have put on christianity not like a garment, but like their flesh and blood." to-day, after 1,400 years, the armenian mountaineers, at their festivals, still drink the health of vartan next after that of the catholicos, or head of their church. from time immemorial it has been the custom in armenian schools to celebrate the anniversary of the battle with songs and recitations, and to wreathe the picture of "vartan the red" with red flowers. of late years, this celebration has been forbidden by the government. in the minds of the common people, all sorts of picturesque superstitions still cluster around that battle-field. a particular kind of red flowers grow there, which are found nowhere else; and they are believed to have sprung from the blood of the christian army. a species of antelope, with a pouch on its breast secreting a fragrant musk, is supposed to have acquired this peculiarity by browsing on herbage wet with the same blood. it is also believed that at avarair the nightingales all sing "vartan, vartan!" to the armenian peasant, all nature is full of stories. the forests, the springs, the mountains, the lakes, the flowers,--all have spirits. an infinite number of strange superstitions prevail, some of which may cast a valuable light upon the early mythology of asia. this, of course, refers only to the uneducated armenians. the educated classes are no more superstitious than those of other nationalities. almost all travelers have been struck by the ability of the armenians, and by the marked difference between them and other oriental races. lamartine calls them "the swiss of the east." dulaurier compares them to the dutch. american missionaries speak of them as "the anglo-saxons of eastern turkey." the hon. james bryce, author of "the american commonwealth," who has traveled in armenia and studied the people, says: "among all those who dwell in western asia, they stand first, with a capacity for intellectual and moral progress, as well as with a natural tenacity of will and purpose, beyond that of all their neighbors--not merely of turks, tartars, kurds and persians, but also of russians. they are a strong race, not only with vigorous nerves and sinews, physically active and energetic, but also of conspicuous brain power." mrs. isabella bird bishop, the well-known english traveler, says: "it is not possible to deny that they are the most capable, energetic, enterprising and pushing race in western asia, physically superior and intellectually acute; and above all they are a race which can be raised in all respects to our own level, neither religion, color, customs, nor inferiority in intellect or force constituting any barrier between us. their shrewdness and aptitude for business are remarkable, and whatever exists of commercial enterprise in eastern asia minor is almost altogether in their hands." dr. grace n. kimball, after living for years in the heart of armenia, describes the armenians as "a race full of enterprise and the spirit of advancement, much like ourselves in characteristics, and full of possibilities of every kind." lord byron said: "it would perhaps be difficult to find in the annals of a nation less crime than in those of this people, whose virtues are those of peace, and whose vices are the result of the oppression it has undergone." dr. cyrus hamlin, the founder of robert college, who spent thirty-five years in turkey teaching among them, says: "the armenians are a noble race." dr. james l. barton, of the american board of foreign missions, ex-president of euphrates college, writes: "i know the armenians to be, by inheritance, religious, industrious and faithful. they are not inferior in mental ability to any race on earth. i say this after eight years' connection with euphrates college, which has continually from 550 to 625 armenians upon its list of students, and after superintending schools which have four thousand more of them." while much criticism has been passed upon the armenians by transient tourists, we may say truly of them, with the rev. edwin m. bliss, late of constantinople, that "those who know the race most widely and most intimately esteem it the most highly." armenia has been described by a european traveler as the land of unsolved riddles. it is full of most interesting problems for the antiquarian, in its ruined cities, its rock grottoes, its unexplored mounds or tumuli, its half-effaced inscriptions, and the repositories of precious manuscripts in its ancient monasteries. but all these are doomed to remain uninvestigated, as its fertile fields must remain untilled, its rich mines unworked, and the fine natural abilities of its people unimproved by education, until the present disturbed condition of the country becomes quiet. when armenia is thus "opened up" to the peaceful investigator, the folk-lorists will profit by the opportunity, as well as other classes of scholars. meanwhile, rich gleanings may be obtained from the educated and english-speaking armenians in this country; and by far the largest and most interesting collection yet made of these is the present work. both the author and the publishers are to be congratulated on this valuable contribution to the world of folk-lore. alice stone blackwell. dorchester, mass. the story-teller to his audience. if i were telling my stories to an audience composed of armenians, as i told them years ago, i would begin without any preliminary remarks or introduction. but since the audience is made up of people who are comparatively unacquainted with my native land and its traditions, naturally they will like to know who the story-teller is, where he got his narratives, and by whom and how his tales were first told. about twenty years ago i was a boy living in a village on the heights of the taurus mountains in cilicia, or lesser armenia, not far from the mediterranean sea. like boys and girls all over the world, i was very fond of stories; but there were no story-books or other reading matter with which i and other children of my age could gratify our eager desire for stories. but better than these were the aged folks who told us all the interesting stories which our inquisitive childhood required. i had two grandmothers and half a dozen aunts, all unlettered country people, who took great delight in a rich store of folk-lore and fairy tales, and who told me the most entertaining and delightful stories that i have ever heard. in every village home there were one or two such old people, who entertained the youth of their respective homes. during the long winter evenings we boys and girls gathered together around the village hearth to listen to the old man or aged woman rehearsing tales of fairies, giants, genii, dragons, knights, winged beauties, captive maidens, and other thousand and one mysterious beings. i need not say how, with utmost interest, our youthful minds used to follow the details of these vivid and picturesque stories, drinking in every word with the greatest avidity. this was true not only of children but of grown-up people also, whose principal pastime, during the long and tedious winter nights, was the rehearsing of folk-tales and fairy stories, or listening to others as they told them. these circumstances gave me opportunity and power to commit to memory a great number of tales and rehearse them whenever there was a favorable occasion. by this means i improved and increased my store of tales so much that i became quite a noted story-teller in our village, at a time when i was but a mere lad. subsequently, both during my college course in aintab, cilicia, and during the period when i was a teacher in erzroom, of armenia proper, i had the opportunity to travel a great deal and to study the life and manners of the armenians in their primitive homes. i found the same fairy stories and folk-tales current everywhere, with such slight differences only as the people made when appropriating the tales to their own surroundings and to their fund of knowledge. at that time it occurred to my mind that it would be a good plan to make a collection of these tales in order to make use of them some day, and so i kept notes of the tales just as they were told by the common, unlettered country people. bishop sirwantzdiants, an armenian clergyman, also made a collection of armenian folk-tales, taking them from the mouth of the people just as they were told. he published his collection in two separate books. the first, "manana" (manna), was printed in constantinople in 1876 by the dindessian printing-press (since closed), and the second, "hamov-hodov" (delicious and fragrant), was printed in constantinople in 1884 by the bagdadlian printing-press. my personal notes of armenian tales and these two books of bishop sirwantzdiants have furnished the material of the present volume. as the bishop and myself made our collections independently in different districts of armenia, our texts naturally differed from each other in some points. but the two being substantially the same, in putting the stories into english i have followed the one which i thought to be the most original, taking all the circumstances into consideration. let me here emphasize the point again that all the stories that appear in the present volume were taken down directly from the lips of the ignorant, unlettered peasantry of armenia, literally without any embellishment or addition whatever, except in the case of rude and unbecoming expressions which had to undergo some slight change. how those unlettered, ignorant people came into possession of these stories, and what the value of such tales is to the student of antiquity and ethnology, are questions which i will not venture to answer. i wish, however, to make a few statements which have been suggested to me by the study of the armenian folk-tales and fairy stories. the history of the armenians is greatly mixed up with mythology and tradition, as is the case with the history of all ancient nations. many of the legends given in the written history of armenia bear a marked similarity to the folk-tales of the present day. the peculiar geography of armenia must have had a great deal to do with the formation of these tales. high, inaccessible mountain ranges have divided the country into such distinct divisions that the inhabitants of one section have, even in the present time, very strange ideas with regard to the people of the other section, attributing to one another magic, witchcraft and other superhuman powers and practices. this, of course, was still more so in olden times, when the population of the country had not yet been fused together into one nation. that was probably the time when most of these tales were formed. s. baring-gould supposes that many of the fairy tales current among all nations took their beginning at a time when a conquering people of one race lived among the conquered people of an entirely different race. thus "two distinct races dwelt in close proximity, not comprehending each other, each suspicious of and dreading the other, and each investing the other with superhuman powers or knowledge." [see "fairy tales from grimm" preface, pp. xvi. and xxi.] there are many instances in armenian history which confirm this supposition, so that in the case of such tales or portion of tales as are purely armenian, we may suppose that the process of fusion of two ancient races, one the conquering and the other the conquered, has given birth to them. although all the tales contained in this volume are taken directly from the lips of the armenians, it will be noticed that some of them bear traces of persian, arabic and turkish influence. this, of course, was naturally to be expected, as the armenians have been ruled successively by these nations. but one of the greatest factors in the formation of the distinctively armenian tales was, no doubt, mount ararat. that majestic mountain, situated in the middle of an extensive plateau in the heart of armenia, and seen from points distant a three or four days' journey, would naturally draw the attention of the people. the many mythological and historical facts attached to it; its hoary, inaccessible peak covered with everlasting snow; its towering heights piercing the sky; its high, steep precipices; its deep cañons; its underground caverns; its fierce storms, and the wild beasts and large birds living on its slopes--would naturally give birth to half-true and half-imaginary stories which gradually and by lapse of time would grow into legendary tales. these are not the only folk-tales current among the armenians; there are a great many more. we may be tempted to make another collection if this one proves acceptable. before closing these notes, i have to confess that my use of english is defective, owing to the fact that it is not my mother tongue. consequently i owe a great deal to generous friends who have been so kind as to take up my manuscript and pass upon it before it was given to the press, smoothing the narrative without destroying the personality of the story-teller. among these generous friends i take pleasure in mentioning the names of mr. w. h. brett, librarian of the cleveland public library; mr. wallace w. newell, secretary of the american folk-lore society; miss alice stone blackwell, the noted poetess and editor of the woman's journal, and my publishers. now, i do not see how to remunerate these friends for their valuable assistance to me unless i share with them the "three apples" which fall from heaven at the end of each tale, and which i had to appropriate to myself as a genuine story-teller. this i gladly do. may they prove as pleasant to them, and the stories be as interesting to you, as has been the re-telling of them to me. a. g. seklemian. tales. page. 1. the golden maiden, 1 2. the betrothed of destiny, 9 3. the youngest of the three, 15 4. the fairy nightingale, 33 5. the dreamer, 41 6. the bride of the fountain, 49 7. dyjhicon: the coward-hero, 53 8. zoolvisia, 59 9. dragon-child and sun-child, 73 10. mirza, 85 11. the magic ring, 103 12. the twins, 111 13. the idiot, 123 14. bedik and the invulnerable giant, 127 15. simon, the friend of snakes, 137 16. the poor widow's son, 141 17. a niggardly companion, 149 18. the maiden of the sea, 155 19. the golden-headed fish, 159 20. husband or wife--which? 165 21. the wicked stepmother, 169 22. the tricks of a woman, 185 23. a wise weaver, 189 24. mind or luck--which? 193 25. the world's beauty, 197 26. salman and rostom, 205 27. the sparrow and the two children, 209 28. the old woman and the cat, 213 29. sia-manto and guje-zare, 217 the golden maiden. once upon a time there was a wicked widow who had an ugly daughter. she married a second husband who had a beautiful daughter and a son by his first wife. the step-mother hated the two motherless children, and used every means to persuade her husband to take them away to the mountains and abandon them as a prey to wild beasts. the poor man loved his children, but being frail was unable to resist the frequent importunities and threats of his wife. therefore one day he put bread in a bag, and taking the two children went to the mountains. after a long journey they came to a lonely wilderness. the man said to the children: "sit here and take a little rest," and then, turning his face away, he began to sob bitterly. "father! father, why are you weeping?" exclaimed the children, and they also began to weep. the man opened the bag and gave them bread, which they soon ate. "father," said the boy, "i am thirsty." the man drove his stick into the ground, and placing his cloak over the stick, said: "come, children, sit here under the shadow of this cloak; i will go and see if there is a fountain near by." the children seated themselves under the cloak, while their father disappeared behind the trees and rocks. after waiting a long time, the two innocent children grew tired and began to ramble about in search of their father, but in vain. "father! father!" they exclaimed, but only the echo of the mountains returned them answer--"father! father!" the children came back, crying: "alas! alas! the stick is here, the cloak is here, but father is not here!" thus they cried for a long time, but seeing that nobody appeared, they rose up, and one of them took the stick and the other the cloak and they began to wander about in the wilderness, not knowing where to go. after a long ramble, they came to a place where some rain-water had gathered on the ground in a print made by the hoof of a horse. "sister," said the little boy, "i am thirsty; i want to drink of this water." "no," said the maiden, "do not drank of this water; as soon as you drink of it you will become a colt." soon they came to another print made by the hoof of an ox, and the boy said: "sister, i am thirsty; i want to drink." but she would not let him drink, saying: "as soon as you drink of this water you will become a calf." then they came to another print made by the paw of a bear, and the boy wanted to drink; but his sister prevented him lest he should become a cub of a bear. then they came to a track made by the foot of a pig, and the boy again wanted to drink, but the maiden prevented him, lest he should turn into a young pig. soon they came to a print made by the foot of a wolf; but the boy did not yield till they came to one made by the hoof of a lamb. "sister," exclaimed the boy, "i am thirsty; i cannot wait any longer; i will drink from this at any risk." "alas!" said the maiden, "what can i do? i am ready to give my life to save you, but it is impossible. you will turn into a lamb the moment you drink of this water." the boy drank, and was at once changed into a lamb, and began to follow his sister bleating. after a long and dangerous journey they found the way to the town, and came to their house. the step-mother was angry to see them come back, though one of them was now but a lamb. as she had great influence over her husband, he used every means to please her. one day she said to him: "i want to eat meat; you must kill your lamb that i may eat it." the sister, hearing this, at once took her lamb-brother and fled secretly to the mountains, where, sitting on a high rock, she spun wool while the lamb grazed safely near her. as she was thus spinning, her spindle fell suddenly from her hand, and was precipitated into a deep cave. the maiden, leaving the lamb grazing, went down to find her spindle. entering the cave, she was surprised to see an old fairy woman, a dame a thousand years of age, who perceiving the maiden, exclaimed: "maiden, neither the bird with its wing, nor the snake on its belly can enter here; how could you venture to come hither?" the terrified maiden was at a loss for an answer, but she replied with a gentle voice: "your love brought me here, grandmother." the old fairy was pleased with this kind answer, and calling the maiden, gave her a seat beside herself and inquired of her many things concerning the upper world. the more she talked with the maiden the better she liked her and she said: "now you are hungry; let me bring you some fishes to eat." she went into the cave, and returned with a plateful of cooked snakes, at the sight of which the maiden shuddered with horror and began to weep. "what is the matter?" inquired the old dame; "why are you weeping?" "nothing at all," answered the maiden, shyly; "i remembered my dead mother who was so fond of fish, and therefore i wept." then she told the old dame her sad story, and the ill treatment of the wicked step-mother. the fairy woman was very much interested in what the maiden told her, and said to her: "be seated, and let me sleep in your lap. in yonder fire-place there is a ploughshare heated in the fire. when the black fairy passes do not waken me; but when the red-and-green fairy passes, at once press the red-hot ploughshare on my feet, that i may awake." the poor maiden shuddered with fear, but she could do nothing but consent. accordingly the old fairy woman lay down in the maiden's lap and slept. soon a fairy as black as night passed through the cave; but the maiden did not stir. after him the red-and-green fairy appeared and the whole cave was gilded with his radiant beams. the maiden at once pressed the red-hot ploughshare on the feet of the sleeping fairy woman, who immediately started up exclaiming: "oh! what is biting my feet?" the maiden told her that nothing had bitten her, but it was the red-hot ploughshare she felt, and that it was time to get up. the old dame arose and at once caused the maiden to stand up as the red-and-green fairy proceeded, whose gleaming rays had such an effect upon her that her hair and garments were all turned to gold and she herself was turned into a fairy maiden. after the red-and-green fairy disappeared, the maiden, kissing the fairy woman's hand, took leave of her, and taking her lamb-brother, went home. seeing that the step-mother was not at home, she at once took off her golden garments and hiding them in a secret comer, put on her old rags. soon the step-mother entered, and seeing the golden hair of the maiden, exclaimed: "how now, little elf! what did you do to your hair to turn it into gold?" the maiden told her what had taken place. on the following day the step-mother sent her own daughter to the same spot. there, on purpose, she let her spindle fall, and entered the cave as if to pick it up. the fairy woman saw her, and taking a dislike to her, changed her into an ugly thing, so ugly that it is impossible to describe her appearance. she came home, and the step-mother seeing her own daughter changed into a form of so great ugliness, was the more enraged against the two step-children. one day the prince of that country sent out heralds to proclaim all over his realm that his son was to be married, and that the most beautiful maiden in all the land should be his bride. he commanded all the marriageable maidens to assemble in the palace courtyard where the young prince would make his selection. at the appointed time all the maidens of the land had crowded into the courtyard. the step-mother dressed her own daughter in the best garments and ornaments she could procure, veiling her ugly face very carefully, however, and took her to the courtyard, hoping that the prince would select her for his bride. in order to prevent the orphan maiden from appearing before the prince, the step-mother scattered a measure of wheat in the yard, and bade the maiden to pick up the wheat before she returned, threatening to beat her to death in case she failed to finish the task. soon after the step-mother went away, however, the maiden let loose the chickens, which in a moment picked the wheat up to the very last grain; and she, putting on her golden garments, was changed to a fairy maiden so beautiful that she might say to the sun: "sun, you need not shine, for i am shining." then she went to the prince's courtyard, where she was the object of the admiration of all the crowd. but she could not stay very long lest her step-mother should return first, and not finding her at home should beat her upon her return, so she ran hastily back, and hiding her golden garments put on her old rags. but in her haste she had dropped one of her golden slippers in the prince's fountain. soon the young prince, who had looked at the maidens without making a selection, came on horseback leading his animal to the fountain to water him; but the horse was frightened by the radiant beams from the slipper. the servants immediately entered the fountain, and taking out the slipper gave it to the prince, who seeing it at once declared that the maiden who wore that slipper should be his bride. he and his peers began to search every house and to try the feet of the maidens to find the true owner of the slipper. they had just approached the house of the golden maiden, when the step-mother took her and hid her in the great kitchen pit which is used as a furnace, presenting her own ugly daughter as the owner of the golden slipper. of course, the slipper did not fit. as the prince and his peers were leaving the house, the cock flying from his roost perched on the top of the door, and cried: "goo-goo-lig-goo-goo! the golden maiden is in the pit!" the pit was immediately opened, and lo! the maiden jumped out. the slipper fitted, and the maiden, taking out her golden garments and the mate of the slipper from the corner where she had hid them, put them on, and was changed to a fairy maiden. the prince seeing this embraced her as his bride. taking the lamb-brother with them, they went to the prince's palace, where their nuptials were celebrated for seven days and seven nights. one day the step-mother took her own daughter and went to the prince's palace to pay a visit to her step-daughter, who conducted them to the prince's orchard for a walk. as they came to the seashore the step-mother said: "come, daughters, let us take a bath in the sea." no sooner had they entered the sea, than the step-mother, intending to drown the golden bride, pushed her into the deep water. a great fish, however, chanced to be there and swallowed her. the step-mother at once gathered up the golden dresses of the bride, and putting them on her own ugly daughter, brought her to the palace. there she left her in the place of the golden bride, veiling carefully her ugly face. the true bride remained in the belly of the fish for several days. one day, very early in the morning, she heard the sexton ringing the bell and inviting the people to church. she cried to him from the belly of the fish: "sexton! sexton! who ring your morning bell, crossing your face, send the devils to hell, for god's sake, go to the young prince and tell, let him not kill my lamb-brother, or sell." the sexton, hearing this call repeated several times, went and informed the young prince, who had by that time discovered the loss of his fairy bride. he immediately came to the seashore, where the sexton had heard the voice. once more it was repeated, and the prince recognized it as the voice of his bride. he drew his sword and leaped into the sea. splitting the fish's belly, he drew out his bride, and taking her in his arms brought her to the palace. soon he called the step-mother before him, saying: "now, kind mother, which gift do you prefer, a nimble-footed horse or a keen sword?" "let your keen sword stab your enemies," answered the step-mother, overjoyed with the expectation of a valuable present; "i will have the nimble-footed horse." "i take you at your word," said the prince; "you shall have the horse." he ordered his men to bind the step-mother and her ugly daughter to the tail of a wild horse. it was done, and the horse being whipped, carried the two wicked women away to the mountains. they were thrown from stone to stone, and from tree to tree, until they were dashed into pieces. the wicked persons being punished, the prince celebrated a new nuptial for forty days and forty nights, because he had found his lost golden bride. she, being released from her rival, thenceforth enjoyed a happy life with her lamb-brother. three apples fell from heaven;--one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. the betrothed of destiny. once upon a time the king of the west had a son who, one night, dreamed a dream in which destiny betrothed him to the daughter of the king of the east. in the morning he awoke, and lo! the betrothal ring of the maiden was on his finger. on the very same night the same dream had come to the sleeping maiden, who on the morrow found on her finger the betrothal ring of the son of the king of the west. the lad at once started to find his betrothed, and after a long journey came to the city of the king of the east. he entered into the service of the king as a stranger, because he could not make himself known on account of the continuous strife existing between his father and the king of the east. he served the king seven years, during which he spent many happy hours with the young princess, his betrothed. at the expiration of the seven years he asked the hand of the princess as a remuneration for his services. the king, who was pleased with the lad, consented to give him his daughter in marriage. but the lad said he must take her to his country, where the wedding should take place. the king consented to that also, and let his daughter go, giving her a precious dower. on their way to the country of the king of the west they had to cross the sea, and so went on board a ship. the captain, being a wicked man, was charmed by the beauty of the maiden, and before the ship sailed he sent the lad ashore, bidding him to make further preparation, as the voyage would probably be long on account of contrary winds. as soon as the lad disappeared the captain weighed anchor and set sail. the lad came back only to find that the ship had sailed away with his love on board. there remained nothing for him to do but to lament and bewail his ill-luck. the maiden, who was in the cabin, did not discover the truth until it was too late. to her censure and upbraiding the vile captain answered with the proposal that she should become his wife. "i marry you! such an ungracious beast as you!" she exclaimed. "i would rather make my grave in the unfathomable sea." but the captain was strong, and they were on the open sea where no help could be expected. seeing that she could not resist force if the captain resorted to it, she resolved to use craft. "well, then," she answered finally, "i will be your wife, but not upon the sea. we will go home to your city and there be married lawfully." the captain consented, and they soon reached the city. "now, do you go first," said the maiden, "and make preparation. i will wait here until you return." without suspicion the captain went ashore. as soon as he had disappeared the maiden bade the sailors weigh anchor, and she set sail without knowing where to go. at last she reached a certain city and cast anchor. the king of that city was a young lad of marriageable age, who was celebrating his wedding festival. thirty-nine beautiful maidens were already elected; only one maiden was missing to complete the number forty from among whom he would choose his queen, while the others were to become hand-maids to the queen-elect. the king, hearing that a beautiful maiden had come to the haven, hastened thither, and seeing the princess, said to her: "fair maiden, come and by your presence complete the number forty. you are the jewel of all the maidens, and will surely be my dear queen, while the rest shall become your handmaids." "very well, i will come," answered the princess; "only send hither your thirty-nine maidens, that i may come to your palace with great pomp." the youthful king consented and sent his maidens on board the ship. as soon as they came, the princess weighed anchor and set sail. she told the thirty-nine maidens who she was, and asked them to accompany her until destiny showed them what to do. the maidens were fascinated by her beauty and commanding appearance, and promised to follow her wherever she went, even to the end of the earth. after sailing for a long time, they came to an unknown shore where there was a castle. they cast anchor and all the party landed. entering the castle, they found in it forty rooms with a bed in each, all richly decorated. the castle contained great wealth and abundant food. satisfying their hunger, they went to bed, each maiden occupying a chamber. in the middle of the night the door of the castle suddenly opened, and there entered forty brigands, who were the owners of the stronghold, and who were just returning from a nightly foray, bringing with them great booty. "aha!" exclaimed the brigands, seeing the maidens, "we hunted elsewhere, and lo! the antelopes have come to our own home." "enter, you brave heroes," said the maidens; "we were waiting for you." and they pretended to be very much pleased to see the brigands, who entered the rooms occupied by the maidens without suspicion. when they had laid down their arms and retired to rest, each maiden took the sword of the brigand who lay in her room and cut off his head. thus the maidens were the owners of their wealth and property. in the morning the maidens rose, and putting on the clothes and arms of the robbers, appeared as youthful knights. they mounted the brigands' horses, taking in their saddlebags gold, silver, jewels and other portable wealth. after a long journey they came to the city of the king of the west, and encamped in a meadow on the outskirts of the city. soon they heard a herald crying that on the following day there should be elected a king of the realm, for inasmuch as the late sovereign had died and the heir-apparent was lost, it was necessary to choose a new ruler. on the following day all the people of the realm were gathered in the park adjoining the palace; the forty strangers also went to gratify their curiosity. soon the nobles let loose the royal eagle, which flapped its wings and soared over the immense crowd, as though searching with its keen eyes for the true candidate for the throne. the multitude held their breath and stood stone-still. the royal bird once more flapped its wings, and descending from its towering flight, perched upon the head of the princess, who was disguised as a knight. "that is a mistake," exclaimed the noblemen; "we must try it again." once more they let loose the royal eagle, but again it alighted upon the head of the same stranger. a third trial gave the same result. thereupon all the multitude saluted the disguised princess, the elect of destiny, exclaiming with one voice: "long live the king!" and with great pomp they took her and her companions to the royal palace, where the princess was anointed with holy oil, and crowned king over the realm, and her companions were made ministers. this new king proved to be the wisest and most just ruler that that country had ever enjoyed, and all the people of the realm loved and honored their sovereign with all their hearts. she built a splendid fountain in the midst of the city, on which she caused her image to be carved, so that every one who came to drink might see it. she put guards to watch the fountain day and night, and said to them: "watch carefully, and when you perceive a stranger who, on seeing my image, shows signs of knowing me, bring him hither." one day there came a stranger who, after drinking, raised his eyes and saw the image. he gazed for a long time, and sighed deeply. immediately he was arrested and taken to the king, who, looking at him from behind a curtain, ordered him to be imprisoned. this was the captain of the ship. on another day there came another stranger, and he also sighed. it was the king, the owner of the thirty-nine maidens. he was kept in an apartment of the palace. and at last, disguised as a stranger, came the prince, the betrothed of the ruling sovereign, and the heir-apparent to the crown. he also looked at the image and sighed, and was taken to the palace. thereupon the princess summoned a parliament of all the nobility and the learned and wise men of the realm. she caused the three strangers to be brought before the assembly, and told her story from beginning to end. the captain was condemned to be hanged, and was executed forthwith. the lord of the thirty-nine maidens received them all, to whose number the princess added one of her most beautiful handmaids, thus making up the forty. the prince and the princess, the betrothed of destiny, celebrated their wedding with great joy and pomp for forty days and forty nights. the prince, as the true heir, was crowned king, his consort became queen, and they reigned together. thus they reached their desire. may all of us attain our desires and the happiness ordained to us by an all-wise providence. three apples fell from heaven;--one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. the youngest of the three. my grandmother once told me a story of a king who fell sick in his royal palace. all the doctors and magicians of the country gathered to consult, but they found no remedy. an old doctor, however, who was well versed in magic, said: "there is only one remedy for our king. there is a certain garden in india and in it a tree upon which grows the apple of life. as soon as the king eats an apple of that tree he will be healed and become as sound as a new-born babe." "but i have heard," answered the king, "that certain giants guard that tree, and pick off the fruit as soon as it is ripe, no mortal can get at it." now the king had three sons standing near by. the eldest said: "long live the king! i will go and bring the apple of life for you;" and he took leave of his father. after a long and perilous journey he came to the tree which bore the apple of life. but the night on which the fruit ripened a sound sleep overpowered his senses, and the giant came, and picking off the fruit went away. in the morning, the lad seeing the apple had been picked off, returned home to tell of his ill-luck. the following year the second brother undertook the expedition, but had the same unfortunate sleep during the critical night. the third year the youngest of the three brothers said to his father: "long live the king! i will go and bring the fruit." "why," said the king, "your older brothers failed, and do you think you will succeed?" but the lad importuned the king again and again until he gave him permission to go. the lad, taking his bow and arrow, came to the tree. during the critical night when the apple would ripen he felt that a heavy sleep was taking possession of his senses. to prevent it, however, he wounded one of his little fingers and put salt on the wound, and the sharp pain did not let him sleep. in the middle of the night, as it was lightning and thundering, lo! a terrible giant appeared and began to climb the tree. the lad took aim with his bow and arrow and shot the giant in the leg. the giant roared and ran away. the lad climbed the tree, and picking off the apple of life brought it to his father, who ate it and was soon after healed. then the youngest of the three brothers said to the king: "please give me permission to go and avenge myself upon my enemy." the king consented, and his two older brothers also went with him. they found that the giant had fled from the tree of the apple of life, leaving a track of blood that came from his wound. the three brothers followed the bloody track till they came to the mouth of an immeasurably deep abyss, into which the giant had entered. the oldest brother said: "bind me by the waist and let me down; i want to fight him." the other two did as he said, but before he was half-way down he began to cry out: "i am burning! i am roasting! draw me up!" and they drew him up. then the second was lowered in his turn; but he also begin to cry as had the former, and was drawn out. now it was the turn of the youngest brother, who said: "let me down, and the more i cry, 'i am burning! i am roasting!' the further let me descend." so they did, and the more he cried, the more they let him descend. at last he reached the bottom, and began to ramble about. soon he saw a terrible giant lying down, with his head in the lap of a beautiful maiden; so beautiful that she seemed to say to the moon, "moon, you need not shine, since i am shining." she was working with her needle, and before her a golden rat and a golden cat were playing in a golden basin. the maiden, seeing the lad, said: "human being! neither the snake on its belly, nor the bird with its wing would dare to come here. how could you venture to come?" "your love brought me hither," answered the lad. "young man!" said the maiden, "if you love your life, go away; because if this giant, who is sleeping now, wakes he will cut you into pieces no larger than your ear." "wake him up," answered the lad; "i have come on purpose to fight him." "he sleeps forty days," said the maiden, "and it is only eight days since he began to sleep; you have thirty-two days more to wait before he will awake. but if you will not wait so long, put yonder ploughshare into the fire, and heating it red-hot, press it on his legs and he will awake." the lad, heating the ploughshare, pressed it on the legs of the giant, who began to awake, saying, "oh! what insects are biting my legs?" "aha! insects!" said the maiden. "get up! a human being has come to fight you." the giant opened his eyes, and seeing the lad, exclaimed: "what a delicious breakfast this morning!" "get up, monster!" said the lad. "let us see whom fortune will favor--you or me." they prepared their bows and arrows. "you shoot first," said the giant to the lad. "not i," said the lad; "you shoot first." the giant shot, but the lad avoided the arrow very cleverly, and it passed by without hurting him. it was now his turn. he took aim and shot the giant through the heart, nailing him to the ground; and then he cut off his head. leaving the body of the giant there, the lad went a little farther, and to his great surprise saw another giant asleep with his head in the lap of another beautiful maiden, whose beauty surpassed even that of the moon. she was working with her needle, and before her a golden hen and a golden weasel were playing in a golden basin. the maiden, seeing the lad, said to him: "human being! the snake on its belly, and the bird with its wing could not come here. how could you venture to come?" "your love brought me hither," answered the lad. "if you love your life," said the maiden, "avoid this giant while he is asleep. if he wakes he will tear you into pieces." "wake him up!" said the lad; "i have come to fight him." "do you see that iron?" said the maiden; "heat it red-hot and press it on his feet; he will then awake." the hot iron being applied on the feet of the giant, he awoke, saying: "oh! what gnats are biting me?" "gnats!" exclaimed the maiden. "get up! a human being has come to fight you." the giant, seeing the lad, exclaimed: "oh! what a good morsel has come for me on his own legs." "come!" said the lad; "let us see whether fortune will favor you or me." they fought, and this giant also was killed as the former had been. the lad cut off his head, and leaving the dead body, went away. soon he saw a third giant asleep with his head in the lap of another beautiful maiden. so beautiful was she that she could say to the sun, "sun, you need not shine, since i am shining." she was working with her needle, and before her a golden greyhound and a golden fox were running a race in a golden basin. as soon as the lad saw this maiden he fell in love with her. the maiden also fell in love with the lad, and said: "oh, you noble human being! the snake upon its belly, and the bird with its wing cannot enter here. how could you come hither?" "your love brought me hither, fair creature," answered the lad. "be on your guard, precious youth!" said the maiden. "if this giant awakes he will tear you into pieces." "wake him!" said the lad; "i have come to fight him." a hot iron was applied to the feet of the giant, who awoke, saying: "oh! what is biting me?" "what!" said the maiden. "get up! this human being has come to fight you." the giant, seeing the lad, said: "oh! what a good featherless partridge for a breakfast." the lad noticed that the giant was wounded in his leg, and at once recognized him as the one who had tried to steal the apple of life. "come!" said the lad, "let us see whom fortune will favor." and they begin to fight. after a long combat, this giant also shared the fate of the former two, and the lad cut his throat. then he brought together the three maidens, who told him that they were daughters of three princes and had been stolen by these giants, who nourished them with the apples of life. then they showed him their houses, their treasure, and everything belonging to the giants. the lad took what he chose from the treasures and prepared three chests for the maidens. he kept only a sword of lightning for himself. then entering the stable, he found three horses of lightning, one black, a second one red, and the third white. the youngest maiden advised the lad to pick three hairs from the tails of the horses and keep them. the lad did so. then they came to the bottom of the abyss where the lad had descended, and found the rope still hanging. he, binding the oldest maiden and her chest to the rope, called to his brothers to draw her up. "this is," he said, "the betrothed of my oldest brother, and the chest is her dowry." then he bound the second maiden and her chest, saying: "this is the betrothed of my second brother, and the chest is her dowry." now it was the turn of the youngest maiden. "you go up first," she said to the lad. "not i," said the lad; "you must go up first." "but when your brothers see me," said the maiden, "they will not draw you up, and you will remain here. i love you! i pity you!" "why," said the lad, "are they not my brothers? do you believe my brothers will do me evil? go up, i say!" "alas!" said the maiden; "i will obey. but if you do remain here below, as i am afraid you will, do as i tell you. next friday evening three rams will come here, one of them black, the second red, and the third white. as soon as you see them, throw yourself upon the black ram. he will throw you upon the red, the red will throw you upon the white, and the white will throw you to the surface of the upper world. but if you make a mistake you are lost, or there is little hope for your release. take this magic ring as a token of my love for you. whatever you desire, kiss this ring and you will certainly have it. and when you are in need, cast the three hairs which you picked from the tails of the three horses in the fire, and they will immediately come to you. so farewell, my love!" "farewell!" said the lad; and the maiden was drawn up. the two brothers were amazed at the beauty of the youngest maiden. "lo! lo! lo!" they exclaimed, "he has preserved the most beautiful one for himself, and has given us the uglier ones." thus envying their youngest brother, they took the three maidens and went away, leaving the poor lad at the bottom of the abyss. on friday evening the three rams came, as foretold by the fair maiden. the lad was so afflicted that he had forgotten the directions of the maiden, and his desire to go up to the surface of the world being very great, he threw himself upon the back of the white ram. it, in turn, threw him upon the back of the red; the red one threw him upon the back of the black; and it, in turn, threw him into the world of darkness. oh! it was awfully dark. the lad began to grope his way until he found a door, at which he knocked. "who is there?" asked an old woman from behind the door. "i am a poor orphan without father, without mother," answered the lad in a pitiful voice. "come in, then," said the old dame, opening the door. "i have no children; you take me as a mother, and i will take you as a son; so let us live together. god will give us our bread." they accepted one another as mother and son. "mother, please give me some water, i am thirsty," said the lad. "oh!" sighed the old dame, "you are asking the hardest thing in the world. we have no water, son; be patient till we get some." "why, have you no water now?" asked the lad, surprised. "alas!" said the woman, "there is only one fountain in our country, and it is guarded by a terrible dragon. every day a virgin is cast to him to be devoured; else, he will not let the people take a drop of water. and soon after he finishes his repast upon the virgin, he again stops the fountain from flowing. to-day the last virgin of the country, the only daughter of the prince, is to be given to the dragon. hark! i hear an uproar in the streets; i suppose they are taking the maiden to the dragon." the lad looked out, and saw that indeed a great crowd of people were leading along a maiden as beautiful as the moon. he followed the crowd, which coming to the fountain, left the maiden there alone and went away. the lad approached the maiden, saying: "fair virgin, be not afraid. let me sleep in your lap, and when the dragon comes, awake me; i will save you." she consented, and he slept in her lap. but soon the dragon began to creep toward the maiden with its mouth wide open, rolling up its terrible tail and hissing like the thunder from joy at finding two victims instead of one. the poor maiden was horror-stricken and mute. she could neither speak nor move to awake the brave hero asleep in her lap. she could only weep. her warm tears rolling down her cheeks dropped upon the face of the lad, who at once jumped up and saw, to his great terror, that the dragon had partly swallowed the maiden. one minute more, and the maiden would be lost. but what could he do now? he could not cut the throat of the dragon without hurting the feet of the maiden. at once he drew his sword of lightning and placed it in the lap of the maiden. so when the dragon swallowed the maiden the sword cut its mouth and down through its side, and just when the maiden was swallowed entirely the dragon also was cut in two pieces, and the maiden came out uninjured. the lad cutting off the head of the dragon said to the maiden: "now, fair one, get up and go to your parents." the maiden, soaking her hand in the blood of the dragon, made a red mark upon the back of the lad; and they departed, she to her father, and he to his adopted mother. the dragon being killed, the fountain was opened and the people took the water freely. "mother, why is your country so dark?" asked the lad of the old woman. "my son," answered the old dame, sighing, "there is a very large eagle living upon the top of yonder mountain. every year she hatches young ones, but a dragon eats them up; and the eagle thinking that men are the cause, deprives us of the sunlight." the lad, taking leave of the old woman, climbed up the mountain till he came to the nest of the eagle. taking refuge under a rock, he set himself to watch. soon a gigantic dragon came creeping up toward the young birds, and was just devouring them, when the lad drew his sword of lightning, and cutting the dragon into pieces, gave its flesh to the young eaglets, which began to eat it and to chirp merrily. the mother-eagle hearing the voice of her young ones, hastened to the spot as swiftly as a flash, and thinking that it was the lad that devoured her young ones every year, and that he had come now to destroy them, was about to tear him into pieces when her young ones cried out: "take care, mother! it was that noble lad that saved us from the dragon, and killing it gave its flesh to us to eat." "now, noble youth!" said the eagle to the lad, "what do you want me to do as a reward for your heroic deed?" "nothing," answered the lad, "but to take me to the upper world upon your wings." "you are requesting the hardest thing in the world," answered the eagle; "but for such a brave hero as you i will do anything, even sacrifice my life if necessary. go bring me forty bottles of wine and forty sheep's tails, and i will do as you request." now let us return for a moment to the maiden who was saved from being devoured by the dragon. she came to her father, who was very angry at seeing her. "you little rogue!" he said, "you want to save your life, and never care that so many thousands of people are dying of thirst. go quickly! let the dragon devour you, that we may have water." the maiden told him how a brave hero saved her by killing the monster, and how the fountain was flowing in torrents to quench the thirst of all the people. upon this the prince sent heralds to proclaim that the man who had saved his daughter's life must come to him; he should not only be the son-in-law of the prince by marrying the maiden whom he had saved, but the prince was ready to bestow upon him any gift which he might ask. thousands of young men appeared before the prince's palace, every one of them claiming the credit of killing the dragon and saving the princess, but the maiden said, "no, none of these is the hero." the people of the town came before the princess, but the hero was not to be found. "is there no other man left in the town?" asked the prince. "none," answered the officials, "except a young stranger who is the guest of a poor widow." "bring him here!" ordered the prince. the lad was brought. "why," exclaimed the maiden, pointing at the blood mark which she had made with her own hand, "this is the hero!" "now, hero," said the prince, "the maiden whom you saved is yours; ask of me whatever else you please." "long live the prince!" answered the lad. "may heaven bless the union of your daughter with a suitable husband, and may you enjoy your estates for many, many years! i ask of you only forty bottles of wine and forty sheep's tails, that the eagle may take me to the upper world." the prince so commanded, and they were immediately given to the lad, who at once took them to the eagle. "now," said the eagle, "place the sheep's tails on my right wing, and the bottles of wine on my left, and seat yourself between. when i say, "boo," pour in my mouth a bottle of wine, and when i say "coo," give me a sheep's tail." the lad went first to take leave of the old woman, who gave him her blessing. as soon as the load was placed on the back of the eagle she took her flight. every time she said "boo" a bottle of wine was poured into her mouth, and every time she said "coo" a sheep's tail was given to her. they ascended and ascended until they came to the world of light. "coo!" said the eagle, the last time. the lad was so glad and in so great a hurry that the last sheep's tail which he was going to give to the eagle fell from his hand. but he did not wish to disappoint his friend, so he drew his sword, and cutting one of the calves of his own leg, gave it to the eagle. the wise bird knew from the flavor that it was human flesh, and kept it under her tongue. they arrived at their destination. "well, now," said the eagle putting the lad on the ground, "go along your way." "no," said the lad, "you go first; my legs are benumbed, i want to take a little rest." the eagle insisted till the lad tried to walk, but he could not walk because of his wound. then the eagle drew the flesh out from under her tongue, and placing it in its proper place, licked it up, and the wound was at once healed. she took her leave of the hero and flew down to her young ones, who were chirping and waiting for her. after that day she never deprived that country of the sun's rays, as she had no longer reason for so doing. the lad, before entering his father's city, thought he had better disguise himself. so he went to a slaughter house, and getting a sheep's stomach, wrapped it around his head, thus changing himself to a bald-headed youth. entering the city as a stranger, he soon found out that a wedding ceremony was to be held in his father's palace. his two brothers were to marry the two maidens whom he saved for them, and his own betrothed was to be married to the king. the lad felt his heart bleeding. he went to the market place, and presenting himself to a goldsmith, asked him to accept him as an apprentice. the goldsmith hesitated for a while, but afterwards said: "come, bald-headed fellow, be my apprentice." that very day the officials of the king brought to the goldsmith a large bag of gold, saying: "you must make of this gold a golden rat and a golden cat that shall play in a golden basin." "i can make the rat and the cat out of this gold," said the goldsmith, "but i cannot give them life to make them run about." "that is not our business," said the officials, "it is the command of the king; you must either make them, or lose your head. the lady to whom the king is betrothed refuses to marry him until these are made for her. you must make them by the morrow." so saying, the officials went away, leaving the gold. the goldsmith was at a loss. poor man! what could he do? he could not make them, and in case he failed to make them by the appointed time his head was in danger. "what is the matter, master?" said the lad; "why are you puzzled and sad?" "keep silent!" exclaimed the goldsmith. "i have no time to hear your chatter." "be of good cheer, master," returned the lad; "if you bring me two or three handfuls of nuts, i will make the golden rat and the golden cat to-night." "why, you rascal! you bald-headed dog!" exclaimed the goldsmith; "as if my affliction is not enough for me, do you make fun of me?" "no, master," said the lad, "do not think i am making fun of you. i really say bring me some nuts, and to-morrow morning come and take what you want." the goldsmith thought there was no harm if he did what the lad requested of him, and brought the nuts. that night he could not sleep at all, and very often he came to the door of the shop to listen to what the lad was doing, and heard nothing but the crack of the nuts, which the bald-headed apprentice was eating all the time. at daybreak the lad took out of his pocket the magic ring which was given him by his betrothed as a token. he kissed it, and immediately two negroes presented themselves with their hands folded on their breasts, saying: "say what is your will, and we will do it at once." "bring me here," said the lad, "the golden rat and the golden cat which i saw playing in the golden basin." he had scarcely finished the sentence, when lo! the golden basin was placed before him. just at that moment the goldsmith entered with beating heart. "here, master," exclaimed the lad; "i have just finished it." the goldsmith began to dance with excess of joy, and at once took the basin to the king, who was so much pleased with it that he gave him costly presents and invited him to come to the royal wedding. the goldsmith came back. he was so happy that he was dancing all the time. "master," said the lad, "please take me with you to the wedding." "but, my lad," said the goldsmith, "there will be a tournament to-morrow; if you go there, i am afraid you will be trampled down by cavalry and get your bald head broken. you had better stay at home." on the following day the goldsmith went to the tournament. the lad cast the black horse's hair into the fire, and lo! the black horse of the first giant whom he killed came neighing with a suit of black armor on his back. immediately the lad put on the suit of armor and mounted the horse; thus being changed to a black knight, he rushed to the place of the tournament. he vanquished all the princes and his brothers, and unhorsing his own master, disappeared, leaving the spectators in utmost surprise. he came to his home, and changing his clothes, was the same bald-headed apprentice. in the evening when the goldsmith came, the lad implored him to tell him what he had seen; and he began to describe the tournament. "but the unexpected thing," said he, "was the appearance of a black knight, clad in armor at all points. whether he was a fairy or a human being, i cannot tell. he vanquished all the princes and knights, and disappeared in a hurricane after unhorsing me, too." "alas!" exclaimed the lad, shaking his head very sadly, as if understanding nothing. now let us return to the maiden. she, seeing the golden rat and the golden cat in a golden basin brought to her, was assured that her betrothed had come from the infernal regions up to the world of light. "i will not marry you," she said to the king, "until you get me a golden hen and a golden weasel playing in a golden basin." the king sent his order to the goldsmith, who promised to make them, first getting the consent of the bald-headed apprentice. he brought him nuts; and the lad, kissing the magic ring, the two negroes again appeared, who immediately brought the golden hen and the golden weasel playing in a golden basin. the goldsmith took them to the king, who invited him to the second day's tournament. the lad again asked leave to go with his master, and the goldsmith again refused him. soon after the goldsmith went, however, the lad cast into the fire the hair of the red horse, which immediately made its appearance with a suit of red armor on its back. the lad, changing his clothes, mounted the horse, which immediately ran to the place of the tournament. at once vanquishing all who were there and unhorsing his own master, the lad disappeared, and coming home changed his clothes and was again the bald-headed apprentice. in the evening the goldsmith began to describe the tournament, and the apprentice listened to his story with great surprise and seriousness. the maiden was now sure that her betrothed had come, for no one else could do these things. on the following day she said to the king: "i want you to get for me a golden greyhound and a golden fox running a race in a golden basin, else i will not marry you." the goldsmith was again called, and promised to make them, first consulting with the bald-headed apprentice, to whom he brought the usual quantity of nuts. the lad cracked and ate the nuts till morning. at daybreak he kissed the magic ring, and for the third time the two negroes appeared, bringing in the golden greyhound and the golden fox running a race in a golden basin. the goldsmith at once took them to the king, who invited him to the third day's tournament. the lad cast into the fire, this time, the white horse's hair, which was the third giant's horse; and immediately it stood before him with a suit of white armor on its back. the lad, putting the armor on, was changed to a white knight; and taking the sword of lightning in hand, rushed to the place of the tournament. after vanquishing all, and killing the king and his own unworthy brothers, he stood in the midst of the crowd and told them who he was, what heroic deeds he had done, and what wrongs he had endured. the people being tired of the tyrannical king, immediately hailed the youth as their monarch. he married his betrothed, and gave the other two maidens in marriage to two of his best friends. thus he attained his wishes. may heaven grant that you may attain your wishes! three apples fell from heaven;--one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. the fairy nightingale. a very interesting story was once told me of a king who built a splendid church. it took the architects seven years to finish the building. the king went to dedicate the church and to pray in it, and lo! there was a fog so dense that the king was almost suffocated. in the very midst of the dense fog a monk stood before the king, saying: "long live the king! you have built a fine church, but it lacks one thing." the monk then quickly disappeared. the king came out and ordered his men to take down the building and to put up another one finer than the first. it took them another seven years to finish the second building. the king again went to dedicate the church and pray in it, and lo! again there was a dense fog, and the same monk stood before the king, saying: "long live the king! you have built a beautiful church, but it lacks one thing." again the monk mysteriously disappeared. the king again ordered his men to take down the building and to put up a new one. it took them another seven years to finish the third building, and it was this time so splendid that there was nothing like it in all the world. the king again went to dedicate it and to pray in it, and lo! again there was a dense fog, and the same monk stood before the king saying: "long live the king! you have built a church incomparably beautiful, but it lacks one thing." the monk was again about to make his exit when the king took hold of his collar, saying: "tell me what is the one thing lacking in my church. this is the third time that you compel me to take down my building, upon which so much labor and time have been spent." "the fairy nightingale is the only thing that is lacking in this magnificent church," said the monk, and disappeared in the fog. the king returned to his palace, and thereafter was very sad. he had three sons, who seeing their father sad, asked: "long live the king! what grieves you, father?" "my sons," said the king, "i am getting old, and the fairy nightingale is needed for the church. i do not know how to get it." "be of good cheer, father," said the lads; "we will go and bring it." and they started. after a long journey they came to a place where the road divided into three branches, with a sign on each. the sign of the broad road was,--"he who goes on this road returns safely." the sign on the middle road was,--"he who goes on this road may return or may not return." and the sign on the third narrow road was,--"he who goes on this road never returns." the oldest brother took the broad road; the second brother took the middle road, and the youngest brother took the narrow road. the oldest lad soon came to a large city, at sight of which he said to himself: "why should i go farther and be killed? i would better stay in this place." and he became a servant in one of the inns of the city. the second brother turned toward the other side of the mountain, and came to a green meadow with shady trees here and there, and benches under the trees. he was tired, and at once sat down upon one of the benches. soon a giant as black as night came along with an iron rod in his hand. he gave the lad one stroke with the rod, and lo! the lad turned into a round stone, and rolled under the bench. the youngest of the three brothers started on the road along which there could be no return. a dense fog covered him, and lo! the monk who had talked with his father appeared to him, saying: "god speed thee, son! whither are you going?" "i am going to bring the fairy nightingale for our new church," said the lad. "good," said the monk; "but this way is dangerous; let me advise you. the owner of the fairy nightingale is the fairy queen, a very beautiful maiden. on your way you will soon come to a river which the fairy queen has by her arts changed into a poisoned stream, and she does not drink of it. but you must drink of it, and say: 'o happy! this is the water of immortality.' after crossing the river you will come to a grove which the queen has changed into a jungle of thorns and thistles. you must smell the trees and shrubs, and say: 'o happy! this grove is the flower of paradise.' then you will come to a narrow pass on one side of which there is a wolf bound with chains, and on the other side there is a lamb bound with chains. there is a bundle of grass before the wolf, and a piece of meat before the lamb. you must put the grass before the lamb, and the meat before the wolf. you will then come to a large gate with double doors, one open and one closed. you must open the closed door and shut the open one. entering in you will find the fairy queen, owner of the fairy nightingale, sleeping in a splendid bedchamber. she sleeps seven days and nights, and is awake seven days and nights. if you can do what i have told you, and reach there at a time when the queen is asleep, you can bring the nightingale; if not, you are lost." the lad started, and came successively to the river, the grove, the lamb and the wolf, and the gate. he did all that the monk had told him, and entering in, saw an exquisite bedchamber where a maiden as beautiful as the sun was sleeping on a purple bed embroidered with gold and jewelry. the fairy nightingale came down from its cage, and standing on the queen's bedside, sang to her a thousand songs with enchanting melody, and lullabied her to sound sleep. the lad, who was watching from behind the arras, seeing the maiden asleep, and that the nightingale had returned to its cage, crept in slowly, took the nightingale's cage, pressed a kiss upon the forehead of the sleeping maiden, thus stamping the sign of his lips there, and started back on his way. the queen awoke, and seeing the nightingale had been stolen, exclaimed: "doors, catch the thief!" "god speed him!" said the doors; "he closed the open one of us and opened the closed one of us." "wolf and lamb, catch the thief!" exclaimed the fairy queen. "god speed him!" said the wolf and the lamb; "he gave the meat to the wolf, and the grass to the lamb." "grove, catch the thief!" exclaimed the queen. "god speed him!" said the grove; "you made me thorns and thistles; he made me a flower of paradise." "river, catch the thief!" exclaimed the queen. "god speed him!" said the river; "you made me a stream of poison; he made me the water of immortality." when the queen saw that all her charms were unavailing, she mounted her horse and started in pursuit of the lad. but let us return to the lad. he passed all the dangerous places and came to the square where the road divided into the three branches. he saw the monk waiting for him. "here is the fairy nightingale, holy father," said the lad, and seeing that his brothers had not yet come back, he give the cage to the monk and he himself started in search of his brothers. he went first along the broad road, until he came to the inn where his brother was serving. he secretly made himself known to him, and taking him away brought him to the monk. he then took the next road, and went as far as the green meadow and sat down upon one of the benches. soon the giant appeared with his iron rod and tried to strike the lad. but the lad cleverly avoided the blow, and snatching the rod from the giant's hand, struck him. immediately the giant fell down and was changed into a huge round black stone. "my brother must have been lost somewhere in this place," thought the lad, and began to strike with the iron rod the stones scattered here and there upon the meadow, and lo! the stones were changed into men, who began to run away; but his brother was not among them. he saw a stone under the bench, and struck it. it was changed into his brother, and began to run. "brother! brother, do not run, it is i," exclaimed the lad. he stopped and both returned to the monk. all three, taking the fairy nightingale, went toward their father's city. on the way they were thirsty, and came to a well. they lowered the youngest brother to draw water, and as soon as he reached the bottom of the well, the two older brothers said to one another: "when we go home to our father all praise and glory will be given to that fellow who is now in the well, and we shall be despised. it shall not be; he shall never come up from that well." they cut the rope, and leaving the hero in the well, took the nightingale and went to their father, saying: "our youngest brother was killed in our attempt to get the fairy nightingale, but we two succeeded in bringing it." they hung the cage in the new church, but the fairy nightingale did not warble a single song; it was sad and silent. soon the fairy queen came riding to the king, and said: "who is the hero that has brought my nightingale?" "we brought it," said the two brothers. "well, what did you meet on the way?" inquired the queen. "nothing," said the lads. "then it was not you who brought it," said the queen; "you are thieves." and she caused them to be arrested and cast into prison, saying: "you shall not be released until the real hero who brought the fairy nightingale is presented to me." some women who were gleaning barley in the fields happened to pass near the well where the lad was left, and hearing him groan took him out; one of them, who had no children, adopted him as her son. after a few weeks news came from the city to the village to the effect that the king's sons had brought the fairy nightingale, but the fairy queen, the owner of the nightingale, also had come after it. one day the lad asked permission of his adopted mother, saying: "a new church has been built, let me go and see it." the old woman consented, and he went to the city as a peasant boy. he went to his father's house and heard that his brothers were imprisoned. he went directly to the prison and set them free. the fairy queen, hearing this, came and said to the lad: "i am the fairy queen, the owner of the nightingale; are you not afraid of me?" "i am he who brought the fairy nightingale," said the lad, "i am not afraid of you." "what did you see on the way?" asked the queen. the lad told her what he had seen and what he had done. "and moreover," said the lad, "i have put a sign upon your forehead with my own lips. look at your image in yonder pond, and you will see that you are my betrothed." the queen looked at her reflected image in the water, and seeing the mark of the lad's kiss, exclaimed: "hero, you are worthy of me; i am yours hereafter." a wedding festival for forty days and forty nights was celebrated. after this the couple went to the church to be married. the fairy nightingale began to warble, and sang them a thousand and one songs. it is still singing, and all the world is wondering at its sweet melodies. three apples fell from heaven; one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. the dreamer. a father and mother once lived whose son was a dreamer. one morning the lad arose and said to his mother: "mother, i dreamed a dream last night, but i will not tell it." "why will you not tell it?" asked the mother. "i will not," answered the lad. "the mother beat the lad, who ran to his father, saying: "father, i dreamed a dream last night; i did not tell it to mother, and i will not tell it to you." the father also beat the lad, who was angered and ran away from the house. after a day's journey he met a traveler. "good-day!" said the lad. "good-day!" replied the traveler. "i dreamed a dream," said the lad; "i did not tell it to my mother, i did not tell it to my father, and i will not tell it to you." the lad went on until he came to the prince's palace. the prince was sitting at the door. the lad said: "prince, i dreamed a dream; i did not tell it to my mother, i did not tell it to my father, i did not tell it to the traveler, and i will not tell it to you." the prince was angry, and cast the lad into a prison in the cellar of his palace. the lad dug through the wall of his prison with his dagger and opened a hole into the adjacent room which happened to be the dining-room of the prince's daughter. the lad finding the maiden's food in the cupboard, ate it all and withdrew to his prison. soon the maiden came in, and lo! the food was eaten. this was repeated on several days. the maiden was very anxious to know who it was who ate her food, and one day hiding herself in her wardrobe she began to watch. soon she saw the lad, who lifting a great stone opened a hole in the wall, crept into her room, took the food from the cupboard and began to help himself. she jumped out, and taking hold of the lad, said: "who are you, young man?" "i dreamed a dream," said the lad, "i did not tell it to my mother, i did not tell it to my father, i did not tell it to the traveler, i did not tell it to the prince; the prince cast me into prison, and i dug a hole with my dagger and came here. i am at your mercy." the maiden fell in love with the lad, and thereafter cherished him not only with her food but with her love, and they accepted one another as husband and wife. one day the king of the east sent messengers to the prince bearing a stick which had both ends equal, saying: "now, tell me which is the bottom and which is the top of this stick. if you solve this, well and good; if not, you must give your daughter in marriage to my son." the prince called all his wise men into council, but no one could solve the riddle. the princess told it to the lad. the lad said: "go and tell your father to tell them to cast the stick into the pond; the bottom end will sink the deeper in the water." they did so, and the riddle was solved. on the following day the king of the east sent three horses, all being exactly the same size and having the same appearance, saying: "which is the one year old colt, which is the two year old colt, and which is the mother? if you solve this, well and good; if not, you must give your daughter in marriage to my son." all the learned men of the prince could not solve this riddle. the princess, in the evening, said to the lad: "no one could solve the riddle, and they will take me away to-morrow." "tell your father," said the lad, "to let them keep the horses in the stable over night. in the morning let them take a bundle of hay, wet and salt it and cast it before the horses outside the stable door. the mother will come out first, the two year old colt after her, and the one year old colt last." they did as the lad advised, and the riddle was solved. on the following day the king of the east sent to the prince a steel shield and a steel spear, saying: "if you can pierce this shield with this spear with one stroke, i will give my daughter to your son in marriage; if you cannot pierce it, you must give your daughter to my son in marriage." the prince and all his men tried, and could not pierce the shield. the prince then said to his daughter: "go, send your man; let us see if he can pierce it." the lad came, and at one stroke pierced the steel shield with the steel spear. now, the prince had no son; he therefore adopted the lad, who was already his son-in-law, and made him heir apparent to his throne. thereupon the lad set out to go and bring the daughter of the king of the east. after a long journey he met a man who was kneeling down with his ear close to the ground. "what man are you?" asked the lad. "i lay my ear to the ground," answered the man, "and listen to whatever men say all over the world." "aha! what a man!" exclaimed the lad, "he can hear what is said all over the world." "man?" said the listener. "a man is he who pierced the steel shield with the steel spear." "it was i," said the lad. "then i am your brother," said the listener, and followed the lad. after another long journey they met a man who was standing with one of his feet upon mount ararat and the other upon mount taurus. "aha! what a man!" exclaimed the lad. "he strides over the world." "man?" exclaimed the colossal strider. "a man is he who pierced the steel shield with the steel spear." "it was i," said the lad. "then i am your brother," said the colossus, and followed the lad. after a long journey they met a man who was eating all the loaves baked in seven ovens, and still crying, "i am hungry! i am famishing! for heaven's sake, give me something to eat!" "aha!" said the lad. "what a man! whom seven ovens continually baking cannot satisfy." "man?" exclaimed the glutton. "a man is he who pierced the steel shield with the steel spear." "i am the man," said the lad. "then i am your brother," said the glutton, and followed the lad. soon they met a man who was carrying the earth upon his shoulders. "what a man!" exclaimed the lad. "man?" replied the carrier of the earth. "a man is he who has pierced the steel shield with the steel spear." "i am the man," said the lad. "then i am your brother," said the carrier of the earth, and he also followed the lad. they soon met a man who was lying flat on the bank of the euphrates, and drinking the river dry, but still crying, "i am thirsty! i am dry; more water, for heaven's sake!" "aha! what a man," exclaimed the lad, "the river euphrates does not satisfy his thirst." "man?" exclaimed the river-drinker, "a man is he who pierced the steel shield." "i am he," said the lad. "then i am your brother," said the river-drinker, and followed the lad. they soon met a shepherd who was blowing his horn, and lo! hills and valleys, plains and forests, men and beasts were dancing. "aha! what a man!" exclaimed the lad, "all the world is dancing to his music." "man!" returned the shepherd, "a man is he who pierced the steel shield." "i am he," said the lad. "then i am your brother," said the shepherd, and he followed the lad. now they were seven. "brother steel-shield-steel-spear," said the six adopted brothers to the lad, "where shall we go now?" "we shall go and bring the daughter of the king of the east," answered the lad. "you are worthy of her," said his six companions. soon they arrived at the city of the king of the east, who seeing them said to his servants secretly: "these seven fellows have come to take away my daughter. heaven forbid! they are bashful lads and will hardly eat a bowlful of soup. now go and bake twenty-one ovens full of bread and make twenty-one cauldrons full of soup and put it all before them. if they can eat all at one sitting, i will give them my daughter; if not, i will not." the lad and his crew were entertained in an apartment some distance from the king's apartment, where he was giving these instructions to his men. the ground-listener, hearing the king's orders, said to the lad: "brother steel-shield-steel-spear, did you hear what the king said to his men?" "no, blockhead!" said the lad, "how can i hear him while he is in another apartment far from us?" the ground-listener said: "they are going to serve us twenty-one horse-loads of bread and twenty-one cauldrons full of soup, and in case we fail to eat all at one meal they will refuse to give us the princess." "be of good cheer." said the ravenous eater; "i take the responsibility upon myself." on the following day all the bread and soup was served to one man, and there was not enough to gratify him. he was still crying, "i am hungry! i am famishing! give me something to eat!" "a plague upon these fellows!" said the king to his peers; "we could not satisfy one; what if all the seven should eat! now i tell you what to do; entertain them in another house; bring quantities of wood and rushes at night and pile them round about the building, and in the middle of the night when they are asleep set fire to the piles. thus they will perish and we shall get rid of them." the ground-listener hearing everything, told it to the lad. "never mind," said the river-drinker, "i can keep in my stomach water enough to extinguish their fire." he went and drank the neighboring river dry and came back, and all went to bed. at midnight they saw that the house was on fire. the river-drinker blew upon the flames, and lo! a stream of water began to flow from his mouth. it not only extinguished the flames, but drowned all those who were making the fire. that caused the king to be still more angry, and he said to his peers: "let come what may, i will not give up my daughter." "now it is my turn," said the earth-carrier, "if he does not give us his daughter i will carry away his whole kingdom." he had hardly finished his words when he put his shoulder under the ground of the king of the east, and lo! he took on his back the whole realm. then the shepherd began to blow his horn and the mountains and valleys, plains and forests, and all living creatures in them began to dance; the strider-of-the-world walked before them opening the way; and so the procession went on with great merriment. thereupon the king began to weep and to beg them, saying: "for heaven's sake, leave me my kingdom! take my daughter and go." then the earth-carrier set the kingdom down in its place again; the shepherd ceased blowing his horn, and the universe stopped dancing. the lad thanked his six brothers for their valuable services and sent them to their homes, and he himself took the maiden and came to the prince's city, where a wedding festival was celebrated for forty days, and he married this maiden also. he sat down with the baby born during his absence, in his arms, and his two wives one on each side, and calling his father and mother to him, said: "now shall i tell you what my dream was?" "yes, what was it?" said his parents. "i dreamed in my dream," said the lad, "that there was one sun upon my right side, another sun upon my left side, and a bright star was twinkling upon my heart." "was that your dream?" said they. "yes, that was my dream," said he. this tale was a dream. the sender of dreams has sent three apples from above; one for him who told the story, one for him who asked that the story be told, and one for him who listened to the story. the bride of the fountain. somewhere i have heard that there were once three sisters, whose mother went to town to buy them dresses. on her way back to the village she sat down by a fountain to rest. "tush!" exclaimed she, remembering that she had forgotten to buy a dress for her youngest daughter. suddenly an old man came out from the fountain, and standing before the woman, said: "my name is tush; why did you call me?" "i did not call you," said the woman, "i exclaimed, 'tush!' because i had forgotten to buy a dress for my youngest daughter." "go, bring her," said the old man, "and call on me again; i will give her a dress." the woman went and brought her daughter to the fountain. as soon as she uttered the word "tush!" the old man came out. he took the maiden into the fountain and never came back, in spite of the repeated exclamations of the woman, who tired of repeating, "tush! tush!" at last she gave up hope, and going home mourned the wonderful disappearance of her pretty daughter. after one or two months she went again to the fountain and uttered the word "tush!" the old man came out, and seeing the woman he turned toward the fountain, saying: "halloo! son, your mother-in-law has come to call on her daughter. won't you send her out?" "certainly," said a voice from within. "i will send her to pay a visit to her mother, as is the custom." in a few minutes the anxious mother saw her daughter come out from the fountain dressed as a beautiful bride, and she took her home. "mamma," said the bride, "give me a separate room; my husband told me that he will come to me every night." the mother gave her a separate room. the bridegroom visited her every night in the shape of a partridge. he used to come after nightfall, and flapping his wings, perch on the window ledge. she opened the window and took him in. every morning the partridge flew away before dawn. her two sisters, envious of the happiness of their youngest sister, brought razors and nailed them around the window. at nightfall the partridge came flying, and when he was perching on the window he struck his wings against the razors, which wounded his body in several places. he was hardly able to fly back to his fountain, and there he was confined to his bed. he vowed to be revenged upon his bride, who he thought had put the razors on the window. the bride, seeing that the partridge did not come for five or six days, went with her mother to the fountain. "tush!" they called, and lo! the old man came out, and turning to the fountain, exclaimed: "son, your bride and mother-in-law have come." "oh! oh!" cried the partridge from within, "i do not want such a bride. i beseech you, put on your eagle's suit, take her to the seventh heaven, and thence cast her to the torrid desert." father tush at once changed himself into an eagle, and carried the bride away and cast her to the sandy desert. there she fell upon the sand, but did not die. "o heaven!" exclaimed the maiden, "what have i done to deserve such treatment." she wandered about in the desert without knowing where to go. at nightfall she buried herself in the sand to sleep. soon there came two conjurers, who sat down near her. they conjured, and lo! innumerable great serpents gathered around them. they sat in council, inquired of each other, and prepared remedies for a thousand and one diseases. for razor cuts they devised this remedy: "wash the patient with the first milk from the breasts of a woman, and put upon the wounds the dried blood taken from a young woman's veins. on the third application the patient will be healed." the maiden, who was listening to them attentively, kept that remedy in mind, and on the following morning started for her husband's fountain. after a long journey, she came to her own country, begged from the village women a mother's first milk, and opening one of her own veins, got some blood which she dried in the sun. she then went to the fountain disguised as a lad. "tush!" she exclaimed, and the old man came out. "what do you want?" said he. "i am a doctor," she said; "i had forgotten to get some of my medicines in the village, therefore i said 'tush.'" the old man went in and informed his son that there was a human doctor on the fountain. "bring him in," said the lad, "let us see if he can administer some remedy to my wounds." the maiden went in, and after an examination said: "i can heal you within three days." she washed him with the milk and put the dried blood on the wounds, and on the third day the lad was healed. "what do you want me to pay you?" said the lad. "i do not want anything," said the maiden; "i wish you only to remember my name." "what is it?" asked the lad. "incense-tree is my name," answered the maiden. "ah!" exclaimed the lad, "that is my wife's name." "i am your wife," said she, throwing away her masculine attire. she fell on his neck sobbing, and told him how without a fault she was. they loved each other thereafter, and are still living in that deep fountain. three apples fell from heaven; one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. dyjhicon: the coward-hero. dyjhicon was a poor unfortunate fellow who had only two goats and a cow. his wife was an ambitious woman, and annoyed him by her frequent demands. "i want you to go out and work," she often said. "i want you to build a new house, i want to buy myself some new dresses, oxen and sheep, a horse and wagon." dyjhicon, tiring of her endless complaints and scoldings, one day took his great stick and drove the cow out of the house, saying to himself: "let me run from this wicked wife to the wilderness and there die." this was what the woman wanted. thus he ran from her and wandered in the wilderness. when he was hungry he milked the cow and drank the milk, and when he was tired he mounted the cow. he was very timid,--a typical coward. the sight of a running rat was enough to make him tremble. "eh!" he thought, nevertheless, "it is better to be torn by wild beasts than to become the slave of a wicked woman." one day, as the cow was pasturing on a green meadow and dyjhicon was lying down lazily, the flies stung him. he cursed his wife and clapped his hands to kill the flies. then he counted to see how many flies he had killed at one stroke, and lo! they were seven in number. this encouraged him, and he took his knife and carved upon his stick these words: "i am dyjhicon; i have killed seven by one stroke of the hand." then he got astride the cow and rode away. after a long journey he came to a green meadow in the center of which there was a magnificent castle with an orchard around it. he let the cow graze in the meadow and he lay down to sleep. seven brothers lived in that castle. one of them, seeing dyjhicon and his cow in the meadow came to find who it was that had ventured to enter their ground. dyjhicon was sleeping, with his stick standing near him. the man approached and, reading the inscription, was terrified. "what a hero!" he thought to himself, "he has killed seven men by one stroke of the hand. he must be a brave man, else he would not dare to sleep here so carelessly. what courage! what boldness! he has come so far without arms, without a horse, without a companion. this man is surely a great hero." he went and informed his brothers as to what he had seen; and all the seven brothers came to pay their respects to the unknown hero, and to invite him to their humble home. the cow, being frightened by their approach, began to leap and bellow. her voice wakened dyjhicon, who, seeing seven men standing before him, was terrified, and snatching his club, stood aside trembling. the seven brothers thought that he was angry with them, and was trembling on account of his wrath, and that he would kill all of them by one stroke of his stick. thereupon they began to supplicate him to pardon their rudeness in disturbing his repose. then they invited him to go with them, saying: "we are seven brothers and have a great reputation as good fighters in this district. but we shall be entirely invincible, if you will join us and become our elder brother. we will take great pleasure in placing our house and all that belongs to us at the service of such a hero as yourself." hearing this, dyjhicon ceased trembling, and said: "very well, let it be as you say." they took him to the castle with great pomp and served to him a grand banquet, at which all the seven brothers stood before him, folding their arms upon their breasts and awaiting his permission to sit. dyjhicon was in great alarm, his heart was faint and he had fallen into meditation as to the manner in which he might free himself from this perplexing situation. the seven brothers thought that he was not only a very brave hero, but was also such a great sage, that he did not care even to look at their faces. they began to cough in a low voice to draw his attention. on account of his internal fear dyjhicon suddenly shook his head. the seven brothers took this as a permission to sit. after the banquet they said to him: "my lord, where have you left your horse, arms and servants? will you command us to go and bring them?" "horse and arms are necessary for timid men," said dyjhicon; "i have never had need of them. i use horse and arms only when i fight a great battle. as to servants, i never need them; all men are my servants. you see, i have come so far having only a cow and my stick. dyjhicon is my name; i have killed seven by one stroke of the hand." their esteem and admiration for dyjhicon increased every day, and at last they were so much fascinated by his alleged bravery that they gave him in marriage their only sister, who was a very beautiful maiden. dyjhicon knew that he was unworthy, but he could not refuse this gift. "eh!" he said, "i will do you the favor of marrying her since you entreat me so earnestly." they brought costly garments, and putting them on dyjhicon, made him a handsome bridegroom. they had a splendid wedding festival which was reported in all neighboring countries. the four princes of the neighboring countries had asked the hand of the maiden in marriage, and all of them had been refused. now hearing that the maiden was given in marriage to a stranger, the four princes waged war against the seven brothers. dyjhicon, hearing this, was stricken with fear, and longed that the earth might open its mouth and swallow him. he thought to run away, but there were no means of escaping. while he indulged in these sad meditations, the seven brothers came, and bowing down before him, said: "what is your order, my lord? will you go fight yourself, or will you have us go first?" this caused dyjhicon's heart to melt. he began to tremble in his whole body, and to strike his teeth one against another. the seven brothers thought that it was because of his violent rage, and that in his fury he would destroy whole armies. "my lord," they said, finally, "let us seven brothers go fight them at first, and if we find them hard to conquer we will send you word, that you may come to our assistance." "well, well; do so," answered dyjhicon, somewhat relieved. they went and began the battle. their neighboring peoples were in constant terror of the seven brothers, who were famous as brave fighters. now that they had also a brother-in-law who could kill seven men by one stroke of the hand, their foes were the more afraid of them. but this time the men of the four princes were united, and they fought with unusual zeal and determination. this caused the seven brothers to retreat a little, and they sent to brother dyjhicon, saying: "we are in trouble; come to our assistance." a fast horse and magnificent arms awaited him. he began to curse the day when he came to that house. but what could he do now? at last he decided to go to the battle-field, cast himself against the swords of the enemy and die; death was preferable to such a disgraceful life. as soon as he mounted the horse, the beast who knew that the rider was inexperienced, ran away like a winged eagle. dyjhicon could not stop or manage it. the seven brothers thought he was so brave that he left the horse free in order to reach and slaughter the enemy. the horse broke into the line of the enemy, who began to fly, saying: "who can stand before this great hero?" in their hurry to retreat they began to slaughter one another. dyjhicon, who had never been on horseback before, was so much afraid that he thought he was already lost. as the horse was running through the forest, he threw his arms around an oak tree and embraced it, letting the horse go from under him. the tree happened to be rotten and was rooted out when he took hold of it. this caused a great panic among the enemy, who ran away exclaiming: "aha! he has pulled up by the roots an enormous oak, and now he means to batter us into pieces with it. who can stand before this strong warrior?" so crying as they ran away, they slaughtered one another. thereupon, the seven brothers came and embracing the feet of their heroic brother-in-law, exclaimed: "what magnificent courage! what a great victory!" with these words they brought dyjhicon home with great pomp and glory. the four princes who waged the war, being greatly humiliated, sued for reconciliation, and in order to gain dyjhicon's favor, each of them sent him as a present one thousand ewes with their lambs, ten mares with their colts, and other costly offerings. thus the greatest coward became the greatest hero. zoolvisia once upon a time there was a king who was very fond of hunting. he had extensive forests full of all kinds of game. but at the farthest boundaries of his dominions was a strip of land, surrounded by steep hills, which the people of the country considered enchanted ground, because none who had gone thither for the purpose of hunting had ever returned. one day the king said to his noblemen: "let us go and see what is there." his men asked him to be advised and not to go. but the king insisted; they started upon the fatal journey and never came back. the king had two sons, the eldest of whom succeeded him. one day the younger brother said to the new king: "i will go and revenge my father's death." the king tried to dissuade him, but all in vain; the lad insisted. he had some very faithful servants who said they would accompany him, and they all set out upon the perilous journey. as soon as they entered the enchanted ground they saw a beautiful antelope running before them. they began to chase the animal, which seemed to mock them with its graceful bounds over the bushes and rocks. they continued chasing it until late in the day, when they came to a thick forest surrounded by steep rocks. the antelope leaped over the rocks and disappeared in the forest. but the hunters' horses could go no farther, and they all dismounted. they were surprised to find an elegant tent pitched among the trees beside a fountain of pure water. entering the tent, they saw a table spread with all kinds of delicious foods. they were very hungry and began to devour the food with ravenous appetites; after that they quenched their thirst from the crystal waters of the fountain. but the lad never tasted the food or the water; he thought to himself that there must be some deviltry at the bottom of this banquet. while his men gave themselves up to eating and drinking, the lad occupied himself in examining the neighborhood. to his great terror he saw not far from the tent a heap of human skeletons bleached and showing their grinning teeth. what could these be if not the bones of those who, from time to time, had come to hunt in that enchanted ground and been lost? among these, perchance, were the bones of his own father. how could he have been killed? with these thoughts he came back to the tent, and to his great horror and grief saw that some of his men were already dead and others were breathing their last. he wished to help them, but in vain; they were soon as dead as stones. he could plainly see the cause; both the food and the water were poisoned. he now understood how all human beings who hunted in this region were done away with and heaped up on the pile of skeletons. but who was the perpetrator of this devilish crime? his blood began to boil, and he determined to do battle with the perpetrator whether human being, fairy or demon, until he had revenged the victims of this diabolical plot. he was buried in this meditation when he heard the footsteps of approaching horsemen, and he immediately withdrew to the depths of the forest, bound his horse to a sycamore tree, and concealed himself behind the bushes, whence he could see the tent and the neighborhood without himself being perceived. soon a number of horsemen arrived, who appeared to be greatly pleased at seeing the dead men, and at once began to strip them of their clothes. they loaded each man's property upon his own horse, and prepared to drive the horses away. one of the riders, who no doubt was their leader, wore a complete suit of white armor, had locks of long hair and a graceful countenance, feminine in its beauty. the lad who was watching them closely, took aim with his bow and arrow and was just about to shoot the leader in the forehead, when he suddenly stopped. "that is a woman," he said to himself. "i will not shoot at a woman." at once he jumped out from the place of his concealment and standing before the leader exclaimed: "are you a human being, a fairy or a demon? disclose yourself. to lead people astray and to destroy human life by poison are not the deeds of heroes. come, let me measure swords with you." these words of the lad at first called forth expressions of rage upon the countenance of the leader. but the next second the natural feminine grace again bloomed upon her cheeks, and she answered with a sweet musical voice, the sweetest that ever fell upon a human ear: "youth, i spare your life provided that your heart is as brave as your words. zoolvisia is my name. if you want to show your courage before me, you must come where i live." and she spurred her horse, and galloping disappeared behind the trees and rocks. the lad stood stone-still as if struck by lightning. the beauty of the horsewoman had charmed him; her face was of light, her hair of gold, her horse of lightning. was she a maiden? "zoolvisia! zoolvisia!" the lad exclaimed suddenly, "i will find you." and at once he mounted his horse and started in the direction whither zoolvisia and her followers had gone. it was late in the evening, the sun having long before disappeared behind the horizon. after groping his way in the darkness for a while, he saw a light gleaming at a distance and turned his horse in that direction. when he arrived he saw a cave where a fairy woman was kneading dough. "the goodness of the hour upon you, mother!" said the lad. "heaven bless you, son!" said the old dame. "neither the snake on its belly, nor the bird with its wing could come here; why did you venture to come?" "your love brought me hither, mother," answered the lad. the fairy woman was pleased with the lad, and said to him: "the seven fairies, my sons, have just gone out a-hunting; they hunt all night long and come back in the morning. if they find you here they will devour you. let me hide you." so speaking, she hid the lad in a hole near the cave. at daybreak the seven fairies returned, and smelling a human being, exclaimed: "o mother! last night you ate a human being; have you not kept at least some bones for us to pick?" "i have eaten no human being," said their mother; "but my nephew, the son of a human sister, has come to visit us." "where is he, mother? we want to see our human cousin," said the fairies. the old woman brought the lad out from the hole and presented him to the fairies, who were much pleased with him and asked him the reason for his journey. the lad said that he was going after zoolvisia. "zoolvisia!" exclaimed the seven brothers. "be advised, cousin, do not go. this is a most dangerous journey. zoolvisia is a cruel tyrant. no human being who has ever undertaken this journey, has returned. come, cousin, stay with us; be our elder brother, we your subordinates, and let us live together in happiness." "no," said the lad, "let come what may; i will go." thereupon he gave the seven brothers a pair of scissors, saying: "when you see blood dripping from the scissors, know that i am in danger and come to my rescue." and he took leave of his adopted cousins. on his way he came to another cave where seven fairies lived with their mother, the sister of the former fairy woman, who accepted him as their cousin and tried to dissuade him from going. he gave to them a looking-glass, saying: "when you see the glass covered with sweat, know that i am in trouble, and hasten to my rescue." then he came to a third abode, where seven fairies lived with their mother, who was a sister of the former two. they also accepted him as cousin, and sought to dissuade him from going. he gave them a razor, saying: "when you see drops of blood falling from the edge of this razor, know that my life is in danger, and run to my rescue." departing on his way he met an old monk in a cottage, who also tried to dissuade him; but as the lad insisted, the monk said: "let me advise you; zoolvisia is the most beautiful maiden in the world. she is a princess endowed from above with a talisman. she has forty maids under her command who play the part of amazons. she goes up to the top of the tower of her castle every morning at daybreak, dressed in her robe of pearls. thence she gazes all about her realm, to see whether human beings or genii have trespassed upon her boundaries. three times she cries out with a loud voice, and all who have been on her ground, on hearing her voice immediately drop dead as if struck by lightning. it is she who, taking the shape of an antelope, leads hunters astray and destroys them by poisonous food and water. now, do as i advise you. as soon as you reach the vicinity of her castle, set up a stick and put on it your cloak and cap, and dig a trench in the neighborhood and conceal yourself, at the same time sealing both your ears with beeswax, so that no sound can penetrate them. at the beginning of daybreak watch her on the top of the tower. do not stir at her first nor second call, but as soon as her third call is ended, jump up from your place of concealment and stand before her. by this means you will break her talisman, and subdue her." the lad thanked the old monk, and continuing his journey soon saw, at a distance, zoolvisia's magnificent castle decorated with gold and jewels. he did just as the monk had advised him, and at zoolvisia's third call jumped up and stood before her gazing at her. zoolvisia recognized him, and said: "you have overcome me; you are brave and a real hero worthy of me. no one except you has ever heard my voice and lived. now my talisman is broken, and i have become a mere woman. come in, hero, i and my forty maids will serve you." the lad's heart began to yearn. all the hatred he cherished toward her who had perpetrated such terrible crimes had vanished. he had fallen in love with her, and zoolvisia on her part loved the lad. she let the rich locks of her golden hair hang down from the window. the lad approached, took hold of them and kissed them, and lo! he was drawn up to the castle by them. they accepted one another as husband and wife, and celebrated their wedding for forty days and nights. the forty maids served them. at the end of forty days zoolvisia presented to the lad her horse of lightning. the animal seemed to be greatly pleased with his new master. the lad mounted the steed and prepared to go hunting when zoolvisia gave him as a keepsake one of the locks of her hair in a pearl box. so the lad continued to hunt every day. one day, as he was chasing a deer on the precipitous borders of the river, the pearl box fell into the water and disappeared. the lad was sorry, but he could not help it, and came home without it. the pearl box was carried by the current of the river to the country of the king of the east, where the king's fishermen drew it from the water and took it to their master. the king, opening the box, was surprised to see the lock of golden hair. he called his noblemen and peers in council, and placing the box before them, said: "you must tell me whose hair this is. if you do not give me an answer in three days i will cut off your heads." "long live the king!" answered the men. "in three days we will bring you word." forthwith they sat in council and asked the advice of all the learned men and magicians of the country, but in vain; they could not solve the riddle within the three days. on the third day, a witch hearing of the case, came to the king's noblemen, saying: "i can tell you what it is, but what will you give me?" "if you save our heads," said the noblemen, "every one of us will give you a handful of gold coins." the witch consented, took the gold and told them of zoolvisia and her golden hair. the men told the king what they had heard from the witch, at the same time boasting that it was they who solved the riddle. "well, then," said the king, "i wish you to bring me zoolvisia. i desire to marry her. i give you forty days' grace; if you do not bring her by that time i will cut off your heads." the men at once went to the witch, saying: "witch, it is only you who can accomplish this and save our heads. we will give you whatever you demand if you will bring zoolvisia." the witch promised. immediately she caught a score of snakes, and putting them in a large pitcher, corked its mouth. she then made a whip of a great black snake, and mounting upon the pitcher, gave it three blows. thereupon the pitcher began to fly through the sky as if it had wings, with the witch on its back. soon she came to zoolvisia's garden, and hiding the pitcher under the weeds, she went and sat on the roadside where the lad would pass on his way from hunting. she had intentionally put on her torn dress, and her worn and dusty shoes. in the evening, the lad seeing her, asked her who she was and how she had come there. "o son!" the witch exclaimed with a pitiful voice, "may heaven bless you! i am a pilgrim to jerusalem. i missed the caravan and went astray; seeing your house at a distance, i came to take rest. for heaven's sake, give me bread and water, and let me lodge with your dog at your gate." the lad had compassion on her and took her on the back of his horse. but the wise animal knew by instinct that she was a wicked woman, and standing on his hind legs, caused her to fall down. "i will follow slowly, son," said the witch. "do you go ahead with your horse." zoolvisia, hearing that the lad had brought an old woman, said: "don't let her enter our house; she may be a witch and bring calamity upon us." the lad gave orders to the maids to keep the old woman apart and not let her appear before zoolvisia. but the witch was clever, and soon won the favor of the maids, who praised her before their mistress and asked her for the sake of merriment to summon her to her presence, at least once. she consented, and the witch was brought before her. the witch had a thousand and one ways of winning a young woman, and she soon became a great favorite with zoolvisia, who could not spend an hour without her. one day she said to zoolvisia: "blessed are you that have for a husband such a hero, who encounters and overcomes all, and himself is never destroyed. he discovered your secret, broke your talisman, and won your love. of course you know his secret of bravery. may heaven preserve his life! but can you tell me what his secret is?" "no," answered zoolvisia, "i don't know what his secret is." "what sort of a husband and wife are you?" said the witch, scornfully. "he knows your secret, and you do not know his; and he says he loves you. strange, strange!" these words were enough to excite the curiosity of zoolvisia, who in the evening again and again importuned the lad, until he was induced to tell her that the secret of his bravery was his magic dagger, which he carried in his belt in daytime and put under his pillow at night. as soon as that dagger was taken away, he would lose all his power. with that they exchanged vows that nobody should know the secret, and also they exchanged rings as a sign to be true to one another, even to death. but woman is frail. on the following day zoolvisia told the secret to the witch, adding: "i have told you this to show you how my husband loves me from his heart." but she did not tell her anything in regard to the vows and exchange of rings. on that night the witch, using her craft, caused a heavy sleep to fall on all the inmates of the house. at midnight she entered the lad's room, and taking the magic dagger from under his pillow, threw it from the window into the neighboring pond. then she went to bed and pretended to sleep. in the morning zoolvisia and the maids saw that their master did not rise. they entered the room, and lo! the lad had fallen from his bed and lay benumbed, foaming at the mouth. they called him; but there was no answer. "look under the pillow and see whether the magic dagger is there," exclaimed zoolvisia. they looked, and lo! it had been stolen. then they all began to wail and cry. thereupon the witch came in to see if the lad were really dead. she beat her breast, she beat her knees, she pulled her hair, crying and yelling all the time. then she went out, brought the pitcher to the door of the castle, and re-entered surrounded by scores of snakes, which were hissing with their forked tongues. all were stricken with terror and began to scream and yell. she bade the snakes bite the maidens, who all fell down in a swoon. then she said to zoolvisia: "now you must obey me and come with me, else i will set on you all these snakes, which will bite you and tear you into pieces." zoolvisia was terrified and mute. the witch pushed her down the stairs, and thrusting her into the pitcher, shut its mouth. she then mounted the pitcher, and gave three strokes with the snake whip, which caused it to fly. she alighted in the country of the king of the east, and taking zoolvisia out, gave her to the king's ministers, who paid her with a horse-load of gold. zoolvisia was taken to the king's palace. let us return to the lad. the twenty-one fairies, the lad's adopted cousins, seeing that blood was dripping from the scissors and the razor, and that the looking-glass was covered with sweat, understood that their human kinsman was in danger, and hastened to his rescue. reaching the castle they saw the lad still in a torpor, and the maids covered with snakes. on killing the snakes, all the maids revived, and told the fairies what had happened. they looked everywhere for the dagger, but in vain. in the evening they were all hungry, but there was nothing at home to eat. the fairies, seeing that large fishes were swimming in the pond, dove in and threw the fishes ashore. a great fish being thrown ashore, was divided into two halves, and lo! the magic dagger fell out. the fish had swallowed it. the moment the dagger was put under the lad's pillow he jumped up, washed himself, and was surprised to see that his fairy cousins had come. they told him everything. immediately he ran to the stable. the horse was there, but in a pitiable condition; it had neither eaten nor drunk; it had fallen in the dust. as soon as the animal saw the lad and smelled him it jumped up, neighing. the lad gave it food to eat and water to drink, brushed it clean, and kissing it on the forehead, said: "o my wise horse! you foresaw the calamity by your unerring instinct, for you threw the hag from your back; and lo! what she has brought upon us. now let us go after zoolvisia." the animal, as if understanding what the lad said, neighed and beat the ground with its hoofs, and seemed to say, "yes, let us go; i am ready to go." the lad came back to the castle, gave to the maidens many precious presents, and sent them away free. he gave the castle and the treasures in it to the fairies, himself taking only his saddlebags full of gold coins. he mounted the horse and went down the river until he came to the city of the king of the east. he stopped before the cottage of an old woman on the outskirts of the city and knocked at the door. "have you a night's lodging for me, mother?" asked the lad. "no, master, i have no place for you," answered the dame. "you had better go elsewhere." "here is something for you," said the lad, giving her a handful of gold. "you are the crown of my head, son!" exclaimed the old woman. "i have room both for you and your horse." the lad entered in to lodge. after the meal he asked the old woman in regard to the news in the city, and was told that zoolvisia was in the king's palace, where for thirty-five days there had been a wedding festival, and after five days she would be married to the king. but she had said to the king that she did not wish to marry him, as she was the wife of some one else, and that rather than to be forced to it she would die by drinking poison, which she had ready in her hand. she therefore received nobody. "well, well, mother; that is enough," said the lad. "you keep a secret, don't you?" "oh, better than you desire," answered the old woman. "here is another handful of gold coins," said the lad; "go to the market place and buy a suit of costly garments. put them on, and go and see zoolvisia. take this ring, put it on your finger, and show it to her; then bring me word what she says." the old woman did just as he had told her. the palace servants thought she was the wife of the prime minister, and told zoolvisia that the greatest lady in the realm had come to visit her. "i don't want her, i don't!" cried zoolvisia; "let her not come near me." the old woman did not pay any attention to the words of the servants, who told her that zoolvisia did not want to see her, but pushed on and opened the door of the room where zoolvisia was confined, and held the ring before her eyes. as soon as zoolvisia caught a glance of the ring, she became as tame as a lamb. "you are welcome, kind lady!" she exclaimed, with her sweet voice; "please be seated," and she shut the door. when they were alone she said: "where is the owner of that ring, mother?" "he is a guest in my house," replied the woman, "and is waiting to know your will." "go tell him," said zoolvisia, "to rest for three days. do you immediately go to the king, and say that you have persuaded me to become his wife. let him be of good cheer. on the third day i shall go for recreation to the public garden. it is the business of your guest to do the rest. farewell!" "farewell!" said the old woman, and went directly to the king's apartment, saying proudly that she had persuaded zoolvisia, who early on the third day would go to the public garden for recreation, and when she returned would become his wife. the king was delighted, and gave the old woman costly presents. she came and told her guest all that had happened. early on the third day, as zoolvisia had gone to the public garden with great pomp, the lad came on the back of his horse like a flash of lightning, put his arm about zoolvisia's waist, and in the twinkling of an eye, disappeared. the crowd thought it was a hurricane, and all were stricken with terror. as soon as the king and his men realized the fact that she had been taken away, they mounted their horses and started in pursuit of the unknown horseman. the lad, having put zoolvisia in a safe place, came back with his horse of lightning, killed the king and his favorites with his magic dagger, and told the crowd in the public garden who he was. the people, who were tired of their tyrannical king, prayed that he would become their king and zoolvisia their queen. the lad went and brought zoolvisia back. a crowd conducted them with great pomp to the throne, where they are still reigning as king and queen. three apples fell from heaven; one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. dragon-child and sun-child. there was once a king who had no children, and whose life was very desolate. he asked the advice of all the doctors and learned men of his realm to relieve him of his trouble, but it was of no avail. in order to forget his dejected condition, he gave his time to hunting. one day, as he was walking in the forest he saw a snake coiled in the sun, surrounded by its little ones. for a long time he gazed wistfully at this family circle, and recognizing that his condition was inferior to that of the reptile parent, he sighed deeply and complained against heaven, saying: "o heaven! have i not so much value before you as this reptile, that you torment me by denying to me offspring and happiness?" he never forgot the sight of this snake-family. one day a child came to the palace, but it was a monster, half man and half dragon. now the grief of the king was heavier than before. they could not kill the monster because it was of royal birth. they therefore cast the dragon-child into a dry well, where they fed him by giving him a skinful of goat's milk every day. soon the dragon-child grew and required meat for his diet. then they cast to him, every week, a tender girl; and when he grew older, they gave him a maiden to devour. every house of the land furnished a maiden for the dragon-child. it came the turn of a poor man who, being a widower, had a daughter from his former wife, and had married a widow who had a daughter of her own. the husband said that they must cast the wife's daughter to the dragon-child, but his wife insisted that they must cast the husband's daughter. the woman's will was followed and so the stepmother prepared her stepdaughter to be cast to the dragon-child on the following day. the maiden was very beautiful and graceful. she wept all night and prayed god to pity her. at midnight she heard some one speak to her in her dreams, saying: "maiden, do not fear being cast to the dragon-child. tell your father to send with you three skinfuls of the milk of a black goat, and do you provide a knife for yourself. let your father wrap you in a bull's skin and lower you and the milk by a rope into the well. when the dragon-child bids you come out from the bull's skin in order that he may devour you, tell him to come out from the dragon's skin, that you may bathe him with milk. when he comes out, do you also cut the bull's skin with your knife and come out of the skin and bathe him." on the following morning the maiden told her dream to her father, who got the required things ready, at the same time praying heaven that what the maiden had dreamed might come true. the maiden being lowered into the well, the dragon-child bade her come out of the bull's skin; to which the maiden answered as she was advised. thereupon in its fury, the dragon's skin burst, and lo! there issued from it a handsome lad. the maiden cut the bull's skin with her knife, in a hurry to emerge, but in her haste she fell down, and one of her front teeth was broken. she bathed the lad with goat's milk and he became a sound, gallant youth, who at once expressed his gratitude to her for releasing him from his horrible bondage. just then the maiden's father came to the mouth of the well, to see whether her dream was true or false, and perceiving them, ran to inform the king, who hastened to the spot accompanied by the queen and his peers. they drew the dragon-child and his deliverer from the well with great joy and ceremony. they celebrated a wedding festival for forty days and nights, and the youth and the maiden loved one another and were married. it came to pass, after a time, that on account of a war the dragon-child had to go away from home. when he was about departing he asked his mother not to send his bride away, not even to her father's, lest some misfortune should befall her. the queen promised. but a thousand devils had entered the heart of the bride's stepmother, who was jealous of her good luck. she came and invited the bride to their house, saying that both she and her husband were longing to see her. when this was refused she sent her husband, who urgently entreated the queen to send his daughter to his house at least for one day. the queen thought there could be no harm in this, and so she let the bride go. the stepmother took her daughter and the bride for a walk on the seashore. when they came there she said to them: "daughters, let us bathe." they entered the sea to bathe. the wicked woman, pretending to help the bride, took her toward the deep sea, where she gave her a violent push and she was caught by the waves and was drawn by the current out to the open sea. when she was sure that the bride had been drowned, she hastened to the shore with her own daughter, and putting the bride's dress on the latter, sent her to the king's palace as the true bride. let us turn to the fortunes of the maiden in the sea. for a long time she struggled against the violent waves, and was saved from being drowned by catching hold of an empty cask which happened to float near her. the wind blew from the shore, and the current carried the cask and the maiden away to the open sea. for three days and nights she floated with the cask, and then she was cast upon an uninhabited shore. she walked for a time on the coast, but saw no sign of a human being. she was hungry, naked and very tired. the first thing she did was to gather rushes and moss and weave for herself something like an apron to hide her nakedness. she then gathered wild berries and ate, and quenched her thirst from a brook nearby. while she was lingering on the banks of the brook she noticed a small hut hidden among the bullrushes and weeds. proceeding thither, she looked in, and lo! a lad was sleeping in the hut. she sat down near the door of the hut. soon after sunset the lad awoke, and as he was coming out of the hut, he noticed the maiden. thinking that she was a fairy or a demon, he made upon his face the sign of the cross, at the same time stepping backward. but to his surprise, seeing that she did not vanish, he said to her: "are you a fairy, a demon or a human being? disclose yourself." the maiden told him her story. "my own story is as strange as yours," then said the lad. "i was the only son of a rich man and had plenty to spend and enjoy. i led a dissipated life and went hunting every day. once it happened that i did not shoot any game for three days in succession. i was enraged to the verge of madness, and wandered all the night. at daybreak my madness reached its climax, and i resolved to shoot the sun and drop him dead from his orb that darkness might cover the world, since i could take no game and have no pleasure. at once i grasped my bow and arrow, took aim at the sun, who had just lifted his shining face from behind the hills, and had hardly loosed the bowstring when i felt a blazing palm slap me in the face; a hand of fire took hold of my hair and cast me into this wilderness, and i heard an angry voice thundering at me from the overhanging clouds, declaring that i was cursed and should never see the light of the sun any more. i thus remain abandoned here, and sleep in the hut all the day while the sun shines, and go out only at night to procure food. if i go out of this hut after daybreak i am doomed to die a horrible death." as fate had so strangely cast these two youthful beings into the same lonely place, they decided to live together, accepting one another as husband and wife. thus she who had been the consort of the dragon-child was now the companion of the sun-child. the woman worked in the daytime, and the man at night, and so they earned their living. but soon married life brought a change upon the woman, who needed the help of others, and they decided that she must go to the parents of the sun-child. the lad wrote the following letter to his parents: "i herewith send you your daughter-in-law; keep her and take care of her as my wife. but do not seek me; i cannot see the sun, i cannot come home, neither can i enter the city. if i do come i shall surely die; i am cursed." walking during the nights, and hiding himself in caves in daytime, the lad brought his wife to the vicinity of his parents' house, and himself went back to his lonely hut. the woman gave the letter to her father-in-law, and was accepted. the lad's father and mother hearing that their son was alive, said they would go and bring him, but the bride dissuaded them, saying that they would be the means of his death. in the fullness of time the family was cheered by the birth of a son, which the young mother put in a cradle and rocked, singing to it melodious lullabies from the incidents of her own life. one night as the young mother was putting her baby to sleep, another voice was heard out in the darkness singing a melodious lullaby. the bride recognized the voice to be that of the sun-child, who had come from such a great distance, being drawn by the love of the baby; but he could not enter. this was repeated several times until the bride's father and mother-in-law heard that somebody was in the habit of coming at night, and singing lullabies by turns with their daughter-in-law. suspicion entered into their minds that the bride might have a lover who was making nightly calls on her. the young woman, seeing that they were watching her with mistrust, said: "it is your son who comes and sings lullabies; the love which he bears to the baby draws him, but he cannot enter; the moment you compel him to come in he dies." "nay, you are lying!" exclaimed her father and mother-in-law with rage; "there must be some foul play here. we will keep watch and catch the nightly visitor; if he proves to be our son, well and good; if not, woe be unto you." that night they kept watch, and when the voice from outside was heard they ran and took hold of the man, and lo! it was their son, who begged them, saying: "for heaven's sake, let me go! if by the time the sun rises i am not hid in my hut, i die. spare my life; i am cursed!" this sounded to his father and mother like deceit, and they kept him at home until daybreak. as soon as the first rays of the sun beamed from the east, lo! the lad sank in the arms of his father and mother, and died. he died, but strange to say, his spirit did not depart from him entirely. they said he would revive at sunset. but not so; at night also he was in the same benumbed state. the house was changed into a house of sorrow; but worse than that befell. he was not dead so that they could bury him and he was not alive so that they might talk with him or administer a remedy. the parents took stones and beat their own heads, they pulled their hair, and sat in ashes and sackcloth. they lamented and wailed, but it was all of no avail. one night the afflicted mother dreamed a dream in which this revelation was made to her: "get up, put on iron sandals, take in your hand an iron rod and travel toward the west, until your sandals are worn and your rod is broken. wherever holes are opened in your sandals and your rod is broken, there you will find a remedy for your son." there is no limit to a mother's love and pity. as soon as she awoke in the morning she ordered the blacksmith to make her a pair of iron sandals and an iron rod, and she set out toward the west, walking day and night. she traveled through the countries of white men, red men, black men; she passed through the lands of fairies, giants and genii: she went farther than beasts and birds would dare to go; she had gone to the very limits of the earth. there she saw at a distance a palace built of blue marble, whither she proceeded. before the palace door the iron rod fell from her hand and was broken; she got out her sandals to shake off the dust, and lo! they were worn and there was a hole in each. she said to herself: "it is here that i shall find a remedy for my son!" she entered and passed through twelve courtyards in succession. each courtyard was surrounded by four arches, where thousands of myriads of stars were sleeping. at the center of each courtyard there was a marble pond with a stream of crystal water gushing from an orifice. there were no trees, no grass, no birds, no beasts, and no other creature. a deep silence was reigning everywhere. upon the pond in the middle courtyard there were four golden arches, upon which there was a golden room of great splendor with a pearl bed in the center. near the window there was, sitting upon a golden throne, a queen so fair and beautiful, that no human being can describe her loveliness. from head to foot she was covered with diamonds and her face beamed with rays of light. at sight of this grandeur the poor woman was greatly amazed; she turned pale and began to shiver like an autumn leaf before a cold blast from the north. she fell upon her knees, and lifting her hands, was about to speak, when suddenly the queen interrupted her, saying: "human being, heaven has never permitted a member of the human race to enter this palace before. as you are the first mortal who has been allowed to come so far, you must have some valid reason. from your appearance i judge that you are a mother and have some maternal grief. tell it to me; be not afraid." these words of the queen encouraged the woman, who said: "long live the queen! yes, i am a mother, and have traveled so far to ask the life of my only son." and she told her story, to which the queen made answer: "your son was an evil boy. i am a mother myself. the sun is my son, by whose living rays heaven and earth are illumined. your son was so wicked that he wanted to shoot my son, the giver of life to the universe. all kinds of sins may be pardonable to a man, but a sin against the sole source of life is not pardonable. your son was therefore doomed to be deprived of life. he is cursed. he will live, but not live; he will die, but not die." "i am a mother," repeated the woman, "come to beg the life of my son. i have come so far that my iron sandals are worn out, and my iron rod is broken. i would willingly go still further if it were necessary. for the love you bear your son, o queen of this luminous orb, devise a remedy for my grief!" these words served to arouse the compassion of the queen, who replied: "there are very many unworthy children who enjoy life simply because of their virtuous mothers. let it be so with your son, o virtuous woman, who bear such great maternal love in your heart! now, go hide yourself behind yonder stars. the day is growing towards evening and my son will soon be here; if you do not hide yourself you will be burned. the first thing he does after reaching this place is to dive in this pond; then he comes to be nursed from my breast. just then take a bottle full of the water of the pond where he has been washing, and carry it home. as soon as you sprinkle that water upon your son he will be healed." soon the sun came embodied in flames. the stars waked and stood on their feet for a time to salute their mighty king; then they scattered over the surface of the blue dome to twinkle in their respective orbits, because it was night. the sun dove into the pond, and the queen stretching out her hand took him out of the water. she placed him in the bed of pearl and began to nurse him, for the sun, who never wears out, never grows old, is a baby from everlasting to everlasting. the woman came out from her concealment and taking a bottle of water from the pond, quickly retraced her steps. she arrived safely at her home, and sprinkled the water upon her son, who was healed. the report of this most wonderful journey of the woman was published all over the world, and princes and philosophers came from distant countries and from the ends of the earth to see the woman and the sun-child, and to hear of all these wonderful things. among those who came from distant lands was the dragon-child. he had returned safe from the wars and was surprised to find his bride changed, although the two step-sisters very much resembled one another. but as the dragon-child had put a golden tooth in the place of the front tooth of his bride, which was broken in the well, he was able to detect the substitution. upon a strict examination of his mother, he discovered that the bride had been sent to her stepmother's where, as he supposed, she had been gotten rid of, and was replaced by her stepsister. all his efforts to find his lost bride being in vain, the dragon-child had come to see the sun-child and his mother, with the expectation of finding some means for the discovery of his wife. he became a guest in the sun-child's house, and told his story while they were eating supper. the bride, who was serving at the table, smiled and showed her golden tooth. this caused her to be discovered, and the sun-child told how she had come and found him. now as they had partaken of bread together, they had become friends, and agreed to solve the difficulty in a friendly manner. they decided to roast salt meat and make the bride eat it, without letting her drink. each was to take a pitcher of water, and they all were to go riding in the fields. he whom she should ask for a drink must be her husband. they did so, and took a ride in the fields, the wife accompanying them with her child in her arms. she was thirsty, but not wishing to offend any one of them, she kept silent for a time. finally she saw that she would faint and must put an end to the perplexed state. "sun-child! sun-child!" she exclaimed. the sun-child dismounted and prepared to give her a drink. thereupon she exclaimed: "dragon-child! dragon-child!" he also dismounted and prepared to give her a drink. turning to the sun-child, she said: "here, take this child whose father you are; but i am the wedded wife of the dragon-child." and she drank from the dragon-child's pitcher, and went home with him. thus their trouble ended and they attained their wishes. may all who are afflicted find consolation. three apples fell from heaven; one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. mirza. a king, on suspicion of an attempt to usurp the throne, had put his brother in chains and suspended him between heaven and earth. the king was old, and the day of his death being near, he called his three sons, and advised them not to leave the throne empty, lest their uncle should usurp it and put them to death. after giving the young princes other important counsel, the old king died. the oldest son, who succeeded his father on the throne, one day went fowling. the youngest brother, whose name was mirza, remembering their father's advice, immediately leaped up and sat on the throne. in the evening the oldest brother returned and began to scold mirza, saying: "how now, rogue! have you a mind to usurp my throne?" "no, your majesty," replied mirza; "i sat on the throne lest our uncle, finding it empty, should usurp it. but if it displeases you i will not do it again." on the following day the king again went fowling, and the throne was left empty. suddenly a loud jangling of chains was heard, and lo! the uncle, having broken the fetters, descended from the skies and seated himself on the empty throne. forthwith he ordered his men to put the three brothers to death, but his officials interceded and begged the king not to kill his nephews, but to banish them from the country. the king consented, and the three brothers were banished. the lot of the three princes was now to lead a sad, wandering life in the dreary desert. after a long journey, they came to a ruined mill just at the time when the sun was going down. the elder brothers at once dismounted to spend the night in the ruined mill, but mirza implored them not to do so, saying: "brothers, when our father died he advised us that in case our uncle usurped the throne and banished us, we must take heed not to lodge in a ruined mill, not to camp on a green meadow, and not to resort to the black mountain. come, be advised, lest worse trouble befall." "hush, coward!" said the elder brothers, and they prepared to lodge in the mill. the oldest brother said: "let us turn the horses out to pasture, and do you two go to bed; i will keep watch all night." after eating their meal the two younger brothers went to bed, while the oldest began his watch. mirza shut his eyes and pretended to sleep, peeping, however, through his eyelashes to see what his oldest brother was doing. after watching a while the latter was tired, withdrew and went to bed. by the snoring of his brothers, mirza understood that they had fallen into sound sleep. he rose, girded on his magic sword, and taking his bow and arrow, began to walk about and to keep watch. in the middle of the night he saw, at a distance, the gleaming of a light which drew nearer and nearer, and soon, to his terror, he saw a horrible dragon with seven heads, on each of which was an enormous jewel burning like a torch. it approached his brothers and was about to devour them, when mirza took aim and shot all its seven heads with a single arrow. the monster stretched itself on the ground, hissing and wheezing. the lad drew his magic sword, and cutting the dragon to pieces put the seven jewels in his pocket. he spent the rest of the night watching, and toward morning went to bed and pretended to sleep. on the morrow the oldest brother awoke and nudged mirza in the side, saying: "get up, ho! have you not slept enough? i was guarding your repose all night long." all three rose and started upon their journey. they traveled until they came to a green meadow, at the sight of which the two elder brothers dismounted and began to pitch their tents to spend the night, in spite of the entreaties of mirza, who reminded them of the advice of their father to avoid the green meadow. "what a coward you are!" exclaimed the second brother. "you need not be so much afraid; i will keep guard to-night," and dismounting, all three pitched their tents on the green meadow. the second brother kept watch till midnight, and then went to bed. mirza, who was only pretending to sleep, hearing his second brother snore soundly, got up, girded on his magic sword, and taking his bow and arrows, began to keep watch. soon he saw something approaching the tents. as it drew nearer, he could see that it was a terrible giantess, with one of her lips reaching the skies, and the other sweeping the ground. he at once took ambush in a neighboring trench, and aimed an arrow toward her, saying to himself: "if she does no harm to my brothers i will not shoot her." the giantess arrived and was apparently surprised to find three tents, and three horses, but only two men. however, she came to the conclusion that the third human being had been devoured by the wild beasts. she then approached the two sleeping lads and hung a sleep-ring on an ear of each, saying: "sleep now, until i send my seven sons to devour you." mirza followed her until she came to a large rock, which was the gate of an underground cave. she turned the rock over, and entering the cave, exclaimed to her sons: "get up, boys! i have found a good meal for you. go make your repast on the two human beings, and save a portion for me." mirza stood at the cave's entrance with his magic sword, and cut off the head of each giant as they came out one by one. then he entered the cave, and taking hold of the giantess, said: "ugly hag! did you dare to send your sons to devour my brothers! here! share the fate of your younglings." so speaking, he cut her head off too. he came back and found his brothers snoring as before. he took the sleep-rings from their ears, and at daybreak went to bed and feigned sleep. in the morning the second brother jogged mirza, saying: "get up, ho! will you sleep till noon? have a little mercy on me, who have watched all the night." they all rose and mounted their horses. that day they came to the black mountain, where the two elder brothers desired to camp. mirza began again to implore them, saying: "this time, at least, let us follow the advice of our father and not halt on this enchanted ground; let us avoid a third disaster which may perhaps be fatal." "what a coward you are!" exclaimed his brothers. "what danger was there in lodging in the mill or in camping on the green meadows? as it is your turn to watch to-night, you grumble. be silent! we will camp here to-night, and you must keep watch." they pitched their tents, and after a meal, the two elder brothers soon went to bed. mirza girded on his magic sword, took his bow and arrows, and began his watch. the first part of the night was quiet. after midnight he sat down to take a little rest, and on account of his sleeplessness on the two previous nights, he soon fell asleep. when he opened his eyes it was near daybreak. he rose, and to his great dismay he found the fire was out. it was a sign that he had slept and this would disgrace him. he could not start the fire anew because the flint and steel were in the pockets of the other brothers. he ran to the top of the neighboring hill, whence he saw a light gleaming at a distance. he determined to fetch embers from that light, and make his own fire. on the hilltop he met an old man winding a ball of black thread, while another ball of white thread lay near him. "good-day to you, father!" said the lad. "god's blessing rest upon you!" answered the old man. "who are you, and what are these balls?" asked mirza. "i am time," answered the old man; "this black ball signifies the night, which as you see, is near its end. as soon as it finishes, the morning breaks. then i will roll this white ball, which represents the day, down the hill, and it will go on unwrapping until it is noon. i shall then wrap it again, and finish just when it is evening." mirza snatched the black ball from the old man's hand, and rolling it down the hill, unwrapped it, saying: "now, father, wrap it up again. i wish this night to be a little longer, for i have much to do." so saying, he proceeded toward the gleaming light. on arriving he saw that it came from a cave, with a fireplace over which there was a great cauldron with forty handles. the meat of seven oxen was cooking in the cauldron, around which forty giants were lying asleep. the youth approached the fireplace, seized the cauldron, put it down, taking some embers from under, replaced it and started back on his way. it chanced that one of the giants was watching, and saw what the lad did. as soon as mirza disappeared, he woke his brothers and told them what the human being had done. all the forty were surprised, and bit their lips upon hearing this marvelous news in regard to a human being, who had displayed a strength surpassing the united force of the forty brothers. at once they decided to make that human hero their partner; so accordingly they ran after him, and overtaking him, proposed to him to be their brother. the lad consented, and they adopted each other as brothers, exchanging promises to go to one another's assistance in case of need. mirza returned to the camp, and after starting the fire, lay down to take a morning nap. by that time his brothers awakened, and jogged him in the side, saying: "get up! we have been watching this night also, and do you still sleep?" he did not utter a word. they all mounted their horses and went their way until they came to the city of the king of the black mountain, and camped in a meadow outside the city. in the middle of the night as mirza was keeping watch around the camp, he saw giants proceeding toward the palace of the king. coming nearer he perceived that they were his adopted brothers each carrying a large iron nail as long as a man is high. "god speed!" said mirza. "well met!" answered the giants; "come and help us in our enterprise to-night, and here are three golden apples as a present for you. the king has three daughters whom we have been hunting for seven years, but cannot find. we have prepared these three golden apples for their love, but we will give them to you if you help us. we have made these iron nails to use in climbing the walls." mirza's anger began to boil, but he carefully concealed his feeling. "very well," he said, at last, "this very night you will attain your desires, but you must obey me." he walked at their head and the giants followed until they came to the foot of the palace wall. he took the iron nails, and thrusting them into the wall with his thumb, formed a row of steps by which he could ascend to the top of the wall. he then ordered the giants to mount, and as they went up one by one, he cut off their heads with his magic sword, throwing their bodies into a trench on the other side. then cutting off the ears of each, he put them in his pocket, and arranged their heads in a row on the top of the wall. after that he jumped over and entered the palace. in the king's bedchamber he saw a golden candlestick burning at the head of the king's bed, and a silver candlestick burning at the foot. mirza changed the places of the candlesticks, and drank the syrup which was in the golden cup near the king. as he was going out, he saw a dragon coiled around the pillar ready to devour the king. at once he drew his dagger, and stabbed the dragon, nailing it to the pillar. next he took the king's dagger from under his pillow and put it in his belt. then he entered the bedchamber of the three maidens, drank the syrup in their golden cups and placed a golden apple on the pillow of each, thus betrothing the oldest to his oldest brother, the middle one to his middle brother, and the youngest to himself. he also placed on the pillow of the youngest maiden a necklace made of the seven jewels which he had taken by killing the seven-headed dragon in the ruined mill. then he came back to his tent, and at daybreak went to bed. when morning came there was a great tumult among the people of the city, who had seen the heads of the forty giants who had been butchered. informants ran to the king bearing the glad tidings that his forty troublesome enemies had all been killed, that their bodies were lying in the trench and their heads were on the top of the wall. the king, who by that time had discovered what had happened in his palace, was filled with amazement. his peers and subjects came to congratulate him. upon this the king sent out heralds to proclaim that the one who did all these things, whoever he might be, must present himself. not only should he become the son-in-law of the king by marrying the most beautiful of the three maidens, but the king would gladly bestow on him any gift which he might ask. thousands appeared before the king claiming to be the hero, but none could prove it. no man was left in the city who did not make his appearance before the sovereign. then the king bade his men call the strangers who were camping without the walls. mirza feigned sickness, and at first did not go. his two brothers feared that they were to be fined for trampling upon the king's ground, but as soon as they were told wherefore they were called, they began to boast that they had done the heroic deed, yet upon trial they also were turned back in shame. "is there no one else left?" inquired the king. "nobody," answered the attendant, "except a sickly boy lying in the tent of these strangers." "bring him hither," ordered the king. mirza, seeing the king's attendant about to force him to go, rose, and leaping on the back of his horse, made his appearance before the king. he put before him the ears of the forty giants and told the king how he slew them, how he changed the places of the candlesticks, how he stabbed the dragon, and betrothed the king's daughters to his brothers and to himself. he gave to the king the dagger, and drew out from the pillar his own dagger which neither the king nor his peers had been able to withdraw. the king sprang from his throne and kissed mirza on the forehead, exclaiming: "may heaven bless you, worthy hero! you are my beloved son-in-law, and after my death my throne is yours." his brothers bowed down before mirza, saying: "pardon our harshness; hereafter you are our elder brother and we are your subordinates." after that there was a great wedding festival for forty days and forty nights, and the three maidens were given in marriage to the three brothers. at the nuptials, however, the brides said to the bridegrooms: "we are not for you, such frail men as you are. do you think killing forty dwarfish giants a heroic act? not so. we have our lover, upon whose breast roses and lilies grow. if you are men of valor, go fight the roaring giant, our lover; if you can overcome him we are yours, but not until you do so." on the following morning, mirza advised his brothers to keep silent and not reveal their secret, lest they should be the laughing-stock of the people. he took leave of the king, saying that he had an important work to do, and would be absent for two months. he started, and after a long journey came to a white castle. a maiden as beautiful as the moon was sitting in the window working with her needle. seeing the lad, she said to him: "human being, neither the snake on its belly, nor the bird with its wing could come here! how could you venture to come?" "your love brought me hither, fair maiden," answered the lad. "here is food for you," said the maiden, letting down from the window a basket; "eat, and go your way. this castle belongs to the white giant. go away before he comes, lest he devour you." "who are you, fair maiden? who has brought you hither?" inquired the lad. "my father is the king of india. we were three sisters, but the white giant, the red giant, and the black giant stole us and brought us into this lonely country. it has been seven years since i have seen a human being." mirza asked if she knew where the roaring giant lived. "you must pass the lands of the red giant and the black giant before you arrive," said the maiden. "farewell!" said mirza. "farewell!" said the fair maiden, sighing. mirza continued on his way. toward evening he saw the white giant returning from hunting. he detected his presence by the human smell, and seeing mirza, exclaimed: "what luck! i have not tasted human flesh for a long time;" and he assailed mirza, to devour him. "halt!" exclaimed the lad, preparing his bow and arrow. "i shall prove a hard nut for you to crack. my name is mirza. i have so far butchered forty-seven giants; you are the forty-eighth." he shot his arrow, which passed through the giant's heart and nailed him to the ground. drawing his magic sword, he cut off his head, and thrusting it on his sword's point took it to the white castle and called to the maiden: "fair princess, here is the head of the white giant, whom i have sacrificed to your love." the maiden seeing it from the window, ran wild with joy. at once she opened the door of the castle, saying: "enter, and may heaven bless you, who came to deliver me from my bondage!" the lad entered, and that night lodged in the castle. on the morning, when departing, he put on the maiden's finger a ring, saying: "now you are the betrothed of my oldest brother. after fighting the other giants i will come back and carry you with me." and he took leave of her. after a long journey he came to a black castle with a beautiful maiden sitting in the window, who gave him refreshment as the former had done. leaving her, he met the black giant, and killing him as he had the former one, brought his head to the maiden. he spent the night there, and on the following morning, putting a ring on the finger of the maiden, betrothed her to his second brother. another long journey brought him to a red castle. a maiden as beautiful as the sun was sitting in the window and working with her needle. the lad at first glance fell in love with her. she also had fallen in love with him at first sight, and said to him: "human being, for heaven's sake, beware of the red giant!" "i have come on purpose to fight with him, fair creature," answered the lad. "i have already killed the white giant and the black giant and freed your sisters." "but the red giant is a sorcerer," said the maiden, "and when brought to bay, changes himself into a mound of earth, with a hole at the top, whence he pours out smoke and flames, and devours everyone who ventures to go near." he had hardly departed from the maiden, when lo! the red giant appeared, brandishing his terrible mace. "aha!" exclaimed the giant, seeing the lad, "a delicious morsel indeed is this which has come to me of its own free will." "nay, come, let us fight," said the lad, "and see who shall be the morsel, i or you!" and he prepared his bow and arrow. "dwarfish human being!" exclaimed the giant, "how can you oppose me?" saying this, he threw his mace at the lad, who took hold of it, exclaiming: "i have killed forty-nine giants, your white and black brothers included. mirza is my name; do you think you will escape from my hand?" when the giant heard that this was mirza, the terror of the giants, he was so frightened that he at once changed himself into a red mound with smoke and flames shooting out from the hole in its top. immediately the lad jumped on the mound, drew his magic sword and thrusting it into the smoking hole, began quickly to stir it until the heart and intestines of the giant were cut to pieces and were thrown out of the orifice. the youth then jumped down, and lo! the mound fell and was ruined. mirza then went back to the red castle and called to the maiden. "fair princess," he said, showing her his sword dyed with blood and the pieces of the giant's heart and intestines still clinging to it, "i have sacrificed the red giant to your love." the maiden was almost wild with joy. she opened the door, and embracing mirza's feet, exclaimed: "hero! you have saved me; i owe you my life and all my being. i am still a virgin, and though unworthy to be your wife, for heaven's sake accept me as your handmaid!" "nay, fair maiden, you are my love, you are my betrothed if you do love me," said the lad, putting a ring on her finger. then the lad asked her concerning the place where lived the roaring giant. "be advised, do not go," said the maiden. "the roaring giant is a cruel tyrant; you will not come back alive; do not go. he is vulnerable only by his own bow and arrows, and who shall give them to you that you may shoot him with them? it is impossible. for the sake of the love you bear to me, do not go, or take me with you that i may die with you," and the maiden began to sob. "nay, love, do not cry," said the lad, "i must go at any risk." and he started. after a long journey he came to a magnificent castle decorated with gold and jewels. it was the castle of the roaring giant. it was toward evening when the lad arrived. at once he took the shape of a servant, sprinkled water about the palace, swept all clean, and hid himself behind the trees and bushes. soon a noise like that of thunder was heard, from the distant mountains. it was the roaring giant who was coming from fowling. every bird, every beast of the forest hid itself on hearing the noise of the giant. mirza's hair stood on end, and he felt what a terrible task it was which he had undertaken. the giant, seeing the courtyard round the palace swept and cleaned was pleased, and soliloquized to himself: "this must be the work of a human being; i must find him out; it would be pleasant to have a human servant." and he exclaimed: "where are you, human being? who are you? come out from your hiding place. i will not hurt you, but give you what you desire." mirza leaped out from his place of concealment, and stood before the roaring giant, saying in a humble voice: "my lord, i have lost my companions and gone astray. heaven was kind enough to guide me until i came to your door. will you accept me as your servant?" the giant accepted him, and the lad served so diligently and devotedly that the giant was greatly pleased, and held him in high esteem. one day the giant and the lad entered the flower garden. roses, violets and other flowers of every color and perfume grew there luxuriously. nightingales, birds of paradise, and all kinds of birds and beasts of the forest were there. in the middle of the orchard a fountain gushed out its crystal waters, and formed a pond amid overhanging verdure. it was, throughout, a paradise. "bring those flower pots and put them around this pond," said the giant to the lad. "bring here all kinds of delicious foods, which you have prepared. every day this week we shall have company, and we must prepare for them." the lad made the necessary preparations meditating to himself that the expected guests were no doubt the three sisters, the wives of himself and his brothers. near the pond there was a tree on which the giant had hung his bow and arrows. the lad took them down. "halloo! what are you doing?" exclaimed the giant. "master, i wish to take the cloth and clean them," answered the lad. soon the arrow fell down. "bring it to me," said the giant, and putting the arrow in the bow handed it over to the lad. he took it and went backward as if to hang it up. he had scarcely come to the tree, when he turned to the giant and took aim at his heart. "alas!" exclaimed the giant. "nay, i have come expressly to take your life," said mirza. "i am mirza. i have killed fifty giants; you are the fifty-first." whiz! and the arrow was flung and pierced the roaring giant through the heart and nailed him to the ground. he uttered his last roar, and then lay dead as a stone. the lad thereupon hid himself behind a tree near the pond to see what might happen. soon three turtledoves came from the sky flapping their wings and perched gently on the border of the pond. at once they dove into the water and were changed into three maidens. the lad saw that they were his own wife and the wives of his brothers. he kept silent and did not stir. the maidens, putting on the human dresses which they had brought with them, went to embrace the roaring giant, who they supposed was asleep. but seeing him nailed to the ground with an arrow through his heart and dead, they were horror-stricken. they ran back to the pond, and undressing themselves, leaped into the water. just at that time, mirza came up and stood on the brink of the pond. "for shame!" he exclaimed. "how now! did you see your lover? did you enjoy the roses and the lilies growing on his breast?" they were horror-stricken and mute, hiding their faces with their hands. mirza cut pieces from the skirts of their dresses, and let them go. they were turned to turtledoves, and flew away with drooping wings. thereupon mirza entering the palace of the roaring giant, gathered all the riches and loaded them on forty camels. he then went and took the three princesses whom he had betrothed to himself and his brothers, also the wealth of the red, black and white giants. then he drove back and came again to the city of the king of the black mountain. the king hearing that mirza had come, bringing inestimable wealth, hastened to meet him at the city gate, all his noblemen and peers accompanying him. as soon as they met, mirza said to the king: "i cannot talk with you until you convoke a meeting of all the noblemen and wise men of your realm to try your three daughters." "what!" said the king, "is it not a shame to bring maidens to trial?" "nay," said the lad, "your daughters are false, and shameless; they must be tried and punished as an example to the womanhood of the realm. if you do not call a meeting as i have requested, i will leave you and go elsewhere." now the king loved mirza as his very life, and could not part with him. so he gave the order and all the peers and wise men of his realm were summoned to a parliament. the three maidens were brought before the court. mirza recited his adventures, and placed before the court the pieces which he had cut from the dresses of the maidens. on being put in their respective places they fitted. thus everything being proved, the maidens could not deny it. the court gave its decision, which the king sanctioned. thereupon the three daughters of the king were bound by their hair to the tails of three wild horses, which were whipped up and carried them away to the wilderness, dashing them from stone to stone until they were cut into pieces. then the king adopted the three princesses whom mirza had brought with him. a wedding festival for forty days and nights was celebrated, and the three maidens were given in marriage to the three brothers. three apples fell from heaven; one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. the magic ring. long ago there was an old woman who had a son. she always advised him not to cause injury to any man, and not to torture or kill any animal or beast, no matter how despised it might be. they were very poor. the lad went to the forest every day, and brought a bundle of wood on his back. he sold it for twopence and bought bread for his aged mother and himself. one day he saw that the village boys were torturing a kitten and taking pleasure in its cries. "why do you torture the poor animal?" said the lad to the boys; "let it go." "give us your pennies, and we will let it go," said the boys. he at once gave them the twopence which he had earned that day by selling his wood, and took the kitten home with him. both mother and son went to bed hungry that night. on the following day he took the kitten with him to the forest, and that evening the bundle of wood was sold at fourpence. he paid twopence for bread, and putting the other twopence in his pocket was returning home, when he met the village boys who were this time torturing a mouse. the lad gave his twopence to the boys, and took the mouse home with him. on the third day he saved a whelp of a dog and brought it home. on the fourth day he saved a little snake, and putting it in a jug, kept it at home. on the following day he took all the animals and went to the forest to cut wood. at noon he sat at a fountain to eat his lunch, and gave a share of it to the animals. he took the snake out of the jug and let it go, but the reptile would not leave him. he then gave it a piece of bread. as soon as it bit the bread, lo! it was changed into a pretty boy, and said to the lad: "i am the son of the king of india; magicians stole me and changed me into a snake. the enchantment was such that the moment a human being gave me bread to eat with his own hand, i should again change into a boy. i escaped from the hands of the magicians, and came to the village for the purpose of biting a piece of bread from a human hand, but the village urchins found me and were about to kill me when you saved me. i owe you my life and my freedom from the magician's spell. now let me advise you. when i go home to my father he will be so happy to see me that he will wish to reward you with the most precious things in his kingdom. but when he asks you to demand something from him, be careful and request only the ring which he has on his finger. it is a magic ring, and the moment you turn its jewel upside-down two genii will wait on you to do your will, and will bring for you anything that you may desire." the lad accompanied the boy to the court of the king of india, who was so glad at the sight of his child that he was almost beside himself with joy. the boy told his father all that had happened, and presented the lad as the deliverer of his life. "ask of me what you will," said the king to the lad, "you have saved the heir apparent, and i will give you whatever you demand, even to the half of my kingdom." "long live the king!" said the lad. "i desire only the ring on your finger." "a plague upon him who advised you!" said the king; "you have demanded the costliest thing i have. but as i have promised i must give it to you." so saying he gave the ring to the lad, and ordered his saddlebags to be filled with gold. the lad came back to his aged mother and told her what had happened. "well then, son," said the old woman, "let me go and ask our king to give you his daughter in marriage." the lad consented, and the old woman, after buying for herself a new dress and adorning herself as best she could, went to the court. "what do you want?" said the king. "long live the king!" said the old woman. "i have come to ask you by god's order, to give your daughter in marriage to my son." "good," said the king; "but has your son the equivalent of the dower that i can give to my daughter?" "certainly he has," answered the woman, "how much do you want him to have?" "he must have a treasure full of gold like mine, and a magnificent palace like mine. the road between my palace and his must be covered with a single soft rug, and on both sides shady trees must grow, and under them horsemen ride from one end to the other on horses all milky white. if he can procure these i will give him my daughter in marriage; if not, i will not." the old woman returned and told the lad what the king had said. the lad turned the jewel of the ring, and lo! two genii presented themselves with their hands folded upon their breasts, saying: "tell us your will, and we will do it immediately." the lad ordered them to prepare all that the king had demanded. everything was ready in one night. on the following day the king was greatly pleased with the palace and everything in it, and gave his daughter in marriage. there they lived in happiness until the death of the old woman. but there was a jew who had heard of the magic ring, and he was anxious to get it. he took on the shape of a peddler, and came to the palace at a time when the lad had gone hunting, and there was no one there besides the princess. she opened the door to look at the goods of the peddler. "i peddle nice goods for ladies," said the clever jew; "and in order to give ladies facility, i do not care to sell them for money, but exchange for old jewelry, such as rings and the like. any lady will have some old rings which she can give in return for beautiful goods." "let me see if we have rings at home which i can give you for your goods," said the princess. she went in, and came back with the magic ring, saying: "here, i have found this among my husband's things; i think it will do for you." the jew gave some rubbish in exchange for the precious ring. as soon as he put it on his finger, he turned the jewel, and lo! the two genii stood before him, ready to do his commands. "i wish you to take this palace, with me in it, and carry it to the island of the seven seas, and i wish you to throw the former owner into the unfathomable sea." he had hardly finished his words when the palace, with the princess and the jew, was transported to the island of the seven seas. then the genii seized the lad, and were about to throw him into the bottomless sea, when they took pity on him, he being their former master, and left him in a wilderness on the shore. this was a dreadful change for the youth. he traveled a long way, and at length came to the hut of a fisherman, who accepted him as an apprentice. but let us return to the animals. the dog, the cat and the mouse, seeing what misfortune had come to their master, decided to go to the island of the seven seas, and getting the ring from the jew, take it to their master, whom they knew by instinct to have become the apprentice of a fisherman. they immediately started and soon came to the sea. the dog entered the water, the cat took her seat on his neck, while the mouse rode on the cat's back. the dog began to swim, and proved to be an expert in the art. "we hope our weight will not cause you to sink brother dog," said the cat and the mouse. "pshaw!" said the dog, proudly, "you are as light as a feather, and speak of sinking me! nay, be careful not to be blown away from my back by the wind of my respiration." and out of his mouth he hung his long tongue. so swimming, at last they came to the island of the seven seas, where they saw their master's palace. it was night. the dog stood at the bottom of the wall while the cat with the mouse on her back climbed up until they came to the window. but as it was closed it was now the turn of the mouse to do his part. he gnawed the board with his fine teeth and opened a hole large enough for himself to go through. entering, he looked everywhere for the ring, but it could not be found. the jew was asleep. "look at the jew's fingers," whispered the cat from without. but it was not there. "look in his mouth," whispered the cat. the mouse made a careful examination, and lo! the ring was in the jew's mouth. but how to get it? the mouse saw that the jew had put his snuffbox near his bed. he first ran to the cellar, and soaked his tail in vinegar; then coming back he thrust it into the snuffbox. he repeated this several times, until his tail was well stiffened with a coating of vinegar and snuff. he went then to the sleeping jew, and perching upon his beard thrust his tail into his nostril as far as it could go. this caused the jew to sneeze with all his might, and lo! the ring was flung from his mouth. the mouse uttered a shriek of joy, and snatching the ring from the floor, in the twinkling of an eye disappeared through the hole. the jew immediately arose, and lighting a candle began to search for the ring. not finding it, he thought to look for it in the morning, and again went to bed. the mouse and the cat descended the wall to their big-mouthed friend, who was looking at them wistfully. the dog again entered the water, the cat took her place on his back, and the mouse rested on the cat's back. they decided that the ring should be in the cat's mouth. this time they began to swim toward the opposite shore of the sea, where the lad was serving the fisherman. they crossed the seven seas and approached the shore safely. as soon as they saw the land and their master's hut, the dog said to his companions: "i am swimming for you, but you have the ring. you will give it to master, who will praise you; while i, who have worked the hardest, will not receive any credit. not so; you must put the ring in my mouth before we reach the land." "brother dog," said the cat, "now you are tired and see how you keep your mouth open all the time and stretch your tongue out. if we put the ring in your mouth, we are afraid you will drop it into the sea. but as soon as we reach the land, we will give the ring to you, that you may give it to master." "no," said the dog, "you must give it now, or else i will drop you into the sea." he began to shake them, threatening to drown them. the cat, therefore, was obliged to place the ring in the dog's mouth. but he could not keep his mouth shut a single minute. he opened his mouth, stretched his tongue, began to pant, and lo! the ring fell into the sea. they came ashore, but all in great excitement. the mouse and the cat began to beat the dog, who thrust his tail between his hind legs as if to acknowledge his fault, but had to defend himself against the sharp paws of the cat and the fine teeth of the mouse. quarreling and howling and rolling upon the sand, they came to the fisherman's hut. the lad, with his natural kindness to animals, came out to separate the fighters, and lo! they were his own friends. seeing the lad, all three paid him their respects, but again began to fight one another, this time more severely. the youth, seeing that it was impossible to leave them in this way, provided three ropes, and bound them separately. he gave them food and drink, and tried to calm their anger. on the following day he drew out a net full of fishes, and sat down to prepare them for market. among them was a large fish. as soon as the lad seized it, there was excitement among the animals. the dog barked, the cat mewed, and the mouse shrieked, and all three tried to cut their ropes. the lad had hardly cut the fish open when the mouse, having gnawed its rope, ran and plunged into the belly of the fish, and in the twinkling of an eye came out with the magic ring in its mouth, for the fish had swallowed the ring. the mouse jumped upon his master's lap and presented the ring, at sight of which the lad understood why the animals were troubled. he untied them, and kissing the three, expressed his gratitude for their brave enterprise. then he turned the jewel, and lo! the two genii presented themselves. "i want my palace to be restored to its place, myself to be placed in it again, and the jew to be thrown into the bottomless sea," said the lad. he had barely finished his sentence when he found himself and his animal friends in his palace once more, and near him was his wife. the jew was cast into the bottomless sea, where he is sinking everlastingly but never reaches the bottom. thus the wicked one was punished and the virtuous one attained his wishes. may heaven grant that you may all be virtuous and attain your wishes! three apples fell from heaven; one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for the man who entertained the company. the twins. in the springtime a certain king pitched his tent in a flowery meadow tract, among shady trees and near a gurgling brook. there came from the village three sisters, maidens of marriageable age, to gather flowers and edible vegetables. at noon-time they sat down on the bank of the crystal brook, not far from the royal tent, and began to prattle. "if the king takes me in marriage for his eldest son," said the oldest maiden, "i will weave for him a tent so big that it will accommodate all his army, and yet one-half of it will be empty." "if the king takes me in marriage for his second son," said the second maiden, "i will weave for him a rug so big that it will accommodate all his court and the people of his realm, and yet half of it will be left empty." "i will not brag," said the youngest sister; "but if the king takes me in marriage for his youngest son, and if it pleases heaven, i will give birth to twins,--a silver-haired boy and a golden-haired girl." the two older maidens laughed at their young sister and ridiculed her. the king, who was listening to the talk of the maidens from behind the arras, was pleased with them and gave all three in marriage to his three sons. one day he asked of the oldest sister: "where is the tent which you were going to weave?" "it was only vain prattle we sisters were indulging in," said she. "where is your rug?" inquired the king of the second sister. "it was merely idle talk," replied she. "and where are your twins?" asked he of the youngest sister. "if it pleases heaven i will bear them in the fulness of time," replied she. the older sisters became very envious of their younger sister and they vowed to be revenged, for now the love and caresses of the whole court seemed to be bestowed upon her. one night there came to the arms of the youngest sister the promised silver-haired boy and golden-haired girl. the envious sisters immediately took the babies away and put them into a chest which they threw into the river. bringing a pair of puppies, they placed them by the bedside of the young mother. then they went to the young prince and informed him that his beloved wife was mother to the two puppies. the young prince was horror-stricken. the king was mad with rage. he ordered his servants to wrap the young woman in a camel's hide and put her in the corner by the palace door, so that every one who entered the palace might spit in her face, for her base conduct in thus bringing shame upon those who had loved and favored her. the king's order was at once put into execution. it so happened that there was an old man and his wife living in a hut on the banks of the river on the outskirts of the city. the old man used to cast his nets into the river every day and catch two fish, one for himself and one for his wife. on that day he threw his net for fish, and lo! a chest was drawn out. he took it to his hut where he and his wife opening it saw that there was in it a pair of pretty babies. the silver-haired boy had put his thumb into the mouth of the golden-haired girl, and the girl had put her thumb into the mouth of the boy. so they were sucking one another's thumbs and were not crying at all. the aged couple looked upon them with great joy and said: "thank heaven! we were till now without offspring, and lo! heaven has now granted us twins." the old dame washed the babies, and lo! gold and silver fell down from their hair. she said to her husband,-"now, husband, get up and take this gold and silver to the mart and buy for us a cow that we may feed the babies with milk." the old man went, and with that silver and gold bought not only a cow, but a great many other things necessary for the twins, who were brought up with great care and kindness, although in an obscure hut. the children grew rapidly and became a great comfort to the aged couple. the boy grew to be a brave lad and became a hunter, and the girl grew to be a beautiful, intelligent maiden. the aged couple, following the course of the world, died when the children were quite young. the girl had only once heard from the old woman that they were fished from the river in a chest, and that the despised woman in the king's palace door was their mother, whom the king's two daughters-in-law had put in that position by falsehood. after the death of their benefactors, the sister and brother continued to live in the hut. the lad went hunting, and the maiden used to visit the court, for the purpose of seeing their mother; but, following the advice of her deceased godmother, she did not let herself be known, lest mischief should befall herself and her brother. she learned, however, all that was going on in the royal palace. one day the lad hunted for an antelope and found a fine one, which he secured. "this is worthy of the king," said the lad, and took it to the palace. the king was very much pleased. on another day he shot a lion, whose skin he took to the king, who said to him: "good for you, my little hunter! come to-morrow to the palace again; i will praise you before my men." the lad came home and told his sister that he was invited to the palace by the king. "good!" said the maiden; "take this bouquet with you. when you enter the king's palace you will see there, in a corner, a woman wrapped in the hide of a camel, and buried in the dust up to her waist. all who enter the door spit in her face; for my sake, do throw this bunch of roses to her as you pass by her." "all right," said the lad; and on the following day, as he was entering the palace, he threw the bunch of roses to the despised woman. he then entered the king's apartment, where both the king and the courtiers were very much pleased with him. his manly bearing and intelligent conversation were the subject of general admiration. but the king's two daughters-in-law were very much displeased with the little hunter, who threw a bunch of roses to their disgraced sister instead of spitting at her. they thought there was something at the bottom of the lad's conduct, and said to one another: "let us find out some means of getting rid of this urchin, lest our secret should leak out." as they had great influence with the king and the court, they went to the king and said: "long live the king! you see that this lad is an expert hunter; he has brought you a lion's hide; but it shall be useless as long as there is only one. send him to bring a dozen more lions' skins with which to adorn the new palace." the king liked this suggestion and sent the lad to bring him a dozen lions' skins. the lad came home and told his sister, who said to him: "brother, when our godmother died she told me that we had an aunt living somewhere among the rocks of yonder black mountains. in case some difficult task was imposed upon us by the court we might go to our aunt, who would always be glad to help us. so you had better go to her; she will show you how to hunt twelve lions." the lad started towards the black mountains. there, in a deep cavern, he saw an old fairy woman sitting. he ran to her and at once kissed her hand. "halloo!" exclaimed the old dame, "is it you, silver-haired twin?" "aye, auntie, it is i," answered the lad. "and how does your golden-haired sister thrive?" the fairy woman asked. "she humbly kisses both of your hands, auntie," said the lad. "and what have you come for, my boy?" inquired the fairy dame. "the king wants from me a dozen lions' skins," answered the lad. "well then, come and hide you under my apron till your forty cousins come," said the old woman, hiding the lad in the folds of her skirts. soon the forty fairies, the sons of the old dame, came, and smelling the lad, exclaimed: "how now, mother! have you prepared for us a meal of human meat to-day?" "no, sons," answered the dame, "unless you are so cruel as to eat your own human cousin." "where is he, mother?" inquired the forty, "we will not hurt him, but talk to him." the lad came out from under the apron of his fairy aunt. the forty brothers were very much pleased with him and kissed him by turns. then they asked him about his errand, and when the lad told them, they said: "that is nothing, cousin, we will give you twelve lions' skins which we are now using as quilts and replace them with new ones to-morrow." they gave the lad the lions' skins to carry to the king, also a tent as a present to his golden-haired sister. the lad came home, and giving the tent to his sister, took the skins to the king, who was highly pleased with them. but the two women were more uneasy now than ever, and asked the king to send the lad to bring seven pairs of elephants' tusks, in order to decorate the new palace with ivory. the king, not knowing that the intention of the wicked women was to destroy the youth, sent him to bring the ivory. the lad went again to his fairy cousins and told his errand. "cousin," said the forty brothers, "we can bring you seven pairs of elephants' tusks, but you must bring us a saw, and seven horse-loads of seven-year-old wine." the lad went back to the city, and getting the saw and seven skinfuls of old wine, loaded them on seven horses and brought them to the fairies, who took them to the pool which was the elephants' watering-place. they emptied the water from the pool and filled it with wine. at night the elephants came to drink, and not knowing that it was wine, they soon were drunken and fell down senseless. thereupon the fairies cut off their tusks and brought them to the lad. besides this they gave him also a rug as a present for the golden-haired maiden. the lad came home, and giving the rug to his sister, he took the ivory to the king, who was very much pleased with it. but the king's two daughters-in-law were very angry at the lad's success, and went again to the king, saying: "long live the king! the new palace is very nicely decorated with lions' skins and ivory, but it has one deficiency, and that is a beautiful mistress to dwell in it. the king of india's daughter must live there. her beauty is unequalled in the world. and as your youngest son is without a wife, she will be his wife. send the little hunter to bring her." the king was persuaded and sent the lad on the errand. the youth again went to his fairy cousins, who kidnaped and brought the daughter of the king of india safely, and gave her to the lad. they gave to him also a table, which was served by itself, as a present. he fell in love with the maiden at first sight; she also fell in love with the lad. but as he had promised to take her to the king, he did so. the king ordered him to take the maiden to the new palace, and invited the lad who was the hero of so many great deeds to a private banquet at the palace. the two wicked women, seeing that they could not destroy the lad by sending him on difficult errands, were mad with anger. the lad went home and told his sister that the king had invited him for the following day. "brother," said the maiden, "when you go to-morrow to the king's palace, take your hound with you. let it go before you, and you step only wherever it has stepped. and when you eat, first give your dog to eat of the meat. if you see it has not hurt him, you may eat of the meat; but if he dies, be careful not to eat, lest you die also." on the following day the lad did as the maiden had advised him and sent the dog before him. just under the threshold of the door there was a deep pit dug which was discovered by the dog's walking before him, and he avoided it. entering in, he cast the bouquet which his sister had given him to the woman in the dust. and when he was called to the table he gave a piece of the food to the dog, and lo! it died at once. thereupon he withdrew, saying: "i am not hungry to-day. i had my meal before i came." he refused to touch any of the food, in spite of the polite entreaties of the king's two daughters-in-law. then in his interview with the king he asked his majesty to accept his invitation and come to his humble home for dinner, with all the court. the king, who by this time had become very much fascinated with the appearance of the youth, accepted his invitation. in the evening the lad came home and told his sister what had happened. "do you know who digged the pit under the threshold?" asked the maiden. "who?" said the lad. "the king's two daughters-in-law," said the maiden, "in order that you might fall into it and be killed." "but they were so friendly and polite," said the lad. "and do you know why your dog died?" inquired the maiden. "why?" said the lad. "the king's two daughters-in-law had poisoned the food, in order to kill you," said the maiden. "strange!" exclaimed the lad, "what have i done to them?" "and do you know who the woman is who is buried in the dust and to whom you have given bunches of roses while all others spat at her?" asked the maiden. "oh! her lot is most pitiful; for heaven's sake tell me who she is," said the lad. "she is our mother, the one who gave us our existence," said she. "how! how!" exclaimed the lad, impatiently. the maiden told him everything. she also told him that it was their cruel aunts who, wanting to destroy him, had persuaded the king to send him on dangerous errands. then sister and brother planned how to entertain the king on the following day. they at first pitched the tent sent by the fairies, and lo! it was so large that a whole kingdom could be entertained in it. then they stretched the rug, and lo! it was as large as the tent. then they put in the middle of it the wishing-table, which served as much and as many kinds of food as one desires. on the following day the king with all the court and the army came, and seeing the tent the king said to himself: "aha! this is the tent that my oldest daughter-in-law would weave." entering in, he saw the immense rug, and he said to himself: "this is the rug which my second daughter-in-law was boasting about." all his army was entertained and there was still room for as many more people. the king fell into deep meditation and thought there must be something at the bottom of it all. the foods served from the wishing-table were so various and delicious that the king was very much pleased, and at the end of the banquet, while all the crowd was listening, he said to the twins: "ask of me whatever you want, and i will give it to you, even to the half of my kingdom." "is there anything more precious than father and mother?" said the twins; "mighty king, give us our father and mother." "although i am a king," said the king, "do not forget that i am human. is it possible that a human being should give you your lost parents?" "how is it," said the twins, "that you believe that a human being can give birth to dogs, and you do not believe a human being to be able to restore lost parents? if one is true, the other also must be true." a thunderbolt suddenly falling from the sky would not have frightened the king's two daughters-in-law as much as did these words. "what do you mean?" said the king, with a trembling voice. the twins told him their story, at the end of which the lad took off his cap, displaying his silver hair; and the maiden took off her head-dress, letting fall her rich golden locks. thereupon the king embraced his grandchildren, weeping loudly because of great joy. then they embraced the prince, their father, and their dear, wronged mother, who was immediately released from her disgraceful punishment. the king at once ordered the furnace to be heated to seven times the usual heat, and the two wicked women were thrown into the fire. then a wedding was celebrated for forty days and nights and the lad was married to the daughter of the king of india, whom he had brought to the palace. thus heaven rewarded the good and punished the evil. three apples fell from heaven; one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. the idiot. once upon a time there was a man who inherited much wealth from his father, but who led such an irregular and unwise life that in a short time he had spent everything, even to the last penny. then he sat down, folded his arms upon his breast, and sighed as he thought of his unfortunate condition. his father's friends gathered about him to console him. one of them, an old and learned man, said to him: "son, you have offended your luck, who has run away from you. you would better go after your luck; perchance you can find it, and being reconciled with it become, as before, a fortunate man." the man at once set out and traveled mountains and plains in search of his luck. one night he saw in his dreams that his luck was a human being like himself, who had fallen upon his face on the top of a high mountain, sighing and beating his breast all the time, just as he himself had done. on the morrow he got up and continued his journey toward that mountain. on his way he met the fairy lion, sitting upon a mound of earth beside the road. "don't be afraid, human being, proceed," said the lion. and when the man approached, he said: "where are you going?" "i am going to find my luck," said the man. "good!" said the lion, "your luck is very wise; ask him what is the remedy for my disease. i have been an invalid for seven years. if you find the right remedy i will reward you." "very well," said the man, and went on his way. soon he came to a very beautiful orchard full of all kinds of fruits. he picked some of the fruits and began to eat, but lo! they were all bitter. thereupon the gardener came and asked where he was going. "i am going to find my luck," said the man. "please ask your luck," said the gardener, "what is the remedy for my orchard. i grafted my plants, but it was of no use. i cut down the old trees and planted new ones, but neither did this avail. if your luck can devise some remedy, i will reward you bountifully." the man promised to ask his luck, and again went on his way. soon he came to a magnificent palace situated in a garden as beautiful as paradise, whose sole inhabitant was a beautiful maiden. "what man are you?" asked the maiden, seeing the man, "and why have you come?" the man told her his story. "you see," said the maiden, "i have this splendid palace and measureless wealth and property; but i have a grief which grows in my heart day and night, and i spend my life sighing all the time. please ask your luck about me, and if you bring me a device to make me happy, i promise to reward you bountifully." the man promised, and went on his way until he came to the mountain top where his luck had fallen on his face. he described to him his own unfortunate condition, and poured out all his grievances. luck listened to him attentively, and said: "everything may yet be well, seeing that you have come so far in search of me." then the man asked of luck the things he had promised to ask, and received answers. "now will you not come with me?" asked the man. "go first," said luck, "i will come after you." the man returned. on his way back, he first met the maiden, and said: "your grief will disappear, and you shall be happy as soon as you marry a young man of your choice." then he met the gardener, and said: "there is gold-ore in the spring from which flows the water with which you irrigate your orchard. the plants suck up particles of gold, which causes the fruits to be bitter. you must either irrigate your orchard by the water of some other spring, or take away the ore from the present fountain,--then your fruits will be sweet." then he came to the fairy lion and told him how he had seen his luck, and what messages he had brought to the maiden and to the gardener. "and what present did the maiden give you?" asked the lion. "she said," answered the man, "that she had fallen in love with me and proposed to marry me, but i refused." "and what reward did the gardener give you?" asked the lion. "he took the gold ore out of the spring," answered the man, "and refining it, prepared a horse-load of pure gold. he gave all to me, but i refused, saying that i did not care to trouble myself and carry such a heavy thing so far." "and what remedy did your luck devise for my ailment?" asked the lion. "he said," answered the man, "the moment you devour an idiot's head you shall be healed." the lion looked the man in the face, and said: "by heaven! i cannot find a greater idiot than you on the face of the earth." and striking at his head with his paw, he made one mouthful of it and the idiot was dead. remember the moral of this tale,--time never befriends a fool. bedik and the invulnerable giant. many years ago there was a king who had seven sons. as soon as each one of the princes was of age his father sent him on an expedition, that he might display his bravery and marry the maiden whom he preferred. thus six of the princes acquired wives, but heaven only knows whether they displayed real bravery or not. it was now the turn of the seventh son, whose name was bedik. [1] his father gave him a horse of lightning, a magic sword and a bow-and-arrow, saying: "go, my son, and may heaven grant you good luck." bedik started and traveled through the length and breadth of the world, visiting the land of darkness, the land of light, the land of fairies, the land of giants. he did battle with men, beasts, genii, and all kinds of creatures which he encountered on the way, and overcame them all, but in his wars he lost all his servants and his wealth. he was alone, one day, when he came to a magnificent castle built of marble, decorated with gold and jewels and surrounded with orchards and flower gardens. he walked about the building and gazed everywhere, but could see no human being, man or woman. he waited all the day, concealed behind some bushes. toward evening there came a giant covered all over with armor, brandishing his bow and arrows, which were of heavy steel. when he walked the earth trembled. when he came near the castle, becoming aware of the presence of a human being, he exclaimed: "aha! i smell a human being. i go a-hunting to the mountains, and lo! the prey has come to my home. ho! human being, disclose yourself; else i will make a morsel of you." the lad was looking at the giant from his place of concealment. he was the strangest creature that he had ever seen; neither a sword nor an arrow could pierce him. nevertheless he decided to face him, and coming out from behind the bushes, he stood before him. "who are you?" asked the giant. "the bird with its wing, and the snake on its belly could not approach this castle of mine; and how could you venture to come? have you not heard of the fame of the invulnerable giant?" "i have," said the lad bravely, "and my name is no less famous than yours; i am bedik; i have traveled all over the world, and having heard of you, i came to measure swords with you." the giant gazed at the lad for a moment and suddenly sneezed. the burst of air through his nostrils caused the lad to leap ten rods away. "halloo!" exclaimed the giant, laughing, "you do not seem to be very well able to fight me, do you? nay, come here again; do not be afraid, i will not hurt you. i have heard about you; you are a brave little fellow. but you see you can do no harm to me, because i am invulnerable. come, be my servant, for i need a skillful human servant, and i do not think i can find a better one than you. bring your sword and bow and arrows. you see they are not available to pierce me; we may need them for hunting and other purposes." the lad consented, and they lived together for a time. one day the giant said to the youth: "you see i am immortal, but i have an anxiety which gnaws my heart day and night. the king of the east has a daughter, and there is no beauty like hers under the sun. i have made seven expeditions to carry her away, but so far have not succeeded. if you can bring her here i will bestow upon you a kingly reward." "i will bring her for you," said the lad. "but do you promise it upon your soul?" said the giant. "i do," answered the lad, and at once started on the expedition. after a long journey he came to the city of the king of the east, changed his clothes, took the shape of a farmer boy, and became the apprentice of the king's gardener. he saw the king's daughter sitting in her window and working with her needle. she was so beautiful that she seemed to say to the sun, "sun, you need not shine, since i am shining." the lad fell in love with her and began to curse the hour when he made the solemn promise to convey her to the giant. one day, taking advantage of the absence of his master, the lad stripped off his humble clothes, and putting on his princely garments, mounted his horse of lightning and rode in the king's garden. the maiden was looking from her window and saw him. she had never seen a young man so perfect, and she fell in love with him. on the following day she sent two of her maids to the youth, informing him of her love. the lad sent her word who he was, how he had heard of her wondrous beauty, and now he was waiting to do anything that she might order. the city was surrounded by high walls, through fear of the invulnerable giant, who assaulted it every year with the intention of carrying off the maiden; but the people of the city, being brave fighters, would not let the maiden be borne away. so the lad had a hard task to perform. one day the girl sent to him, through her maids, the following message: "to-morrow is the feast of the navasard, [2] when all the maidens of the city go out for recreation and merriment, but i am not allowed to go forth because it is the day when the invulnerable giant makes his annual assault to seize me. i will, however, go to the garden by the riverside, which is surrounded by high walls; there i will wait for you to see you display your bravery." having received this message, on the next day the youth put on his princely garments, girded his magic sword, and taking his bow and arrows, mounted his horse of lightning. once or twice he coursed the steed near the garden wall, until it began to gallop as fast as if it had wings. one stroke of the whip, and lo! it jumped over the wall like an eagle, and instantly the horse and its rider alighted in the middle of the garden. in the twinkling of an eye the lad put his arm around the maiden's waist, and placing her behind him on the saddle, gave another stroke of the whip, which made the horse leap over the garden wall, and in a second they were on safe ground outside the city galloping like a flash of lightning. the maids in attendance were horror-stricken, thinking that it was a hurricane which had taken their lady from them. it was a long time before they understood what had taken place; then they informed the king, who sent out his bravest horsemen in pursuit of the fugitives. but it was too late. the couple on the back of the horse of lightning passed over the mountains and valleys until they came to the border of the deep river. a stroke of the whip and the steed swam the deep waters and emerged on the other side. the king's horsemen came as far as the river, but seeing that the couple had crossed the frontier, they returned. as soon as the maiden and the youth had crossed the water, and the invulnerable giant's castle appeared in the distance, the maiden said to the lad: "bedik, dearest, we have come so far and you have not yet spoken a single word to me; you have shown no sign of love. for heaven's sake, tell me; did you kidnap me for yourself or for another?" "you said, 'for heaven's sake,'" replied the lad, "i will therefore tell you the truth; i have kidnaped you for the invulnerable giant; i have promised to deliver you to him." "alas!" exclaimed the maiden. "may heaven's curse rest upon the invulnerable! he could not get me for all the world. you do not reflect that it was by your skill and valor that you secured me. woe be to frail womanhood! maidens are the slaves of their hearts. for you, only for you, i eloped. if you reject me, here is the deep water, and here the high precipice; i would better be food for fishes and birds. may heaven's fire burn and consume the hard hearts of men!" so saying, she prepared to throw herself down the abyss into the deep water. the lad's heart began to burn like a furnace, and he took hold of her, crying: "nay, dearest, do not harm yourself. it was because of the vow i made upon my soul that i am taking you to the giant, and the day you become his wife i will put an end to my life with this sword, for without you life for me would be a curse." then they exchanged vows that they would use every means to put a speedy end to the invulnerable giant, and then be married; because they could not marry without destroying the giant. thereupon, they mounted the horse and began to proceed toward the castle. the giant, who from the tower of the castle was looking their way, seeing them at a distance, immediately came down and ran to meet them. he expressed his gratitude to the lad, and his excess of love to the maiden. he treated her with extreme kindness, fearing that he might hurt her tender feelings with his unpolished manners. "are you pleased with this place?" he asked her. "what do you want me to do in order to make you as happy as possible?" "i am very well, thank you; you are everything for me," said the maiden, suppressing her bitter hatred towards him. "but my parents consented to send me to you only under the condition that i should keep myself a virgin seven years longer. i have given an oath that i will do so; otherwise the love with which they have cherished me would turn into poison and defile my whole life. do you accept this condition?" "i do," said the giant. "as you are now in my hand, i am willing to wait not only seven years, but, if necessary, seven times seven years." they exchanged solemn vows, and decided that bedik should live with them, and be the best man at their wedding. the maiden occupied one apartment of the castle, the youth and the giant the other apartments, and so they lived for a time. but the lad and the maiden were uneasy. it was in vain to think of killing the giant,--he was invulnerable. if they eloped he would certainly overtake them, and there was no escaping from his wrath. one day as the giant was lying on the couch, with his head on the maiden's lap, she said to him: "in former times, how did you live alone, without any companions? and how is it that you are invulnerable, when so many arrows and swords are thrown at you? what is the secret of your immortality?" at first the giant refused to tell, but the maiden importuned him, saying: "if you will not inform me, then you do not love me. tell me in plain words that you love me not, and i will cease to live." the giant was at last persuaded to give up his secret, and he said: "seven days' journey from this castle there is a white mountain, where lives an unsubduable white bull which neither man nor beast dares to approach. once in seven days he becomes thirsty and goes to the top of the white mountain, where there is a white fountain with seven white marble reservoirs full of water, which he drains at a single draught. the bull has in his belly a white fox, which in its turn has in its belly a white box made of mother-of-pearl. in that box are seven white sparrows. those are my spirits, and those are my seven secrets. the bull cannot be subdued, the fox cannot be caught, the box cannot be opened, the sparrows cannot be seized. if either of them is taken, the others will escape. so i remain unconquerable and invulnerable and immortal." the maiden told the secret to bedik, adding: "i have done what i could; now it remains for you to do the rest." after a few days the lad girded on his sword, and bearing his bow and arrow, took leave of the giant, saying that he would go on a month's journey. he started and went directly to the convent of the seven wise monks, who were renowned all over the world for their great erudition and learning. after performing his religious duties before the holy altar, he asked the monks: "how is the unconquerable man conquered, and the unsubduable beast subdued?" and he received the following answer: "man by woman; beast by wine." on the following day he loaded seven horses with seven skinfuls of seven-year-old wine and took them to the white mountain. he emptied the water out of the seven marble reservoirs and filled them with wine, turning the water of the fountain elsewhere. near by he dug a trench, and hiding himself, waited for the result. at the end of seven days the white bull came to drink, and smelling the wine, he was so much terrified that he leaped as high as the height of seven poplar trees, and ran back roaring and bellowing. on the following day he returned, and being thirsty, drank the wine and was overcome. he leaped once or twice and fell down senseless. the lad drew his sword and approached and cut off the bull's head. let us return a moment to the palace of the giant. it was the last day of the seven years during which he had waited for the maiden. he had gone to the hunt, that they might have noble game for their wedding dinner. when the bull was overcome and fell, the giant began to grow drowsy. as soon as the youth cut off the bull's head, the giant turned dizzy, and a tremor ran through his frame. "alas!" cried the giant. "some one has killed the white bull. i know it is my fault. i gave my secret to the maiden, and she has told it to bedik or to some other lover. the bull is killed, and i must die. i will go and kill the maiden. she is not to be for me; why shall she be for another?" so saying, he began to run toward the castle. bedik cut the bull's belly open; the fox also was drunk and stupid, and he cut off his head. the giant lost his senses, and the blood began to gush out of his nostrils. the youth, opening the stomach of the fox, obtained the pearl box and put it in warm blood. the lid was opened, and the lad seized the seven sparrows. thereupon streams of blood began to run from the giant's mouth and ears, and his two eye-balls started from their sockets, like two great pomegranates. but still he was running toward the castle, sword in hand, and roaring like a mad beast. the maiden was horror-stricken, and quickly ran up to the top of the tower, determined to throw herself thence and kill herself, rather than fall into the hands of the giant. the giant had barely reached the castle door, when bedik killed two of the sparrows; with that the two knees of the giant were broken. he killed two more sparrows, and the giant's two arms withered. he killed two more, and the lungs and heart of the giant ceased to breathe and beat. he killed the last sparrow; the giant knocked his head against the threshold of the castle, his skull was broken, and his brains oozed out. a black smoke rose from his mouth and nostrils, and he lay dead as a stone. thereupon bedik came on horseback like a flash of lightning. the maiden descended from the tower, and they embraced one another. at once they decided to go to the maiden's parents and celebrate their wedding. they collected all the wealth of the invulnerable giant, and mounting the horse of lightning, began to proceed toward the east. the maiden being the only child of the king of the east, he was greatly grieved at her loss, seeing that he was getting old, and there was no successor to his throne. on the day following the maiden's disappearance, the king had sent his servants to the seven wise monks, asking their advice, and he had received the following message: "the hero who carried off your daughter is a prince. at the end of seven years your daughter will be restored to you by the same hero, as pure and chaste as before." the anxious father waited for seven long years. it was the last day of the seventh year; the king and his subjects had made great preparations for the reception of the returning princess and her hero. towards evening the king and his peers were looking anxiously from the seven towers of the city wall. the sun was just going down, when a flash as of lightning was seen on the western horizon, and in the twinkling of an eye bedik and the maiden reached the city gate on the back of their fiery steed. they were received amid the wild acclamations of the crowd, and were led to the king's palace. there they knelt before the king and told their story. the king blessed them, and for forty days and forty nights the wedding feast was celebrated. they attained their wish. may heaven grant that you may attain your wishes! three apples fell from heaven; one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. simon, the friend of snakes. the king of the snakes lives in the ruins of a big tower between nineveh and babylon, and rules all the snake tribe, both on land and sea. once the king's son, who was viceroy of the province of diarbekir, wrote a letter to his royal father, as follows: "long live the king! may heaven bestow upon you life everlasting. amen. be it known to you that your daughter-in-law and grandchildren were sick last summer, and the doctors advised that they must have a change of climate and must go to mount ararat and bathe in its pure streams, and eat its fragrant flowers, and this will immediately heal them. consequently i sent her and the children, with their attendants, to mount ararat. i also wrote letters to the provincial viceroys and princes to assist the princess and her train during their sojourn in that district. but the prince of aderbadagan, after receiving my letter, instead of giving help to the traveling princess, collected his troops and assaulted her and her train. the attendants of the princess met them bravely, and there, at the foot of mount ararat, occurred a bloody battle, which would doubtless have resulted in the total defeat of the princess' train, on account of the superior numbers of the enemy, if a human being, simon the shepherd, who was tending his flock in a neighboring field, had not come to the assistance of our fatigued combatants. he took his great club, and entering the ranks of the warriors, beat and killed and pursued the assaulting brigands of the prince of aderbadagan, and saved the life of your daughter-in-law, who thus came safely through this perilous journey. you see, my liege, that there is good even among men. i will punish the vile prince of aderbadagan for his wicked conduct; but it remains for you to reward the goodness of this noble human being as you deem best, and oblige your affectionate son." the king of the snakes, receiving this letter, took with him a vast quantity of gold and jewels, and went to his palace, in a ruined castle between aleppo and diarbekir. he posted his attendants on the highways to keep watch and inform him when shepherd simon should pass. the shepherd was employed by dealers in live-stock, who did business with damascus and aleppo, and was now on his way to aleppo. as soon as he approached the palace of the snake king the watchers informed their sovereign, and in the twinkling of an eye the whole army of snakes stood near the highway and began to conjure. simon the shepherd felt a strange dizziness,--the heavens above and the earth below seemed to change. he stood there bewitched, while his companions drove away. presently he opened his eyes, and lo! he was surrounded by innumerable snakes of all sizes and colors. upon a golden throne was sitting a snake as thick as the body of an elephant, and upon his head there was a crown of costly jewels and diamonds. one of the snakes read a paper praising the goodness of the shepherd, his natural fondness for the snake tribe, and his gallant defense of the weak and the wronged. "now, noble human being," said the king, "here is gold for you, precious jewels and diamonds; take as much as you like; and in addition to these, if you have a desire in your heart tell it to me and i will cause it to be satisfied." simon, after filling his shepherd's bag and his pockets with gold and jewels, said: "i wish to understand the language of all animals, reptiles and birds." "let it be so," said the king; "but the day on which you shall tell anything of what you have seen or heard, you shall die." the spell was removed, the snakes vanished, and simon the shepherd returned to his home near the foot of mount ararat. on the way he heard the animals talking, and lo! they knew all the secrets of men, and foretold events that would happen. sometimes he laughed at what he heard, and sometimes he was terrified so that his hair stood erect upon his head. he entered his native village, and lo! all the dogs, cats, chickens, and even the long-legged storks were hallooing to one another and saying: "simon the shepherd has come; his bag and pockets are full of gold and jewels." simon came to his house and put his treasure before his wife who, being a very curious woman, instantly asked him where and how he obtained so much wealth. "enjoy it, but never ask," answered simon. simon heard his dog and chickens talking in regard to the secrets of his house. some times he laughed and sometimes he was angry. his wife, noticing simon's strange conduct towards the animals, asked the reason. he refused to tell, but she begged and importuned him, weeping all the time. finally he could resist her entreaties no longer, and he promised to tell her everything on the following day. that evening he heard the dog talking to the cock, which was leading the chickens to roost, chuckling and gurgling: "tell me, master rooster," said the dog, "what is the use of your chuckling and gurgling, since our master has promised his wife to-morrow to tell her everything? he will die; people will come and kill you, shoot me, and plunder and ruin everything which belongs to our master." "eh! the sooner it is ruined the better," answered the rooster, contemptuously. "i have a family of forty wives, who are all obedient to me; if our master was as wise as he is rich, he would not pay attention to the vain inquisitiveness of his wife; he himself would not die, and no harm would befall us or his house. but now he deserves death." hearing this, simon was advised; he seized his great club, and stood before his wife, saying: "wife, you must stop trying to compel me to tell you the secret; be content with what you have; else, by heaven, i will beat you to death!" the woman, seeing the club brandished over her head, put an end to her inquiries, and thereafter they enjoyed a happy life. the poor widow's son. once upon a time there was a king who had a daughter who was quite beautiful. when she was of marriageable age the king sent heralds inviting all the young men of his realm to come to court in order that the princess might make her selection. on the appointed day all the young men of the country passed before the princess, who was standing with a golden apple in her hand that she might throw it at the choice of her heart. she threw the apple, and lo! it hit a poor widow's son. it was reported to the king, who was angry, and said: "it cannot be; we must try it once more." on the following day the princess again threw the apple, and once more hit the same poor widow's son. on the third trial the same lad proved to be the maiden's choice. thereupon the king was very angry, and expelled both the maiden and the lad from the court and the royal city. the lad took the maiden to the house of his mother, a poor old hut near the bridge without the city. the old widow, seeing the maiden, said to her son: "we had not bread enough to keep us alive, and lo! you have brought a tender maiden. how shall we live now?" "be not angry, mamma," said the maiden, humbly, "i know how to spin yarn, and we shall be able to earn our living." in this manner they lived a few months. then they decided that the youth should travel and sojourn in other countries in order to earn money. on the following day they saw a merchant crossing the bridge with eighty camel-loads of merchandise destined for arabia. the lad offered the merchant his services in the caravan. the merchant accepted, and the lad came home to make ready. "before you set out," said the bride, "go to yonder convent where there is a wise monk and ask him to give you some good advice, which you may need in your travels." the lad went, and the old monk gave him the following maxims for his guidance: first, "she whom one loves the best is the most beautiful;" secondly, "patience leads to safety;" thirdly, "there is a good in every patient waiting." he came back to his bride, who said: "commit these wise words to memory; you will no doubt have need of them." "farewell!" said the youth. "farewell!" said the young bride. the lad departed from her. after a long journey the caravan camped in a desert near arabia. there had camped before them also a large caravan composed of eighty other merchants. the lad was tired and soon fell into a deep sleep. there were many men and animals in the caravan, and all were thirsty. in that desert there was only one well, and that was dangerous; of all who had gone down to draw water, not one had ever come out. in the middle of the night, the lad was wakened by the crying of a herald in the caravan, who announced that each merchant was offering ten pieces of gold to the man who would descend into the well and draw water for men and animals. the lad, coveting the sum, promised to go down. his master pitied him, and tried to prevent him, but it was too late. "you are going down into that dangerous well of your own free will," he said; "your blood shall be upon your own head. but if you come out safely, one of my camels shall be yours with the merchandise upon it." they let the lad down with a rope. reaching the bottom, he saw a flowing river of fresh water; he drank and quenched his thirst. lifting up his eyes, nearby he saw a giant sitting with a maiden on each side, one colored and the other white. "look, human being," exclaimed the giant; "i will ask you a question. if you answer it rightly i will let you go; if not, i will kill you with this club, as i have killed so many men before you. which of these two maidens is the beautiful one, and which the ugly?" the lad remembered the first maxim of the old monk, and said: "she whom one loves the most is the most beautiful." the giant jumped up, and kissing the lad on the forehead, said: "well done, youth! you gave me the only right answer; all the rest were wrong." he then asked the lad the cause of his descent, and said: "this well is enchanted; i must therefore give you a safe conduct. take these three apples, and after drawing water enough, when you go up, drop one of these apples as soon as your feet are lifted from the ground; drop the second one when you reach the middle, and the third apple when you approach the well's mouth. thus you will have a safe return." and the giant gave to the lad three pomegranates as a present, one white, one green and one red. the lad put them in his pockets, and after sending a sufficiency of water for the caravan, gave a sign to be drawn up. he threw the three apples just as he was directed by the giant, and reached the surface safely. the merchants gave him the 800 pieces of gold and his master a camel's load of merchandise, as previously promised. the lad said to his master that he wanted to send the camel's load of merchandise and the money to his wife. his master consented, and the lad, putting the three pomegranates in the load, sent it with a driver to his hut near the bridge under the sycamore tree. the merchant promoted the lad, and made him superintendent of the camel drivers. after a time the merchant died, and his wife continued to do the business. she liked the lad and adopted him as her son. thus he worked with that merchant and his wife for twenty years. one day he was granted permission by his adopted mother to go and visit his family, and he set out on his journey. leaving him on his way for a moment, let us turn to his family. a few months after the departure of the youth heaven blessed his humble home by the birth of a son. when the camel's load of merchandise, money and pomegranates arrived, both the old widow and her young daughter-in-law were greatly pleased. at first sight the princess knew that the pomegranates were not common fruits, but jewels; but the old widow, who thought they were common pomegranates, prepared to cut them, saying: "heaven's blessing rest upon you, my son, that you have remembered your aged mother by sending her fruits to eat!" the bride snatched them from her hand and kept them in the drawer. thereupon the old woman was offended, cursed her daughter-in-law and withdrew to the adjoining room. the bride ran to the neighboring shop, and buying three common pomegranates, brought them to her, saying: "mamma, be not offended; pardon my harsh conduct. here are the pomegranates; you may eat them." and mother and daughter were reconciled. the princess then bought new dresses for her mother-in-law, herself, and the baby. she filled her mother-in-law's pocket with gold pieces, and cutting a slice from one of the pomegranates, put it in a costly golden box and gave it to her, saying: "now, mamma, go to the king's palace, and giving the gold pieces as a present to the attendants, say you want to see the king, and give him this golden box with the slice of pomegranate in it. when he asks you what you want, say that you have brought it to him as a present, and that you want nothing but a decree sealed with the royal seal, permitting you to do whatever you please without being molested." the old woman, making herself as trim as she could, started on the errand and did all that the princess had bid her. the king, upon seeing the jewels in the shape of a pomegranate slice, at once called the royal jewelers to set a price on them. the jewelers, examining the slice of pomegranate, said: "no one can set a price on this. let a lad of fifteen stand and throw a stone with all his might toward the sky; a heap of gold as high as that would hardly equal the value of this wonderful row of precious stones." the king thought there was not so much gold in his treasury. "do you want the price of this jewel, or have you brought it as a present to the king?" asked the king of the woman. "i have brought it as a present to your majesty," answered the woman. "what favor do you want in recompense?" asked the king. the old woman answered as she had been advised by her daughter-in-law. the royal decree was immediately signed, sealed, and given to the old woman, who brought it to her daughter-in-law. as soon as the princess took the royal edict, she sent slices of the three pomegranates to all the seven kings of the world and received in recompense treasure inestimable. she then built a splendid palace in the place of the poor old hut, and decorated it with silver, gold, and the rest of the jewels, which illumined the palace by night, making it as bright and lustrous as the twinkling morning star. the fame of this palace spread all over the world, and people came to see its splendor. the king also came to see it and admired it, because it contained so many beautiful things which were not to be found in his own palace. he visited all parts of it and sighed deeply from his heart, saying: "i wish my only daughter was not lost, and that she lived in this magnificent building!" from behind the curtain his daughter heard him speak, and she also sighed. the princess' son had by this time grown into a good-looking, intelligent lad, and it was he who made a grand princely reception to the king in the new palace. the king greatly liked the lad and took him into his service. seeing that he was an uncommon youth, displaying extraordinary ability in everything he handled, the king was so much pleased with him that he advanced him to the position of commander of his forces, without knowing that he was his own grandson. now let us return to the father of the commander. he arrived in his country and went directly in search of the bride, with the expectation of finding his lowly hut under the sycamore tree. but to his disappointment and surprise he found in its place a magnificent palace, the most magnificent indeed that he had seen in his travels of twenty years' duration. there was nothing left of the old hut, only the sycamore tree which had grown taller and thicker during the past twenty years. as a stranger he walked into the yard, approached the old sycamore tree, his only acquaintance in the neighborhood, and climbed it. soon he saw a woman and the commander come to the porch and sit upon the sofa near one another. he knew the woman; she was his wife, the princess. twenty years seemed to have made little change in her. but why was she in this splendid palace and not in his hut? and what was the business of the commander there? suspicion filled his mind, and he drew his bow and arrow with the intention of killing both of them. just at that moment he remembered the old monk's second maxim--"patience leads to safety," and he did not use his arms. presently he saw the commander and his wife embracing one another. this time his blood ran to his brain and he drew his bow and arrow to shoot; but remembered the old monk's third maxim--"there is good in all patient waiting," and again he did not shoot. he began, however, to listen attentively to their talk, and heard the commander saying: "mother, is my father living? where is he? last night i dreamed in my dream that he had come home." thereupon his mother told him all this story, which she had till then kept secret from him. "what!" exclaimed the young commander, "you the daughter of the king; i the commander of his army; this palace our home, and my father a wanderer in foreign lands! it is impossible! i will to-morrow take my army and go and find my father." his father, who was listening to his words from the tree, felt the great tears rolling down his cheeks. after nightfall he came down from the tree, and spent the night in a neighboring inn. the following morning he sent messages to his wife and son, bearing the good tidings of his arrival. their meeting was a very happy one. the king, hearing of the return of his dear commander's father, hastened to express his congratulations and best wishes. entering the palace he met, to his great surprise, his daughter, who with her husband and son fell on their knees, begging the blessing of the king. the old king was almost mad with joy, and embraced them all, shedding tears. "now i see," he exclaimed, "that it is useless to strive to undo what destiny has decreed. it was destined that you should marry one another, and lo! you prove to be the best match that i could desire." as the king had no other child except that daughter, upon his death his son-in-law succeeded him upon the throne. thus they reached the highest glory of this world. may heaven grant that we may all reach the highest glory of the world to come! a niggardly companion. two men were traveling in company on their way to a distant city. each had a bag of food to support him on the journey, which would last several days. they agreed to first eat the provision of one man, and when that was finished to consume that of the other, which they expected would be sufficient to last during their journey. but when the store of the first man was finished, the second man would not allow his companion to use his own bag, as they had previously agreed. "for heaven's sake, jack!" exclaimed the first man, "give me something to eat. if you will not bestow it in return for my bread, give it as charity. otherwise, i shall starve and die in this wilderness, while my family and children will be left paupers. spare me, jack, spare me!" but it was impossible to persuade the second man, who refused, saying: "no, i will give you nothing, lest the bread should not be enough for both. i will eat my own food and go. i don't care for you." can a hungry man walk? the one who had the provision bag went on ahead, leaving his starving companion behind. for a while the poor man walked, casting earth in his mouth and drinking water from every brook until sunset, when he came to a ruined mill. "let me lodge in this ruined mill," he thought. "heaven is merciful." there was nothing in the ruined mill, except an old tambourine which hung from the wall. in order not to be torn by wild beasts, the man entered the grain holder of the mill and tried to sleep. at midnight he saw a bear enter the mill and sit opposite the grain holder. soon arrived a wolf, and took his seat near the bear, and at last came a fox, and sat next to the wolf. the wolf asked the bear, saying: "how is it with you, brother bear? how do you fill that great stomach of yours, when game is so scarce nowadays?" "i never am in trouble because of scarcity of food," answered the bear. "i find plenty of vegetables in the neighborhood, which have delicious roots. when i am hungry i dig some of these and appease my hunger." "this is good!" thought the hungry man, in his concealment. "and how is it with you, brother wolf," asked the fox. "do you ever succeed in satisfying your gluttonous appetite, now that every shepherd keeps a cursed dog?" "oh, never mention that," answered the wolf, sighing deeply. "i have been planning all the time, during the past two or three months, to snatch some morsels from the flocks of the mayor of greendale, but i never succeed in approaching the flock for fear of the big black dog, who never leaves the sheep. i do not know why the doctors do not kill that cursed dog, and bathe with its blood the king's son, who would at once be healed from the disease which has been tormenting him so long that the doctors have given up hope. by this means the poor lad would be cured and the obstacle before me would be removed." "good!" thought the man to himself. "and how is it with you, brother fox?" asked the bear. "how are you getting along?" "gramercy!" said reynard, "although i am not as strong as you are, yet heaven has given me wisdom and dexterity, and i have never been troubled by hunger. eh! i have accumulated some wealth also. i have a jug full of gold hidden under yonder sycamore tree, and another under the threshold of this mill. i get the gold pieces out once a day and enjoy myself in playing with them. then i put them into the jugs and hide them once more." "very good!" said the man to himself. the man took courage; his mind began to work; he suddenly took hold of the tambourine and began to play on it. hearing this, the beasts ran away and disappeared in the twinkling of an eye. they thought a wedding procession was coming; and beasts are very much afraid of wedding processions. by this time it was daybreak. the man came out from his concealment, took the two jugs full of gold, filled his pockets, and hid the remainder in another place. he dug the roots which the bear had recommended and satisfied his hunger. he then asked the way to the village of greendale and became a guest in the mayor's house. as he provided costly presents both for the mayor and the members of his family, they were all highly pleased with him. in the morning he heard the mayor whispering with the members of his family as to the present they could make their guest in recompense for his costly offerings. thereupon the man said: "i have admired the black dog of your flock; i wish i could have one like it." "since your desire is for that black dog," answered the mayor, "you may have it; we can easily find another dog for the flock." the man put a rope around the neck of the dog, and taking with him a skin bottle, withdrew to a lonely place, where he cut the throat of the dog, and caught its blood in the skin. taking the skinful of dog's blood, he went to the city and presenting himself to the king, said: "i am a doctor; i can heal your son." "if you can heal my son," said the king, "i will assure you the second place in the kingdom after my death; but if you do not heal him, i will cut off your head." "may your son himself enjoy your throne," said the man; "but if i do not heal him my head is yours." the king consented, and the man took the invalid prince, who was very weak and upon his deathbed, to a room alone, where he applied the dog's blood over all his body, and laid him to sleep. towards evening the lad had perspired and became wet all over. the assumed doctor washed him, and once more applied the dog's blood. he continued this treatment two days; on the third day the lad was cured, his body being as sound as that of a newly born babe. the man took the prince to the king, who was so much pleased that he presented the physician with a magnificent palace, and abundant wealth. not only the court but all the people of the country loved the man for his generous spirit. he sought and obtained the rest of the fox's treasure, which he had hidden, and caused his family to be brought to his new palace, where they lived a happy life, and praised heaven. but what became of his niggardly companion, who had refused to give away a slice of bread? he reached his destination safely, but never attained success there, and was obliged to go from city to city seeking work to earn a living. at last he came to the city where his fortunate companion lived, and seeing him enjoying a princely life, asked him how he attained it. his former comrade told him everything. thereupon the man hastened to the ruined mill, with the expectation that he also would attain good luck, and hid himself in the grain holder. the beasts again came to hold a meeting. "mr. chairman," said reynard to the bear, as soon as they came in, "before we commence our deliberations, we would better look carefully and see if there is a human being near by to hear us. because i have been robbed since our last meeting." they all got up to look around, and lo! there was a man in the grain holder. "vile intruder!" exclaimed the fox, biting the man's legs madly. the bear gave him some violent blows on the head with his heavy paws which made him fall senseless, and the wolf tore him into pieces. thus ended the life of this niggardly man. the maiden of the sea. there was an old woman and her son who lived on the seacoast. she used to cast a loaf of bread into the sea every morning. one day she said to her son: "my son, i am getting old, and i feel that i shall soon die. listen to my advice, and every morning cast a loaf of bread to the sea." the old woman died, and the lad continued casting a loaf of bread into the sea every morning. one evening as he came back home from his work he was surprised to see the house swept and cleaned. another day he put some meat in the cupboard, and in the evening, lo! the meat was cooked and the table ready for him. this was repeated several times. one day he hid himself under the stairs. soon a splash of water was heard in the sea, and, lo! a big fish cast itself on the threshold. at once the skin of the fish fell down, and out of it came a maiden as beautiful as the shining moon. she swept the house clean, and finishing the kitchen work was just going out of the door, when the lad took hold of her. "mamma, mamma! help me!" exclaimed the maiden. immediately a voice came from the sea: "be not afraid, daughter, that is my son-in-law." by the will of god and the permission of the mother, the maiden became the bride of the lad. at once the priest was called, who performed the marriage ceremony, and for seven days they celebrated the wedding festival. one day, as the bride was working with a needle before the window, the prince, who was taking a walk in his seashore orchard, saw her and was enchanted by her beauty. finding out that she was a married woman, he decided to destroy her husband and get her in marriage. he immediately summoned the lad, and said: "i want you to make me a tent so large that all my army may be accommodated in it, and yet half of it remain empty. i will give you three days' time to prepare it; if you don't make it ready by that time your head shall be cut off and all your property confiscated." the lad came home with a sad face. what should he say to the prince at the end of the third day? surely his head should be cut off. the bride, seeing him, said: "how now, husband! what is the matter? why are you sad to-day?" "nothing," answered the lad, sighing. "nay, your face is changed," said the bride. "i pray you what is the matter?" the lad told her what the prince had ordered him to do. "never mind, husband," said she, and putting her head out of the window toward the sea, she cried: "mamma, mamma! send us up our small tent, please. we want to go a-camping." the small tent was thrown up from the sea. the lad took it to the prince. it took his servants seven days to pitch it. not only the prince's army, but all his people were accommodated in it, and yet half of it was empty. "this is right well," said the prince, "but you see there is no furniture to put on the ground. i want you to bring me a rug to suit the tent exactly. if you don't bring it in three days your head shall be cut off." the lad told his wife, and she asked her mother to send up the small rug, which was taken to the prince. the prince next day bade the lad fetch him a cluster of grapes so large that all his army might eat and not be able to finish it. on the following day that also was brought. then the prince wanted him to bring him a three-day old baby who could walk and talk like grown-up people. this time the lad was dismayed, because it was a sheer impossibility, and he thought he would surely lose his head this time. "never mind that, husband," said his wife, in the evening; and turning toward the sea, she cried: "mamma! send up here the baby for a while, we want to see him." the baby was given up, and the lad took him to the prince, still doubting in his mind whether the baby could do what the prince required. on the way the lad's foot slipped and the baby was shaken. "have you not your eyes about you, brother-in-law," the baby said, "or have you a mind to fall down and crush me under you?" the lad was pleased at the baby's reproach, because it assured him that his head would not be cut off. on being presented to the prince the baby at once walked toward him, jumped up to his lap and giving the prince a box on his ear, said: "are you not ashamed, prince, to give so much trouble to my brother-in-law? you want to kill him and be married to my sister, do you? for shame, prince, for shame!" thereupon the prince gave up his evil intention, apologized to the lad and asked forgiveness. so the lad and his bride of the sea were left unmolested and they are still living on the border of the sea. three apples fell from heaven; one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. the golden-headed fish. i remember having heard my grandmother tell a story of a king who had lost his eyesight. i will repeat it to you. all of the doctors and all of the magicians of the realm held a consultation, but could not do him any good. at last the king, hearing that there was in india a doctor three hundred years old, wrote a letter to the king of that country requesting him to send the aged doctor in order that the latter might devise some remedy to restore his eyesight. the doctor came, and after an examination of the king's eyes, said: "there is only one remedy, and that is a tincture made from the blood of the golden-headed fish. send men to the open sea to catch one. i will wait one hundred days. if they cannot take one during that time i will depart." the king's only son, taking with him one hundred men and as many nets, sailed to the open sea to catch the desired fish. they worked hard and caught many kinds of fish, but none of them had a golden head. ninety-nine days passed by and only one day remained before the expiration of the term. they had given up hope and decided to sail back, when the prince said to his men: "cast this one last net for my luck." they did so, and lo! the golden-headed fish was caught. they were glad, and put the precious fish in a jug of water in order to keep it alive. the jug was put in the prince's cabin and they set sail homeward. when the prince was alone he looked at the fish, and lo! it began to talk to him. "prince," said the golden-headed fish, "i am a prince myself; spare my life and cast me back into the sea. some day you will receive your remuneration." the prince took pity upon the poor fish, and cast him back into the sea, saying: "go, live; if you, a fish, do not appreciate this mercy, the creator from above will appreciate it." the party returned and told what the prince had done. this enraged the king to the very verge of madness. "alas!" exclaimed he, "my son desires my speedy death, that he may himself be king. executioners, take this unnatural son and immediately cut off his head." but as the prince was the only son of the king, by the intervention of his mother they put his clothes on a criminal and hanged him, and banished the prince to a distant island, where he lived a miserable life, as nobody knew who he was. he was considered by the people as a vile criminal and was despised by all, and, forsaken and abandoned, he remained in this wretched condition without friends, without means of livelihood. he felt himself so wretched that he fell into a condition of despair, and resolved to put an end to so unbearable a life. with this intention, he went to a high precipice on the sea-shore and precipitated himself into the foaming deep. but as soon as he reached the sea, lo! he found himself in the arms of a strange-looking negro, who after setting him on the beach, fell down and saluted him, saying: "mighty prince, vouchsafe to me that i may put myself at your service. you may depend upon it that i shall please you and serve you with all my might." the humane and brave conduct of the stranger, and his kind and courteous words made such an impression upon the lad that his despair was at once banished, and he repented of his attempt to commit suicide. he accepted the service of the negro, and they went together to the lad's house, where a rich dinner was awaiting them. thereafter the prince found everything necessary abundantly prepared, and master and man lived together for a time. during those days the people of the island suffered greatly from the frequent attacks of a large dragon which devoured all the men it met. the people were in such terror that no one ventured to go out of his house. the prince of the island sent his army to kill the dragon, but it could not be done. then he sent out heralds, proclaiming that he would give great wealth to the man who killed the dragon. thereupon the negro, the attendant of the lad, went to the prince of the island, saying: "my master will kill the dragon, and desires to know what you intend to give him." "the hero who kills the dragon," said the prince, "shall become my son-in-law by marrying my daughter, and i will also bestow upon him whatever presents he may desire." "agreed," said the negro. "give to my master your daughter in marriage and half of your wealth." then he went and, killing the dragon himself, brought its ears to the lad, who took them to the prince. he became the son-in-law of the prince by marrying his daughter, and lived in a splendid palace, which the prince gave him with half of his wealth. as the prince had no son, the lad succeeded him after his death and reigned over the island. a son was born to him. one day the negro said to the youth: "abdicate your throne in favor of your son, appoint your wife as regent, and let us go to the city of the king of the west." the young man consented, and they started, taking with them much riches. as soon as they reached the city of the king of the west the negro said to the lad: "go ask for yourself the daughter of the king in marriage." the lad went to the king, who was pleased with him, and said: "prince, i see you are a worthy man. now let me tell you frankly that i have given my daughter to ninety-nine princes in marriage, and every one died on the nuptial night. i have pity on your youth." the lad, hearing this, was afraid, but the negro insisted, saying: "nay, get her in marriage. do not be frightened." and the youth took the maiden in marriage. as soon as the wedding ceremony was performed, the king's servants began to prepare this bridegroom's coffin and his grave also. during the nuptial night, however, the negro hid himself in the wardrobe of the bedchamber. as soon as the bride and the bridegroom were asleep he came out and stood at the head of the bed, holding a dagger and tongs. at midnight there came from the bride's mouth a viper to bite the bridegroom. the negro at once took hold of the serpent with the tongs, and cutting it in pieces with the dagger, hid it in the wardrobe. in the morning the king's men came to bury the bridegroom, and lo! he was alive, and they ran back to carry the good tidings to the king, and to felicitate him on the happy event. on the following night there came from the bride's mouth another viper, which the negro killed, and after that they lived in peace. now the king of the west also had no son and after his death the lad succeeded him on the throne. one day a messenger came to him from the city of the king of the east, the youth's fatherland, sent from his mother, saying: "your father has died; come and reign in his stead." the youth, putting a regent in his place, took his second wife, accompanied by the negro, and started for his fatherland. he set sail and on the way stopped at the island, where he took also his first wife on board. thence they proceeded and came to the kingdom of the east, the lad's fatherland, where he was crowned king. thus the kingdoms of the east and the west with the island between them were united under one crown, and were thereafter governed by the same sovereign. soon after the coronation of the king, the negro asked his master to give him leave to go to his own country. "my friend and benefactor," said the king to the negro, "i owe you not only everything i have, but my very life and existence. come, take whatever you please, and then go your way." "whatever we earned we earned together," replied the negro; "so i have a right to the half of what belongs to you. however, i will take nothing from your wealth and property, but let us divide your wives between us." "well said!" answered the king, "take whomsoever you like the best." "not so," said the negro, "lest you should think i had the beautiful one, and i should think that you had her. but we shall divide both ladies into equal parts, half to you and half to me." the king at first thought to offer opposition; but remembering the many favors he had received from the negro, he thought it would be ingratitude on his part not to comply with this one strange demand of his colored friend. "well, i agree to that," he said at last. and they took both women under the large sycamore tree on the seashore, where the negro hung the daughter of the king of the west, head down, and lifted his big sword as if to cut her in two by a single stroke. the woman shrieked at the sight of the lifted sword. "oh!" exclaimed she with all her might. and lo! a serpent's nest, with a great number of young vipers, fell from her stomach. the negro killed the vipers, and releasing the woman gave her to her husband, saying: "now, go enjoy your wives and rule over your empire in peace; there is no more evil left to trouble you. in doing all these things, i have done my duty, because you saved my life. i am the golden-headed fish. farewell!" this he said, and dived into the sea, where he still lives. husband or wife!--which? a goldsmith and his wife lived a happy life in perfect harmony and love. in all the country they were considered the best patterns of conjugal love. it was their custom not to put out the light in their house but let it burn all the night. one night as the king and queen were looking from their high window at the sleeping city, they noticed the goldsmith's light gleaming at a distance, and his well-known matrimonial love became the subject of debate between the royal couple. the king insisted that it was on account of the husband's virtue that he and his wife were in such perfect harmony. the queen insisted that it was on account of the wife's virtue. thereupon they decided to make a trial and find out the truth. on the following day the queen sent one of her handmaids to the goldsmith, saying that she had fallen in love with him and would become his wife if he killed his present wife. "not i," answered the goldsmith; "i will not part from my wife for all the world. i am content with what heaven has assigned me. i will not exchange my wife for a thousand queens." on the following day the king sent a servant to the goldsmith's wife, saying that he had been charmed with her beauty and wanted to make her queen, if she would kill her present husband. "is it really true? is it really true?" exclaimed the woman. "it is true," answered the servant. "well, then," said the woman, "i will kill my husband this very night. when you see our light has gone out to-night, know that i have begun to murder him." the servant brought word to the king, who ordered his men to be ready and go to the rescue of the goldsmith if the light was really put out. in the evening the goldsmith came home. after supper the husband and wife had a nice talk as usual, and the husband, putting his head in the lap of his wife, fell asleep. the woman put the loop of a rope around his neck, blew out the candle, and began to pull the rope. the poor goldsmith was strangled before the king's men came to the rescue. this murder of one of his best subjects grieved the king so deeply that he thereafter hated all women from the depths of his soul. he could not sleep that night, and early in the morning he called his prime minister, saying: "to-day i will go hunting. you must put to death all the women of the country, old and young, before i come home this evening." the prime minister had an aged father, to whom he went and repeated the king's terrible order. "do not obey it," said the old man; "i shall be responsible. go and hide yourself for a couple of days from the anger of the king." in the evening the king came back from hunting, and seeing the women of the realm still alive, was enraged, and called his prime minister into his presence. the old man appeared before the king, standing on his crutches. "where is your son?" said the king. "i want to cut off his head first, then those of the women." "long live the king!" said the old man with his trembling voice. "permit me to tell you an experience of mine, and then put your command into execution if you choose." "speak!" said the king, who at the same time gave orders to the soldiers to be ready to butcher the women. "i was prime minister during your father's reign," said the old man. "one day we had gone to hunt. i was led astray by the game, and came near a village on the other side of the forest. soon i was overtaken by an unknown horseman, who took hold of me, and lifting me from the back of my horse, placed me before him upon the saddle of his own horse, bound me with a rope, and tied the reins of my horse to the back of his own. to struggle on my part was useless, because he was very strong. soon we arrived at a cemetery, where we dismounted. for a while he looked here and there, and stopping at a certain place, began to dig, and ordered me to shovel the earth after him. thus working we dug two graves. we mounted again and dismounted at the foot of a castle wall. he bound me carefully to the saddle of his horse, and himself climbed up the wall. after a few minutes he threw down from the top of the wall the headless corpse of a man who had just been murdered. he came down, and placing the corpse on my horse took it and myself to the graves we had dug. i was horror stricken, and thought that one of the graves must be for the corpse and the other for me. but to my surprise, he untied me and bade me assist him to bury the corpse, which i did. he then turned to me and said: "'i know who you are; you are the prime minister of this state. now listen to me, and go and tell the king my story. i am a woman and had a boundless love for my husband. this vile prince, whose body we have just now buried, having fallen in love with me, killed my own husband that he might win my love. but i vowed by the sacred love i bore my husband to kill the murderer and bury him under my husband's feet. now that is accomplished. i vowed next to kill myself, that i might be buried by the side of my husband. for the love of heaven, bury me in this grave and tell my story to the king.' this she said, and stabbing herself with a dagger, fell dead at my feet. i buried her in that grave near her husband. here you have the example of a faithful and brave wife. if the unfaithful wife of the goldsmith gave you occasion to order the death of all the women of the realm, let this woman be the means of saving her sex from general slaughter. why shall many good women die because of the wickedness of one woman?" thereupon the king revoked the order and only the goldsmith's wife was put to death. the wicked stepmother once upon a time, in armenia, there was a noted hunter, who was a widower. he had a son by a former wife. he married another wife, but soon was taken mortally sick. on his deathbed he said to his wife: "wife, i am dying, and i know that when my son grows up he will follow my profession. take care and do not let him go to the black mountains to hunt." after the death of the hunter, the son growing up, began to follow his father's profession, and became a hunter. one day his stepmother said: "son, your father, when dying, said that after you grew up, if you followed his profession, you should not go to the black mountains to hunt." but the lad, paying no attention to what his father had advised him, one day took his bow and arrow, mounted his horse and hastened to the black mountains to hunt. as soon as he reached them, lo, a giant made his appearance on the back of his horse of lightning, and exclaimed: "how now! have you never heard my name, that you have dared to come and hunt on my ground?" and he threw three terrible maces at the lad, who very cleverly avoided them, hiding himself under the belly of his horse. now it was his turn; he drew his bow and arrow, took aim and shot the giant, who was nailed to the ground. he at once mounted the giant's horse of lightning, which galloping, soon brought him to a magnificent palace, gilded all over with gold and decorated with precious jewels. lo, a maiden as beautiful as the sun appeared in the window, saying: "human being, the snake upon its belly and the bird with its wing could not come here; how could you venture to come?" "your love brought me hither, fair creature," answered the lad, who had already fallen in love with the charming maiden. "but the giant will come and tear you into pieces," said the maiden, who also had fallen in love with the lad. "i have killed him, and there lies his carcass," answered the lad. the door of the palace was opened, and the lad was received by the maiden, who told him that she was the daughter of a prince, and that the giant had stolen her and kept her in that palace, where she had forty beautiful handmaids serving her. "and as you have killed the giant," she added, "i, who am a virgin, shall be your wife, and all these maidens will serve us." and they accepted one another as husband and wife. opening the treasures of the giant, they found innumerable jewels, gold, silver, and all kinds of wealth. the lad thought such a beautiful palace, with so many treasures worthy of a prince, and the most beautiful wife in the world, things that he could hardly have dreamed of, and he decided to live there, going to hunt every day as usual. one day, however, he came home sighing, "ah! alas! alas!" "how now, what is the matter?" said the beautiful bride. "am i and my forty handmaids not enough to please you? why did you sigh?" "you are sweet, my love," said the lad, "but my mother also is sweet. you have your place in my heart, but my mother also has her place. i remembered her, therefore i sighed." "well," said the young bride, "take a horseload of gold to your mother, let her live in abundance and be happy." "no," said the lad, "let me go and bring her here." "very well, go, then," said the young bride. the lad went to his stepmother and telling her all that he had done, brought her to the palace of the black mountains. there she was the mother-in-law of the fair bride, and therefore the superior of the whole palace. both the bride and the maidens had to submit to her. the lad used to go out hunting. the stepmother, being well versed in witchcraft and medicine, went secretly, and administered some remedy to the corpse of the giant, so that he was soon healed. falling in love with the giant, she took him to the palace and hid him in the cellar, where she secretly paid him daily visits, as she was afraid of her stepson. wishing, however, to have none to oppose her, the witch one day said to the giant: "giant, you must advise me of a way by which i may send my son on an errand, and from which he may never come back." upon the advice of the giant, she entered her room and putting under her bed pieces of very thin and dry oriental bread, lay down upon the bed and feigned sickness. in the evening the lad returned from hunting, and hearing that his stepmother was ill, hastened to her side, and asked: "what is the matter, mother?" "o, son," exclaimed the witch, with a sickly voice, "i am very sick. i shall die," and as she turned from one side to the other the dry bread began to crackle. "hark!" exclaimed the witch, "how my bones are crackling!" "what is the remedy, mother, what can i do for you?" asked the lad. "o, my son," said the witch, "there is only one remedy for my sickness, and that is the melon of life. i shall never be healed, if i do not eat one of that fruit which you could bring to me." "all right, mother," said the lad, "i will bring to you the melon of life." he at once started upon the expedition, and after a long journey was guest in the house of an old woman who asked him where he was going. when she heard of the errand, she said to the lad: "son, you are deceived; the expedition is a fatal one,--do not go." but as the lad insisted, the old woman said: "well, then, let me advise you. on your way you will soon come to a mansion, which is the abode of forty giants, who in the day-time go out hunting. but you will find their dame there kneading dough. if you are agile enough to run and suck the nipples of the open breast of that giantess without being seen by her, you are safe; if not, she will make one mouthful of you and devour you." the lad went and found as foretold by the old woman. he was clever enough to suck the nipples of the giantess without being seen by her. "a plague on her who advised you!" exclaimed the angry giantess, "else i would make a good morsel of you. but now having sucked of my breast, you are like one of my own sons. let me hide you in a box, lest the forty giants should come in the evening and finding you here, devour you." and she shut the lad in a box. in the evening the forty giants came, and smelling a human being, said: "o mother, all the year long we hunt beasts and fowls which we bring home to eat together, and now we smell a human being, whom no doubt you have devoured to-day. have you not preserved for us at least a few bones which we might chew?" "it is you," answered the dame, "that are coming from mountains and plains where no doubt you have found human beings, and the smell comes out of your own mouths. i have eaten no human being." "yes, mother, you have," exclaimed the giants. "how if my nephew, the son of my human sister, has come to pay me a visit!" answered the giantess. "o mother," exclaimed the giants, "show us our human cousin; we will not hurt him, but talk with him." the giantess took the lad out of the box and brought him to the giants, who were very much pleased to see a human being so small, but so beautiful and manly. holding him up like a toy, the giants handed him to one another to gratify their curiosity by looking at him. "mother, what has our cousin come for?" inquired the giants. "he has come," answered the giantess, "to pick a melon of life, and carry it to his mother who is sick. you must go and get the melon of life for him." "not we," exclaimed the forty giants, "it is above our ability." the youngest of the forty brothers, however, who was lame, said to the lad: "cousin, i will go with you and get the melon of life for you. you must only take with you a jug, a comb, and a razor." on the following day the lad took what was necessary and followed the lame giant, who soon brought him to the garden of the melon of life, which was guarded by fifty giants. the guards being asleep, the lad and his companion entered the garden without being perceived, and picking the melon began to run. but they were just crossing the hedges, when the lame leg of the giant was caught by the fence, and in his haste to release it he shook the hedges which crackled like thunder and, lo, all the fifty giants awoke crying: "thieves! human beings! a good prey for us!" and began to pursue the lad and his lame companion. "throw the jug behind you, cousin," exclaimed the lame giant. the lad did so, and lo, plains and mountains behind them were covered by an immense sea which the fifty giants had to cross in order to reach them. by this means they gained quite a distance till the fifty crossed the sea. "now, cousin, throw the comb behind you," exclaimed the lame giant. the lad did so, and lo, an extensive jungle between them and the fifty giants. they gained another great distance before the giants finished crossing the jungle. "throw the razor now, cousin," exclaimed the lame giant. the lad did so, and lo, all the country between them and the fifty giants was covered with pieces of glass, sharp as razors. before the fifty could cross the distance the thirty-nine giants came to the rescue of the two and took them, safely to their borders. the lad took leave of his adopted aunt and cousins, find taking the melon of life with him, returned home. on his way, however, he was again the guest of the old woman, who seeing him come safely, asked if he had succeeded in bringing the precious fruit. "yes, i have brought it, auntie," answered the lad, and told her his tale. in the middle of the night, when the lad was sound asleep, the old woman took the melon of life out of the lad's saddle bag and put a common melon in its place. in the morning the lad brought the melon to his stepmother, who eating it exclaimed: "o, happy! i am healed." the lad again went hunting, and the witch said to the giant: "look here, giant; this enterprise did not prove fatal to my stepson. advise me of another more dangerous journey on which i may send him, and from which he shall surely not return." upon the advice of the giant she once more placed some thin and dry loaves of bread under her bed and lay down feigning sickness. in the evening when the lad came she said in a weak voice: "o, son, i am dying, you will not see me any more." "why, mother," exclaimed the lad, "what is the matter? what can i do for you?" "the only remedy for my sickness," answered the witch, "is the milk of the fairy lioness. if you bring it for me i shall live; if not, i must die." the lad started, and again was the guest of the old woman, who asked where he was going. "i am going this time to bring a skinful of the milk of the fairy lioness for my mother," answered the lad. the old dame again importuned him not to go, but as he insisted she said: "well, as you are resolved to go, let me advise you. on the other side of yonder mountain is the den of the fairy lioness, which is at this moment very much troubled by a pustule on her paw, and you will find her at the entrance of her den, holding her pustulous paw above her head and roaring. now, you must approach her cleverly without being noticed by her, and taking aim with your bow and arrow, shoot into the pustule, which, being wounded, will at first cause her great pain and make her roar. but soon the pain being past, she will feel comfortable and give you whatever you demand of her." the lad went, and found the fairy lioness, as foretold by the old dame, standing at the entrance of her cave, and roaring on account of her pain. the lad at once taking aim, shot and wounded the pustule. the pain of the lioness increasing she exclaimed: "oh! who was it that shot this arrow? i would i could find him and devour him. oh! oh! oh!" but soon, the matter of the wound coming out, she felt comfortable, and said: "who was it that shot this arrow? by heaven, i would give him whatever he demanded." the lad at once jumping out from his concealment stood before the lioness, who seeing him exclaimed: "was it you, young hero, that healed me of my pain which was troubling me so long?" "yes, it was i," answered the lad. "demand of me whatever you please," said the lioness, "i am ready to give to such a hero as you anything that you may ask." "give me," said the lad, "some milk of your own udders, which is the only remedy to heal my sick mother." "in yonder cave," said the lioness, "there are two orphan cubs; go kill them, and flaying them, bring the skins to me." the lad did so and brought her the two whole skins. the lioness milked her udders into them until they were filled. "here," said the lioness, "take these and go, and be careful not to harm my little cubs on your way." the lad took the two cubs' skins full of milk and thanking the lioness, departed. on his way, however, he slily stole two beautiful cubs and began to run. but the mother lioness smelling her young ones, pursued the lad, and overtaking him, exclaimed: "how now, human being! is this the way you reward kindness done to you? why did you steal my two cubs?" "i humbly beg your pardon," answered the lad. "i was so much pleased with your kindness that i wanted to have a permanent keepsake from you, and what better thing could i carry with me than a brace of your cubs, which i will nourish on princely diet and keep as faithful friends." the lioness, being much pleased with this answer, gave him leave to carry the cubs. he soon came to his hostess, who asked if he brought the fairy lioness's milk. "yes, auntie, i have brought it," answered the lad, presenting the two skins full of milk. during the night, however, when the lad was sound asleep, the old woman poured out the lioness's milk from the skins into a cask and filled them with common goat's milk. on the following day, the lad, loading the skins on the back of his horse, took the cubs and went home. the stepmother, drinking the milk, exclaimed: "o good! i am healed." the lad again went hunting as usual. the witch said to the giant: "giant, did i not tell you to advise me and name a task from which my stepson would never return? why are you devising only light tasks which he can so easily accomplish? now you must either advise me as to the most dangerous expedition in which he will surely lose his life, or i will betray you to him and he will cut you into pieces." "what can i do?" replied the giant, "your son is the bravest hero that ever lived; no mortal can vanquish him. he will return from any expedition, no matter how dangerous it may be. let him go this time and bring you a jug full of the water of life." the witch again feigned sickness, and when the lad came to see her she said: "o my son, i am dying, my bones are breaking," and the crackling of the dry bread under the bed was heard when she turned from one side to the other. "what shall i do for you, mother?" asked the lad sadly. "the only remedy for me this time," answered the witch, "is the water of life, and you must go and bring to me a jug full, else i shall die." the lad at once mounted his horse and taking with him the two cubs, which by that time had grown up to be a pair of fine young lions, he went to his hostess and explained the object of his expedition. "o son," exclaimed the good woman, "i see plainly that you are employed for some wicked purpose; there must be a detestable plot against your life. this is the most dangerous expedition that ever human being has undertaken, and no one has ever returned from the task you have started upon. be advised, go back; your mother is surely false." "not i," said the lad, "i will certainly go." the old woman said, "as soon as you place your jug in the fountain to receive the water, which oozes out only in the thickness of a hair, a heavy sleep will fall upon you, and you will remain there benumbed for seven days and nights. first, scorpions will assail you; then serpents; then beasts of prey, and at last all kinds of genii. you will surely be devoured by them." "let come what may, i will go," said the lad, and taking the two lions with him, he started for the fountain of the water of life. he came to the fountain and found the water oozing out in a tiny stream. as soon as he placed his jug under it, a sound sleep overpowered his senses and he remained there benumbed for seven days and seven nights. soon innumerable large scorpions began to attack the sleeping hero. but the lions destroyed all of them. then thousands of terrible serpents made their appearance and assailed the lad, hissing and striking with their forked tongues. the lions, after a bloody fight, destroyed them also. soon a whole army of voracious beasts surrounded the fountain in search of the lad. the lions, after a sanguinary strife, succeeded in destroying them also. at the end of the seven days and nights, the lad awoke, and to his great horror saw that he was surrounded by a high wall which the lions had built of the carcasses of the beasts and serpents they had killed. the two faithful guardians were now sitting on either side of their master and were watching his every motion. the lad, seeing them stained with blood from head to foot, understood how much he owed to them in the preservation of his life. he then washed them clean with the water of life and taking the jug, which by that time was filled, he returned to his hostess. "did you bring the water of life?" asked the old dame. "yes, auntie, i did," answered the lad, presenting her the jug full of water. "it was not you that succeeded," returned the old woman, "but heaven and your faithful lions that preserved your life." during the night, as the lad was sleeping, the old woman poured the water of life into another vase, and filled the jug with common water, which the lad in the morning took to his stepmother, who drinking it said: "o, happy! i am healed." the following day the lad again went hunting. the witch said to the giant: "can you not devise some means to destroy my stepson? by heaven, i will destroy you this time if you do not tell me how to destroy him." "your stepson is brave," answered the giant, "he is a unique hero, and no one can kill him but yourself." "how! how!" exclaimed the witch with great joy, "tell me and i will do it." "do you not remember the three red hairs among his black hairs on his head? as soon as they are picked, your son dies." on the following day the witch said to the lad: "come, son, lay your head in my lap and take a nap." the lad did so and soon slept. the witch immediately took hold of the three red hairs and picked them out. a spasm or two, and the hero died. "now, giant," said the witch, "take that sword and chop this corpse into small pieces." "not i," answered the giant, "my hand will not be lifted to chop such a hero." "you coward!" exclaimed the witch, and taking the sword she chopped the corpse into small pieces, put these into a sack, and threw them over the garden wall. one of the little fingers, however, fell into the garden. the lions learned that their master was killed, and that his chopped body had been put into the bag. they immediately took hold of the bag and carried it to the old woman, the hostess of the hero. opening the bag, she took out the body, and putting every part in its proper place made a whole; only the little finger was missing. she explained to the lions what was missing, and they at once went, and smelling their master's finger in the garden, found it and brought it to the old woman, who put it in its proper place. now she brought the milk of the fairy lioness, which she had secretly preserved, and poured it over the body. immediately all the broken bones, muscles and sinews came together, and all the members being united, the body became as sound and delicate as that of a newborn babe. then she brought the melon of life, and put it before his nostrils. as soon as the lad smelt it, he sneezed seven times. then she poured the water of life down his throat. at once the lad opened his eyes, and jumped up, saying: "o, what a sound sleep was this that overpowered my senses!" "sleep!" exclaimed the kind woman. "yes, a sleep out of which you would never have awaked had not providence preserved you." and she told him what had happened. "now, my good hostess," said the lad, "you have done me a very great kindness--a kindness that i can never reward. may heaven reward you!" he brought her from his treasures a horseload of gold and a horseload of silver, saying: "these are for you; spend as much as you like and pray for me as long as you live." the lad came to his palace and found that his beautiful bride was imprisoned in a dark cellar, where she was left to starve, while the witch, his stepmother, was in an excess of merriment with the giant and half a dozen younglings around her. they were all amazed to see the hero enter, and the giant was about to make his exit through a secret door in the wall when the lad seized hold of him, saying: "how now, coward, are you running? stop and solve this puzzle for me; whose are these ugly younglings that are infecting the very air of my palace?" "they are my children out of yonder woman, your mother," answered the giant. "mother! i have no mother," exclaimed the lad. "you increase so soon, do you? now we are going to have great merriment. go and bring me from yonder mountain, wood enough to build a large pile." the giant obeyed, and soon a large pile of wood was built in the courtyard of the palace. the lad struck a flint and lighted the wood. soon the whole pile was on fire, burning like a furnace. "now, giant," said the lad, "take hold of these bastards, and throw them into the fire, one by one." the giant obeyed, and all the younglings were burned on the pile. "bring now yonder witch, and throw her into the fire," ordered the lad. she also shared the fate of the bastard children. "now, shall i throw you also?" asked the lad of the giant. "hero," exclaimed the giant, "i honor you, i will obey you." "well, then," said the lad, "i will not kill you. come, pass under my sword and swear obedience to me." the giant kissed the sword, and passing under it became the bondman of the lad. the lad then released his beautiful wife from the dark prison. they celebrated anew their nuptials for forty days and forty nights, and enjoyed a happy life thereafter. thus they attained their wishes. may heaven grant that you may attain your wishes! three apples fell from heaven; one for me, one for the story-teller, and one for him who entertained the company. the tricks of a woman. serkis was a simple farmer who prayed every morning before he went to the fields, and every evening after he came from his work. one day his wife said to him: "husband, why do you not mention in your prayer that god may preserve you from the tricks of a woman?" "tricks of a woman?" exclaimed the man. "i am not such a coward as to be afraid of a woman or her tricks." "is that your opinion of a woman?" asked his wife. "yes, that is my opinion of a woman," answered serkis sternly, as he shouldered his farming utensils. the woman decided to give her husband proof of a woman's power, so she bought some fish, and putting them in her apron, took them to the farm at noon, when she carried her husband's dinner. the farmer went to the bank of a neighboring brook to eat his dinner, when his wife, taking advantage of his absence, buried the fish here and there in the field, and went home. soon serkis returned to his ploughing, and as the earth was turned, lo! fish came out of the ground. he picked them up, and in the evening, bringing them home to his wife, told her that he had taken them from the farm and that he believed the creator had created them in that very place. he then ordered his wife to cook them, and on the following day bring them to the farm for his dinner. on the morrow, the woman cooked the fish, ate them herself, and took to her husband a bowl of pea soup for his dinner. "where are the fish?" asked serkis. "fish! what fish?" exclaimed the woman, feigning surprise. "why, the fish which i picked from the farm yesterday," said the farmer. "are you crazy, husband?" said she, "you have not brought home any fish that i know of." "what!" exclaimed serkis, taking hold of the whip, "you have eaten my fish, and do you call me crazy?" and he threatened to beat her. "help!" exclaimed the woman, and ran to a neighbor's farm. thereupon the ploughmen of the neighborhood came to the rescue of the woman and took hold of serkis. "nay, let me beat her to death," said serkis; "she has eaten my fish, and now she calls me crazy." the ploughmen asked the woman what fish he meant. "nay, i beseech you," exclaimed the woman, "take hold of him, don't let him go; he will kill me. woe upon me! he is certainly crazy, he is a lunatic. ask him where he found the fish he talks of." "why, i caught them just here," said serkis. "i dug them from the ground." "alas!" exclaimed the ploughmen; "the woman is right, he has really lost his mind." and as they bound him with ropes some of the farmers said: "he of late has been giving signs of this." "it is a hereditary disease," said some others, "many members of his family have been crazy." so, treating the poor man as a lunatic, they brought him to his home and bound him to a pillar after whipping him. at night, when everybody else had gone, the woman approached her husband, saying: "how now, husband? are you afraid of a woman's tricks or not? this was the least of all." "for heaven's sake, wife, untie me," said serkis in a pitiful voice. "be sure my first prayer hereafter shall be to be preserved from a woman's tricks." she released him and thereafter he was wise as respects women. a wise weaver. a king was once sitting upon his throne when an embassador from a distant country approached, drew a line around the throne, and sat down without speaking a word. the king did not understand this mystery. he called his ministers. they also did not understand it. it was a disgrace to the king that he did not have a man wise enough to understand the symbolical message of a neighboring sovereign. the king was very angry, and ordered his ministers to solve the riddle themselves, or to find some one in the city to solve it immediately; otherwise he would put them all to death. thereupon the ministers began to search through the realm for a wise man. after a long quest they came to a certain house, which they entered. there was no one in the first room but a baby sleeping in a cradle. and strange to say, the cradle was rocking without any visible cause. they entered the adjacent room, and lo! there also was a baby sleeping in a cradle, which was rocking, though no one was in the room. they walked out into the back yard, where they saw wheat washed and spread to dry; there was a cane moving to and fro, driving away the sparrows, in order that they might not eat the wheat. the ministers of the king were surprised, and going down into the cellar they found a weaver weaving cloth. as his wife had died soon, after giving birth to twins, he had both to weave for his living and do a housewife's work and nurse his children. he therefore had connected the two cradles and the sparrow driver to his loom and shuttle with cords; and so, in this manner, by virtue of his cleverness he was performing all his duties without much trouble. the ministers thought that this man might solve the king's riddle, and so they told him what had happened. the weaver thought a while and then taking a couple of marbles and a chicken, went with the ministers. entering the presence of the king, he looked the foreign embassador in the face, and threw before him the marbles. the embassador took from his pocket a handful of grain and spread it on the floor. the weaver put down the chicken, which in a few minutes ate all the grain. thereupon the embassador put on his sandals and ran away speedily. "what was all this?" asked the king. "by drawing the line around the throne," answered the weaver, "the embassador wished to say that their king was coming to besiege us, if we did not humiliate ourselves and pay tribute. to this i answered by dropping marbles, which meant that they were children compared to ourselves and that they would better go and play marbles, rather than to undertake a war which would result in their utter ruin. by spreading the handful of grain he meant that their forces were innumerable. by the chicken which ate all the grain, i meant that a company of ours was enough to destroy a legion of theirs." the king was pleased with the weaver, and gave him costly presents, but the weaver took only a little to enable him to bring up his beloved twins. the king wanted to make him his prime minister, but the weaver declined, saying: "let me continue to be a weaver; only i beg you to remember, that wisdom and understanding are not distributed according to rank and that the common tradesmen are entitled to be treated as humanely as your peers and noblemen." mind or luck--which? mind and luck were one day debating. "it is only by me that a man becomes a man," said luck. "no, it is by me," insisted mind. at last they decided to make a trial upon a villager who was working on a neighboring farm. luck first approached the man, and lo! the ploughshare unearthed a jug. the farmer stopped, and opening the mouth of the jug saw that it was full of gold coins. "ah!" he exclaimed, "i shall be a rich man." but soon he changed his mind and said,--"yes, but how will it be if thieves hear about my wealth, and come and rob me, and upon my resistance, kill me?" while he was thus musing, he saw the judge passing by, on his way to the village. he at once decided to give the gold to the judge, and himself continue to live his tranquil farmer's life. accordingly he ran and called the judge to the farm. but before the judge had arrived, mind had entered the man's brain. he hid the jug and said to the judge: "sir, you are a judge, you are a learned man; do tell me, which of these two oxen of mine is the better one?" the judge was angry and departed scolding the man. mind also departed, and the farmer began to soliloquize: "oh, what a blockhead i am! why did i not give the gold to the judge? surely he was the best man to have it. what shall i do with these coins? where shall i keep them?" he did not work during the rest of the day, but spent his time in useless meditation. in the evening he saw the judge returning from the village. he ran to meet him and begged him to come to his farm for a moment. the judge thought there must be meaning in the man's conduct, and entered the field. by that time mind had returned to the man's brain, and he said to the judge: "sir, you are a learned man; do tell me which is the larger, the lot which i ploughed yesterday or the one i ploughed to-day?" the judge thought that the man was crazy and departed smiling. mind also departed from the man, who began to beat his head, saying: "what a pumpkin-pated fellow i am! why did i not give the gold to him? where shall i keep it? what shall i do with it?" so saying he placed the jug in his lunch-bag, and came home leading the oxen. "wife! o wife!" he exclaimed; "lead the oxen to the stable, give them hay, and take the plough in. i will go to the judge and come back." his wife, a shrewd woman, saw that there was something in the lunch-bag which her husband did not put down. it must be something which she thought she ought to know, so she said to him: "it is not my business to take care of your oxen. i have hardly time enough to drive and milk the cows, and care for the sheep. you put in your oxen and plough, and go wherever you please." the man, putting the lunch-bag by the door, began to attend to his oxen. while he was thus occupied, the woman opened the bag, and seeing the jug full of gold, took it out and put a round stone in its place. the man then took the bag to the judge, and placing it before him, said: "i have brought you this as a present." on opening it they saw that it was a stone. the judge was angry with the man, but thinking that he might after all have a secret, he cast him into prison. he put two spies in his cell to watch the man and report whatever he did or said. the man began to meditate in the jail, motioning with his hands: "the jug was as big as this, its mouth as wide as this, its belly as large as this, and the gold in it as much as this." the spies reported to the judge that the man was making certain gestures, but not speaking. the judge called the man and asked what it was he was showing with his hands. mind entered the man's brain, and he answered: "i was thinking to myself that you had a head as big as this, a neck as thick as this, a beard as long as this. and i was asking myself whose pate and beard was the larger, yours or our goat's?" thereupon the judge was very angry and ordered his men to beat the farmer to death. the thrashing was hardly begun when the man exclaimed: "do not beat me, i will tell the truth." they ceased beating him, and brought him to the judge, who asked him to tell the truth as to what he was measuring in the jail. "the truth is this," said the man, "that if you continued to beat me i would surely die." this made the judge laugh, and he ordered the man to be released, being convinced that he was only a lunatic. the man came safely home. thereupon mind and luck shook hands and made friends, saying: "luck with mind, mind with luck, can make a man a man." the world's beauty. a rich merchant of the city of bagdad had accumulated great wealth and property. he had a wife and a son. one day the merchant fell sick, and felt that he was about to die. on his deathbed he called his son, saying: "you see, my son, i have accumulated so great wealth that even princes have not as much. i bequeath all to you. continue my business and enjoy your property, but never go to the city of tiflis." then he called his wife, explained to her the mystery of his riches, and gave her the key of his secret chamber, saying: "if my son spends all my wealth and becomes poor, then you may tell him my secrets." the merchant died, and his son, continuing his business, one day took forty camel-loads of merchandise, and set out for the city of erzerum. in the caravansary, where he deposited his goods in erzerum, he met two poor men in rags, sighing and beating their breasts. "what is the matter with you?" asked the young merchant. "oh!" exclaimed the two ragamuffins, "it is something that cannot be told." the lad had great compassion on them, and said: "nay, masters, tell me your grief; i am ready to spend all my wealth for your sake." at last they said: "would to heaven you had not met us, sir! you will be like ourselves." "how?" asked the lad. "each of us was a wealthy merchant, such as you are," said the men; "we went to tiflis and there heard that the king had a daughter called the world's beauty. we wished to see her, and they charged each of us forty pieces of gold to behold her from behind a glass partition. we fell in love with her, and thereafter spent all our wealth to see her over and over again. so we wasted eighty camel-loads of merchandise and to-day we are so poor that no one cares to look at us." the lad gave them a handful of gold coins, and on the next day loaded his camels and started for tiflis. he gave forty gold coins to see the world's beauty from behind the glass, and after that spent all his wealth and merchandise for her sake. he came back to bagdad to his mother, as poor as job, and told her his ill-luck. she scolded him for his disobedience to his father's command. but the lad wept and promised that he would not go to tiflis any more, if she gave him from his father's secret chamber something by which he could earn his living and preserve his father's reputation. his mother gave him an empty purse, saying: "if to-day you put in this purse forty pieces of copper, on the morrow you will see that they have changed to forty pieces of gold. after three years, the gold put into the purse changes into copper. that is to say, once in three years the talisman changes to its contrary." "this is good," thought the lad; "i have now an inexhaustible revenue, which never requires work." he soon forgot his promise to his mother, and took the first caravan to go to tiflis. he paid forty gold pieces every day to see the world's beauty, and his money was not exhausted. the maiden was surprised, and one day invited him to a banquet, with the intention of robbing him. "ah! i love you very much," she said to him, artfully, "i will certainly marry you if you tell me the secret of your wealth." how easily may a simple youth be deceived by an artful woman! the lad fell into the trap and showed her the magic purse. the maiden intoxicated him with poisonous wine, and taking away the purse expelled him from her house. he returned to his mother, lamenting his loss. he wept and promised not to go again to tiflis, if she gave him something else from his father's secret chamber by which he might earn his living. a mother's heart is tender; she could not resist his importunities, and at last brought to him from the secret chamber a cap, saying: "this is a magic cap; when you put it on your head you will see others without being seen by anybody." this was something that suited the lad best of all. as soon as he became the owner of the cap he forgot his solemn promises to his mother and directly set out for the city of tiflis. he entered the maiden's house and looked at her as much as he pleased, without being molested. the maiden and the inmates of the house detected that there was somebody in the house, but they could not see him, despite their repeated efforts. one day, the maiden thought it might be the youth of bagdad who was playing this trick, and she called him by his name, saying: "disclose yourself, i will certainly marry you." the lad took the cap from his head, and appeared to the maiden. "o, my dear lord," said the wily maiden, "i have been burning for your love. ever since you have gone away i have uttered no name but yours, and i am yours still if you tell me your secret." the lad was deceived by her artful words and told her the secret of the cap. a banquet was given to the lad, poisonous wine was served to him, and the cap being taken from him he was expelled from the house, with disgrace. he came back to bagdad, begging his way. he had no heart to go again to his mother. he entreated the intervention of friends and kinsfolk, who persuaded the mother and reconciled her with her prodigal son. he begged his mother for a third secret from his father's chamber. "but one secret is left," she said. "if you lose this one also, we shall become hungry and naked, and become paupers." she gave the lad a horn, and told him to blow it. the lad blew it, and lo! the mountains and plains were covered with soldiers. "now," she said, "blow it from the other end." he did so, and lo! the army disappeared. "mamma," said the lad, "now let me go, fight with my enemies and bring back all that i have lost." thus speaking he set out without waiting for an answer. as soon as he arrived at tiflis, he stood upon the hilltop near the city and blew the horn. in the twinkling of an eye the city was besieged by an army so great that there was no room left for the soldiers to stand on. there was a sudden panic in the city; all the people were terrified. the king sent messengers to the lad, asking him what he wanted. "war! war!" exclaimed the lad. "who do you think i am?" they recognized him and saw that he was the lad of bagdad. thereupon the king called his daughter, saying: "you are the cause of this trouble; go see the lad and quench this fire, before we both perish." the maiden sent a messenger to the lad, saying: "i will come to you, my love, and we will go directly to the church to be married, and then go to our house. but, love, disperse your army that i may come to you." soon after the message the maiden herself appeared. the lad blew the horn from the other end, and the army disappeared. the maiden coming to the lad, apologized for the past and poured out all her store of sweet and fascinating words. she brought also a letter from her father approving of their marriage. the lad told the maiden the secret of the horn, but this time did not give it to her. "well, then," said the maiden, "put the horn in your trunk, lock and seal it, and let us send it home. one cannot go to church with a horn in one's pocket; it is a sin. after the wedding we will return home, examine the seal of the trunk, and open it. nobody will steal your horn." the lad consented, and putting the horn in the box, sealed it and sent it to the maiden's house. when they reached the church door, the maiden suddenly exclaimed: "o me! i forgot to kiss the hand of my father and mother. let me go and bid them farewell, then i will come and the wedding will take place." the lad believed her and let her go. coming to the house, she ordered her servants to break the trunk. she got out the horn, sent a man to the lad and expelled him with disgrace from the city. the lad was now at a complete loss. he had no more hope in his mother, and no favor in the sight of his countrymen. for a time he wandered here and there and then decided to go to sea. "let me go," he thought, "to the end of the world, to an unknown country, where nobody will know me." he was accepted as a servant on board a ship. but soon after they sailed there was a heavy storm on the sea, and the ship was wrecked. the lad was saved on a piece of board, and was cast upon an uninhabited island where he lived eating wild berries. one day he saw two apple-trees growing near one another; the fruit of one was of common size, but the fruit of the other tree was as large as a man's head, and very tempting to eat. "what a nice fruit!" thought the lad, and ate one of the large apples. as soon as he tasted it, lo! he became a donkey, with a tail and very long ears. as a four-legged beast, for a time he grazed in the neighborhood; only he was conscious that he was a man and had become a donkey. one day, as he was grazing near the two apple-trees, he ate one of the small apples which had fallen down from the tree, and lo! he became a man as before. "this is well," thought the lad, "i can make good use of these wonderful fruits." he picked up a good many of the apples of both kinds. one day he saw a ship sailing at a distance. he displayed a signal and the ship sailed to the island. he went on board, taking both kinds of apples with him. the sailors pitied him and brought him back to tiflis without charge. the lad disguised himself, and taking the shape of a peddler, went to the neighborhood of the house of the king's daughter, to sell his large apples. the maiden was greatly pleased with the appearance of the fruit, and paying twenty pieces of gold, bought two large apples. she and her forty maids ate slices of the apples, and all of them were suddenly changed into donkeys, and went out into the yard braying. it is said that as a donkey also the world's beauty was excellent. the king came with his peers who, seeing what had happened, were greatly surprised and grieved. by this time the lad was again disguised, taking the shape of a doctor, and calling himself dr. karabobo. the king's servants summoned all the doctors of the city, but it was of no avail. at last they said to the king that there was left only a certain dr. karabobo, a foreigner. "bring him hither," said the king. by that time all the followers of secret arts crowded about the king's palace. priests, monks, astrologers, star-gazers, magicians, sorcerers, witches, wizards, necromancers, bird conjurers, mice conjurers, snake conjurers, predictors by measuring with the span, predictors by casting beans or blue pebbles, predictors by gazing at cups of water, and all kinds of enchanters, male and female, old and young, were there, practicing their arts, but none could understand the secret, or devise a remedy. they all, however, were unanimous in declaring that it was a punishment sent from heaven to chastise the world's beauty for her arbitrary cruelties. thereupon dr. karabobo came in and said to the king: "i can transform these donkeys once more into human beings, but only on two conditions; first, that you give to me your daughter in marriage, and secondly, that you also give me whatever i desire." "i agree to do so," answered the king. the agreement was written, signed and sealed by the king and his twelve peers. the lad took the document, and putting it in his pocket, said: "first of all, i want you to bring hither the eighty camel-loads of merchandise, which your daughter stole from two merchants." the king gave orders and they were brought. "now bring," he added, "the forty loads which were taken from the youth of bagdad; bring his magic purse, cap, and horn, and also the gold coins which were, during the past years, taken from the magic purse at the rate of forty gold pieces a day." the king and his lords were surprised that he knew all this, but were obliged to bring what he asked, according to the agreement. the king only begged him not to demand the gold which the purse had held, as there was not enough in the royal treasury to make up so large a sum. but dr. karabobo was inflexible; he held the horn in readiness to call the army, if needed. then he drew the small apples out of his pocket and gave a piece to every donkey, whereupon they were transformed into human beings. after that he told them who he was. he took the maiden and all belonging to him and set out for bagdad. he blew the horn and an immense army accompanied him. thus with a princely procession he came to the city of erzerum, where he found the two ex-merchants and restored to them their property. then he entered bagdad with great pomp, and said to his mother, who had gone to meet him: "mother, here are all my possessions, and here is the maiden who tortured your son so much. i was obliged to become an ass before i learned how to treat her, and it was necessary for her to become an ass before she ceased to be a deceitful shrew. she is now a human being and promises to become a submissive daughter-in-law." the maiden then kissed both hands of the aged woman as a token of her obedience. they celebrated their wedding festival for forty days, after which they went to the church and were married. salman and rostom. salman was a strong and mighty man, he was as large as a hill, as powerful as a giant, and a terrible tyrant. he lived in one corner of the world, but his fame spread terror over all the earth. he had a horse of lightning, and his arms were as strong as iron. he assaulted men in their peaceful habitations, and took tribute from them; none could refuse to pay him tribute, else he would slaughter and destroy the people. in another portion of the earth there was another strong brigand, called chal, who had a son named rostom. this rostom was a huge man, as large as a mountain, and greatly celebrated for his extraordinary strength and bravery. it was only the land of this chal which did not pay tribute to salman. one day chal mounted his horse and started, saying: "let me go and see what kind of a man salman is." after a long journey he met a huge man mounted on a horse swift as lightning; the staff of his spear was as thick as a man's waist. chal did not know that this was salman himself; but nevertheless he prepared his spear for battle. to his surprise, the horseman gave spur to his horse and passed by chal without even looking at his face. upon this chal was offended, and threw his spear after the horseman. salman turned back, seized chal, whom he bound under the belly of his horse, and galloped until he came to a tent pitched by a gurgling spring. he dismounted, nailed chal's ear to the tent's beam, and lay down to sleep. chal was almost mad with rage; he gnashed his teeth and muttered to himself: "he did not speak a word to me, he did not tell me his name. i wish i might know who he is." salman soon waked, and asked: "fellow, who are you?" "i am from chal's country," answered chal. he was so much afraid that he did not say that he was chal himself. "ah!" exclaimed salman, releasing chal's ear, "why did you not tell me before? go and bid rostom, chal's son, come hither that we may measure swords. there cannot be two men of equal strength; the world must know who is the stronger champion. i am salman." chal returned to his house and sighed deeply. rostom, hearing him sighing, said: "how now, father? you are chal and i am rostom, your son, and yet you sigh! nay, you must tell me your grief." chal told him of his meeting with salman, and the latter's challenge to rostom. rostom took with him his cousin vyjhan, and both disguised themselves, assuming the habit of pilgrims. rostom kissed his white-hoofed horse on both eyes and said to his father: "when i am in trouble my horse will know it and will beat the ground with his feet. then bind my arms upon his back and set him free; he will come and find me." vyjhan, who accompanied rostom on his journey, was far from being a common mortal. he had a wonderful voice; if he cried in the east his voice would be heard in the west. after traveling for a long time, rostom and vyjhan came to a city and encamped upon a meadow outside the town. rostom was sleeping, when vyjhan heard a terrible uproar in the city and went there to inquire the cause of the trouble. some of the people were running like chased deer, some were tearing their hair, some beating their breasts, and all were weeping and wailing. "why, what is the matter?" asked vyjhan. "salman has come, demanding seven years' tribute that is in arrears," the people answered. soon they collected the amount; but the question now arose, by whom they should send the tribute, because salman would take away the man by whom the tribute was sent, and kill him. "give it to me, i will take it," said vyjhan. soon rostom heard in his sleep vyjhan's shrill voice, saying: "help, rostom! salman is carrying me away." rostom got up and learned from the people what had happened, and lo! his white-hoofed horse came running and stood before him. immediately rostom jumped on the back of his horse, which galloped away and soon reached salman's tent. salman, having nailed vyjhan's ear to the tent beam, came out to meet rostom. then and there took place a duel the most terrible that has ever been recorded in the history of the world. bows and arrows, spears and swords were cut into pieces. finally they came near one another, seized each other, and both were entangled in each other's hair. up to the present time they have not yet conquered one another, but are still struggling. now and then they pull and shake each other so violently that the earth quakes, and that is what men call an earthquake; and vyjhan's voice is still heard deeply from afar. the sparrow and the two children. vart was the name of a boy who was six years old, and vartoohi was the name of his sister, who was five years of age. varteni, their dear mother, had died, and vartan, their father, had brought home a stepmother who had with her a boy of her own four years old. vartan was a well-to-do farmer, and as he loved his children he brought them nice suits of clothes and dresses, delicious food, pretty toys and many other presents. the stepmother, being a wicked woman, envied the little half-orphans and wished to destroy them that she might secure every good thing for her own child. in order to attain her vile purpose she secretly boiled the seed which her husband was to sow in the field that year. the wheat, of course, did not grow, and as there was no crop, the farmer had to borrow to meet his expenses. the following year she played the same treacherous trick and increased the farmer's indebtedness so much that the poor man, giving up every hope of the farm, went away to sojourn in other countries to earn money. that was what the wicked woman desired with all her heart. she fed her son with meat and pies, while she gave the half-orphans only a handful of boiled wheat to eat. one day she decided to take vart and vartoohi to the river as if to bathe them, and there to drown them. that day the two innocent half-orphans had taken their handful of boiled wheat and were eating it in a corner of the yard. they saw a small sparrow which was jumping and hopping around them, and chirping and chattering as it leaped. vart wanted to kill it with a stone, but vartoohi prevented him. as they were eating their poor, scanty meal, they listened to the little birdie, and lo! they thought they could understand what it was chirping. "orphans, orphans! good little orphans!" the little sparrow was saying, "give me a few grains which i may take to my little ones in my tiny nest and i will give you good counsel." the children cast a few grains to the bird, which after taking them to its nest came back, saying: "orphans, run! orphans, run! your stepmother will to-day take you to the river to drown you. run, orphans, run!" and the little sparrow flew away. soon the stepmother came, saying: "get up, you dirty things! we will go to the river, where i may bathe you." "you go first, mamma; we will come by and by," answered the orphans. and following the advice of their little feathered friend they ran away to the mountains. the stepmother never searched for them, and the two children wandered in the forest until evening. at nightfall they entered the hollow trunk of an old sycamore tree, repeated the prayer which they had learned from their dead mother, and lay down to sleep embracing one another. soon after daybreak the faithful sparrow came, and the two children waking heard it chirp to them: "orphans, good orphans, come and eat; there is boiled wheat for you." they immediately got up and ran after the sparrow, which led them until they came where an old woman brought a kettleful of boiled wheat, and emptying it under a tree, went away. a great many little sparrows were gathered; the two half-orphans sat with them at the table. the good old woman used to bring the kettleful of wheat and empty it under that tree day after day. she did this in memory of her children and grandchildren, who had died when they were young boys and girls, and whom she had loved very much. she believed that these little birdies were the spirits of her dead little ones. so these two half-orphans lived with the little sparrows for a long time. one day as the prince was hunting in the forest he met vart and vartoohi, took them with him to the palace, loved them and adopted them as his son and daughter. the children were so pretty and amiable that all the court loved them dearly. but vart and vartoohi were not happy. "what is the matter with you, my children?" asked the prince; "what is the cause of your grief?" "we long to see our dear papa who has gone away," answered vart. "and we long to see the little sparrow, our benefactor," added vartoohi. the prince sent out men in search of vartan, the father of the children; and finding him, brought him home. he punished his wife for her wickedness, and embraced his children. the prince kept him also, as a messenger in the court. but who could find the sparrow? it came by itself one day, and alighting on the window where the orphans were, chirped: "you blessed little orphans, you pitied my little ones and gave me grain, and lo! heaven has bestowed upon you so many bounties. may you continue to be blessed and to be happy." the prince liked the little sparrow for its good services and permitted it to build its nest thereafter under the eaves of the palace. all sparrows which at the present time build their nests under the eaves of houses are the descendants of that good sparrow. let us be good even to the sparrows and they may bring good to us. the old woman and the cat. an armenian nursery tale. [3] once upon a time there was an old woman who had a goat. she milked the goat every day and kept the milk in the cupboard; but a sly cat came and licked it up. one day, however, the old woman succeeded in getting hold of the cat, and cutting off her tail as a punishment, let her go. "meow! meow!" cried the cat; "give me my tail!" "bring me my milk and i will give you your tail," said the old woman. the cat went to the goat and said: "goat, kind goat, do give me some milk! i will give it to the old woman and get back my tail." "bring me some boughs from yonder tree, and i will give you milk," answered the goat. the cat went to the tree and said, "o good tree, do give me some boughs! i will take them to the goat, get a little milk and give it to the old woman, and get back my tail." "bring me some water and i will give you some boughs," answered the tree. the cat went to the water-carrier and said, "kind water-carrier, give me some water! i will take it to the tree and get some boughs, give them to the goat and get some milk, and give it to the old woman and get my tail." "bring me a pair of shoes and i will give you some water," said the water-carrier. the cat went to the shoemaker and said, "shoemaker, good shoemaker, do give me a pair of shoes! i will give them to the water-carrier, who will give me some water; i will take it to the tree and get some boughs for the goat; she will give me some milk, which i will take to the old woman and get my tail." "bring me an egg and i will give you a pair of shoes," said the shoemaker. the cat went to the hen and said, "hen, good hen, do lay me an egg! i will take it to the shoemaker and get a pair of shoes for the water-carrier; he will give me some water, which i will take to the tree and get some boughs for the goat; she will give me some milk, which i will take to the old woman and get my tail." "bring me some barley and i will lay an egg for you," answered the hen. the cat went to the threshing-floor and said, "threshing-floor, kind threshing-floor, do give me some barley!" the threshing-floor said: "there, you may gather the scattered barley which my good master has left as food for the birdies and ants." the cat gathered the barley and took it to the hen, which laid her an egg. she took the egg to the shoemaker and got a pair of shoes. she took the pair of shoes to the water-carrier and got a pailful of water for the tree. the tree gave her some boughs which she took to the goat. the goat gave her some milk which she took to the old woman. "here is your tail," said the old woman, "and be careful hereafter not to steal my milk." the cat took her tail and tried to stick it in its place but she could not. she tried over and over again to stick it with resin, with tar and with glue, but it was of no use. so that cat has remained tailless to this day, as a sign of her being a thief. moral.--wickedness is always punished. nothing valuable can be gotten without labor. the mark of a great sin cannot be erased. sia-manto and guje-zare. note. miss alice stone blackwell was kind enough to put into english verse for me the following ballad. in some districts of armenia this tragic story of sia-manto and guje-zare is told as a prose tale as are the other tales of this volume. in some other districts, especially near the foot of mount ararat, it has the form of a versified ballad and is sung with great relish by both the armenians and the kurds. according to the tradition of the natives, sia-manto was an armenian youth and guje-zare a kurdish maiden. they were both of noble birth. the armenians and the kurds, although close neighbors, never intermarry owing to their religious differences. the kurds, however, very often kidnap armenian girls, and as they are professed mohammedans they find protection from the turkish authorities, instead of being punished for their crimes. the armenians, on the other hand, being despised as "christian infidels," never dare to kidnap or elope with kurdish girls. this is the only instance on record of a kurdish maiden's elopement with an armenian youth, and this is a mere tale. a. g. s. sia-manto and guje-zare. it chanced that sia-manto in a dream saw guje-zare; in his dream it seemed they were troth-plighted, and exchanged their rings. to guje-zare the same dream befell on the same night. then sia-manto rose long before dawn, and, mounting on his steed- red, spirited, a horse of lightning--rode swift as an eagle to his sweetheart's tribe. an aged dame received him in her tent. lo! drums were beating, trumpets sounding loud. "why is this mirth, and whose the festival?" he asked of his good hostess, the old dame. "'tis guje-zare's wedding, o my son," she answered, "and the bridegroom from afar has come to bear her with him to his home. this is the third day of the festival." then sia-manto prayed with tearful eyes, saying, "a token bear to her from me;" and from his finger drew and gave the ring exchanged with guje-zare in his dream. the old dame took a kerchief many-hued, put raisins in it, and with them the ring. then to the bride she went, and wished her joy. the lovely girl received her and her gift; with fingers dyed with henna, she turned o'er and stirred the raisins; and among them, lo! the ring of the betrothal of her dream! she knew it at a glance; deeply she sighed; she paled, her eyes were darkened, and she swooned. the old dame held her, and with sorrow said: "o guje-zare! would i had been blind and had not seen this sight! what is thy pain? dear soul, what ails thee? ope thine eyes, thy lips! tell me, what hast thou seen? what moves thee thus?" the voice of sympathy, the dame's warm touch, roused guje-zare; faintly thus she spake: "o auntie, i implore thee, tell me true where dwells the owner of this golden ring?" "a guest within my tent," replied the dame. then guje-zare, sighing, said, "behold, of the festivities three days are past; to-morrow is the bridal's final day. let sia-manto know there is one chance, but one; to-morrow morning i shall go unto my mother's tomb; alone i go to weep there, and to bid her bones farewell. there may he come and find me. tell him this." the dame to sia-manto told her tale. that night long, sia-manto could not sleep. ere dawn he rose, and hastened to the place. there, 'neath the silent dome, sleep fell on him. he wrapped his cloak about him, slept, and snored. soon guje-zare came; and lo! he slept. she stood there long, and long she gazed on him; pitying, she did not touch him. sound he slept, and loud he snored, while by his side she stood. she blamed him, and condemned him in her heart; two golden marbles from her pocket drew, and put them in his pocket, and went home. 'twas noon when sia-manto woke from sleep. he looked around and beat his head, and came again to his kind hostess. mournfully, with broken heart, thus spake he to the dame: "auntie, i sought the tomb; she was not there. i slept there; when i woke i was alone." "ah!" said the dame. "hast thou no token, look within thy pocket?" and he looked, and lo! the pair of golden marbles. "this," she said, "is guje-zare's token." "but," he asked, "what does it mean?" "by this," the matron said, "she meant, 'i see thou yet art but a boy, and not a man of love. go play with boys; this undertaking is too great for thee.'" then sia-manto blushed with shame. in tears he begged the dame, "go, auntie, go once more, for heaven's sake, and let her speak to thee a last word. what she bids me, i will do." the dame from guje-zare brought this word: "to-morrow is the bridal's closing day, the day of the procession. at that time the bridegroom and his men will bear me hence. if sia-manto is a man, and knows how to be loved, and love, let him come then, full armed from head to foot, upon his steed, and take me. we will go to ararat, and rest and love there, hidden in the mist." next morning, when the bridal train set forth, the bridegroom, with his forty horsemen, armed from head to foot, rode, bearing home the bride. and then like lightning sia-manto came, and snatched the bride, and set her on his steed; and swifter rode he than the eagle flies chasing a dove; a journey of three days was all passed over in that one wild ride. with the same swiftness the pursuers rode. the rider on the gray steed nearest pressed. "who is it," sia-manto asked his love, "that risks his own life and his horse's thus?" "'tis he," she answered, "from whom thou hast reft his plighted bride, the maid whom he had loved a year and longer. do not blame him, dear; his heart is broken; he is full of rage." he lifted guje-zare from the horse, and spread his cloak, and set her there to rest; then, mounting, took his arrows and his sword, and furiously on the pursuers fell, and slew the forty horsemen and their steeds. then he returned, and guje-zare bore unto mount ararat, where they reposed, hid in thick mist and fog. his weary head he laid in her soft lap, and fell asleep. soon sia-manto started suddenly; warm tears had fallen from guje-zare's eyes upon his face, and wakened him from sleep. "what is it, dear?" he said. "what hast thou seen? tell me, why dost thou weep and tremble so?" "in this wild place a wonder i have seen. forty wild bulls there were that came to drink at yonder spring, and with them was one cow. then raged a fearful fight among the bulls; and the gray bull, victorious o'er the rest, took him the cow. the thing reminded me of our own case--the forty horsemen slain- and i was so excited that i wept." he rose and took his arrow and his bow, chased the gray bull, and shot it, and it fell, and rolled upon the ground. he rushed on it, and with his dagger strove to cut its throat; but the bull, bellowing madly, tossed its horns, and threw him down the precipice profound. and sia-manto fell upon his back upon a sharp oak trunk, that pierced his chest four spans and further. there he hung transfixed. then guje-zare, following him afar, came to the precipice, and gazed around; saw the wild bull in its last agony, and heard her sia-manto's mournful groans. she found his bow and arrow, picked them up, and bent her o'er the precipice's edge until she saw where sia-manto hung. she tore her hair, and wailed this loud lament: "o sia-manto, dost thou lie so low? thy bow and arrow of pure silver are. thou hadst no need to follow the wild bull. oh, groan not, sia-manto, groan not so!" "my guje-zare," from below he called, "weep not! thy wailing causes me more pain than this curst oak trunk." "but thou groanest there, my sia-manto, and shall i not weep? thy groans, that pierce my heart, call forth my tears. there is a great storm on mount ararat. here are thy bow and arrow, o my love. thou didst not heed me when i prayed to thee. 'nay, lay thy bow and arrow down,' i said; 'chase not the wild bull, he too has his mate; nay, let them live, like us, and love, like us.' o thou wild bull, thou fearful, cruel bull, thy horns are steel, thou huge and dreadful bull that didst part lovers on mount ararat. the top of ararat is wrapt in mist; and sia-manto's bow and arrow gleam like pearls. alas! who ever heard before of game that killed its hunter? o my love, i told thee, 'sia-manto, do not go; let the wild bull go after his own love. dost thou need game, i am enough for thee. oh, do not, do not go!' yet who can tell? perchance 'twas heaven that had ordained it thus. the will above cannot be changed below. rocky and bushy is mount ararat, and cold and deadly are its winds and storms. o sia-manto! show me now a way to reach thee where thou art, that i once more may hold thee in my arms, and die with thee. oh, hither come with shovels and with spades to turn the earth and rocks, and bury here both sia-manto and his love with him!" she shut her eyes, and casting herself down, fell on her lover, uttering but one word- "my sia-manto!" and he echoed it- "my guje-zare!" with his latest breath. then silence! in each other's arms they died. there in the spring men still may see two flowers bud forth, twin blossoms, like as like can be: two butterflies come there to light on them. they represent the hapless lovers twain who lost their lives upon mount ararat. notes [1] "bedik" means in armenian,--"little prince." [2] navasard is the armenian new year, which falls on the 23rd of august. [3] the armenian mother tells this tale to her child when she puts it to bed. its effect upon the little one is very quieting, so that the child often goes to sleep before the tale is finished. armenia and the armenians a list of references in the new york public library compiled by ida a. pratt under the direction of richard gottheil, ph.d. new york 1919 note this list contains titles of works in the new york public library on march 1, 1919. the books and articles mentioned are in the reference department, in the central building of the library at fifth avenue and forty-second street. reprinted. with additions. october 1919 from the bulletin of the new york public library of march-may 1919 printed at the new york public library form p-126 [x-23-19 3c] table of contents page prefatory note 1 bibliography 5 periodicals 7 description and geography 7 archaeology 18 numismatics 20 art 20 history 21 general works 21 massacres 36 works in armenian relating to other countries 40 biography 41 social life 42 economics and industries 43 folklore and mythology 44 law 45 science 45 geology and natural history 46 language 47 inscriptions 53 history of literature 56 literature 57 poetry 57 fiction and drama 59 other literature 62 translations from european languages 65 armenian church 68 mechitharists 72 missions 72 armenian question 73 armenians in other countries 78 index 81 armenia and the armenians a list of references prefatory note by richard gottheil, ph.d. chief of the oriental division few people have been the subject of so much pity and commiseration as have the armenians. and few have deserved such pity as fully as have they. a remarkable race, they have had an uncommon history. they have always written and spoken an indo-european language, one that belongs to that large number of which the sanskrit is an early and prominent representative. according to their traditions, they are also of indo-european race; though evidently intermixed with semitic and other blood. historically, they come to our notice at first in ancient phrygia; and, peculiarly enough, seem to have reversed the general order and to have travelled towards the rising sun instead of towards the west. the empire of the hittites was breaking up, and the armenians appear to have settled in the upper reaches of the euphrates, to have extended their quarters into the region of lakes van and urmia and to have made their home around mt. ararat. unfortunately, the armenians were never able to hold out long as an independent kingdom. in antiquity the greater powers of greece, of seleucid syria, of persia and of rome were at hand, ready to prevent the assertion of any rights that might controvert their own. at one time, it is true, that which historians call armenia major and armenia minor--the caucasus regions south of the mountains and north of mesopotamia--were ruled by independent kings, especially under tigranes ii, termed the great (94-56 b. c.), who extended his power to take in a good deal of the former kingdom of assyria, the northwest corner of persia, the province of azerbaijan, a territory said to have covered some 500,000 square miles and to have contained some 3,000,000 inhabitants. his royal city was called after his own name--tigranocerta; and it is sufficient to record cicero's saying that "tigranes made the republic of rome tremble before his powers." but rome's watchful eye was envious of such power, and under lucullus, in 69 b. c., armenian independence was put down--not to be raised again for many centuries. at a later date she became the playball between byzantium and persia, who in their continued strife swarmed up and down her land carrying destruction in their wake. weakened as she thus was, she was in no condition to withstand the onslaughts made upon her by the arab hordes that swarmed up through northern mesopotamia in 636 a.d. but, withal, her people held firmly to their heritage. from time to time attempts at freedom were made and independent kings ruled for a nonce and after a fashion. vartan did this in from 571 until 578 under the byzantines. ashot i was semi-independent in 885 under the auspices of arab overlords. but such attempts as these were not productive of good. they opened the way for internal strife and for the entry of those tartar hordes in the eleventh century that were destined finally to overrun the whole country. here again the tenacity of the armenians told its tale. small independent kingdoms were established at ani, in georgia and near lake van. but the coming of toghril beg soon ended their existence. in 1071, the turks drove the byzantines out of armenia and began that series of depredations and plunder through which they have made their name infamous. in 1239, jenghiz khan was there; and when the turks were at rest, the kurds were ready to supplement their work. an exodus was begun, the first of many the armenians have had to suffer during their long and tragic history. multitudes were driven out of the country into poland, into moldavia and galicia,--even around the north of the caspian sea, where in lemberg, an important colony was founded. some wandered to the south and founded settlements in the mountains of cilicia which were able to exist for some 300 years, although they were looked at askance by byzantium because of their peculiar church government. in 1375, the country was conquered by the ottomans; but so strong is the desire of the armenians for freedom that a small body of them withdrew into the recesses of the taurus mountains and refused--with success--down to the present day, to pay taxes to the government at constantinople. the armenians were overrun by tamerlane in 1401, by the sultan selim i in 1514, by the persians in 1575 and 1639. it was therefore natural that, when the russian armies came upon the scene and offered to release the christian peoples from the yoke of the turk they were received with joy. etchmiadzin, which for a time had been persian, became russian by the treaty of turkman-chai in 1828. whatever fault we may in truth find with the manner in which the former russian government treated its subject peoples, very little can be said against its method of dealing with the armenians. it is true that a strong attempt at russification was commenced during the closing years of the nineteenth century. this went so far that in 1898, under the governorship of prince galitzin, many armenian schools were taken over, and in 1903 much armenian church property was condemned. but nothing was done to disturb the daily life of the armenians who grew numerous and flourished in that part of the caucasus that was under russian surveillance. the plain of erivan and the valley of the araxes river are their chief residing places. here, though in close contact with tartars, lazes and kurds, they have preserved their separate existence, and have cherished with ardor the details of their older life. etchmiadzin was originally a religious settlement--a monastery encircled by high battlements. but for the armenians it is not only a religious center. it is more than this. it has become a national rallying point towards which all armenians look with a peculiar attachment and affection. one would have imagined that such tenacity in holding on to what they considered to be the truth would have received the recognition it deserved on the part of the leading political forces in europe. but that was asking too much. the lot of the armenians who were under turkish overlordship gradually grew worse. it is true that the draft treaty of san stefano called for "improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by armenians," and guaranteed "their security from kurds and circassians." but the final berlin treaty of 1878 had whittled this down to a simple promise of reform "for the protection of christian and other subjects of the porte." this meant, of course, that nothing was to be done. turkey was astute enough to know this; and the great arbiter of fate in the europe of his time, bismarck, had said openly that the germans had no care for armenian reforms. soon the massacres commenced that unfortunately carried the tale of armenian sufferings all over the world. beginning at mush, in 1893, they have lasted with more or less continuity down to our own day. unfortunately, such place-names as erzerum (1895) and adana (1909) are too familiar to our ears. the hope was felt and openly expressed that the coming of the young turk would bring a change in the treatment of the armenians; but enver, talaat, and djavid have certainly done their best to prove that though the turk may change from "old" to "young" he still remains a turk. "the first phase of ottoman policy towards subject peoples was neglect; the hamidian was attrition; but the young turkish phase is extermination." the report presented in 1916 by viscount bryce on "the treatment of the armenians in the ottoman empire," is the severest indictment that could be presented against a people and against their political backers. from 800,000 to 1,000,000 of these armenians are said, on reliable authority, to have perished. at an early date the armenians accepted christianity. they themselves believe that the new faith was preached to them by the apostles thaddai and bartholomew. but it was not until the year 301 that gregory the illuminator persuaded their king tiridates officially to accept christianity for the state and the people as a whole. and just as they have preserved their national identity, so they have kept themselves apart as a church--called the "gregorian," after the saint mentioned above. they followed the decisions of the council of nicea (325) of constantinople (381) and of ephesus (381), but refused to regard the council of chalcedon as legally convened; and at a synod of their own, composed of armenian and georgian bishops, held at driune in 506, the armenians definitely wedded themselves to the council of ephesus and the theological doctrines propounded there. the armenian church stands thus, in no connection either with the greek or the roman church. in the 18th century, it is true, a certain bishop mekhitar, of sebaste, joined the roman hierarchy and established at venice the mekitarist monastery that has done some excellent literary and educational work, and that in turkey a kotolik milleti (catholic nation), was established in 1835, through roman influence. but neither have any connection with the armenian church as such. the oriental character of this church may be seen from the fact that its weekly day of rest lasts from saturday sun-down up to sunday evening. at an equally early date the armenians showed a taste for literary expression, and so eager are they for education that in the year 1902, and under all the circumstances of turkish oppression, they had no less than 1,200 armenian schools in the ottoman empire, giving instruction to 130,000 pupils. their script is said to have come to them from a certain syrian daniel and to have been enlarged and perfected by their own saint mesrob in 410, who added the vowel signs after the manner of the greek system. it was to this same mesrob, assisted by sahak (isaac; 387-439), to whom the armenians owe the translation of both the old and new testament into their tongue. much of the older literature is composed of translations from greek and from syriac authors, but, in a certain sense, a national literature was growing up--though, as was natural, it was largely theological in character. yet valuable historical works were written by moses of khorene, by mesrob, and in the twelfth century, by nerses shnorhali. some poetry has also been written, though this, too, is chiefly of a religious turn. printing in armenia was introduced by the patriarch mikhael of sebaste (1542-1570) though some years prior to this--in 1512--a press that used armenian type had been set up in venice. the first armenian book to be printed in england dates from the year 1736; the first to be put out in russia from 1771; but it was not until 1857 that an armenian book left the press in america. in quite modern times large quantities of armenian literature have been published dealing with a great variety of topics. wherever they are, the armenians are in the forefront of those who work and strive; they have large capacity and when they will once again be settled in their ancient home in asia minor and in northern mesopotamia, to which 500,000 are ready to return at a moment's notice, we shall look forward to a development that will be as remarkable as it will be thorough. prior to the calamities of this war, armenian historians reckoned the number of their fellow-racials to be 4,160,000--of whom 2,380,000 were in the turkish empire. the following list deals with the various subjects to which reference has been made in these pages. whatever excellence it has is due to the care and vigilance of miss pratt. i am also beholden to mr. v. h. kalendarian for the help he has given in verifying the transliteration of the armenian titles. list of works on armenia and the armenians order of arrangement bibliography. periodicals. description and geography. archaeology. numismatics. art. history: general works. massacres. works in armenian relating to other countries. biography. social life. economics and industries. folklore and mythology. law. science. geology and natural history. language. inscriptions. history of literature. literature: poetry. fiction and drama. other literature. translations from european languages. armenian church. mechitharists. missions. armenian question. armenians in other countries. bibliography alishanian, gheuont. table bibliographique. (in his: sissouan. venise, 1899. f°. p. 533-535.) �*onk aucher, g. bollettino: armeno. (rivista degli studi orientali. roma, 1907-12. 8°. v. 1. p. 514-528; v. 2, p. 636-650; v. 3, p. 687-718; v. 4, p. 801-861.) *oaa baronian, sukias. see bodleian library, oxford university. basmadjian, k. j. la presse arménienne en turquie. (revue du monde musulman. paris, 1908. 8°. tome 4, p. 196-201.) *oaa bibliotheca hagiographica orientalis; ediderunt socii bollandiani. bruxellis: apud editores, 1910. xxiii, 287 p. 4°. (subsidia hagiographica. [v.] 10.) *oab bibliothèque nationale, paris. catalogue des manuscrits arméniens et géorgiens de la bibliothèque nationale par frédéric macler. paris: e. leroux, 1908. xxx, 203 p., 1 l., 5 facs. 8°. *oab blackwell, alice stone. bibliography. (in her: armenian poems. boston, 1917. 12°. p. 290-291.) *onp bodleian library, oxford university. catalogue of the armenian manuscripts in the bodleian library by the rev. sukias baronian and f. c. conybeare. oxford: clarendon press, 1918. viii p., 254 col., 6 l. f°. (catalogi codd. mss. bibliothecae bodleianae pars xiv.) �*oab british museum.--department of oriental printed books and manuscripts. a catalogue of the armenian manuscripts in the british museum, by frederick cornwallis conybeare ... to which is appended a catalogue of georgian manuscripts in the british museum, by j. oliver wardrop ... london: the trustees, 1913. viii p., 2 l., 410 p., 1 l. f°. �*oab brosset, marie félicité. activité littéraire des géorgiens et des arméniens, en russie, en transcaucasie et en crimée. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1863-66. f°. tome 5, col. 393-395; tome 7, col. 45-48; tome 8, col. 549-561; tome 10, col. 390-392.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863-68. tome 4, p. 667-670; tome 5, p. 59-64, 351-368, 529-532, *oaa. conybeare, frederick cornwallis. see bodleian library, oxford university; also british museum.--department of oriental printed books and manuscripts. deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. armenisch. (in: katalog der bibliothek. leipzig, 1900. 8°. bd. 1, p. 369-379.) *oab dwight, harrison gray otis. catalogue of all works known to exist in the armenian language, of a date earlier than the seventeenth century. (american oriental society. journal. new york, 1853. 8°. v. 3, p. 241-288.) *oaa finck, franz nikolaus. katalog der armenischen handschriften des herrn abgar joannissiany zu tiflis. leipzig: n. kapamadjian, 1903. xxiii, 260 p. 8°. *onk imprimerie arménienne de saint-lazare. catalogue des livres de l'imprimerie arménienne de saint-lazare. venise: institut des mékhitharistes, 1894. 112 p. 12°. *onk p.v.1 ---tzoutzag krots. [catalogue of books.] 1716-1899. venise: institut des mékhitharistes, 1899. 1 p.l., 102 p. 12°. *onk p.v.1 ------1716-1903. venise: institut des mékhitharistes, 1903. 2 p.l., 73 p. 12°. *onk p.v.1 kalemkiar, gregoris. eine skizze der literarisch-typographischen thätigkeit der mechitharisten-congregation in wien aus anlass des 50jährigen regierungs-jubiläums ... kaiser franz joseph i. wien: mechitharisten-congregations-buchdruckerei, 1898. 4 p.l., 99 p. 8°. *gd karamianz, n. verzeichniss der armenischen handschriften der königlichen bibliothek zu berlin. berlin: a. asher & co., 1888. viii, 88 p., 5 facs. f°. (königliche bibliothek zu berlin. die handschriften-verzeichnisse. bd. 10.) ��*oab karekin, paul. bibliographie arménienne. haïgagan madenakidutiun. venice, 1883. 32, 734 p. 12°. *onk langlois, victor. les journaux chez les arméniens. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1863. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 15, p. 256-271.) *oaa lynch, h. f. b. bibliography. (in his: armenia. london, 1901. 8°. v. 2. p. 471-496.) *r-bby macler, frédéric. indications bibliographiques. (in his: autour de l'arménie. paris, 1917. 12°. p. iii-xvi.) bbx ---notices de manuscrits arméniens vus dans quelques bibliothèques de l'europe centrale. (journal asiatique. paris, 1913. 8°. série 11, v. 2, p. 229-284, 559-686.) *oaa ---rapport sur une mission scientifique en arménie russe et en arménie turque, juillet-octobre 1909. paris: imprimerie nationale, 1910. 135 p., 16 pl. 8°. (france.--ministère de l'instruction publique et des beaux-arts. nouvelles archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires. nouvelle série, fasc. 2.) *en ---see also bibliothèque nationale, paris. mordtmann, j. h. armenische drucke von smyrna und constantinopel. zusammengestellt von j. h. mordtmann. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. wissenschaftlicher jahresbericht... leipzig, 1883. 8°. 1880, p. 57-58.) *oaa mueller, friedrich. die armenischen handschriften des klosters von aryni (arghana). [wien, 1896.] 14 p. 8°. *onk repr.: kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte, philos.-hist. cl. bd. 134, abhandl. 4. *ef. ---die armenischen handschriften von sewast (siwas) und senqus. [wien. 1897.] 13 p. 8°. *onk repr.: kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte, philos.-hist. cl. bd. 135, abhandl. 6, *ef. patkanov, keropé petrovich. catalogue de la littérature arménienne, depuis le commencement du iv. siècle jusque vers le milieu de xvii. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1860. f°. tome 2, col. 49-91.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863. tome 4, p. 75-134, *oaa. ---bibliograficheskii ocherk armianskoi istoricheskoi literatury. (travaux de la troisième session du congrès international des orientalistes. st. pétersbourg, 1879-80. 8°. v. 1, p. 455-511.) *oaa a bibliography of armenian historical literature. petermann, julius heinrich. litteratura armeniaca. (in his: brevis linguae armeniacae grammatica. carolsruhae, 1872. 12°. p. 100-111.) *oac richardson, ernest cushing. armenia. (in his: an alphabetical subject index ... to periodical articles on religion. new york [cop. 1907]. 8°. p. 48-50.) *r-za and *p rockwell, william walker. armenia. a list of books and articles with annotations by w. w. rockwell. new york: american committee for armenian and syrian relief, 1916. 8 p. 12°. *onk salemann, c. armenien. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. wissenschaftlicher jahresbericht ... von october, 1876 bis december, 1877. leipzig, 1879. 8°. heft 2, p. 20-26.) *oaa sarghissian, basile. grand catalogue des manuscrits arméniens de la bibliothèque des pp. mekhitharistes de saint-lazare. v. 1. venise, 1914. f°. �*onk title from cover. armenian title-page. the schrumpf collection of armenian books. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1893. 8°. 1893, p. 699-716.) *oaa streck, maximilian. armenia. bibliography. (in: encyclopaedia of islam. leyden, 1913. 4°. v. 1, p. 446-449.) �*ogc wardrop, j. oliver. see british museum.--department of oriental printed books and manuscripts. periodicals ararat. a searchlight on armenia, v. 1, no. 1-2, 4-12; v. 2-v. 6, no. 61 (july, aug., oct., 1913-nov., 1918). london, 1913-18. 8°. *onk armenia. see new armenia. the armenian herald. published by the armenian national union of america, v. 1-date (dec, 1917-date). boston, 1917-date. 8°. *onk armenian relief association. bulletin, no. 1-2. new york, 1895. 8°. sht asbarez. the arena. an armenian weekly, v. 9, no. 439-date (jan. 5, 1917-date). fresno, cal., 1917-date. f°. ��*onk the azad, an armenian semi-monthly periodical, v. 1, no. 1-18 (jan. 1-nov. 15, 1918). new york, 1918. f°. �*onk azk. the nation, v. 6, no. 15-date (sept. 25, 1912-date). boston, 1912-date. f°. ��*onk banaser. revue littéraire & scientifique publiée sous la direction de k. j. basmadjian. v. 1-9, no. 3. paris, 1899-1907. 8°. *onk basmadjian, k. j., editor. see banaser. cilicia. weekly periodical, v. 3, no. 1-date (jan. 5, 1918-date). new york, 1918-date. 4°. *onk eritassard hayastan, an armenian weekly, v. 5, no. 26-v. 10, no. 42, 44-46, 48-v. 11, no. 22, 24-v. 12, no. 30, 32-v. 13, no. 62, 64-78, 82, v. 14, no. 1-20. new york, 1908-17. f°. ��*onk the friend of armenia, new series, no. 50-51, 53-69 (july, oct., 1912. april, 1913-jan., 1918). london, 1912-18. 4°. �*onk gabriel, m. s., editor. see haik. gaghapar. no. 1-12, 15-17, 19-86, 88-106, 108-135. tiflis, 1916-17. f°. ��*onk gégharvest (l'art). revue littéraire et artistique arménienne. directeur-rédacteur: g. levonian. 1913, no. 5. tiflis, 1913. f°. �*onk the gotchnag. armenian weekly, v. 10-date (jan. 1, 1910-date). new york, 1910-date. 4°. *onp haik. m. s. gabriel, editor, no. 1-24 (jan. 1-dec. 15, 1891). new york, 1891. f°. ��*onk hairenik. the oldest, largest and leading armenian newspaper, in u. s. a. v. 3, no. 115-date (sept. 21, 1901-date). boston, 1901-date. f°. ��*onk levonian, g., editor. see gégharvest. mourdj. no. 12 (dec, 1901). tiflis, 1901. 8°. *onk national armenian relief committee. helping hand series, v. 1, no. 4--date (sept., 1899-date). worcester, mass., 1899-date. 24°. shs new armenia, v. 1-3, no. 9; v. 4-date (oct., 1904-date). boston and new york, 1904-date. 4° and f°. �*onk title varies: oct., 1904-sept., 1913, armenia; feb.-april, 1914, oriental world; dec, 1915-date, new armenia. la voix de l'arménie. revue bi-mensuelle. année 1, no. 5-date (march, 1918-date). paris, 1918-date. 8°. *onk description and geography abbott, k. e. notes of a tour in armenia in 1837. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1843. 8°. v. 12, p. 207-220.) kaa abich, hermann. die besteigung des ararat am 29. juli 1845 durch h. abich. (in: beiträge zur kenntniss des russischen reiches. st. petersburg, 1849. 8°. bd. 13, p. 39-72.) *qfb ---hauteurs absolues du système de l'ararat et des pays environnants. (société de géographie bulletin. paris, 1851. 8°. série 4, v. 1, p. 66-73.) kaa ---vergleichende chemische untersuchungen der wasser des caspischen meeres, urmiaund van-see's. 2 pl. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mémoires: sciences mathématiques et physiques. saint pétersbourg, 1859. f°. série 6, tome 7, p. 1-58.) *qcb ainsworth, william francis. travels and researches in asia minor, mesopotamia, chaldea and armenia. london: j. w. parker, 1842. 2 v. 12°. bbr alaux, louis paul. the armenian schools in the ottoman empire. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 5, p. 44-49.) �*onk alischan, léonce. see alishanian, gheuont. alishanian, gheuont. sissouan; ou, l'arméno-cilicie: description géographique et historique avec carte et illustrations. traduit du texte arménien. publié sous les auspices de son ex. noubar pacha. venise: s. lazare, 1899. viii, 539 p., 1 map, 2 pl. f°. �*onk ---topographie de la grande arménie, par le r. p. léonce alischan; traduite de l'arménien par m. éd. dulaurier. (journal asiatique. paris, 1869. 8°. série 6, v. 13, p. 385-446.) *oaa brosset, marie félicité. examen critique de quelques passages de la description de la grande-arménie du p. l. alichan, relatifs à la topographie d'ani. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1862. f°. tome 4, col. 255-269.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863. tome 4, p. 392-412, *oaa. allen, thomas gaskell, and w. l. sachtleben. across asia on a bicycle. the journey of two american students from constantinople to peking. london: t. f. unwin, 1895. xii, 234 p. 8°. bbf der ararat. (ausland. münchen, 1830. 4°. jahrg. 3, p. 1077-1078, 1082-1083, 1085-1086, 1090-1091.) �kaa the armenians and the eastern question. [by "an armenian."] [london: gilbert & rivington, 1876.] 7 p. 8°. *onk p.v.2 arzruni, andreas. reise nach süd-kaukasien. (gesellschaft für erdkunde. verhandlungen. berlin, 1895. 8°. bd.22, p. 602-611.) kaa azhderian, antranig. the turk and the land of haig; or, turkey and armenia, descriptive, historical and picturesque. new york: the mershon co. [1898.] xiv, 13-408 p., 1 port. 8°. bbx baker, g. percival. an ascent of ararat. (alpine journal. london, 1880. 8°. v. 9, p. 318-327.) psl banks, edgar j. to the summit of mount ararat. (open court. chicago, 1913. 8°. v. 27, p. 398-410.) *da banse, ewald. die türkei; eine moderne geographie... braunschweig: g. westermann, 1915. 2 p.l., 452 p., 1 folded map, 17 pl. 8°. *opk barton, james levi. daybreak in turkey. boston: pilgrim press [1908]. 6 p.l., 11-294 p., 6 pl. 8°. gib ---who are the armenians? (new armenia. new york, 1915. f°. v. 8, p. 19-20.) �*onk basmadjian, k. j. quelles étaient les frontières de l'arménie ancienne? (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1919. 8°. année 2, p. 21-25.) *onk ---souvenir d'ani. paris, 1904. 24 pl., 1 plan. 16°. *onm the text, in armenian and in french, is on the back of the plates. belck, waldemar. beiträge zur alten geographie und geschichte vorderasiens. leipzig: e. pfeiffer, 1901. 3 p.l., 112 p. 8°. kcb belin, françois a. extrait du journal d'un voyage de paris à erzeroum. (journal asiatique. paris, 1852. 8°. série 4, v. 19, p. 365-378.) *oaa bell, mark s. around and about armenia. (scottish geographical magazine. edinburgh, 1890. 8°. v. 6, p. 113-135.) kaa bent, j. theodore. travels amongst the armenians. (contemporary review. london, 1896. 8°. v. 70, p. 695-709.) *da bierbaum, paul willi. streifzüge im kaukasus und in hocharmenien (1912). zürich: o. füssli, 1913. 278 p., 20 pl. 12°. (orell füssli's wanderbilder. no. 308-317.) psk binder, henry. au kurdistan, en mesopotamie et en perse ... paris: maison quantin, 1887. 3 p.l., 454 p., 1 port. 4°. bbv black, george fraser. the gypsies of armenia. liverpool, 1913. 4 p. 8°. qod p.v.9 repr.: gypsy lore society. journal, new series, v. 6, p. 327-330, qox. blau, otto. vom urumia-see nach dem van-see. 1 map. (petermanns mittheilungen. gotha, 1863. 4°. 1863, p. 201-210.) kaa bliss, edwin munsell. armenia. (in: the new schaff-herzog encyclopedia of religious knowledge. new york [cop. 1908]. f°. v. 1, p.288-296.) *r-zab bluhm, julius. routen im türkischen armenien. (zeitschrift für allgemeine erdkunde. berlin, 1864. 8°. neue folge, bd. 16, p. 346-357.) kaa boré, eugène. arménie. 144 p. (in: jean m. chopin, russie. paris, 1838. 8°. v. 2.) gld brant, james. journey through a part of armenia and asia minor, in the year 1835. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1836. 8°. v. 6, p. 187-223.) kaa ---notes of a journey through a part of kurdistan, in the summer of 1838. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1841. 8°. v. 10, p. 341-432.) kaa brosset, marie félicité. note sur le village arménien d'acorhi et sur le couvent de st. jacques. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin scientifique. st. pétersbourg, 1841. f°. v. 8, col. 41-48.) *qcb ---notice sur edchmiadzin. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin scientifique. st. pétersbourg, 1840. f°. v. 7, col. 44-64.) *qcb ---rapport sur la 2de partie du voyage du p. sargis dchalaliants dans la grande-arménie. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin de la classe historico-philologique. st. pétersbourg, 1859. f°. tome 16, col. 201-205.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1859. tome 3, p. 589-594, *oaa. ---rapports sur un voyage archéologique dans la géorgie et dans l'arménie, exécuté en 1847-1848. livr. 1-3 and atlas. st. pétersbourg: impr. de l'académie impériale des sciences, 1849-51. 4 v. 8° and ob. 4°. bbv and �bbv atlas has title: atlas du voyage archéologique dans la transcaucasie. ---see also john of crimea. brosset, marie félicité, and p. a. jaubert. description des principaux fleuves de la grande-arménie, d'après le djihan-numa de kiatib tchélébi, par m. amédée jaubert, avec la traduction d'un fragment arménien du docteur indjidjian, par m. brosset. (journal asiatique. paris, 1833. 8°. série 2, v. 12, p. 458-70.) *oaa broussali, jean. l'arménie. (revue française de l'étranger et des colonies. paris, 1886. 8°. tome 3, p. 199-222, 507-521.) kaa bryce (1. viscount), james bryce. the ascent of ararat. (alpine journal. london, 1878. 8°. v.8, p. 208-213.) psl ---on armenia and mount ararat. (royal geographical society. proceedings. london, 1878. 8°. v. 22, p. 169-183.) kaa ---transcaucasia and ararat, being notes of a vacation tour in the autumn of 1876, by james bryce. 4th ed. rev., with a supplementary chapter on the recent history of the armenian question. london: macmillan and co., 1896. xix, 526 p., 1 map, 1 pl. 8°. psk ---see also tchobanian, archag. buxton, harold. see buxton, noel, and harold buxton. buxton, noel, and harold buxton. travel and politics in armenia, with an introduction by viscount bryce, and a contribution on armenian history and culture by aram raffi. new york: macmillan co., 1914. xx, 274 p., 1 map, 16 pl. 12°. bby chantre, b. a travers l'arménie russe. karabagh. vallée de l'araxe. massif de l'ararat. (tour du monde. paris. 1891-92. f°. v. 61, p. 369-16; v. 62, p. 225-288; v. 63, p. 177-224; v. 64, p. 161-192.) �kba voulzie, g. a travers l'arménie russe. 2 pl. (revue française de l'étranger et des colonies. paris, 1894. 8°. tome 19, p. 170-176.) kaa chantre, ernest. l'ararat. (annales de géographie paris, 1894. 8°. tome 3, p. 81-94.) kaa ---de beyrouth à tiflis à travers la syrie, la haute-mésopotamie et le kurdistan. (tour du monde. paris, 1889. f°. v.58, p. 209-304.) �kba ---mission scientifique de mr. ernest chantre dans la haute mésopotamie, le kurdistan et le caucase ... [lyon?] 1881. 28 mounted photographs in portfolio. 4°. �*ofx ---premiers aperçus sur les peuples de l'arménie russe. (société d'anthropologie de lyon. bulletin. lyon, 1890. 8°. v.9, p. 81-85.) qoa ---rapport sur une mission scientifique dans l'asie occidentale et spécialement dans les régions de l'ararat et du caucase. (archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires. paris, 1883. 8°. série 3, tome 10, p. 199-263.) *en chantres reisen am ararat. (globus. braunschweig, 1892. f°. bd. 62, p. 246-250, 278-281.) �kaa chikhachov, piotr aleksandrovich. asie mineure; description physique, statistique et archéologique de cette contrée, par p. de tchihatcheff. partie 1-4. paris: gide et j. baudry, 1853-69. 6 v. in 8. 4°. kcb and �kcb partie 1. géographie physique comparée. text and atlas. partie 2. climatologie et zoologie. partie 3. botanique. 2 v. partie 4. géologie. 3 v. partie 4 published by l. guérin. ---reisen in kleinasien und armenien, 1847-1863 ... gotha: j. perthes, 1867. viii, 68 p., 1 map. 4°. (petermanns mitteilungen. ergänzungsband 4, heft 20.) kaa childs, w. j. across asia minor on foot. new york: dodd, mead & co., 1917. xvi, 459 p., 40 pl., 1 port. 8°. bbs chopin, j. de l'origine des peuples habitant la province d'arménie. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin scientifique. st. pétersbourg, 1841. f°. v.8. col. 16-20.) *qcb the condition of armenia. (speaker. london, 1900. f°. new series, v. 2, p. 673-674.) *da conybeare, frederick cornwallis. armenia and the armenians. (national review. london, 1889. 8°. v. 14, p. 295-315.) *da reprinted in new armenia, v. 8, p. 292-294, 309-311, �*onk. cooley, w. d., translator. see parrot, friedrich. creagh, james. armenians, koords and turks. london: s. tinsley & co., 1880. 2 v. 8°. bbp cuinet, vital. la turquie d'asie. géographie administrative, statistique, descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l'asie-mineure. paris: e. leroux, 1892-95. 4 v. 4°. kcb curtis, william eleroy. around the black sea; asia minor, armenia, caucasus, circassia, daghestan, the crimea, roumania. new york: hodder & stoughton, 1911. 7 p.1., 3-456 p., 1 map, 32 pl. 8°. bbs curzon, robert. see zouche (14. baron), robert curzon. dale, darley. armenia and the armenians. (american catholic quarterly review. philadelphia, 1917. 8°. v. 42, p. 563-571.) *da dalyell, robert a. o. earthquake of erzerûm, june, 1859. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1863. 8°. v. 33, p. 234-237.) kaa damas, andré de. coup d'oeil sur l'arménie à propos d'une mission de la compagnie de jésus ouverte en asie mineure par les ordres du pape léon xiii. lyon: delhomme et briguet, 1888. 2 p.1., vi, 602 p., 2 charts. 8°. bbx davey, richard. the sultan and his subjects. new york: e. p. dutton & co., 1897. 2 v. 8°. gip ---turkey and armenia. (fortnightly review. london, 1895. 8°. new series, v. 57, p. 197-210.) *da develay, albert. autour des lacs de van et d'ourmiah. (revue scientifique. paris, 1892. 4°. v. 49, p. 553-557.) oa deyrolle, théophile. voyage dans le lazistan et l'arménie. (tour du monde. paris, 1875-76. f°. v. 29, p. 1-32; v. 30, p. 257-288; v. 31, p. 369-416.) �kba dingelstedt, v. the armenians or haikans; an ethnographical sketch. (scottish geographical magazine. edinburgh, 1913. 8°. v. 29, p. 413-429.) kaa diran, a. etchmiadzin. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 5, p. 32-43.) �*onk the dispersion of the armenian nation. from the english blue book. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9. p. 89-91.) �*onk the distribution of the armenian nation. from the english blue book. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 111, 143.) �*onk dolens, noël. ce que l'on voit en arménie. (tour du monde. paris, 1906-07. f°. nouvelle série, v. 12, p. 457-528; v. 13, p. 217-264.) �kba dominian, leon. the peoples of northern and central asiatic turkey. 2 maps. (american geographical society. bulletin. new york, 1915. 8°. v. 47, p. 832-871.) kaa dubois de montpéreux, frédéric. voyage autour du caucase, chez les tcherkesses et les abkhases, en colchide, en géorgie, en arménie, et en crimée; avec un atlas géographique, pittoresque, archéologique, géologique... tome 1-6 and atlas. paris: gide, 1839-43. 7 v. 8° and f°. bbv and ���bbv dulaurier, édouard. commerce, tarif des douanes et condition civile des étrangers dans le royaume de la petite arménie au moyen âge. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1858. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 7, p. 277-287, 359-366.) *oaa ---ethnographie de l'arménie. (société d'ethnographie. actes. paris, 1872. 8°. tome 6, p. 132-136.) *oaa ---étude sur l'organisation politique, religieuse et administrative du royaume de la petite-arménie. (journal asiatique. paris, 1861. 8°. série 5, v. 17, p. 377-437; v. 18, p. 289-357.) *oaa ---see also alishanian, gheuont. edschmiatsin. 1 pl. (der christliche orient. westend-berlin, 1897. 4°. 1897, p. 51-56.) �*oaa edwards, b. b. ascent of mount ararat. (biblical repository and quarterly observer. andover, 1836. 8°. v. 7, p. 390-416.) *da erk-ura, die armenische kolonie auf dem berge ararat. (ausland. münchen, 1834. 4°. jahrg. 7, p. 729-730.) �kaa excursions in armenia. (fraser's magazine. london, 1857. 8°. v. 55, p. 602-611.) *da flandin, eugène. souvenirs de voyage en arménie et en perse. l'arménie. (revue des deux mondes. paris, 1851. 8°. nouvelle période, v. 10, p. 651-681.) *dm ---ueber altund neuarmenien. (ausland. stuttgart, 1851. 4°. jahrg. 24, p. 489-491, 494-495, 498-499.) �kaa freshfield, douglas william. early ascents of ararat. (alpine journal. london, 1878. 8°. v. 8, p. 213-221.) psl ---travels in the central caucasus and bashan including visits to ararat and tabreez and ascents of kazbek and elbruz. london: longmans, green and co., 1869. xiii p., 1 l., 509 p., 3 maps, 5 pl. 8°. psk friederichsen, maximilian hermann. die grenzmarken des europäischen russlands, ihre geographische eigenart und ihre bedeutung für den weltkrieg. hamburg: l. friederichsen & co., 1915. 148 p. 8°. *qg ---russisch armenien und der ararat. 1 pl. (geographische gesellschaft in hamburg. mittheilungen. hamburg, 1900. 8°. bd. 16, p. 1-15.) kaa gaidzakian, ohan. illustrated armenia and the armenians. boston: b. h. aznive, 1908. 255 p., 12 pl., 17 ports. 2. ed. 12°. bby gatteyrias, j. a. l'arménie et les arméniens. paris: léopold cerf, 1882. 144 p. 12°. bby ghisleri, arcangelo. l'armenia e gli armeni. (emporium. roma, 1916. 4°. v. 43, p. 259-273.) maa gooch, george peabody. who are the armenians? a survey. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 63-70.) *onk graves, john temple. the armenian nation. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4°. v. 4, no. 3, p. 1-2.) �*onk gregory, g. marcar. see tchobanian, archag. grothe, hugo. der russisch-türkische kriegsschauplatz (kaukasien und armenien). mit 8 abbildungen und 4 kartenskizzen im text. leipzig: veit & co., 1915. 45 p. 8°. (kriegsgeographische zeitbilder. heft 5.) btze guinness, walter. impressions of armenia and kurdistan. (national review. london, 1914. 8°. v. 62, p. 789-801.) *da hamilton, william j. extracts from notes made on a journey in asia minor in 1836. 1 map. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1837. 8°. v. 7, p. 34-61.) kaa ---researches in asia minor, pontus and armenia; with some account of their antiquities and geology. london: j. murray, 1842. 2 v. 8°. bbr handbook for travellers in asia minor, transcaucasia, persia, etc., edited by ... sir c. w. wilson. london: j. murray, 1895. xii, 88, 416 p., 10 maps. 12°. (murray's handbooks.) kcb ---london: j. murray, 1905. xii, 2, 416 p., 6 maps, 2 plans. 16°. (murray's handbooks.) kcb heneage, charles, translator. see thielmann, max franz guido, freiherr von. hepworth, george hughes. through armenia on horseback. new york: e. p. dutton & co., 1898. xii, 355 p., 1 map, 24 pl., 1 port. 8°. bby hodgetts, edward arthur brayley. round about armenia; the record of a journey across the balkans, through turkey, the caucasus, and persia. london: s. low, marston and co., ltd. [1916.] xii p., 1 l., 296 p., 1 map. 12°. bby hoffmeister, eduard von. durch armenien; eine wanderung und der zug xenophons bis zum schwarzen meere; eine militär-geographische studie. leipzig: b. g. teubner, 1911. viii p., 2 l., 4-251 p., 2 maps, 5 pl. 4°. bby bibliography, p. vii-viii. hommaire de hell, adèle. les arméniennes à constantinople. (revue de l'orient. paris, 1845. 8°. tome 7, p. 130-139.) *oaa howel, thomas. a journal of the passage from india, by a route partly unfrequented, through armenia and natolia, or asia minor. to which are added, observations and instructions, for the use of those who intend to travel, either to or from india, by that route. london: the author [1789]. 2 p.l., 187 p., 1 map. 8°. bbr huebschmann, heinrich. die altarmenischen ortsnamen. (indogermanische forschungen. strassburg, 1904. 8°. bd. 16, p. 197-490.) raa huntington, ellsworth. through the great cañon of the euphrates river. (geographical journal. london, 1902. 8°. v. 20, p. 175-200.) kaa hyvernat, henry. armenia, past and present. (catholic world. new york, 1896. 8°. v. 62, p. 312-326.) *da ---see also mueller-simonis, paul, and henry hyvernat. in türkisch-armenien. (globus. braunschweig, 1876. f°. bd. 29, p. 340-344, 353-358, 369-374.) �kaa injijian, ghougas. see brosset, marie félicité, and p. a. jaubert. ischchanian, b. die armenische bevölkerung in der türkei. (nord und süd. breslau, 1913. 4°. bd. 146, p. 186-194.) *df jaubert, pierre amédée. voyage en arménie et en perse, fait dans les années 1805 et 1806.... suivi d'une notice sur le ghilan et le mazenderan par m. le colonel trézel. paris: pélicier, 1821. 2 p.l., xii, 506 p., 1 l., 1 map in pocket, 8 pl., 2 ports. 8°. bby ---see also brosset, marie félicité, and p. a. jaubert. jenkins, hester donaldson. armenia and the armenians. (national geographic magazine. washington, 1915. 8°. v. 28, p. 329-360.) kaa johansson, karl ferdinand. om de nyaste upptäckterna i armenien. (ymer. stockholm, 1901. 8°. v. 20, p. 347-375.) kaa john of crimea. description des monastères arméniens d'haghbat et de sanahin, par l'archimandrite jean de crimée, avec notes et appendice par m. brosset. 1 p.l., 94 p. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mémoires. st. pétersbourg, 1863. f°. série 7, tome 6, no. 6.) *qcb armenian and russian texts. kiepert, heinrich. über die lage der armenischen hauptstadt tigranokerta. 1 map. (königlich preussische akademie der wissenschaften. monatsberichte. berlin, 1874. 8°. 1873, p. 164-210.) *ee kinneir, john macdonald. armenia. (in his: a geographical memoir of the persian empire. london: j. murray, 1813. f°. p. 318-338.) �*ona ---journey through asia minor, armenia and koordistan, in the years 1813 and 1814; with remarks on the marches of alexander, and retreat of the ten thousand. london: john murray, 1818. 1 p.l., v-xii, 603 p. 8°. bbr klaproth, julius heinrich. description de l'arménie russe d'après les notions publiées en russie. (nouvelles annales des voyages. paris, 1834. 8°. tome 61, p. 286-312.) kaa ---opisanie rossiiskoi armenii. (biblioteka dlia chteniia. st. petersburg, 1834. 8°. 1834, v. 4, part 3, p. 1-20.) *qca description of russian armenia. knapp, grace h. see ussher, clarence douglas. kolenati, friedrich anton. reiseerinnerungen. dresden: r. kuntze, 1858-59. 2 v. 8°. bby theil 1. die bereisung hocharmeniens und elisabethopols, der schekinschen provinz und des kasbek im central-kaukasus. theil 2. die bereisung circassien's. kotschy, theodor. neue reise nach klein-asien. (petermanns mittheilungen. gotha, 1859-60. 8°. bd. 5, p. 342-344, 372-375; bd.6, p. 68-77.) kaa l., j. l'arménie et les arméniens. conférence de m. minas tchéraz. (société de géographie de marseille. bulletin. marseille, 1898. 8°. tome 22, p. 182-184.) kaa langlois, victor. les populations arméniennes indépendantes du mont taurus. le zéithun, hatchin et le giawourdagh. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1854. 8°. [série 2,] tome 16, p. 103-110, 186-192.) *oaa ---voyage dans la cilicie et dans les montagnes du taurus exécuté pendant les années 1852-1853 ... paris: b. duprat, 1861. x, 484 p., 1 map, 28 pl., 1 port. 8°. bbr ---voyage à sis, capitale de l'arménie au moyen âge. (journal asiatique. paris, 1855. 8°. série 5, v. 5, p. 257-300.) *oaa lanin, e. b. armenia, and the armenian people. (fortnightly review. london, 1890. 8°. new series, v.48, p. 258-273.) *da layard, sir austen henry. discoveries in the ruins of nineveh and babylon; with travels in armenia, kurdistan and the desert: being the result of a second expedition undertaken for the trustees of the british museum. london: j. murray, 1853. xxiv, 686 p., 2 maps, 3 plans, 10 pl. 8°. *ocn ------new york: harper & brothers, 1853. xvi, 586 p., 2 maps, 3 plans, 2 pl. 8°. *ocn ------new york: g. p. putnam & co., 1853. xxii p., 1 l., 686 p., 1 map, 3 plans. 10 pl. 8°. *ocn lehmann-haupt, ferdinand friedrich karl. armenien, einst und jetzt: reisen und forschungen. hrsg. mit unterstützung des königlich preussischen kultusministeriums, der averhoff-stiftung und der bürgermeister kellinghusen-stiftung zu hamburg, der rudolf virchow-stiftung zu berlin sowie befreundeter förderer. bd. 1. berlin: b. behr, 1910. 8°. bby bd. 1. vom kaukasus zum tigris und nach tigranokerta. longuinoff, d. ascension de l'ararat. (société de géographie. bulletin. paris, 1851. 8°. série 4, v. 1, p. 52-65.) kaa lynch, henry finnis blosse. armenia: travels and studies, v. 1-2. london: longmans, green and co., 1901. 4°. *r-bby reviewed by f. f. k. lehmann-haupt in petermanns mitteilungen, bd. 49, p. 231-236, kaa; also by ira m. price in the dial, v.-32, p. 203-204, *da. tonapetian, p. h. f. b. lynch and his book. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 7, p. 12-22.) �*onk turkey and armenia. (quarterly review. london, 1902. 8°. v. 195, p. 590-616.) *da a review of lynch's armenia, earl percy's the highlands of asiatic turkey and sir chas. eliot's turkey in europe. lynch, henry finnis blosse. the ascent of mount ararat. (scribner's magazine. new york, 1896. 8°. v. 19, p. 215-235.) *da reprinted in mountain climbing, 1897, p. 159-222, psk. mccoan, james carlile. our new protectorate. turkey in asia, its geography, races, resources, and government. london: chapman and hall, 1879. 2 v. 8°. bbo macler, frédéric. autour de la cilicie. zêÿthoun (notes d'ethnographie arménienne). (journal asiatique. paris, 1916. 8°. série 11, v. 7, p. 139-169.) *oaa maksimov, sergyei v. armianckii narod. (in his: sobranie sochinenii. st. petersburg, 1913. 8°. v. 19, p. 187-192.) *qdb the armenian people. markoff, anatolius vladimirovich. russian armenia and the prospects for british trade therein. (journal of the society of arts. london, 1895. 8°. v. 43, p. 225-231.) va markoff, e. eine besteigung des grossen ararat. (ausland. stuttgart, 1889. f°. jahrg. 62, p. 244-249.) �kaa marquart, josef. eransahr nach der geographie des ps. moses xorenac`i. mit historisch-kritischem kommentar und historischen und topographischen excursen. berlin: weidmann, 1901. 358 p. 4°. (königliche gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttingen. abhandlungen. philologisch-historische klasse. neue folge, bd. 3, nr. 2.) *ee martyr, bishop of arzendjan. relation d'un voyage fait en europe et dans l'océan atlantique, à la fin du quinzième siècle, sous le règne de charles viii, par martyr, évêque d'arzendjan, dans la grande arménie, écrite par lui-même en arménien, et traduite en français par m. saint-martin. (journal asiatique. paris, 1826. 8°. série 1, v. 9, p. 321-373.) *oaa maunsell, francis richard. eastern turkey in asia and armenia. (scottish geographical magazine. edinburgh, 1896. 8°. v. 12, p. 225-241.) kaa menant, joachim. a travers l'arménie russe. (nouvelle revue. paris, 1894. 8°. v.86, p. 23-37.) *dm mexborough (4. earl), john charles george savile. notes on a journey from erz-rúm, by músh, diyár-bekr, and bíreh-jik to aleppo, in june, 1838. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1841. 8°. v. 10, p. 445-454.) kaa mexborough (5. earl), john horace savile. half round the old world; being some account of a tour in russia, the caucasus, persia, and turkey, 1865-66. london: edward moxon & co., 1867. 2 p.l., 403 p., 1 map. 8°. btyb millingen, frederick. wild life among the koords. london: hurst and blackett, 1870. xiii, 380 p., 1 map, 1 pl. 8°. bbv monteith, william. journal of a tour through azerdbijan and the shores of the caspian. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1834. 8°. v. 3, p. 1-58.) kaa ---notes sur la position de plusieurs anciennes villes situées dans les plaines d'ararat et de nakktchévan et sur les bords de l'araxe. (nouvelles annales des voyages. paris, 1852. 8°. série 5, tome 32, p. 129-179.) kaa morgan, jacques jean marie de. les arméniens. (revue de paris. paris, 1916. 8°. année 23, tome 3, p. 118-133.) *dm morier, james. a journey through persia, armenia, and asia minor, to constantinople, in the years 1808 and 1809; in which is included some account of the proceedings of his majesty's mission, under sir harford jones ... to the court of persia ... london: longman, hurst, rees, orme, and brown, 1812. xvi p., 1 l., 438 p., 3 maps, 26 pl. 4°. �bcr ---a second journey through persia, armenia, and asia minor to constantinople, between the years 1810 and 1816; with a journal of the voyage by the brazils and bombay to the persian gulf; together with an account of the proceedings of his majesty's embassy, under sir gore ouseley. london: longman, hurst, rees, orme, and brown, 1818. xx, 435 p., 2 maps, 17 pl. 4°. �bcr moses of chorene. see marquart, josef; also patkanov, kerope petrovich. mounsey, augustus henry. a journey through the caucasus and the interior of persia. london: smith, elder & co., 1872. xi, 336 p., 1 map. 8°. gmv mueller-simonis, paul, and henry hyvernat. du caucase au golfe persique à travers l'arménie, le kurdistan et la mésopotamie par p. müller-simonis suivie de notices sur la géographie et l'histoire ancienne de l'arménie et les inscriptions cunéiformes du bassin de van par h. hyvernat. washington: université catholique d'amérique, 1892. viii, 628 p., 2 maps, 32 pl. 4°. (relation des missions scientifiques de h. hyvernat et p. müller-simonis. 1888-1889.) �bbv bibliographie, p. 605-611. la nation arménienne, son passé, son présent, son avenir politique et religieux. paris: bureaux des oeuvres d'orient [1899]. 2 p.l., 101 p. 8°. bbh p.v.3 extr.: revue illustrée de la terre sainte et de l'orient chrétien. nolde, eduard, baron. reise nach innerarabien, kurdistan und armenien, 1892. braunschweig: f. vieweg und sohn, 1895. xv, 272 p., 1 map, 1 port. 8°. *ofw notice de la ville d'érivan, capitale de l'arménie russe. traduit du russe. (journal asiatique. paris, 1833. 8°. série 2, v. 12, p. 254-262.) *oaa osman bey, originally frederick millingen. see millingen, frederick. palgrave, william gifford. eastern christians. (in his: essays on eastern questions. london, 1872. 8°. p. 164-224.) gie the armenians, p. 182-193. parrot, friedrich. journey to ararat. translated by w. d. cooley. london: longman, brown, green, and longmans [1845]. xii, 375 p., 1 map. 8°. (world surveyed in the nineteenth century, v. 1.) psk ------new york: harper & bros., 1846. xi, 15-389 p., 1 map, 1 pl. 12°. bby patkanov, kerope petrovich. armianskaia geografiia vii vieka po r. kh. pripycyvavshaiasia moiseiu khorenskomu. st. petersburg: akademiya nauk, 1877. xxviii, 84, 26 p. 8°. *qfp the armenian geography of the seventh century, a. d., attributed to moses khorensky. pears, sir edwin. turkey and its people. london: methuen & co., ltd. [1911.] vi p., 1 l., 409 p. 8°. *r-gip peterson, wilhelm. aus transkaukasien und armenien. reisebriefe. leipzig: duncker & humblot, 1885. x, 140 p. 12°. bbo pichon, jules. itinéraire de djoulfa à roudout-kalé, par l'arménie, la géorgie, l'imérétie et la mingrélie. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1853. 8°. [série 2,] tome 13, p. 109-121.) *oaa pitton de tournefort, joseph. relation d'un voyage du levant, fait par ordre du roy. contenant l'histoire ancienne & moderne de plusieurs isles de l'archipel, de constantinople, des côtes de la mer noire, de l'arménie, de la géorgie, des frontières de perse & de l'asie mineure ... enrichie de descriptions & de figures d'un grand nombre de plantes rares, de divers animaux, et de plusieurs observations touchant l'histoire naturelle. paris: imprimerie royale, 1717. 2 v. 4°. *opk ------lyon: anisson et posuel, 1717. 3 v. 8°. bvx ------london: d. midwinter, 1741. 3 v. 8°. bvx pollington, viscount. see mexborough (4. earl), john charles george savile; and mexborough (5. earl), john horace savile. porter, robert ker. travels in georgia, persia, armenia, ancient babylonia ... during the years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820. london: longman, hurst, rees, orme, and brown, 1821-22. 2 v. 4°. �bbv powers, harriet g. in armenian villages. (chautauquan. meadville, 1889. 8°. v. 10, p. 197-202.) *da price, m. philips. a journey through turkish armenia and persian khurdistan. (manchester geographical society. journal. london, 1915. 8°. v. 30, p. 45-67.) kaa radde, gustav. briefe von dr. gustav radde über seine bereisung von hoch-armenien, 1871. (petermanns mittheilungen. gotha, 1872. 4°. bd. 18, p. 206-209.) kaa ---die ebene des oberen frat. (petermanns mittheilungen. gotha, 1877. 4°. bd. 23, p. 260-267.) kaa ---karabagh. bericht über die im sommer 1890 im russischen karabagh von dr. gustav radde und dr. jean valentin ausgeführte reise. gotha: j. perthes, 1890. 1 p.l., 56 p., 1 map. 4°. (petermanns mitteilungen. ergänzungsband 21, nr. 100.) kaa ---vier vorträge über den kaukasus gehalten im winter 1873/4 in den grösseren städten deutschlands. gotha: j. perthes, 1874. vi, 71 p., 2 maps. 4°. (petermanns mittheilungen. ergänzungsband 8, nr. 36.) kaa ---see also reisen im armenischen hochland; also reisen in hoch-armenien; also vorlaeufiger bericht. raffi, aram. from london to armenia. (ararat. london, 1913-14. 8°. v. 1, p. 180-184, 211-218, 250-258, 287-296, 328-334, 359-364, 401-408; v. 2, p. 56-60, 85-90, 115-123, 164-172.) *onk ---the land of armenia. (ararat. london, 1918. 8°. v. 5, p. 444-448; v. 6, p. 41-49, 99-112, 175-183.) *onk ---see also buxton, noel, and harold buxton. rassam, hormuzd. asshur and the land of nimrod: being an account of the discoveries made in the ancient ruins of nineveh, asshur, sepharvaim, calah, babylon, borsippa, cuthah, and van, including a narrative of different journeys in mesopotamia, assyria, asia minor, and koordistan. with an introduction by robert w. rogers. cincinnati: curts & jennings, 1897. xvi, 432 p., 1 map, 2 plans, 19 pl., 1 port. 8°. *ocn reclus, élisée. asiatic turkey. (in his: universal geography. london, n. d. 4°. v. 9, p. 162-191.) kan reisen im armenischen hochland, ausgeführt im sommer 1871 von dr. g. radde und dr. g. siewers. (petermanns mittheilungen. gotha, 1872-73. 4°. bd. 18, p. 367-380, 445-450; bd. 19, p. 174-183.) kaa reisen in hoch-armenien, ausgeführt im sommer 1874 von dr. g. radde und dr. g. siewers. (petermanns mittheilungen. gotha, 1875. 4°. bd. 21, p. 56-64, 301-310.) kaa rey, f. c. les périples des côtes de syrie et de la petite arménie. 1 map. (société de l'orient latin. archives de l'orient latin. paris, 1884. 8°. tome 2, p. 329-353.) *oba rikli, martin. naturund kulturbilder aus den kaukasusländern und hocharmenien von teilnehmern der schweizerischen naturwissenschaftlichen studienreise, sommer 1912, unter leitung von m. rikli. zürich: o. füssli, 1914. viii, 317 p., 32 pl. 8°. gmv riseis, g. de. traverso l'armenia russa. (nuova antologia. roma, 1903. 8°. serie 4, v. 105, p. 218-235.) nna ritter, karl. die erdkunde im verhältniss zur natur und zur geschichte des menschen, oder allgemeine, vergleichende geographie, als sichere grundlage des studiums und unterrichts in physikalischen und historischen wissenschaften, von carl ritter ... zweite stark vermehrte und umgearbeitete ausgabe. theil 1-19. berlin: g. reimer, 1822-59. 20 v. 8°. kc the latter part of theil 9 and theil 10 treat of armenia. rogers, robert w. see rassam, hormuzd. rohrbach, paul. armenier und kurden. (gesellschaft für erdkunde. verhandlungen. berlin, 1900. 8°. bd. 27, p. 128-133.) kaa ---vom kaukasus zum mittelmeer. eine hochzeitsund studienreise durch armenien. mit 42 abbildungen im text. leipzig: b. g. teubner, 1903. vi p., 1 l., 224 p., 1 pl. 8°. bby roussel, thérèse. souvenirs d'une française en arménie. (tour du monde. paris, 1913. f°. nouvelle série, tome 19, p. 529-576.) �kba saad, l. zwei türkische städtebilder aus der gegenwart. (petermanns mitteilungen. gotha, 1896. 4°. bd. 42, p. 282-290.) kaa erzerum and trapezunt. sachtleben, william lewis. see allen, thomas gaskell, and w. l. sachtleben. safrastian, a. s. armenia: her people and history. (ararat. london, 1914-15. 8°. v. 2, p. 218-223, 258-262, 301-305, 343-346.) *onk saint-martin, jean antoine. see martyr, bishop of arzendjan. schaffer, franz xavier. cilicia. gotha: j. perthes, 1903. 1 pl., 110 p., 2 maps. 4°. (petermanns mitteilungen. ergänzungsband 30, heft 141.) kaa schilder, siegmund. eine zweiglinie der bagdadbahn nach südarmenien. (österreichische monatsschrift für den orient. wien, 1913. f°. jahrg. 39, p. 59-61.) �*oaa schulz, éd. mémoire sur le lac de van et ses environs. 8 facs. (journal asiatique. paris, 1840. 8°. série 3, v. 9, p. 257-323.) *oaa schweiger-lerchenfeld, a. von. armenia and the armenians. (chautauquan. meadville, pa., 1896. 8°. v. 22, p. 697-703.) *da ---erzerum und erzingdjan. (ausland. stuttgart, 1878. 4°. v. 51, p. 253-255.) �kaa seidlitz, n. von. pastuchows besteigung des alagös. (globus. braunschweig, 1896. f°. bd. 70, p. 85-90.) �kaa ---pastuchows besteigung des ararats. (globus. braunschweig, 1894. f°. bd. 66, p. 309-315.) �kaa ---see also selenoy, g. l., and n. von seidlitz. selenoy, g. l., and n. von seidlitz. die verbreitung der armenier in der asiatischen türkei und in transkaukasien. 1 map. (petermanns mittheilungen. gotha, 1896. 4°. bd. 42, p. 1-10.) kaa seylaz, louis. l'ascension du mont ararat. (tour du monde. paris, 1911. f°. nouvelle série, année 17, p. 397-408.) �kba shiel, j. notes on a journey from tabriz, through kurdistan, via van, bitlis, se'ert and erbil, to suleimaniyeh, in july and august, 1836. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1838. 8°. v. 8, p. 54-101.) kaa shoemaker, michael myers. the heart of the orient. saunterings through georgia, armenia, persia, turkomania and turkestan to the vale of paradise. new york: g. p. putnam's sons, 1904. xiii, 416 p., 1 map, 1 pl. 8°. bbs sievers, g. see reisen im armenischen hochland; also reisen in hoch-armenien; also vorlaeufiger bericht. sievers, wilhelm. asien. leipzig: bibliographisches institut, 1904. xi, 712 p., 16 maps, 20 pl. 2. ed. 4°. (allgemeine länderkunde.) kc sijalski. erinnerungen aus armenien. (ausland. stuttgart, 1839. 4°. jahrg. 12, p. 949-950, 955-956, 965-966, 970-971.) �kaa slousch, nahum. le caucase, l'arménie et l'azerbeidjan d'après les auteurs arabes, slaves et juifs. (revue du monde musulman. paris, 1910. 8°. tome 10, p. 494-508; tome 11, p. 54-65, 260-279; tome 12, p. 262-272.) *oaa southgate, horatio, bishop. narrative of a tour through armenia, kurdistan, persia and mesopotamia, with an introduction and occasional observations upon the condition of mohammedanism and christianity in those countries. new york: d. appleton & co., 1840. 2 v. 12°. bbr streck, maximilian. das gebiet der heutigen landschaften armenien, kurdistân und westpersien nach den babylonisch-assyrischen keilinschriften. (zeitschrift für assyriologie. weimar, berlin, 1898-1900. 8°. bd. 13, p. 57-110; bd. 14, p. 103-172; bd. 15, p. 257-382.) *ocl strecker, wilhelm. beiträge zur geographie von hoch-armenien. 3 maps. (gesellschaft für erdkunde. zeitschrift. berlin, 1869. 8°. bd. 4, p. 145-162, 512-538.) kaa ---notizen über das obere zab-ala-gebiet und routiers von wan nach kotur. (petermanns mittheilungen. gotha, 1863. 4°. 1863, p. 257-262.) kaa stuart, robert. the ascent of mount ararat in 1856. (royal geographical society. proceedings. london, 1877. 8°. v. 21, p. 77-92.) kaa suter, henry. notes on a journey from erz-rúm to trebizond, by way of shebbkháneh, kará hisár, sivás, tókát and sámsún, in october, 1838. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1841. 8°. v. 10, p. 434-444.) kaa taylor, j. g. journal of a tour in armenia, kurdistan and upper mesopotamia, with notes of researches in the deyrsim dagh, in 1866. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1868. 8°. v. 38, p. 281-361.) kaa ---travels in kurdistan, with notices of the sources of the eastern and western tigris, and ancient ruins in their neighbourhood. (royal geographical society. journal. london, 1865. 8°. v. 35, p. 21-58.) kaa tchélébi, kiatib. see brosset, marie félicité, and p. a. jaubert. tchihatcheff, p. de. see chikhachov, piotr aleksandrovich. tchobanian, archag. the armenian nation. (new armenia. new york, 1916. f°. v. 8, p. 244-247.) �*onk ---l'arménie, son histoire, sa littérature, son rôle en orient. conférence faite le 9 mars 1897 à la salle de la société de géographie.... paris: société du mercure de france, 1897. 90 p. 5. ed. 12°. bbx ---the people of armenia; their past, their culture, their future. translated by g. marcar gregory.... with introduction by the right honourable viscount bryce. london: j. m. dent & sons, ltd., 1914. xi, 68 p. 16°. bbx telfer, j. buchan. armenia and its people. (journal of the society of arts. london, 1891. 8°. v. 39, p. 567-584.) va texier, charles félix marie. description de l'arménie, la perse et la mésopotamie, publiée sous les auspices des ministres de l'intérieur et de l'instruction publique. partie 1-2. paris: firmin didot frères, 1842-52. 2 v. f°. ���*on ---itinéraires en arménie, en kurdistan et en perse. (société de géographie. bulletin. paris, 1843. 8°. série 2, v. 20, p. 229-249.) kaa ---notice sur erzéroum, fragment d'un journal de voyage, 1839-1840. (société de géographie. bulletin. paris, 1843. 8°. série 2, v. 20, p. 213-228.) kaa ---notice géographique sur le kourdistan. (société de géographie. bulletin. paris, 1844. 8°. série 3, v. 1, p. 282-314.) kaa ---renseignements archéologiques et géographiques sur quelques points de l'asie-mineure, de l'arménie et de la perse. (société de géographie. bulletin. paris, 1841. 8°. série 2, v. 15, p. 26-38.) kaa thielmann, max franz guido, freiherr von. le caucase, la perse et la turquie d'asie d'après la relation de m. le baron de thielmann par le baron ernouf. paris: e. plon et cie., 1876. 2 p.l., 368 p., 1 map, 16 pl. 12°. bbv ---journey in the caucasus, persia, and turkey in asia. translated by charles heneage. london: john murray, 1875. 2 v. 8°. bbv tozer, henry fanshawe. turkish armenia and eastern asia minor. london: longmans, green, and co., 1881. xiv p., 1 l., 470 p., 1 map, 5 pl. 8°. bby trézel. see jaubert, pierre a. trowbridge, tillman c. armenia and the armenians. [new haven, 1874.] 15 p. 8°. zng p.v.4 repr.: new englander, v. 33, p. 1-15, *da. tschihatscheff, p. v. see chikhachov, piotr aleksandrovich. turkey--a past and a future. 2 maps. (round table. new york, 1917. 8°. v. 7, p. 515-546.) sea ubicini, jean henri abdolonyme. les arméniens. (in his: lettres sur la turquie. paris: j. dumaine, 1853-54. 12°. partie 2, p. 243-347.) gio ussher, clarence douglas. an american physician in turkey; a narrative of adventures in peace and in war, by clarence d. ussher, m.d., grace h. knapp, collaborating.... boston and new york: houghton mifflin company, 1917. xiv p., 1 l., 339 p., 1 map, 16 pl. 8°. wzo ussher, john. a journey from london to persepolis; including wanderings in daghestan, georgia, armenia, kurdistan, mesopotamia and persia. london: hurst & blackett, 1865. 1 p.l., v-xiii p., 2 l., 3-703 p., 18 pl. 4°. stuart 6705 and �bcr valentin, jean. see radde, gustav. vecchi, felice de. escursione lungo il teatro della guerra attuale dal danubio alle regioni caucasee. brano d'un viaggio nell' armenia, persia, arabia ed indostan fatto negli anni 1841, 42 da f. de vecchi e g. osculati, descritto da f. de vecchi. milano: c. wilmant, 1854. 4 p.l., 12-203 p., 5 pl. 4°. �gio villari, luigi. fire and sword in the caucasus. london: t. f. unwin, 1906. 347 p., 64 pl. 8°. *r-gmv ---the land of ararat. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 265-267.) �*onk reprinted from his fire and sword in the caucasus. a visit to mount ararat. (fraser's magazine. london, 1859. 8°. v. 60, p. 111-121.) *da vivien de saint martin, louis. note sur le site d'armavir, la plus ancienne cité royale de l'arménie. sur le site de l'ancienne artaxata. (nouvelles annales des voyages. paris, 1852. 8°. série 5, tome 32, p. 180-199.) kaa vizetelly, edward. a winter ride in armenia. (english illustrated magazine. london, 1896. 8°. v. 15, p. 135-141.) *da volland. beiträge zur ethnographie der bewohner von armenien und kurdistan. (archiv für anthropologie. braunschweig, 1909. 4°. neue folge, bd. 8, p. 183-196.) qoa von trapezunt nach erzerum. (globus. braunschweig, 1875. f°. bd. 27, p. 209-215, 225-232.) �kaa vorlaeufiger bericht über die im jahre 1875 ausgeführten reisen in kaukasien und dem armenischen hochlande von dr. g. radde und dr. g. sievers. (petermanns mittheilungen. gotha, 1876. 4°. bd. 22, p. 139-152.) kaa wagner, m. mittheilungen eines deutschen reisenden aus dem russischen armenien. (ausland: stuttgart, 1846. 4°. jahrg. 19, p. 425-427, 430-431, 441-443, 446-447, 450-452, 454-455, 458-460, 461-463.) �kaa westarp, eberhard joachim, graf von. routenaufnahmen in armenien und kurdistan. 1 map. (petermanns mitteilungen. gotha, 1913. 4°. jahrg. 59, halbband 2, p. 297-300.) kaa ---unter halbmond und sonne; im sattel durch die asiatische türkei und persien. berlin: h. paetel verlag [1913]. vii, 326 p., 1 map, 29 pl. 2. ed. 8°. (allgemeiner verein für deutsche literatur. veröffentlichungen. bd. 3, abt. 38.) bbs who are the armenians? (armenia. new york, 1913. 4°. v. 7, p. 47-51.) �*onk wilbraham, richard. travels in the trans-caucasian provinces of russia, and along the southern shore of the lakes of van and urumiah in the autumn and winter of 1837. london: john murray, 1839. 2 p.l., vii-xviii, 477 p., 1 map, 5 pl. 8°. bbv and stuart 6846 wilson, sir c. w. see handbook for travellers in asia minor. wuensch, josef. meine reise in armenien und kurdistan. (kaiserlich königlich geographische gesellschaft. mittheilungen. wien, 1883. 8°. bd. 26, p. 487-496, 513-520.) kaa ---die quelle des westlichen tigrisarmes und der see gölldschik. (kaiserlich königlich geographische gesellschaft. mittheilungen. wien, 1885. 8°. bd. 28, p. 1-21.) kaa yorke, vincent w. a journey in the valley of the upper euphrates. (geographical journal. london, 1896. 8°. v. 8, p. 317-335, 453-474.) kaa zimmerer, h. armenien. (asien. berlin, 1902. f°. jahrg. 1, p. 6-9, 27-31, 71-74.) �bba zouche (14. baron), robert curzon. armenia: a year at erzeroom, and on the frontiers of russia, turkey and persia. london: j. murray, 1854. 1 p.l., iii-xiv, 253 p., 1 map, 5 pl. 3. ed. 8°. bby ------new york: harper & bros., 1854. 1 p.l., v-xiv p., 1 l., 17-226 p., 1 map. 8°. bby archaeology abich, hermann. sur les ruines d'ani. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin: classe historico-philologique. st. pétersbourg, 1845. f°. v. 2, col. 369-376.) *qcb adadourian, haig. the armenian coat of arms and the truths it displays. (armenian herald. boston, 1917. 8°. v. 1, p. 8-10.) *onk archaeologische bemerkungen über armenien. (ausland. stuttgart, 1841. 4°. jahrg. 14, p. 544, 547-548, 551-552, 556.) �kaa bachmann, walter. kirchen und moscheen in armenien und kurdistan. leipzig: j. c. hinrichs, 1913. 2 p.l., 80 p., 1 map, 1 plan, 70 pl. f°. (deutsche orient-gesellschaft. wissenschaftliche veröffentlichungen. heft 25.) �*oaa belck, waldemar. archäologische forschungen in armenien. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1893. 8°. jahrg. 1893, p. 61-82.) qoa ---armenien im altertum und in der jetztzeit. (frankfurter verein für geographie und statistik. jahresbericht. frankfurt am main, 1901. 8°. jahrg. 64-65, p. 127-137.) kaa ---armenische expedition. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1898. 4°. jahrg. 1898, p. 414-416.) qoa ---aus den berichten über die armenische expedition. (zeitschrift für ethnologie. berlin, 1899. 8°. jahrg. 31, p. 236-275.) qoa ---das reich der mannäer. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1894. 8°. jahrg. 1894, p. 479-487.) qoa ---die rusas-stele von topsanä (sidikan). briefliche mittheilungen des hrn. dr. w. belck an hrn. rud. virchow. (zeitschrift für ethnologie. berlin, 1899. 8°. jahrg. 31, p. 99-132.) qoa ---untersuchungen und reisen in transkaukasien, hoch-armenien und kurdistan. (globus. braunschweig, 1893. f°. bd. 63. p. 349-352, 369-374; bd. 64, p. 153-158, 196-202.) �kaa ---see also roesler, emil, and waldemar belck. belck, waldemar, and f. f. k. lehmann-haupt. bericht über die armenische forschungsreise der w. belck und c. f. lehmann. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1900. 4°. jahrg. 1900, p. 29-66.) qoa ---bericht über eine forschungsreise durch armenien. (königlich preussische akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte. berlin, 1899. 4°. 1899, p. 116-120.) *ee ---reisebriefe von der armenischen expedition. (geographische gesellschaft in hamburg. mittheilungen. hamburg, 1899-1900. 8°. bd. 15, p. 1-23, 189-221; bd. 16, p. 16-70.) kaa ---vorläufiger bericht über die im jahre 1898 erzielten ergebnisse einer forschungsreise durch armenien. (königliche gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttingen. nachrichten: philol.-hist. klasse. göttingen, 1899. 8°. 1899, p. 80-86.) *ee ---weiterer bericht über die armenische expedition. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1898. 4°. jahrg. 1898, p. 522-527.) qoa ---zweiter vorbericht über eine forschungsreise in armenien. (königlich preussische akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte. berlin, 1899. 4°. 1899, p. 745-749.) *ee cumont, eugène. see cumont, franz, and eugène cumont. cumont, franz, and eugène cumont. voyage d'exploration archéologique dans le pont et la petite arménie. [bruxelles: h. lamertin, 1906.] 105-375 p., 19 maps. sq. 8°. (studia pontica. [v. 2.]) *onm dwight, harrison gray otis. armenian traditions about mt. ararat. (american oriental society. journal. new york, 1856. 8°. v. 5, p. 189-191.) *oaa dzotsikian, s. m. aus ma ani kaghakin. [an account of the city of ani.] new york, 1914. 40 p. 8°. *onk hin havadk gam hetanosagan gronk hahots. [ancient belief or the pagan religion of armenia.] venice, 1910. 4 p.l., 557 p., 1 l. 12°. *onp hittite--armenian? a theory. (ararat. london, 1914. 8°. v. 2, p. 34-39.) *onk huntington, ellsworth. mittheilungen aus englischen briefen des hrn. ellsworth huntington über armenische alterthümer. [übersetzt von c. f. lehmann.] (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1900. 4°. jahrg. 1900, p. 140-152.) qoa ---weitere berichte über forschungen in armenien und commagene. [uebersetzt von c. f. lehmann.] (zeitschrift für ethnologie. berlin, 1901. 4°. jahrg. 33, p. 173-209.) qoa injijian, ghougas. hnakhosoutiun. [armenian antiquities.] venice, 1835. 3 v. 4°. *onm kachouni, manouel. hnakhosoutiun hahasdani. [an abridgement for schools of ghougas injijian's hnakhosoutiun.] venice, 1855. 3 p.l., 303 p. 16°. *onm jensen, peter. hittiter und armenier. strassburg: k. j. trübner, 1898. xxvi, 256 p., 1 map, 10 tables. 8°. *ocze khanikof, n. voyage à ani, capitale de l'arménie, sous les bagratides. (revue archéologique. paris, 1858. 8°. v. 15, p. 401-420.) mta krahmer, d. die altarmenische hauptstadt ani. (globus. braunschweig, 1895. f°. v. 68, p. 263-267.) �kaa langlois, victor. fragment d'un voyage en cilicie. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1857. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 5, p. 1-9.) *oaa ---les monuments de la cilicie aux différentes époques. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1861. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 13, p. 102-113.) *oaa ---rapport sur l'exploration archéologique de la cilicie et de la petite-arménie... paris: imprimerie impériale, 1854. 55 p., 1 pl. 8°. *c p.v.1356 ---les ruines de lampron en cilicie. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1860. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 12, p. 119-122.) *oaa lehmann-haupt, ferdinand friedrich karl. bericht über den von ihm erledigten abschnitt der armenischen expedition: reise von rowanduz bis alaschgert. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1899. 4°. jahrg. 1899, p. 586-614.) qoa ---von der deutschen armenischen expedition. (wiener zeitschrift für die kunde des morgenlandes. wien, 1900. 8°. bd. 14, p. 1-45.) *oaa ---weiterer bericht über den fortgang der armenischen expedition. (zeitschrift für ethnologie. berlin, 1899. 8°. jahrg. 31, p. 281-290.) qoa ---see also belck, waldemar, and f. f. k. lehmann-haupt; also huntington, ellsworth. morgan, jacques jean marie de. mission scientifique au caucase, études archéologiques & historiques. paris: e. leroux, 1889. 2 v. in 1. 4°. qpx tome 1. les premiers âges des métaux dans l'arménie russe. tome 2. recherches sur les origines des peuples du caucase. ---note sur les nécropoles préhistoriques de l'arménie russe. (revue archéologique. paris, 1890. 8°. série 3, v. 16, p. 176-202.) mta ---note sur l'usage du système pondéral assyrien dans l'arménie russe, à l'époque préhistorique. (revue archéologique. paris, 1889. 8°. série 3, v. 14, p. 177-187.) mta ---les stations préhistoriques de l'alagheuz (arménie russe). (revue de l'école d'anthropologie de paris. paris, 1909. 8°. année 19, p. 189-203.) qoa murad, friedrich. ararat und masis. studien zur armenischen altertumskunde und litteratur. heidelberg: c. winter, 1901. 2 p.l., 104 p. 8°. *onm roesler, emil, and waldemar belck. archäologische thätigkeit im jahre 1893 in transkaukasien. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1894. 8°. jahrg. 1894, p. 213-241.) qoa saint-martin, jean antoine. notice sur le voyage littéraire de m. schulz en orient, et sur les découvertes qu'il a faites récemment dans les ruines de la ville de sémiramis en arménie. (journal asiatique. paris, 1828. 8°. série 2, v. 2, p. 161-188.) *oaa schulz, éd. see saint-martin, jean antoine. spiegel, friedrich. eranische alterthumskunde. leipzig: w. engelmann, 1871-78. 3 v. 8°. *om tchéraz, minas. homère et les arméniens. (mélanges charles de harlez. leyde, 1896. 4°. p. 303-306.) *oac the temple of muzazir in armenia. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1905. 8°. 1905, p. 362-363.) *oaa virchow, rudolf. entdeckungen in armenien. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1898. 4°. jahrg. 1898, p. 568-592.) qoa ---forschungsreise unserer armenischen expedition belck-lehmann. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1899. 4°. jahrg. 1899, p. 411-420.) qoa ---über die armenische expedition belck-lehmann. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1899. 4°. jahrg. 1899, p. 487-489, 579-586.) qoa ---ueber den ursprung der bronzecultur und über die armenische expedition. (deutsche gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. correspondenz-blatt. münchen, 1899. 4°. bd. 30, p. 146-150.) qoa ------(anthropologische gesellschaft in wien. mittheilungen. sitzungsberichte. wien, 1900. 4°. bd. 30, p. 80-84.) qoa ---see also belck, waldemar. numismatics brosset, marie félicité. monographie des monnaies arméniennes. 2 pl. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin scientifique. st. pétersbourg, 1840. f°. tome 6, col. 33-64.) *qcb langlois, victor. lettre à m. ch. lenormant ... sur les monnaies des rois arméniens de la dynastie de roupène. (revue archéologique. paris, 1850. 8°. année 7, p. 262-275, 357-368, 416-426.) mta ---numismatique de l'arménie [dans l'antiquité]. 6 p.l., xx, 87 p., 6 pl. (in: bibliothèque historique arménienne; ou, choix des principaux historiens arméniens traduits en français par édouard dulaurier. paris: c. rollin, 1859. 4°.) �mhm ---numismatique de l'arménie au moyen âge. paris: c. rollin, 1855. xii, 110 p., 7 pl. 4°. mil soret, frédéric. numismatique de l'arménie au moyen-âge. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1855. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 2, p. 66-74.) *oaa marcar, samuel. description of a copper coin of leo, king of armenia. (madras journal of literature and science. madras, 1853. 8°. v. 17, p. 151-155.) *oha mohammed-bey. lettre à m. victor langlois sur la légende arabe d'une monnaie bilingue d'héthum, roi chrétien d'arménie. (revue archéologique. paris, 1850. 8°. année 7, p. 220-223.) mta sibilian, clément. numismatique arménienne. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1860. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 12, p. 193-205.) *oaa ---ueber 17 unedirte münzen der armenisch-rubenischen dynastie in kilikien. 3 pl. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. classe. wien, 1852. 8°. bd. 8, p. 275-300.) *ef art abdullah, séraphin, and frédéric macler. études sur le miniature arménienne. 3 facs., 2 pl. (revue des études ethnographiques et sociologiques. paris, 1909. 4°. 1909, p. 280-302, 345-366.) qoa alishanian, gheuont. zartangark avedarani mlké takouhuoh. [on the decorations of the manuscript of the gospels called mlké takouhuoh.] venice, 1902. 12 p., 6 facs., 10 pl. f°. ��*onn ayvazian, hovhannes, dzovangarich hishadagau hisnamiah kordzouneoutian. [hovhannes ayvazian, marine painter. souvenir of his fifty years activity.] venice, 1898. 7 p. 4°. �*onp basmadjian, k. j. armenia, the home of grecian architecture. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 9, p. 21-22.) �*onk boyajian, zabelle c., compiler. armenian legends and poems, illustrated & compiled by zabelle c. boyajian ... with an introduction by the right hon. viscount bryce ... and a contribution on "armenia: its epics, folksongs and mediaeval poetry," by aram raffi. london: j. m. dent & sons, ltd. [1916.] xvi, 195 p., 12 col'd pl. f°. �*onp bryce (1. viscount), james bryce. see boyajian, zabelle c., compiler. coulon, henri. l'art et l'arménie. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 410-413.) *onk gégharvest (l'art). revue littéraire et artistique arménienne. directeur-rédacteur: g. levonian. 1913, no. 5. tiflis, 1913. f°. �*onk levonian, g. see gégharvest. macler, frédéric. miniatures arméniennes. vies du christ, peintures ornementales (xe au xviie siècle). paris: p. geuthner, 1913. 2 p.l., 44 p., 68 pl. f°. �*ism ---see also abdullah, séraphin, and frédéric macler. marshall, annie c. armenian embroideries. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 3, no. 1, p. 8-12.) �*onk mauclair, camille. vartan mahokian, the armenian marine painter. (from the french of camille mauclair.) (new armenia. new york, 1918. 4°. v. 10, p. 165-168.) �*onk raffi, aram. see boyajian, zabelle c., compiler. stuart-browne, d. m. armenian exhibits in the victoria and albert museum. (ararat. london, 1918. 8°. v. 5, p. 317-320, 350-355.) *onk wartabet, zaven. tébi kegharvesti haireniku. [a visit to the fatherland of art. a treatise on the art and architecture of constantinople and parts of asia minor.] baku, 1910. 149 p., 1 l. 8°. *onp history general works see also massacres abaza, v. a. istoriia armenii. st. petersburg: i. skorokhodov, 1888. ix, 128 p. 8°. *qb history of armenia. abbruzzese, antonio. le relazioni fra l'impero romano e l'armenia, a tempo di augusto, 30 a. c.--14 d. c. (rivista di storia antica. padova, 1903-04. 8°. nuova serie, anno 7, p. 505-521, 722-734; anno 8, p. 32-61.) baa ---le relazioni fra l'impero romano e l'armenia a tempo di tiberio e di caligola. (bessarione. roma, 1907. 8°. serie 3, v. 2, p. 63-106.) *oaa ---le relazioni politiche fra l'impero romano e l'armenia da claudio a traiano.... (bessarione. roma, 1911. 8°. serie 3, v. 8, p. 389-434.) *oaa abdullah, séraphin. vérification d'une date de l'ère arménienne [894 ère chrétienne]. (journal asiatique. paris, 1914. 8°. série 11, v. 3, p. 645-651.) *oaa achguerd, k. s. see nersès, patriarch of constantinople. adontz, n. armeniia v epokhu iustiniana. politicheskoe sostoianie na osnovie nakhararskago stroia. st. petersburg: tip. imperatorskoi akademii nauk, 1908. xiv, 526 p. 4°. *qg armenia in the age of justinian. agathangelos. agathange. histoire du règne de tiridate et de la prédication de saint gregoire l'illuminateur, traduite pour la première fois en français sur le texte arménien accompagné de la version grecque, par victor langlois. (in: victor langlois, collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'arménie. paris, 1867. 4°. v. 1, p. 97-194.) �*onq ---agathangelus neu hrsg. von paul de lagarde. (königliche gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttingen. abhandlungen. göttingen, 1889. 4°. bd. 35, p. 3-88.) *ee ---badmoutiun. [a history of armenia; together with sermons by gregory the illuminator.] venice, 1862. 678 p. 24°. *onq lagarde, paul anton de. erläuterungen zu agathangelus und den akten gregors von armenien. (königliche gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttingen. abhandlungen. göttingen, 1889. 4°. bd. 35, p. 121-163.) *ee meillet, antoine. remarques sur le texte de l'historien arménien agathange. (journal asiatique. paris, 1910. 8°. série 10, v. 16, p. 457-481.) *oaa sarkisian, h. parsék. akatankéghos ev ur pazmatarian kaghdnikn. [a critique of agathangelos and his pazmatarian kaghdnikn.] venice, 1890. 14, 416 p. 8°. *onq akulian, aram. einverleibung armenischer territorien durch byzanz im xi. jahrhundert; ein beitrag zur vorseldschukischen periode der armenischen geschichte. grüningen: j. wirz, 1912. 94 p. 8°. *onk p.v.2. 'ali ibn abi talib, caliph. see avtaliantz, john, baron. allen, e. see stuermer, harry. amfiteatrov, aleksandr valentinovich. armeniia i rim. petrograd: "prosvyeshcheniye" [1896]. 3 p.l., 361 p. 12°. *qg armenia and rome. apcar, diana. the turkish constitution and armenia. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4°. v. 4, no. 1, p. 6-7.) �*onk arakel of tabriz. see brosset, marie félicité. arakélian, h. les rapports des arméniens avec l'occident au moyen âge et après. (verhandlungen des xiii. internationalen orientalisten-kongresses. leiden: e. j. brill, 1904. 8°. p. 369-371.) *oaa arisdaguès de lasdiverd. histoire d'arménie par le vartabed arisdaguès de lasdiverd traduite pour la première fois sur l'édition des ... mekhitharistes de saint-lazare et accompagnée de notes par m. évariste prud'homme. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1863-64. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 15, p. 343-370; tome 16, p. 41-59, 159-184, 268-286, 289-318; tome 17, p. 5-33.) *oaa armenian huntchakist party.--central committee. a memorial to the powers. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 8, p. 3-5.) �*onk the armenian people and the ottoman government. from the english blue book. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 157-159.) �*onk the armenians. (armenia. boston, 1904-05. 4°. v. 1, no. 2, p. 12-18; no. 3, p. 17-27; no. 4, p. 29-40.) �*onk die armenischen unruhen und die pläne auf einführung von reformen in der türkei. (das staatsarchiv. sammlung der officiellen actenstücke zur geschichte der gegenwart. leipzig, 1897. 8°. bd. 59, p. 168-308.) xba l'armeno-veneto. compendio storico e documenti delle relazioni degli armeni coi veneziani. primo periodo, secoli xiii-xiv. parte 1-2. venezia: stab. tip. armeno, s. lazzaro, 1893. 8°. bbx parte 1. compendio storico. parte 2. documenti. arzanov, d. zamiechaniia ob armenii i armianakh (viestnik evropy. moscow, 1824. 8°. 1824. no. 5-6, p. 241-247.) *qca notes about armenia and the armenians. ---istoricheskii vzgliad na armeniiu i georgiiu. (viestnik evropy. moscow, 1825. 8°. 1825, no. 7-8, p. 15-33.) *qca historical sketch of armenia and georgia. aslan, kévork. études historiques sur le peuple arménien. paris: g. dujarric, 1909. 2 p.l., viii-xxv p., 1 l., 28-339 p. 8°. bbx aucher, john baptist. see eusebius pamphilus, bishop of caesarea. aukerian, mëgërdich. see eusebius pamphilus, bishop of caesarea. avdall, johannes. see avtaliantz, john. avtaliantz, john, baron. a covenant of ali, fourth caliph of baghdad, granting certain immunities and privileges to the armenian nation. (asiatic society of bengal. journal. calcutta, 1870. 8°. v. 39, part 1, p. 60-64.) *oha ---memoir of a hindu colony in ancient armenia. by johannes avdall. (asiatic society of bengal. journal. calcutta, 1836. 8°. v. 5, p. 331-339.) *oha ---note on the origin of the armenian era, and the reformation of the haican kalendar. (asiatic society of bengal. journal. calcutta, 1836. 8°. v. 5, p. 384-387.) *oha ---singular narrative of the armenian king arsaces and his contemporary sapor, king of persia; extracted from the armenian chronicles. (asiatic society of bengal. journal. calcutta, 1837. 8°. v. 6, p. 81-87.) *oha ---see also chamchian, michael; also moses of chorene. basmadjian, k. j. histoire moderne des arméniens, depuis la chute du royaume jusqu'à nos jours (1375-1916); les guerres russo-turques, les guerres russo-persanes, les guerres perso-turques, les soulèvements des arméniens, la question d'orient et principalement la question arménienne.... préface par j. de morgan. paris: j. gamber, 1917. viii, 174 p., 1 l., 1 map. 12°. *onq ---les lusignans de poitou au trône de la petite arménie. (journal asiatique. paris, 1906. 8°. série 10, v. 7, p. 520-524.) *oaa ---a survey of ancient armenian history. (new armenia. new york, 1918. f°. v. 10, p. 38-39.) �*onk baynes, norman h. rome and armenia in the fourth century. (english historical review. london, 1910. 8°. v. 25, p. 625-643.) baa bedrosian, sahag. see vahram of edessa. berberov, r. die armenier. (in: russen über russland. frankfurt a. m., 1906. 8°. p. 640-655.) gly berchem, max van. see lehmann-haupt, ferdinand friedrich karl. bicknell, ernest percy. red cross and red crescent. (survey. new york, 1916. 4°. v.37, p. 118-121.) sha blackwell, alice stone. the battle of avarair. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 4, p. 18-23.) �*onk bogdanov, artemy. memoirs of the life of artemi, of wagarschapat, near mount ararat in armenia: from the original armenian [or rather russian] written by himself. london: treuttel & würtz, 1822. x, 374 p., 1 pl. 8°. bbx brosset, marie félicité. des historiens arméniens des xviie et xviiie siècles. arakel de tauriz, registre chronologique, annoté par m. brosset. 1 p.l., 60 p. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mémoires. st. pétersbourg, 1873. f°. tome 19, no. 5.) *qcb ---études sur l'historien arménien mkhithar d'aïrivank, xiiie s.; ire et iie parties, de la création du monde au commencement de l'ère chrétienne; iiie partie, jusqu'en 1289 de j.-c. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1865. f°. tome 8, col. 391-416.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1868. tome 5, p. 315-350, *oaa. ---études sur l'historien arménien oukhtanès, xe s. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1869. f°. tome 13, col. 401-454.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1873. tome 6, p. 13-89, *oaa. ---examen d'un passage de l'historien arménien oukhtanès, relatif à la prétendue conquête "de l'ibérie" par nabuchodonosor. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1869. f°. tome 13, col. 248-260.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1868. tome 5, p. 742-760, *oaa. ---listes chronologiques des princes et métropolites de la siounie, jusqu'à la fin du xiiie siècle. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1862. f°. tome 4, col. 497-562.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863. tome 4, p. 501-592, *oaa. ---notice sur l'historien arménien thoma ardzrouni, xe siècle. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1863. f°. tome 5, col. 538-554; tome 6, col. 69-102.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863. tome 4, p. 686-709, 716-763, *oaa. ---notice des manuscrits arméniens appartenant à la bibliothèque de l'institut asiatique établi près le ministère des affaires étrangères. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin scientifique. st. pétersbourg, 1838. f°. tome 3, col. 21-26, 36-41.) *qcb ---projet d'une collection d'historiens arméniens inédits. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin scientifique. st. pétersbourg, 1841-42. f°. v. 8, col. 177-189; v. 9, col. 253-268.) *qcb ---revue de la littérature historique de l'arménie. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1877. f°. tome 22, col. 303-312.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1881. tome 8, p. 21-34, *oaa. ---sur l'histoire ancienne de l'arménie, d'après les textes hiéroglyphiques et cunéiformes. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1871. f°. tome 16, col. 332-340.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1873. tome 6, p. 389-400, *oaa. ---sur l'histoire composée en arménien par thoma ardzrouni, xe s. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1870. f°. tome 14, col. 428-432.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1873. tome 6, p. 226-232, *oaa. browne, j. gordon. tartars and armenians. (contemporary review. london, 1906. 8°. v. 89, p. 72-85.) *da brunhes, jean. le rôle ancien de l'arménie. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 593-599.) *onk bryce (1. viscount), james bryce. see buxton, noel, and harold buxton; also hacobian, avetoon pesak. budushcheye ustroistvo armenii ... budushchee ustroistvo armenii po offitsiad'nym diplomaticheskim dokumentam oranzhevoi knigi, traktuiushei reform v armenii. petrograd: "osvobozhdeniye," 1915. 94 p. 8°. (diplomaticheskii arkhiv. tom 8.) *qg p.v.57 the future of armenia, according to diplomatic documents. burchardi, gustav. der zweifel und das böse. eine botschaft der sasaniden an die armenier. (geist des ostens. münchen, 1914. 8°. jahrg. 1, p. 428-438.) *oaa buxton, harold. see buxton, noel, and harold buxton. buxton, noel, and harold buxton. travel and politics in armenia, with an introduction by viscount bryce and a contribution on armenian history and culture by aram raffi. new york: macmillan co., 1914. xx, 274 p., 1 map, 16 pl. 12°. bby cappelletti, giuseppe. l'armenia. firenze: stamperia e fonderia fabris, 1841. 3 v. in 1. 8°. bby ---see also elisha, vartabed. carlier, émilie. en arménie. journal de la femme d'un consul de france. (revue des deux mondes. paris, 1903. 8°. période 5, v. 13, p. 406-433.) *dm chahan de cirbied, jacques. détails sur la situation actuelle du royaume de perse. paris: imprimerie royale, 1816. 12 l. 4°. *omz armenian, french and persian texts. ---mémoire sur le gouvernement et sur la religion des anciens arméniens, par m. cirbied. (société royale des antiquaires de france. mémoires. paris, 1820. 8°. tome 2, p. 262-311.) da chahnazarian, garabed v. see ghévont, vartabed. chakijian, ephrem. badmoutiun hahots. [a history of armenia.] vienna, 1851. 5 p.l., 18, 484 p. 12°. *onq chakmakjian, h. h. armenia's place in the family of nations. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 306-309.) *onk ---badmoutiun hahots. [the political history of the armenian people from ancient times down to 1914, together with a short account of armenian literature.] boston, 1917. 4 p.l., 692 p., 1 map. 8°. *onq chalathianz, gregor. see khalathianz, grigori abramovich. chalatiantz, b. see khalathianz, bagrat. chamchian, michael. badmoutiun hahots. [a history of armenia from the creation to the end of the eighteenth century.] venice, 1784-86. 3 v. 4°. *onq ---history of armenia by father michael chamich; from b. c. 2247 to the year of christ 1780, or 1229 of the armenian era, translated from the original armenian by johannes avdall. to which is appended a continuation of the history by the translator from the year 1780 to the present date. calcutta: h. townsend, 1827. 2 v. 8°. *onq chantre, ernest. les arméniens, esquisse historique et ethnographique. (société d'anthropologie de lyon. bulletin. lyon, 1897. 8°. v. 15, p. 49-101.) qoa chesney, francis rawdon. the russo-turkish campaigns of 1828 and 1829 with a view of the present state of affairs in the east. with an appendix containing the diplomatic correspondence between the four powers, and the secret correspondence between the russian and english governments. new york: redfield, 1854. 1 p.l., xiii-xxiv, 25-360 p., 2 maps. 12°. glk chesney, g. m. a winter campaign in armenia. (fortnightly review. london, 1916. 8°. new series, v. 99, p. 99-111.) *da clark, william. armenian history. (new englander. new haven, 1863. 8°. v. 22, p. 507-529, 672-691.) *da constitution nationale des arméniens traduite de l'arménien sur le document original par m. e. prud'homme. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1861-62. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 14, p. 1-18, 89-107.) *oaa coumryantz, a. see vogel, charles, and a. coumryantz. the cradle of history. (eclectic magazine. new york, 1859. 8°. 1859, p. 248-259.) *da daghbaschean, h. gründung des bagratidenreiches durch aschot bagratuni. berlin: mayer & müller, 1893. xi p., 1 l., 106 p. 8°. bbx des coursons, r. de, vicomte. la rebellion arménienne; son origine, son but. paris: librairie du service central de la presse, 1895. 102 p. 8°. bbh p.v.2 desimoni, cornelio. actes passés en 1271, 1274 et 1279 à l'aïas (petite arménie) et à beyrouth par devant des notaires génois. (société de l'orient latin. archives de l'orient latin. paris, 1881. 8°. tome 1, p. 434-534.) *oba dolens, noël, and a. khatch. histoire des anciens arméniens. publié par l'union des étudiants arméniens de l'europe. genève, 1907. 226 p. 8°. bbx dulaurier, édouard. considérations sur les plus anciennes origines de l'histoire arménienne. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1860. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 11, p. 93-109.) *oaa ---littérature arménienne. bibliothèque historique arménienne; ou, choix et extraits des historiens arméniens. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1856. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 3, p. 95-106.) *oaa ---recherches sur la chronologie arménienne technique et historique; ouvrage formant les prolégomènes de la collection intitulée bibliothèque historique arménienne. tome 1. paris: imprimerie impériale, 1859. 4°. �*onq tome 1. chronologie technique. ---see also matthew of edessa; also michael i., patriarch of the jacobites. egli, emil. feldzüge in armenien, von 41-63 n. chr. ein beitrag zur kritik des tacitus. (in: max büdinger, untersuchungen zur römischen kaisergeschichte. leipzig, 1868. 8°. bd. 1, p. 265-363.) bwh eliot, sir charles norton edgecumbe. turkey in europe. london: e. arnold, 1908. vii, 459 p., 2 folded maps. new ed. 8°. *opq elisha, vartabed. yeghishei vartabedi vasn vartanah yev hahots baderazmin. [elisha on vartan and the battle of the armenians.] venice, 1852. 394 p., 1 pl. 32°. *onq ------venice, 1864. 394 p., 1 pl. 24°. *onq ---the history of vartan, and of the battle of the armenians: containing an account of the religious wars between the persians and armenians; by elisæus, bishop of the arnadunians. translated from the armenian by c. f. neumann. london: oriental translation fund, 1830. 1 p.l., xxiv, 111 p. 4°. �*oag ---histoire de vartan et de la guerre des arméniens. traduction nouvelle accompagnée de notes historiques et critiques par victor langlois. (in: victor langlois, collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'arménie. paris, 1869. 4°. tome 2, p. 177-251.) �*onq ---eliseo, storico armeno del quinto secolo, versione del prete giuseppe cappelletti. venezia: tipografia di alvisopoli, 1840. 240 p. 8°. bbx ---soulèvement national de l'arménie chrétienne au ve siècle, contre la loi de zoroastre, sous le commandement du prince vartan le mamigonien. ouvrage écrit par élisée vartabed, contemporain ... traduit en français par ... grégoire kabaragy garabed. paris: [p. renouard,] 1844. 2 p.l., xix, 358 p., 1 l., 1 map. 8°. znv émin, jean baptiste. recherches sur le paganisme arménien. [traduction du russe, par m. a. de stadler.] (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1864. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 18, p. 193-244.) *oaa ---see also faustus of byzant. engelhardt, édouard. la turquie et le tanzimat; ou, histoire des réformes dans l'empire ottoman depuis 1826 jusqu'à nos jours. paris: a. cotillon et cie., 1882-84. 2 v. 8°. gib eschavannes, e. d'. les familles d'orient. histoire de la famille de lusignan. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1852. 8°. [série 2,] tome 11, p. 136-149, 363-376; tome 12, p. 46-60, 182-191.) *oaa ---les rois d'arménie au xive siècle. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1852. 8°. [série 2,] tome 12, p. 315-320.) *oaa eusebius pamphilus, bishop of caesarea. eusebii pamphili caesariensis episcopi chronicon bipartitum nunc primum ex armeniaco textu in latinum conversum adnotationibus auctum graecis fragmentis exornatum opera p. jo. baptistae aucher ... pars 1-2. venetiis: typis coenobii pp. armenorum in insula s. lazari, 1818. 2 v. 4°. ��ba faustus of byzant. faustus de byzance. bibliothèque historique en quatre livres, traduite pour la première fois de l'arménien en français, par jean-baptiste emine. (in: victor langlois, collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'arménie. paris, 1867. 4°. v. 1, p. 201-310.) �*onq menevischean, p. g. faustus von byzanz und dr lauer's deutsche uebersetzung. (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1889. 8°. v. 3, p. 51-68.) *oaa filler, ernst. quaestiones de leontii armenii historia. lipsiae: b. g. teubner. 1903. 2 p.l., 4-37 p. 8°. bbh p.v.2 fonton, félix. la russie dans l'asie-mineure; ou, campagnes du maréchal paskévitch en 1828 et 1829; et tableau du caucase, envisagé sous le point de vue géographique, historique et politique. paris: leneveu, 1840. 2 v. 8° and f°. bbp and �bbp france.--ministère des affaires étrangères. documents diplomatiques. 1897. affaires arméniennes; projets de réformes dans l'empire ottoman, 1893-97. paris: imprimerie nationale, 1897. xix, 371 p. f°. �xbi ---documents diplomatiques. 1897. affaires arméniennes (supplément) 1895-1896. paris: imprimerie nationale, 1897. xv, 124 p. f°. �xbi die franzoesischen gelbbücher über armenien und die zustände in der türkei, 1893-1897. auszüge. (der christliche orient. westend-berlin, 1897. 4°. 1897, p. 251-266, 317-325, 360-368, 408-416.) �*oaa fresneaux, marcel. trait d'union. arménie-france; leurs relations depuis les temps les plus reculés. vannes: lafolye frères, 1917. 2 p.l., (1)8-162 p., 1 l. 12°. bbx at head of title: docteur t. aslan. furneaux, henry. the roman relations with parthia and armenia from the time of augustus to the death of nero. (in his: annals of tacitus. oxford, 1891. 8°. v. 2, p. 96-126.) bwh gabrielian, mugurdich chojhauji. armenia, a martyr nation; a historical sketch of the armenian people from traditional times to the present tragic days. new york: fleming h. revell co. [1918.] 352 p., 1 map. 8°. bbx galanus, clemens. historia armena, ecclesiastica, & politica, nunc primum in germania excusa, & ad exemplar romanum diligenter expressa. coloniæ, 1686. 4 p.l., 504 p., 8 l. 12°. bbx garabed, grégoire kabaragy. see elisha, vartabed. gatteyrias, j. a. élégie sur les malheurs de l'arménie, et le martyre de saint vahan de kogthen, épisode de l'occupation arabe en arménie, traduit pour la première fois de l'arménien littéral sur l'édition des... méchitaristes par m. j. a. gatteyrias. (journal asiatique. paris, 1880. 8°. série 7, v. 16, p. 177-214.) *oaa ghambashidze, d. georgia and armenia as allies. (ararat. london, 1918. 8°. v. 5, p. 383-388.) *onk ghazarian, mkrtitsch. armenien unter der arabischen herrschaft bis zur entstehung des bagratidenreiches. nach arabischen und armenischen quellen. marburg: n. g. elwert, 1903. 88 p. 8°. *onq repr.: zeitschrift für armenische philologie, bd. 2, p. 149-225, *onl. ghésarian, samuel. see lazar of pharbe. ghévont, vartabed. histoire des guerres et des conquêtes des arabes en arménie par l'éminent ghévond, vardabed arménien écrivain du huitième siècle traduite par garabed v. chahnazarian. paris: librairie de ch. meyrueis et cie., 1856. xv, 164 p. 8°. *onq glen, james. see hubboff, prince. great britain.--foreign office. turkey. 1877, no. 15. further correspondence respecting the affairs of turkey. london: harrison and sons [1877]. xviii, 355 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1877, v. 91.) *sdd ---turkey. no. 38 (1878). despatch from the marquis of salisbury inclosing a copy of the treaty signed at berlin, july 13, 1878. london: harrison and sons [1878]. 1 p.l., 31 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1878, v. 83.) *sdd article 58 cedes to russia the territories of ardahan, kars and batoum.... articles 61 and 62 treat of reforms in the provinces inhabited by armenians and of religious liberty. ---turkey. 1879, no. 10. correspondence respecting the condition of the population in asia minor and syria. london: harrison and sons [1879]. v. 128 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1878-79, v. 80.) *sdd ---turkey. 1880, no. 1. correspondence respecting the commission sent by the porte to inquire into the condition of the vilayet of aleppo. london: harrison and sons [1880]. vii, 138 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1880, v. 80.) *sdd ---turkey. 1880, no. 4. correspondence respecting the condition of the populations in asia minor and syria. london: harrison and sons [1880]. vii, 189 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1880, v. 80.) *sdd ---turkey. 1880, no. 23. further correspondence respecting the condition of the populations in asia minor and syria. (in continuation of "turkey no. 4, 1880.") london: harrison and sons [1880]. ix, 282 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1880, v. 82.) *sdd ---turkey. 1881, no. 6. further correspondence respecting the condition of the populations in asia minor and syria. (in continuation of "turkey no. 23, 1880.") london: harrison and sons [1881]. ix, 323 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1881, v. 100.) *sdd ---turkey. no. 1 (1889). correspondence respecting the condition of the populations in asiatic turkey, 1888-89. london: harrison and sons [1889]. v, 91 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1889, v. 87.) *sdd ---turkey. no. 1 (1890). correspondence respecting the condition of the populations in asiatic turkey, and the trial of moussa bey. in continuation of "turkey no. 1, 1889." london: harrison and sons [1890]. iii, 130 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1890, v. 82.) *sdd ---turkey. no. 1 (1890-91). correspondence respecting the condition of the populations in asiatic turkey, and the proceedings in the case of moussa bey. in continuation of "turkey no. 1 (1890)." london: harrison and sons [1891]. v, 101 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1890-91, v. 96.) *sdd ---turkey. 1892, no. 1. further correspondence respecting the condition of the populations in asiatic turkey. (in continuation of "turkey no. 1, 1891.") london: harrison and sons [1892]. iv, 86 p., 1 l. f°. *sdd and ��xbi ---turkey. 1896, no. 1. correspondence respecting the introduction of reforms in the armenian provinces of asiatic turkey. london: harrison and sons [1896]. xi, 176 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1896, v. 95.) *sdd ---turkey. 1896, no. 3. correspondence relating to the asiatic provinces of turkey. 1892-93. london: harrison and sons [1896]. xv, 230 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1896, v. 95.) *sdd ---turkey. 1896, no. 5. correspondence relating to the asiatic provinces of turkey. reports by vice-consul fitzmaurice from birejik, ourfa, adiaman, and behesni. london: harrison and sons [1896]. 1 p.l., 19 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1896, v. 96.) *sdd ---turkey. 1896, no. 6. correspondence relating to the asiatic provinces of turkey: 1894-95. (in continuation of "turkey no. 3, 1896.") london: harrison and sons [1896]. xxiv, 393 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1896, v. 96.) *sdd ---turkey. 1904, no. 3. correspondence respecting the asiatic provinces of turkey. london: harrison and sons [1904]. viii, 83 p. f°. *sdd and �xbi greene, francis vinton. the russian army and its campaigns in turkey in 1877-1878. new york: d. appleton and co., 1879. 2 v. 8°. gln gregory, g. marcar. see tchobanian, archag. gregory of armenia, called illuminator. see agathangelos. gregory the priest. chronique de grégoire le prêtre. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 151-201.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. greiffenhag, andré m. see hethoum, prince of gorigos. guiragos of kantzag. extrait de l'histoire d'arménie (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 411-430.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. hacobian, avetoon pesak. armenia and the war; an armenian's point of view, with an appeal to britain and the coming peace conference. with a preface by the rt. hon. viscount bryce. london: hodder & stoughton, 1917. xx, 200 p. 12°. btze ------new york: g. h. doran co. [1917?] xvi p., 1 l., 19-192 p. 12°. btze hagopian, hovhan. the relations of the armenians and the franks during the reign of leon ii, 1186-1219. [boston: "armenia" publishing co., 1905.] 39 p. 8°. bac p.v.14 repr.: armenia, v. 1, no. 5, p. 13-31, no. 6, p. 11-24, �*onk. ---the russification of the armenians. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 7, p. 37-42; no. 8, p. 20-25; no. 9, p. 23-27.) �*onk henderson, bernard william. the chronology of the wars in armenia, a. d. 51-63. (classical review. london, 1901. 4°. v. 15, p. 159-165, 204-213, 266-274.) �rba henry, james dodds. baku; an eventful history. london: archibald constable & co., ltd. [1905.] viii, 256 p., 1 map, 24 pl. 8°. glr herold, a. ferdinand. l'amitié de la france et de l'arménie (1895-1908). (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 697-706.) *onk hethoum, prince of gorigos. chronographie d'héthoum, seigneur de gôrigos, ouvrage inédit du moine aithon, auteur de l'histoire des tatars; traduit pour la première fois sur le texte arménien de l'édition de venise ... par victor langlois. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1863. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 15, p. 103-114.) *oaa ---histoire orientale; ou, des tartares de haiton ... qui comprend, premièrement, une succincte & agréable description de plusieurs roiaumes ou païs orientaux, selon l'état dans lequel ils se trouvoient environ l'an 1300. secondement, une relation de beaucoup de choses remarquables, qui sont arrivées aux peuples de ces païs & nations. le tout décrit par la main de n. salcon, & traduit suivant l'édition latine de a. m. greiffenhag. (recueil de divers voyages curieux, faits en tartarie. leide, 1729. 4°. v. 2, 96 cols., 1 l., 1 map.) reserve ------(in: p. bergeron, voyages faits principalement en asie dans les xii, xiii, xiv, xv siècles. la haye, 1735. 4°. v. 2, 96 cols., 1 l., 1 map.) reserve and �bbe ---historia orientalis haythoni armenii: et hvic svbiectvm marci pavli veneti itinerarium, item fragmentum è speculo historiali vincentij beluacensis eiusdem argumenti. [edited by r. reineccius.] helmaestadii: [i. lucius,] 1585. 8 p.l., 211 f., 87 l., 1 table. 12°. reserve ---the historie of ayton, or anthonie the armenian, of asia, and specially touching the tartars. (in: samuel purchas, purchas his pilgrimes. london, 1625. f°. part 3, p. 108-128.) �kbc ---relation de hayton, prince d'arménie.... (in: louis de backer, l'extrême orient au moyen âge. paris, 1877. 8°. p. 125-255.) bbb ---table chronologique de héthoum, comte de gorigos. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 469-490.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. hrasdan, saven. sind die armenier kriegerischen geistes bar? 2 ports. (geist des ostens. münchen, 1915. 8°. jahrg. 2, p. 422-436.) *oaa hubboff, prince. genealogical catalogue of the kings of armenia. translated from the armenian into the russian language by lazar kooznets. translated from the russian into english and compared with the original armenian manuscript by james glen. 94 p. (oriental translation fund. miscellaneous translations. london, 1834. 8°. v. 2.) *oag hyvernat, henry. see mueller-simonis, paul, and henry hyvernat. injijian, ghougas. hnakhosoutiun. [armenian antiquities.] venice, 1835. 3 v. 4°. *onm kachouni, manouele. hnakhosoutiun hahasdani. [an abridgement for schools of ghougas injijian's hnakhosoutiun.] venice, 1855. 3 p.l., 303 p. 16°. *onm institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. tome 1. paris: imprimerie impériale, 1869. f°. ��btr contents: préface; introduction; le royaume de la petite arménie ou la cilicie au temps des croisades; tableaux généalogiques et dynastiques; matthew of edessa, extraits de la chronique; gregory the priest, chronique; basil, oraison funèbre de baudouin; nerses the graceful, patriarch of armenia, élégie sur la prise d'édesse; gregory dgha, patriarch of armenia, élégie sur la prise de jérusalem par saladin; michel syrus, extrait de sa chronique; guiragos of kantzag, extrait de l'histoire d'arménie; vartan the great, extrait de l'histoire universelle; samuel of ani, extrait de la chronographie; hethoum, prince of gorigos, table chronologique; vahram of edessa, chronique rimée des rois de la petite arménie; chant populaire sur la captivité de léon; hethoum ii, king of armenia, poème; nerses of lambron, extraits de l'ouvrage intitulé: réflexions sur les institutions de l'église et explication du mystère de la messe; sempad, constable of armenia, chronique du royaume de la petite arménie; martiros of crimea, liste rimée des souverains de la petite arménie; mkhithar of dashir, relation de sa conférence avec le légat du pape; appendice, continuation de l'histoire du royaume de la petite arménie; chartes arméniennes; index. armenian texts with french translations. isaverdentz, hagopos. histoire de l'arménie par le r. p. jacques dr. issaverdens, mékhithariste de venise: enrichie de nombreuses figures exécutées aux frais de mr. jean arathoon de batavia. venise: imprimerie de s. lazare, 1888. 259 p., 61 pl. ob. 4°. �*onq jean vi, patriarch of armenia. histoire d'arménie par le patriarche jean vi dit jean catholicos traduite de l'arménien en français par m. j. saint-martin. paris: imprimerie royale, 1841. 2 p.l., iii-xlviii, 462 p. 8°. *onq jean ouosk'herdjan. mémoire de jean ouosk'herdjan, prêtre arménien de wagarchabad, pour servir à l'histoire des événemens qui ont eu lieu en arménie et en géorgie à la fin du dix-huitième siècle et au commencement du dix-neuvième, suivi de vingt-huit anciennes inscriptions arméniennes, traduit de l'arménien. (in: j. h. klaproth, mémoires relatifs à l'asie. paris, 1824. 8°. tome 1, p. 225-309.) *oac kalenderian, vahan h. the armenians as soldiers. (new armenia. new york, 1918. 4°. v. 10, p. 61-63.) �*onk kennedy, j. the indians in armenia, 130 b. c.-300 a. d. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1904. 8°. 1904, p. 309-314.) *oaa khalathianz, bagrat. ueber den ursprung der armenischen fürstentümer. auszug. (verhandlungen des xiii. internationalen orientalisten-kongresses. leiden: e. j. brill, 1904. 8°. p. 126-128.) *oaa ---der ursprung der armenischen fürstentümer. (wiener zeitschrift für die kunde des morgenlandes. wien, 1903. 8°. bd. 17, p. 60-69.) *oaa khalathianz, grigori abramovich. was artasches von armenien der besieger des krösus? von gregor chalathianz. (wiener zeitschrift für die kunde des morgenlandes. wien, 1903. 8°. bd. 17, p. 37-46.) *oaa khaniji, anton. mukhtasar tawarikh al-arman. [a short history of armenia, translated into arabic from the armenian.] jerusalem, 1868. 2 p.l., 356 p., 2 l. 8°. *onq khatch, a. see dolens, noël, and a. khatch. khungian, t. b. glimpses from ancient armenia. (american antiquarian. chicago, 1908. 8°. v. 30, p. 270-275.) hba kiepert, heinrich. über älteste landesund volksgeschichte von armenien. 1 map. (königlich preussische akademie der wissenschaften. monatsberichte. berlin, 1870. 8°. 1869, p. 216-243.) *ee klaproth, julius heinrich. aperçu des entreprises des mongols en géorgie et en arménie dans le xiiie siècle. (journal asiatique. paris, 1833. 8°. série 2, v. 12, p. 193-214, 273-305.) *oaa ---extrait du derbend-nâmeh, ou de l'histoire de derbend. (journal asiatique. paris, 1829. 8°. série 2, v. 3, p. 439-467.) *oaa ---see also jean ouosk'herdjan. kohler, charles. lettres pontificales concernant l'histoire de la petite arménie au xive siècle. (in: florilegium; ou, recueil de travaux d'érudition dédiés à monsieur le marquis melchior de vogué. paris, 1909. 4°. p. 303-327.) �*oac kooznets, lazar. see hubboff, prince. kurkjian, vahan m. the armenian kingdom of cilicia. (armenian herald. boston, 1919. 8°. v. 2, p. 60-71.) *onk lagarde, paul anton de. see agathangelos. lagov, n. m., compiler. armeniia; ocherki proshlago, prirody, kul'tury i pr. sostavil n. m. lagov. petrograd: n. p. karbasnikov, 1915. viii, 134 p. 8°. *qg p.v.54 armenia: her past, nature and culture. langlois, victor. collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'arménie publiée en français sous les auspices de son excellence nubar-pacha.... paris: firmin didot frères, fils et cie., 1867-69. 2 v. 4°. �*onq tome 1. historiens grecs et syriens traduits anciennement en arménien. tome 2. historiens arméniens du cinquième siècle. ---considérations sur les rapports de l'arménie avec la france au moyen âge. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1860. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 12, p. 235-249.) *oaa ---documents pour servir à une sigillographie des rois d'arménie au moyen âge. (revue archéologique. paris, 1855. 8°. année 11, p. 630-634.) mta ---une fête à la cour de léon ii, roi d'arménie, au xiiie siècle. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1854. 8°. [série 2,] tome 15, p. 213-216.) *oaa ---lettre à monsieur l'académicien brosset, sur quelques points d'histoire politique, religieuse et civile des arméniens et des franks, à l'époque des croisades. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1861. f°. tome 3, col. 241-248.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863. tome 4, p. 280-291, *oaa. ---lettre à m. l'académicien brosset, sur la succession des rois d'arménie de la dynastie de roupen et de la maison de lusignan, d'après les sources orientates et occidentales. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg. 1862. f°. tome 4, col. 285-300.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863. tome 4, p. 413-428, *oaa. ---place de l'arménie dans l'histoire du monde. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1856. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 4, p. 321-331.) *oaa ---see also agathangelos; also elisha, vartabed; also hethoum, prince of gorigos; also michael i., patriarch of the jacobites; also sempad, constable of armenia. lazar of pharbe. histoire d'arménie traduite pour la première fois en français et accompagnée de notes historiques et critiques par le p. samuel ... ghésarian. (in: victor langlois, collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'arménie. paris, 1869. 4°. tome 2, p. 253-367.) �*onq lehmann-haupt, ferdinand friedrich karl. die einwanderung der armenier im zusammenhang mit den wanderungen der thrakier und iranier. (verhandlungen des xiii. internationalen orientalisten-kongresses. leiden: e. j. brill, 1904. 8°. p. 130-140.) *oaa ---materialien zur älteren geschichte armeniens und mesopotamiens. mit einem beitrage, arabische inschriften aus armenien und diyarbekr, von max van berchem. berlin, 1907. 183 p., 14 pl. 4°. (königliche gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttingen. abhandlungen: philologisch-historische klasse. neue folge, bd. 9, nr. 3.) *ee ---religionsgeschichtliches aus kaukasien und armenien. (archiv für religionswissenschaft. tübingen, 1900. 8°. bd. 3, p. 1-17.) zaa lenormant, françois. sur l'ethnographie et l'histoire de l'arménie avant les achéménides. (in his: lettres assyriologiques. paris, 1871. 4°. tome 1, p. 113-164.) *ock léon iii, king of armenia. décret ou privilège de léon iii, roi d'arménie, en faveur des génois, en l'année 1288; tiré des archives de gènes par j. de saint-martin. (institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. notices et extraits des manuscrits. paris, 1827. 4°. tome 11, p. 97-122.) *eo léon vi, king of armenia. basmadjian, k. j. léon vi of lusignan. [a history of the last king of armenia.] paris, 1908. 8, 166 p., 1 l., 1 fac., 1 pl., 1 port. 4°. �*onq léon vi is frequently referred to as léon v. carrière, auguste. la rose d'or du roi d'arménie léon v. (revue de l'orient latin. paris, 1902. 8°. tome 9, p. 1-5.) *oba langlois, victor. notice sur le chrysobulle, octroyé par léon v, roi d'arménie, aux siciliens, en 1331. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1863. f°. tome 5, col. 375-387.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863. tome 4, p. 649-666, *oaa. saint martin, jean antoine. recherches sur la vie et les aventures de léon, dernier roi des arméniens. (institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. mémoires. paris, 1836. 4°. tome 12, partie 2, p. 147-158.) *eo schlumberger, gustave. bulles d'or et sceau des rois léon ii (i) et léon vi (v) d'arménie. 2 pl. (revue de l'orient latin. paris, 1893. 8°. tome 1, p. 161-167.) *oba tournebize, françois. léon v de lusignan dernier roi de l'arméno-cilicie. (études publiées par des pères de la compagnie de jésus. paris, 1910. 8°. v. 122, p. 60-79, 196-203.) *dm lohmann, ernst. im kloster zu sis. ein beitrag zu der geschichte der beziehungen zwischen dem deutschen reiche und armenien im mittelalter. striegau: r. urban [1904]. 34 p., 1 l. 4°. �bbx maccoll, malcolm. armenia and the transvaal. (fortnightly review. london, 1896. 8°. new series, v. 59, p. 313-329.) *da macler, frédéric. les arméniens en turquie. (revue du monde musulman. paris, 1913. 8°. v. 24, p. 115-173.) *oaa ---pseudo-sebêos, texte arménien traduit et annoté par frédéric macler. (journal asiatique. paris, 1905. 8°. série 10, v. 6, p. 121-155.) *oaa ---rapport sur une mission scientifique en arménie russe et en arménie turque, juillet-octobre, 1909. paris: imprimerie nationale, 1910. 135 p., 16 pl. 8°. (france.--ministère de l'instruction publique et des beaux-arts. nouvelles archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires. nouvelle série, fasc. 2.) *en ---russia and the armenians. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 117-119.) �*onk ---see also maribas the chaldean. mai, angelo. see samuel of ani. maribas the chaldean. extraits de la chronique de maribas kaldoyo (mar abas katina?). essai de critique historico-littéraire par frédéric macler. (journal asiatique. paris, 1903. 8°. série 10, v. 1, p. 491-549.) *oaa marr, n. kavkazskii kul'turnyi mir i armeniia. (zhurnal ministerstva narodnago prosvieshcheniia. petrograd, 1915. 8°. 1915, no. 6, p. 280-330.) *qca a treatise on caucasian culture and armenia. martiros of crimea. liste rimée des souverains de la petite arménie. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 681-687.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. matthew of edessa. chronique de matthieu d'édesse (962-1136) avec la continuation de grégoire le prêtre jusqu'en 1162.... (in: bibliothèque historique arménienne; ou, choix des principaux historiens arméniens traduits en français. par édouard dulaurier. paris: e. thorin [1858]. 4 p.l., xxvii, 546 p., 1 l. 8°.) *oag ---[extraits de la chronique.] expéditions de nicéphore phocas et de jean zimiscès dans la mésopotamie, la syrie et la palestine. récit de la première croisade. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 1-150.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. michael i, patriarch of the jacobites. chronique de michel le grand, patriarche des syriens jacobites. traduite pour la première fois sur la version arménienne du prêtre ischôk, par victor langlois. venise: typographie de l'académie de saint-lazare, 1868. 3 p.l., 378 p. 4°. �*odr ---extrait de la chronique de michel le syrien. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 309-409.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. ---extrait de la chronique de michel le syrien comprenant l'histoire des temps écoulés depuis l'année viiie du règne de l'empereur justin ii, jusqu'à la seconde année du règne de léon iii, l'isaurien; traduit de l'arménien par éd. dulaurier. (journal asiatique. paris, 1848-49. 8°. série 4. v. 12, p. 281-334; v. 13, p. 315-376.) *oaa mkhithar of aïrivank. see brosset, marie félicité. monteith, william. kars and erzeroum: with the campaigns of prince paskiewitch in 1828 and 1829; and an account of the conquests of russia beyond the caucasus, from the time of peter the great to the treaty of turcoman chie and adrianople. london: longman, brown, green and longmans, 1856. xvi, 332 p., 2 pl. 8°. glf mordtmann, andreas david. see wakidi, abu 'abd allah muhammad ibn 'umar al-. morgan, jacques jean marie de. the armenians. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 135-136.) �*onk ---the rise and fall of armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 149-150.) �*onk moses of chorene. badmoutiun hahots. [history of armenia.] venice, 1827. 1 p.l., 624 p., 4 pl. 24°. *onq ---mosis chorenensis historiæ armeniacæ libri iii. accedit ejusdem scriptoris epitome geographiæ. præmittitur præfatio quæ de literatura, ac versione sacra armeniaca agit; et subjicitur appendix, quæ continet epistolas duas armeniacas; primam, corinthiorum ad paulum apostolum; alteram, pauli apostoli ad corinthios; nunc primum ex codice ms. integrè divulgatas. armeniacè ediderunt, latinè verterunt, notisque illustrârunt gulielmus & georgius, gul. whistoni filii.... londini: apud joannem whistonum, 1736. 2 p.l., xxiv, 412 p., 1 map. 4°. �*onq ---histoire d'arménie en trois livres, traduction nouvelle accompagnée de notes historiques, critiques et philologiques: (in: victor langlois, collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'arménie. paris, 1869. 4°. tome 2, p. 45-175.) �*onq ---storia di mosè corenese versione italiana illustrata dai monaci armeni mechitaristi ritoccata quanto allo stile da n. tommaséo. venezia: tipografia armena di san lazzaro, 1841. xxii, 403 p., 8 l. 8°. *onq ------venezia: tipografia armena di san lazzaro, 1850. xviii, 403 p., 8 l. 2. ed. 8°. *onq ---see also saint-martin, jean antoine. anderson, william. notes on the geography of western afghanistan. [appendix. notes by johannes avdall, on the extracts proposed from the work of moses khorenensis.] (asiatic society of bengal. journal. calcutta, 1849. 8°. v. 18, p. 553-594.) *oha carrière, auguste. la légende d'abgar dans l'histoire d'arménie de moïse de khoren. (in: école des langues orientales vivantes. centenaire 1795-1895. recueil de mémoires. paris: imprimerie nationale. 1895. f°. p. 357-414.) �*oaf gildemeister, johann. pseudokallisthenes bei moses von khoren. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1886. 8°. bd. 40, p. 88-91.) *oaa khalathianz, grigori abramovich. armianskii epos v istorii armenii moiseia khorenskago. opyt kritiki istochnikov. moscow: v. gatzuk, 1896. 2 parts in 1. 4°. *qb a commentary on the armenian history of moses of chorene. ---nachalo kriticheskago izucheniia istorii armenii moiseia khorenskago. (zhurnal min. narodn. prosv. st. petersburg, 1894. 8°. 1894, no. 10, p. 377-402.) *qca ---zur erklärung der armenischen geschichte des moses von chorene. von gregor chalathiantz. (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1893. 8°. v. 7, p. 21-28.) *oaa langlois, victor. étude sur les sources de l'histoire d'arménie de moïse de khoren. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1861. f°. tome 3, col. 531-583.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863. tome 4, p. 293-368, *oaa. pichard, c. e. essai sur moïse de khoren, historien arménien du ve siècle de l'ère du christ et analyse succincte de son ouvrage sur l'histoire d'arménie; accompagné de notes et commentaires et suivi d'un précis géographique. paris: a. lemerre, 1866. 97 p., 1 l. 8°. *onq saint-martin, jean antoine. notice sur la vie et les écrits de moyse de khoren, historien arménien. (journal asiatique. paris, 1823. 8°. série 1, v. 2, p. 321-344.) *oaa mueller-simonis, paul, and henry hyvernat. du caucase au golfe persique à travers l'arménie, le kurdistan et la mésopotamie par p. müller-simonis suivie de notices sur la géographie et l'histoire ancienne de l'arménie et les inscriptions cunéiformes du bassin de van par h. hyvernat. washington: université catholique d'amérique, 1892. viii, 628 p., 2 maps, 32 pl. 4°. (relation des missions scientifiques de h. hyvernat et p. müller-simonis, 1888-1889.) �bbv muravyev, andrei nikolayevich. gruziia i armeniia. st. petersburg: tip. iii otdyeleniya, 1848. 3 v. 12°. *qg georgia and armenia. nersès, patriarch of constantinople. les arméniens de turquie. rapport du patriarche arménien de constantinople à la sublime porte; traduit de l'arménien par k. s. achguerd. paris: e. leroux, 1877. 2 p.l., 67 p. 8°. *onr neumann, carl friedrich. see elisha, vartabed; also vahram of edessa. nève, félix. étude sur thomas de medzoph, et sur son histoire de l'arménie au xve siècle. (journal asiatique. paris, 1855. 8°. série 5, v. 6, p. 221-281.) *oaa ---exposé des guerres de tamerlan et de schah-rokh dans l'asie occidentale, d'après la chronique arménienne inédite de thomas de medzoph. 158 p. (académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de belgique. mémoires couronnés. bruxelles, 1861. 8°. tome 11, no. 4.) *em niebuhr, barthold georg. see wakidi, abu 'abd allah muhammad ibn 'umar al-. norman, charles boswell. armenia, and the campaign of 1877. london: cassell, petter & galpin [1878]. xx, 484 p., 4 maps, 4 plans. 8°. bbx o'connor, thomas power. see williams, william llewelyn. orpélian, e. see saint-martin, jean antoine. oukhtanes. see brosset, marie félicité. papazian, bertha s. the tragedy of armenia, a brief study and interpretation, with an introduction by secretary james l. barton. boston, chicago: the pilgrim press [cop. 1918]. xii p., 2 l., 164 p. 12°. bbx chapters 1-4 reprinted in the armenian herald, v. 1, p. 626-632; v. 2, p. 29-46, 93-103, *onk. pavlovitch, michel. la russie et les arméniens. (revue politique internationale. paris, 1914. 8°. 1914. partie 1, p. 463-479.) sea pis'ma iz armenii. (moskovskii telegraf. moscow, 1829. 8°. 1829, no. 8, p. 361-400.) *qca letters from armenia. prud'homme, évariste. see arisdaguès de lasdiverd; also constitution nationale; also zénob of klag. raffi, aram. the armenian nation. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 280-282.) �*onk ---the armenians and persia. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 139-141.) �*onk ---the english and the armenians. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 213-214.) �*onk ---see also buxton, noel, and harold buxton. rawlinson, george. parthia. new york: g. p. putnam's sons, 1903. xx, 432 p., 2 maps, 1 pl. 12°. (story of the nations.) *omv ---the sixth great oriental monarchy; or, the geography, history and antiquities of parthia. london: longmans, green & co., 1873. xiii p., 1 l., 458 p., 2 maps, 1 pl. 8°. stuart 6686 ------new york: dodd, mead & co. [188-?] xiii p., 1 l., 458 p., 2 maps, 1 pl. 8°. *omv ---the story of parthia. new york: g. p. putnam's sons, 1893. xx, 432 p., 1 map. 12°. (story of the nations.) *omv reinach, théodore. mithridate eupator, roi de pont. paris: firmin-didot et cie., 1890. 3 p.l., v-xvi, 494 p., 1 map, 4 pl. 8°. (bibliothèque d'archéologie, d'art et d'histoire ancienne.) bbp reineck, reinerus. see hethoum, prince of gorigos. robert, ulysse. la chronique d'arménie de jean dardel, évêque de tortiboli. (société de l'orient latin. archives de l'orient latin. paris, 1884. 8°. tome 2, p. 1-15.) *oba robinson, emily j. armenia and the armenians. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 315-316.) �*onk ---the truth about armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1916. 4°. v. 8, p. 217-220.) �*onk rockwell, william walker, editor. the deportation of the armenians, described from day to day by a kind woman somewhere in turkey; edited by w. w. rockwell.... new york: american committee for armenian and syrian relief, 1916. 24 p. 12°. btze p.v.208 rolin-jacquemyns, gustave. actual position of armenia and the armenians under treaties of 1878. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 2, no. 9, p. 34-39.) �*onk ---armenia, the armenians and treaties. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 249-269, 310-316, 359-381, 421-437, 476-498.) *onk ---armenia under the treaty of paris of 1856. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 2, no. 7, p. 13-32.) �*onk ---l'arménie, les arméniens et les traités. (revue de droit international et de législation comparée. bruxelles, 1887-89. 8°. tome 19, p. 284-325; tome 21, p. 291-353.) xba ---diplomatic remonstrances. (armenia. boston, 1907. 4°. v. 3, no. 3, p. 21-40; no. 4, p. 40-47.) �*onk ---legal position of turkish armenia under the treaties of san stefano and berlin, and the anglo-turkish convention of the 4th june, 1878. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 2, no. 8, p. 29-35.) �*onk ---period from 1878 to 1881. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 2, no. 10, p. 6-13; no. 11, p. 20-29; no. 12, p. 8-13.) �*onk ---review of consular reports. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 3, no. 1, p. 13-18; no. 2, p. 14-27.) �*onk roth, karl. armenien und deutschland. leipzig: veit & comp., 1915. 30 p. 8°. (länder und völker der türkei; schriften des deutschen vorderasienkomitees. heft 10.) gic russia.--ministerstvo inostrannykh dyel. sbornik diplomaticheskikh dokumentov. reformy v armenii. 26 noiabria 1912 goda--10 maia 1914 goda. petrograd: gosudarstvennaya tipografiya, 1915. 294 p. 4°. *qg a collection of diplomatic documents dealing with reforms in armenia. russia and armenia. the orange book. (ararat. london, 1915-16. 8°. v. 2, p. 314-322, 358-365, 409-416, 465-469; v. 3, p. 7-10, 47-51, 98-100, 199-203, 256-258, 295-298, 394-397, 440-443, 493-495.) *onk safrastian, a. s. dashnaksuthiun--its past and present. (ararat. london, 1914. 8°. v. 2, p. 196-205.) *onk saint-martin, jean antoine. discours sur l'origine et l'histoire des arsacides. (journal asiatique. paris, 1822. 8°. série 1, v. 1, p. 65-77.) *oaa ---fragments d'une histoire des arsacides. ouvrage posthume de m. j. saint-martin. publié sous les auspices du ministère de l'instruction publique. paris: imprimerie nationale, 1850. 2 v. 8°. *omv ---histoire des révolutions de l'arménie, sous le règne d'arsace ii, pendant le 4. siècle. (journal asiatique. paris, 1829-30. 8°. série 2, v. 4, p. 401-452; v. 5, p. 161-207, 336-374.) *oaa ---mémoires historiques et géographiques sur l'arménie, suivis du texte arménien de l'histoire des princes orpélians par e. orpélian, archevêque de siounie, et de celui des géographies attribuées à moyse de khoren et au docteur vartan, avec plusieurs autres pièces relatives à l'histoire d'arménie; le tout accompagné d'une traduction françoise et de notes explicatives. paris: imprimerie royale, 1818-19. 2 v. 8°. *onq ---see also jean vi, patriarch of armenia; also léon iii, king of armenia. salcon, nicolas de. see hethoum, prince of gorigos. samuel of ani. extrait de la chronographie de samuel d'ani. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 445-468.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. ---samuelis presbyteri aniensis temporum usque ad suam ætatem ratio e libris historicorum summatim collecta. opus ex haicanis quinque codicibus ab joanne zohrabo doctore armenio diligenter exscriptum atque emendatum joannes zohrabus et angelus maius primum conjunctis curis latinitate donatum notisque illustratum ediderunt. (in: j. p. migne, patrologiæ cursus completus.... series græca. paris, 1857. 4°. tomus 19, col. 599-742.) zel brosset, marie félicité. samouel d'ani; revue générale de sa chronologie (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1873. f°. tome 18, col. 402-442.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1873. tome 6, p. 741-798, *oaa. finck, franz nikolaus, editor. kleinere mittelarmenische texte; hrsg., mit einleitung und glossen versehen von f. n. finck. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1903-04. 8°. bd. 1, p. 1-32, 97-117, 177-219, 301-336; bd. 2, p. 81-111.) *onl the chronicle of samuel of ani. sandwith, humphry. how the turks rule armenia. (nineteenth century. london, 1878. 8°. v. 3, p. 314-329.) *da ---a narrative of the siege of kars and of the six months' resistance by the turkish garrison under general williams to the russian army: together with a narrative of travels ... in armenia and lazistan. london: j. murray, 1856. ix, 348 p., 2 maps, 1 pl. 8°. bbx sempad, constable of armenia. chronique du royaume de la petite arménie. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 605-680.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. ---extrait de la chronique de sempad, seigneur de babaron, connétable d'arménie, suivi de celle de son continuateur, comprenant l'histoire des temps écoulés depuis l'établissement des roupéniens en cilicie, jusqu'à l'extinction de cette dynastie. traduit pour la première fois de l'arménien, sur les éditions de moscou et de paris par victor langlois. 1 p.l., 38 p. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mémoires. st. pétersbourg, 1862. f°. série 7, tome 4, no. 6.) *qcb siebert, wilbur henry. armenia and turkey. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4°. v. 6, p. 261-265.) �*onk sobraniye aktov. sobranie aktov, otnosiashikhsia k obozrieniiu istorii armianskago naroda. moscow: lazarevykh institut vostochnykh yazykov, 1838. 3 v. 8°. *qb a collection of facts relating to the history of the armenian people. stadler, a. de. see émin, jean baptiste. streck, maximilian. armenia. (in: encyclopaedia of islam. leyden, 1913. 4°. v. 1, p. 435-449.) �*ogc stubbs, william, bishop of oxford. the medieval kingdoms of cyprus and armenia. (in his: seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.... oxford, 1886. 8°. p. 156-207.) baf stuermer, harry. two war years in constantinople; sketches of german and young turkish ethics and politics.... translated from the german [by] e. allen and the author. new york: george h. doran co. [1917.] xiv p., 1 l., 17-292 p. 8°. btze svasley, miran. anglo-armenian relations from the xii to xiv centuries. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 7, p. 3-11.) �*onk reprinted in the armenian herald, v. 1, p. 11-16, dec., 1917, *onk. ---armenia in and before 1878. (armenia. boston, 1905-06. 4°. v. 1, no. 9, p. 7-18; no. 10, p. 8-17; no. 12, p. 9-15; v. 2, no. 6, p. 11-23.) �*onk sykes, sir mark, bart. the caliphs' last heritage; a short history of the turkish empire. london: macmillan and co., ltd., 1915. xii, 638 p., 11 folded maps, 11 plans, 23 pl., 1 port. 8°. *opq tchobanian, archag. l'arménie; son histoire, sa littérature, son rôle en orient. conférence faite le 9 mars 1897 à la salle de la société de géographie.... paris: société du mercure de france, 1897. 90 p. 5. ed. 12°. bbx ---the people of armenia; their past, their culture, their future. translated by g. marcar gregory.... with introduction by the right honourable viscount bryce. london: j. m. dent & sons, ltd., 1914. xi, 68 p. 16°. bbx teza, emilio. cose armene. (reale istituto veneto. atti. venezia, 1900. 8°. tomo 59, parte 2, p. 569-589.) *er thomas the arzrunian. see brosset, marie félicité. thomas of medzoph. see nève, félix. thopdschian, hagob. armenien vor und während der araberzeit. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1904. 8°. bd. 2, p. 50-71.) *onl ---die inneren zustände von armenien unter asot i. (ausgenommen die geschichte des armenischen naxararowt 'iwns und der armenischen kirche). (berlin.--universität: seminar für orientalische sprachen. mitteilungen. berlin, 1904. 8°. jahrg. 7, abteilung 2, p. 104-153.) *oaa ---politische und kirchengeschichte armeniens unter asot i. und smbat i. (berlin.--universität: seminar für orientalische sprachen. mitteilungen. berlin, 1905. 4°. jahrg. 8, abteilung 2, p. 98-215.) *oaa thoumaian, g. armenian-kurdish relations. (new armenia. new york, 1918. 4°. v. 10, p. 104-105.) �*onk ---a historical sketch of russia's relations with armenia. (ararat. london, 1915. 8°. v. 3, p. 83-89, 124-132.) *onk ---the kurds in their relation to armenia. (ararat. london, 1918. 8°. v. 5, p. 375-378, 426-430.) *onk ---the relations of armenia with england. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 53-55.) �*onk ---the relations of armenia with england in the middle ages. (ararat. london, 1917. 8°. v. 4, p. 368-373.) *onk ---russia's relations with armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1916. f°. v. 8, p. 122-124, 153-156.) �*onk tommaséo, niccolò. see moses of chorene. tournebize, françois. histoire politique et religieuse de l'arménie. depuis les origines des arméniens jusqu'à la mort de leur dernier roi (l'an 1393).... paris: librairie a. picard et fils [1910?]. 2 p.l., 872 p., 3 maps. 4°. bbx transmigration des arméniens d'aderbéidjan sur le territoire russe. (journal asiatique. paris, 1834. 8°. série 2, v. 13, p. 317-337.) *oaa turabian, hagop. the armenian social-democratic hentchakist party. (ararat. london, 1916. 8°. v. 3, p. 451-457, 516-522; v. 4, p. 34-38.) *onk tutundjian, télémaque. du pacte politique entre l'état ottoman et les nations non-musulmanes de la turquie. dissertation pour le doctorat présentée à la faculté de droit de l'université de lausanne. lausanne: g. vaney-burnier, 1904. 113 p., 1 l. 8°. *opq ubicini, jean henri abdolonyme. de l'état moral et politique de l'arménie turque. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1854. 8°. [série 2,] tome 15, p. 261-266.) *oaa ---empire ottoman. les arméniens sous la domination ottomane. fragment historique. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1854. 8°. [série 2,] tome 15, p. 81-94.) *oaa vahram of edessa. chronique rimée des rois de la petite arménie. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 491-535.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. ---vahram's chronicle of the armenian kingdom in cilicia during the time of the crusades. translated from the original armenian with notes and illustrations by charles f. neumann. london: oriental translation fund, 1831. xix p., 1 l., 23-110 p. 8°. (c. f. neumann, translations from the chinese and armenian.) *oag ---chronique du royaume arménien de la cilicie à l'époque des croisades composée par vahram rapoun et traduite sur l'original arménien par sahag bedrosian. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1864. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 17, p. 245-254, 315-325.) *oaa vartan the great. see saint-martin, jean antoine. vartooguian, armayis p. armenia's ordeal. a sketch of the main features of the history of armenia; and an inside account of the work of american missionaries among armenians, and its ruinous effect. new york, 1896. v, 101 p., 9 pl. 12°. bbx vérité sur le mouvement révolutionnaire arménien et les mesures gouvernementales. constantinople, 1916. 16 p. 8°. btze p.v.253 villari, luigi. the armenians and the tartars. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 233-235.) �*onk reprinted from his fire and sword in the caucasus. ---the armeno-tartar hostilities. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 251-252.) �*onk reprinted from his fire and sword in the caucasus. ---fire and sword in the caucasus. london: t. f. unwin, 1906. 347 p., 64 pl. 8°. *r-gmv ---russia and the armenians. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 200-202.) �*onk reprinted from his fire and sword in the caucasus. ---russian bureaucracy and the armenians. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 219-220.) �*onk reprinted from his fire and sword in the caucasus. vincentius, bellovacensis. see hethoum, prince of gorigos. vogel, charles, and a. coumryantz. le peuple qui souffre; l'arménie, ses origines, son passé, son avenir? préface par jean jullien. paris: dorbon-ainé [cop. 1917]. xiii, 16-110 p., 1 l. 16°. bbx vziatie arzeruma (pis'ma iz aremnii). (moskovskii telegraf. moscow, 1830. 8°. 1830, no. 2, p. 141-175.) *qca capture of erzeroum. wakidi, abu 'abd allah muhammad ibn 'umar al-. geschichte der eroberung von mesopotamien und armenien von mohammed ben omar el wakedi. aus dem arabischen übersetzt und mit anmerkungen begleitet von b. g. niebuhr. hrsg. und mit zusätzen und erläuterungen versehen von dr. a. d. mordtmann. hamburg, 1847. xxi, 185 p., 1 map. 4°. �*ofl wheeler, alfred a. the russians in armenia. (fortnightly review. london, 1878. 8°. new series, v. 24, p. 852-866.) *da whiston, george. see moses of chorene. whiston, william. see moses of chorene. williams, charles. the armenian campaign: a diary of the campaign of 1877, in armenia and koordistan. london: c. kegan paul & co., 1878. xx, 366 p., 2 maps. 8°. bbx williams, william llewelyn. the ancient kingdom of greater armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 5-7, 25-27.) �*onk reprinted from his armenia: past and present, p. 41-51. ---armenia: past and present; a study and a forecast.... with an introduction by t. p. o'connor, m. p. london: p. s. king & son, ltd., 1916. xi, 211 p., 2 folded maps. 8°. bbx ---the kingdom of lesser armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 36-39.) �*onk reprinted from his armenia: past and present, p. 64-81. ---under the heel of the turk. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 56-58.) �*onk reprinted from his armenia: past and present, p. 82-98. zavak. armenia: a chronological treatise. b. c. 2247-a. d. 1375. (ararat. london, 1917. 8°. v. 5, p. 80-83, 129-135, 183-187, 234-239.) *onk ---armenia. a monograph. (ararat. london, 1917. 8°. v. 4, p. 324-331.) *onk zénob of klag. histoire de darôn. [translated by évariste prud'homme.] (journal asiatique. paris, 1863. 8°. série 6, v. 2, p. 401-475.) *oaa zohrabian, john. see samuel of ani. massacres the adana massacres: who is responsible? the parliamentary commission to adana. interview with an armenian deputy. change in the tone of the turkish press. the central government acts promptly. decision to bring the chief offenders, including high officials, to trial. constantinople, turkey, 1909. 23 p. 12°. gic p.v.5 american armenian relief fund. the cry of armenia. [new york: american armenian relief fund in cooperation with the american committee for armenian and syrian relief, 1916.] 32 p. 8°. btze p.v.243 american committee for armenian and syrian relief. more material for your sermon on bible lands, to-day, a. d. 1918. [new york, 1918.] 31 p. nar. 8°. btze p.v.301 articles by henry morgenthau, oscar s. straus, and others. ---a national test of brotherhood; america's opportunity to relieve suffering in armenia, syria, persia and palestine. [new york, 1917?; 32 p. 8°. btzw p.v.2 andreasian, dikran. comment un drapeau sauva quatre mille arméniens. paris: fischbacher [1916]. 15 p. 12°. btze p.v.270 apcar, diana agabeg. betrayed armenia. yokohama: japan gazette press, 1910. 5 p.l., 10-77 p., 1 l., 1 pl. 8°. bbx ---in his name. yokohama: japan gazette press, 1911. 4 p., 1 l., 5-52 p., 1 l., 9 pl. 8°. bbx ---on the cross of europe's imperialism, armenia crucified. yokohama: [fukuin prtg. co., ltd.,] 1918. viii, 116 p., 1 l. 12°. bbx ---peace and no peace. yokohama: japan gazette press, 1912. 1 p.l., 101 p., 1 l. 12°. yfx p.v.12 ---the peace problem. yokohama: japan gazette press, 1912. 1 p.l., 131 p., 1 l. 12°. yfx p.v.12 ---the truth about the armenian massacres. yokohama: japan gazette, 1910. 26 p. 12°. bbh p.v.2 argyll (8. duke), george douglas campbell. our responsibilities for turkey. facts and memories of forty years. london: j. murray, 1896. 166 p. 12°. gie ---see also armenia. armenia. letter from the duke of argyll, &c. documentary and historical evidence of england's responsibility for the horrors inflicted by the turks upon the armenian people. manchester: "guardian" printing works, 1896. 16 p. 8°. bbh p.v.4 the armenian deportations. from the english blue book. (new armenia. new york, 1917-18. f°. v. 9, p. 238-239, 253-255, 270-271, 286-287, 319; v. 10, p. 14-16.) �*onk armenian documents. [no.] 1-6. (armenian herald. boston, 1917-18. 8°. v. 1, p. 51-53, 95-104, 153-164, 223-229, 326-347, 453-457, 506-515, 555-563.) *onk the armenian massacre. (hartford seminary record. hartford, 1895. 8°. v. 5, p. 251-279.) zisf the assassination of armenia. the turkish program of annihilation described by government representatives, teachers, missionaries, and other eyewitnesses. (missionary review of the world. new york, 1915. 8°. new series, v. 28, p. 837-848.) zkva les atrocités en arménie. (l'asie française. paris, 1915. 4°. année 15, p. 82-89.) �bba barby, henry. au pays de l'épouvante, l'arménie martyre. préface de m. paul deschanel.... paris: a. michel [1917]. 2 p.l., v, 260 p., 14 pl., 2 ports. 12°. btze an account, with official documents, of the massacre, resistance and deportation of the armenians in the european war. benoit, lucien. les massacres d'adana. relations de missionnaires. (études par des pères de la compagnie de jésus. paris, 1909. 8°. v. 120, p. 39-54, 237-248.) *dm bliss, edwin munsell. turkey and the armenian atrocities. a graphic and thrilling history of turkey--the armenians, and the events that have led up to the terrible massacres ... in armenia.... by rev. e. m. bliss, assisted by rev. c. hamlin, e. a. grosvenor.... with an introduction by f. e. willard. new york: hibbard & young [cop. 1896]. 1 p.l., 4, v-xv, 17-573 p., 1 map, 1 pl., 1 port. sq. 8°. bbx ---turkey and the armenian atrocities; a reign of terror. from tartar huts to constantinople palaces. centuries of oppression--moslem and christian--sultan and patriarch--broken pledges followed by massacre and outrage. the red cross to the rescue. with an introduction by frances e. willard. n. p.: edgewood pub. co. [cop. 1896.] 1 p.l., 4, v-xv, 17-574 p., 1 map, 1 port. 8°. bbx and *onq bresnitz von sydacoff, philipp franz. abdul hamid und die christenverfolgungen in der türkei. aufzeichnungen nach amtlichen quellen. berlin: f. luckhardt [pref. 1896]. iv, 73 p. 3. ed. 8°. bbx brézol, georges. les turcs ont passé là. recueil de documents, dossiers, rapports, requêtes, protestations, suppliques et enquêtes, établissant la vérité sur les massacres d'adana en 1909. paris: l'auteur, 1911. vi, 8-400 p., 1 map, 3 ports. 12°. *opq bryce (1. viscount), james bryce. the armenian massacres. (new armenia. new york, 1916. f°. v. 8, p. 51-53.) �*onk ---see also great britain.--foreign office. miscellaneous. no. 31 (1916); also toynbee, arnold joseph. burns, john. see the massacres in turkey. carlier, émilie. au milieu des massacres; journal de la femme d'un consul de france en arménie. paris: f. juven [1903]. 2 p.l., 4-156 p., 1 port. 12°. *onq chambers, l. p. the massacre of armenia. (queen's quarterly. kingston, 1916. 8°. v. 24, p. 228-235.) *da the constantinople massacre. (contemporary review. london, 1896. 8°. v. 70, p. 457-465.) *da der-hagopian, nishan. persecuted armenia. (century. new york, 1918. 8°. v. 96, p. 660-667.) *da dzotsikian, s. m. debi pergutiun. [a story of the armenian massacres, republished from the newspaper "aspares."] fresno, cal., 1916. 1 p.l., 194 p. 12°. *onp einstein, lewis. the armenian massacres. (contemporary review. london, 1917. 8°. v. 111, p. 486-494.) *da reprinted in new armenia, v. 9, p. 152-153, 169-171, �*onk. etesioh sosgali tebkl yev oghperkoutiun godoradzin etesioh. [etesia's horrible circumstances; or, the tragedy of the massacres at etesia. written by an armenian of that city.] schumla, bulgaria, 1904. 8, 32 p., 3 pl. 8°. *onq fa'iz al-husain. l'arménie martyre, par faiz el-ghassein. (in: la domination ottomane. genève, 1917. 2. ed. 12°. p. 65-136.) bbx ---martyred armenia, by fà'iz el-ghusein ... translated from the original arabic.... new york: g. h. doran co., 1918. vii p., 1 l., 52 p. 12°. btze p.v.293 ---die türkenherrschaft und armeniens schmerzensschrei, von scheik faiz el-ghassein. zürich: art. institut o. füssli, 1918. 100 p., 1 map. 8°. bbx des martyrium armeniens, p. 47-100. ferriman, z. duckett. the young turks and the truth about the holocaust at adana in asia minor, during april, 1909. written and compiled in april, 1911, by the author of "turkey and the turk." [london? 1913.] vi p., 1 l., 216 p., 1 map. 12°. bbx germany, turkey, and armenia; a selection of documentary evidence relating to the armenian atrocities from german and other sources. london: j. j. keliher & co., ltd., 1917. 3 p.l., 127 p. 8°. btze gibbons, helen davenport. the red rugs of tarsus; a woman's record of the armenian massacre of 1909. new york: century co., 1917. xiv p., 1 l., 194 p. 12°. bbx ---les turcs ont passé par là! journal d'une américaine pendant les massacres d'arménie. traduit de l'anglais par f. de jessen, préface de fr. thiébault-sisson. paris: berger-levrault, 1918. xviii, 163 p., 1 l., 3 ports. 12°. bbx a translation of the preceding. gibbons, herbert adams. the blackest page of modern history; events in armenia in 1915, the facts and the responsibilities. new york: g. p. putnam's sons, 1916. 71 p. 12°. btze sources, p. 69-71. ---"la page la plus noire de l'histoire moderne." les derniers massacres d'arménie, les responsabilités, par herbert adams gibbons.... traduit de l'anglais. [paris: berger-levrault, 1916.] 47 p. 16°. (pages d'histoire, 1914-1916. [fasc.] 92.) btze gladstone, william ewart. see the massacres in turkey. great britain.--foreign office. miscellaneous no. 31 (1916). the treatment of armenians in the ottoman empire 1915-16. documents presented to viscount grey of fallodon, secretary of state for foreign affairs, by viscount bryce. with a preface by viscount bryce. london: sir j. causton and sons, 1916. xlii, 684 p., 1 map. 8°. xbi and *onq ---turkey. 1895, no. 1. correspondence relating to the asiatic provinces of turkey. part i. events at sassoon, and commission of inquiry at moush. london: harrison and sons [1895]. xv, 208 p., 1 map. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1895, v. 109.) *sdd relates to the armenian massacres of 1894. ------part ii. commission of inquiry at moush: procès-verbaux and separate depositions. london: harrison and sons [1895]. 3, 378 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1895, v. 109.) *sdd relates to the armenian massacres of 1894. greene, frederick davis. the armenian crisis in turkey; the massacre of 1894, its antecedents and significance with a consideration of some of the factors which enter into the solution of this phase of the eastern question. new york: g. p. putnam's sons, 1895. xix, 180 p., 1 map, 1 pl. 12°. bbx ---armenian massacres; or, the sword of mohammed, containing a complete and thrilling account of the terrible atrocities and wholesale murders committed in armenia by mohammedan fanatics, including a full account of the turkish people, their history, government, manners, customs and strange religious belief. to which is added: the mohammedan reign of terror in armenia, edited by henry davenport northrop. [philadelphia:] american oxford pub. co. [cop. 1896.] xviii, 512 p., 1 folded map, 18 pl., 1 port. 12°. bbx p. 1-180 identical with correspondingly paged matter in the author's rule of the turk. ---the rule of the turk. a revised and enlarged edition of the armenian crisis. new york: g. p. putnam's sons, 1896. xix, 192 p., 1 map, 2 pl. 12°. bbx bibliography, p. 183-186. gregory, daniel seelye. the armenians in the eastern question. the armenian crisis and massacres. (in his: the crime of christendom. new york [cop. 1900]. 8°. p. 139-238.) gie griselle, eugène. une victime du pangermanisme; l'arménie martyre. paris: bloud & gay, 1916. 127 p. 12°. ("pages actuelles," 1914-1916. no. 83-84.) btze grosvenor, e. a. see bliss, edwin munsell. hamlin, cyrus. the genesis and evolution of the turkish massacre of armenian subjects. (american antiquarian society. proceedings. worcester, 1898. 8°. v. 12, p. 288-294.) iaa ---the martyrdom of armenia. (missionary review of the world. new york, 1896. 8°. new series, v. 9, p. 431-435.) zkva ---see also bliss, edwin munsell. harris, helen b. see harris, james rendel, and helen b. harris. harris, james rendel, and helen b. harris. briefe von schauplatz der letzten massacres in armenien. (der christliche orient. westend-berlin, 1897. 4°. 1897, p. 302-311, 350-359, 387-395, 444-450, 556-566.) �*oaa ---letters from the scenes of the recent massacres in armenia. new york: f. h. revell co. [1897?] xii p., 1 l., 254 p., 1 map, 8 pl. 8°. bby howard, william willard. horrors of armenia: the story of an eye-witness. new york: armenian relief association, 1896. 62 p. 12°. bbh p.v.2 jessen, f. de. see gibbons, helen davenport. khungian, t. b. massacres in turkey. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 2, no. 4, p. 48-54.) �*onk ksan gakhaghannir. [twenty gallows.] providence, 1916. 171 p., 2 l. 8°. *onq maccoll, malcolm. the constantinople massacre and its lesson. (contemporary review. london, 1895. 8°. v. 68, p. 744-760.) *da ---malcolm maccoll; memoirs and correspondence; edited by g. w. e. russell. london: smith, elder & co., 1914. 4 p.l., 407 p., 1 port. 8°. an les massacres d'arménie. (l'asie française. paris, 1916. 4°. année 16, p. 25-27.) �bba the massacres in turkey. [no.] 1-5. (nineteenth century. london, 1896. 8°. v. 40, p. 654-680.) *da 1. by dr. j. guinness rogers. 2. by the earl of meath. 3. by john burns. 4. by prof. h. anthony salmoné. 5. by hon. w. e. gladstone. meath (12. earl), reginald brabazon. see the massacres in turkey. meda, filippo. la storia documentata delle ultime stragi in armenia. (nuova antologia. roma, 1917. 8°. serie 6, v. 191, p. 312-321.) nna morgenthau, henry. ambassador morgenthau's story, by henry morgenthau, formerly american ambassador to turkey. garden city, new york: doubleday, page & co., 1918. xv, 407 p., 48 pl. 8°. btze mouchek yebiscobos (seropian). adanahi chartu yev badaskhanadouneru. [the adana massacres.] boston, 1910. 3, 64 p. 12°. *onq ---the truth about the adana massacres. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4°. v. 4, no. 10, p. 1-4; no. 11, p. 9-11; no. 12, p. 19-22.) �*onk nazarbek, avetis. zeitun. (contemporary review. london, 1896. 8°. v. 69, p. 513-528.) *da niepage, martin. the horrors of aleppo, seen by a german eyewitness; a word to germany's accredited representatives by dr. martin niepage, higher grade teacher in the german technical school at aleppo, at present at wernigerode. london: t. f. unwin, ltd. [1917?] 24 p. 12°. btze p.v.275 northrop, henry davenport. see greene, frederick davis. pinon, rené. la suppression des arméniens: méthode allemande--travail turc. paris: perrin et cie., 1916. 2 p.l., 75 p. 12°. btze this was published anonymously in the revue des deux mondes, période 6, tome 31, p. 531-560, feb., 1916, *dm. political papers for the people. edited by w. t. stead, no. 1. london: "review of reviews" office, 1896. 3 p.l., 9-63 p. 12°. bbh p.v.4 no. 1. the haunting horrors in armenia. price, morgan philips. war & revolution in asiatic russia. london: g. allen & unwin, ltd. [1918.] 295(1) p., 2 folded maps. 8°. btze quillard, pierre. l'extermination d'une race. (la contemporaine. paris, 1901. 8°. no. 8, p. 520-531.) *dm ---les nouveaux massacres d'arménie. (revue. paris, 1901. 8°. v. 39, p. 113-127.) *dm ramsay, sir william mitchell. two massacres in asia minor. [london, 1896.] 16 p. 8°. zng p.v.4 repr.: contemporary review, v. 70, p. 435-448, *da. raynolds, george c. thrilling experiences in van. (missionary review of the world. new york, 1916. 8°. new series, v. 29, p. 169-180.) zkva red cross, united states.--american national red cross. report. america's relief expedition to asia minor under the red cross. washington, 1896. 125 p., 1 map, 9 pl. 8°. wzx roberts, chalmers. a mother of martyrs. (atlantic monthly. boston, 1899. 8°. v. 83, p. 90-96.) *da rogers, james guinness. see the massacres in turkey. rohrbach, paul. deutschland unter den armeniern. (preussische jahrbücher. berlin, 1899. 8°. bd. 96, p. 308-328.) *df russell, george william erskine. see maccoll, malcolm. salmoné, habib anthony. see the massacres in turkey. seropian, moushek. see mouchek yebiscobos (seropian). shepard, fred douglas. personal experience in turkish massacres and relief work. (journal of race development. worcester, 1910-11. 8°. v. 1, p. 316-339.) qoa situation in russian armenia. massacres in bakou. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 7, p. 43-52.) �*onk speer, robert elliott. the armenian massacres. (in his: missions and modern history. new york [1904]. 8°. v. 2, p. 439-485.) zkvf stead, william thomas, editor. see political papers. the story of an armenian refugee. (national magazine. boston, 1897. 8°. v. 6, p. 3-15, 145-155.) *da the story of a nation's martyrdom, n. p. [1894?] 1 l., 4 pl. 4°. bac p.v.18 tchéraz, minas. les martyrs arméniens devant la conférence de la haye. (revue des revues. paris, 1899. 8°. v. 29, p. 234-242.) *dm tchobanian, archag. la femme arménienne; conférence faite à paris le 18 janvier 1917, suivie de poèmes de mlle. s. vahanian, mme. z. essaïan, mme. ch. kourghinian, de maximes et conseils des vieilles mères rustiques d'arménie, du récit de l'épisode de djebel-moussa, par une rescapée, et du cri d'une arménienne. paris: b. grasset, 1918. 2 p.l., 87 p., 2 l. 16°. btze p.v.303, no.3 toynbee, arnold joseph. armenian atrocities; the murder of a nation ... with a speech delivered by lord bryce in the house of lords. london: hodder & stoughton, 1915. 117 p., 1 double map. 12°. btze p.v.145 ------new york: g. h. doran co. [1918.] 117 p., 1 double map. 12°. bbx ---de armeniska grymheterna: ett mördat folk. jämte ett tal i engelska överhuset av lord bryce. london: eyre & spottiswoode, ltd., 1916. 3 p.l., 182 p., 1 map. 12°. btze p.v.228 ---las atrocidades en armenia; el exterminio de una nación, precedido de un discurso pronunciado por lord bryce en la cámara de los lores. paris: t. nelson & sons [1918?]. 201 p. map. 12°. bbx ---"the murderous tyranny of the turks," with a preface by viscount bryce.... london: hodder & stoughton, 1917. 35 p. 12°. btze p.v.270, no.4 troshine, yvan. a bystander's notes of a massacre. the slaughter of armenians in constantinople. (scribner's magazine. new york, 1897. 8°. v. 21, p. 48-67.) *da ussher, clarence douglas. the armenian atrocities and the jihad. (moslem world. london, 1916. 8°. v. 6, p. 140-143.) *oaa veselovski, yuri. dieti obezdolennago kraia. (viestnik vospitaniia. moscow, 1916. 8°. v. 27, no. 3, p. 179-197.) *qca atrocities committed upon turkish armenians, as described in armenian literature. works in armenian relating to other countries acogh'ig de daron, étienne. histoire universelle par étienne açogh'ig de daron traduite de l'arménien et annotée par e. dulaurier. partie 1. paris: e. leroux, 1883. 4°. (école des langues orientales vivantes. publications, série 1, v. 18.) *oaf chahan de cirbied, jacques. see davoud zadour de melik schahnazar. davoud zadour de melik schahnazar. notices sur l'état actuel de la perse, en persan, en arménien et en français, par myr-davoud-zadour de melik schahnazar ... et mm. langlès ... chahan de cirbied.... paris: imprimerie royale, 1818. 3 p.l., 360 p., 2 pl. 24°. *omz dirohyan, hagop v. hamarod tasakirk unthanour badmoutian. [brief course in general history.] venice, 1897. 2 v. in 1. 12°. *onq dulaurier, édouard. l'histoire des croisades d'après les chroniques arméniennes. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1858. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 8, p. 169-184.) *oaa ---les mongols d'après les historiens arméniens; fragments traduits sur les textes originaux par m. éd. dulaurier. (journal asiatique. paris, 1858-60. 8°. série 5, v. 11, p. 192-255, 426-473, 481-508; v. 16, p. 273-322.) *oaa ---see also acogh'ig de daron, étienne. khalathianz, grigori abramovich. über die armenische version der weltchronik des hippolytus. (wiener zeitschrift für die kunde des morgenlandes. wien, 1903. 8°. bd. 17, p. 182-186.) *oaa langlès, louis mathieu. see davoud zadour de melik schahnazar. patkanov, keropé petrovich. essai d'une histoire de la dynastie des sassanides, d'après les renseignements fournis par les historiens arméniens par m. k. patkanian; traduit du russe par m. évariste prud'homme. (journal asiatique. paris, 1866. 8o. série 6, v. 7, p. 101-238.) *oaa petermann, julius heinrich. beiträge zu der geschichte der kreuzzüge aus armenischen quellen. (königliche akademie der wissenschaften zu berlin. philologische und historische abhandlungen. berlin, 1861. 4o. 1860, p. 81-186.) *ee prud'homme, évariste. see patkanov, keropé petrovich. vartan the great. extrait de l'histoire universelle de vartan le grand. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. fo. v. 1, p. 431-443.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. brosset, marie félicité. analyse critique de la vseobshchaia istoriia de vardan, édition princeps du texte arménien et traduction russe par m. n. emin, par m. brosset. 1 p.l., 30 p. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mémoires. st. pétersbourg, 1862. fo. série 7, tome 4, no. 9.) *qcb biography abuhaiatian, hagop. pastor hagop abuhaiatian von urfa. eine selbstbiographie. (der christliche orient. westend-berlin, 1897. 4o. 1897, p. 468-472, 514-521.) �*oaa anderson, antony. hovsep pushman: an appreciation. (new armenia. new york, 1918. fo. v. 10, p. 30-31.) �*onk avtaliantz, john, baron. a short memoir of mechithar ghosh, the armenian legislator. by johannes avdall. (asiatic society of bengal. journal. calcutta, 1840. 8o. v. 9, p. 967-972.) *oha barrès, maurice. tigran yergat. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4o. v. 4, no. 2. p. 7-9.) �*onk brosset, marie félicité. notice sur le diacre arménien zakaria ghabonts, auteur des mémoires historiques sur les sofis, xve-xviie s. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1874. fo. tome 19, col. 320-333.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1876. tome 7, p. 93-112, *oaa. ---le prétendu masque de fer arménien, ou autobiographie d'avétik, patriarche de constantinople, avec pièces jusificatives [sic] officielles. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1874-75. fo. tome 19, col. 186-197; tome 20, col. 1-100.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1876. tome 7, p. 1-18, 179-322. *oaa. chirol, sir valentíne. a great armenian [nubar pasha]. (ararat. london, 1918. 8o. v. 6, p. 87-91.) *onk conybeare, frederick cornwallis. see wardrop, marjory, and j. o. wardrop. holynski, aleksander jan joachim. nubar pacha devant l'histoire. paris: e. dentu [1886]. 2 p.l., viii, 148 p. 12o. bla kassabian, dr. mihran k. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4o. v. 4, no. 4, p. 1-3.) �*onk maghak-teopileantz, madteos v. gensakroutiun yérévéli arants. [a biographical dictionary.] venice, 1839. 2 v. 8o. *onk mouchek yebiscobos (seropian). madteos ii izmirlian. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4o. v. 4, no. 9, p. 1-3.) �*onk n., w., and s. m. hovannes aivazovsky. a biographical sketch. (new armenia. new york, 1916. fo. v. 8, p. 362-363.) �*onk najib makhluf. nubar pasha. [a life of nubar pasha.] cairo, 1899. 222 p., 19 pl. 8o. *ofs arabic text. neumann, carl friedrich. mémoire sur la vie et les ouvrages de david, philosophe arménien du 5. siècle de notre ère et principalement sur ses traductions de quelques écrits d'aristote. (journal asiatique. paris, 1829. 8o. série 2, v. 3, p. 49-86, 97-153.) *oaa s., a. g. general yeprem khan. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 5, p. 359-361.) �*onk seropian, moushek. see mouchek yebiscobos (seropian). sevasly, mrs. marie. bedros atamian. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8o. v. 1, p. 86-88.) *onk tcheraz, minas. kamar-katiba. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9. p. 121-123.) �*onk kamar-katiba was the pseudonym of raphael patkanian. ---saiat-nova. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 91-94.) �*onk ---saïat-nova, sa vie et ses chansons. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1893. 8°. 1893, p. 497-508.) *oaa tchobanian, archag. gregory of narek. from the french of arshag tchobanian. (armenia. boston, 1907. 4°. v. 3, no. 4, p. 8-13; no. 5, p. 18-24; no. 6, p. 7-16; no. 7, p. 37-44.) �*onk thoumaian, g. an armenian diplomat in the service of napoleon a hundred years ago. (ararat. london, 1917. 8°. v. 4, p. 514-516.) *onk mir-david khan. vittoria aganoor pompily. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4°. v. 4, no. 2, p. 1-3.) *onk wardrop, john oliver. see wardrop, marjory, and j. o. wardrop. wardrop, marjory, and j. o. wardrop. life of st. nino. [the armenian version of djouanshêr translated by f. c. conybeare.] oxford: clarendon press, 1900. 88 p. 8°. (studia biblica et ecclesiastica. v. 5, part 1.) *yip yeremian, simeon. azkahin temker kraked hayer. [biographies of armenian writers.] part 1-8. venice, 1913-14. 8 v. 12°. *onp social life adger, john bailey. my life and times, 1810-1899. richmond, va.: presbyterian committee of publication [1899]. 681 p., 2 ports. 8°. an b., e. an armenian wedding. (leisure hour. london, 1877. 4°. 1877, p. 70-71.) *da barkley, henry c. a ride through asia minor and armenia: giving a sketch of the characters, manners and customs of both the mussulman and christian inhabitants. london: j. murray, 1891. x, 350 p. 12°. bbs barton, james levi. armenian qualifications for success. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 259-261.) �*onk bedickian, s. v. how the armenians keep the new year and christmas. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 3, no. 2, p. 8-12.) �*onk blackwell, alice stone. armenian virtues. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4°. v. 4, no. 4, p. 9-10.) �*onk burgin, g. b. the armenian at home. (cassell's family magazine. london, 1897. 8°. may, 1897, p. 655-660.) *da dadian, mek. b. la société arménienne contemporaine. les arméniens de l'empire ottoman. (revue des deux mondes. paris, 1867. 8°. période 2, v. 69, p. 903-928.) *dm dan, demeter. glaube und gebräuche der armenier bei der geburt, hochzeit und beerdigung. (zeitschrift für österreichische volkskunde. wien, 1904. 4°. jahrg. 10, p. 96-106.) �zba distribution des prix du collège arménien de paris. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1861-62. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 14, p. 241-246.) *oaa dulaurier, édouard. les arméniens en autriche, en russie et en turquie. la société arménienne au xixe siècle. (revue des deux mondes. paris, 1854. 8°. année 24, tome 6, p. 209-265.) *dm dzotsikian, s. m. arnutiun. [an account of social life and customs among the armenians.] paris, 1914. 158 p. 8°. *onk elton, l. m., translator. see nazarbek, avetis. garnett, lucy mary jane. an armenian wedding. (argosy. london, 1900. 8°. v. 70, p. 347-350.) *da ---the women of turkey and their folk-lore. london: d. nutt, 1893. 3 p.l., 546 p. 8°. snh keworkian, komitas. armeniens volkstümliche reigentänze. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1903. 8°. bd. 1, p. 87-96.) *onl kurkjian, vahan. the armenian benevolent union. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4°. v. 5, p. 231-234.) �*onk macfarlane. moeurs arméniennes. demande de mariage. (nouvelles annales des voyages. paris, 1831. 8°. tome 49, p. 118-121.) kaa nazarbek, avetis. through the storm. pictures of life in armenia. translated by mrs. l. m. elton, with a prefatory note by f. york powell. london: john murray, 1899. xxvii, 322 p. 8°. bby ohanian, armene. en arménie (mon enfance). (mercure de france. paris, 1916. 8°. tome 118, p. 452-465.) *dm petermann, julius heinrich. ueber die musik der armenier. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1851. 8°. bd. 5, p. 365-372 and 12 p. music.) *oaa société de sunie formée à smyrne, pour la propagation de l'instruction morale et des lumières parmi la nation arménienne. [réglemens actuels.] smyrne: w. griffitt, 1844. 20 p. 8°. bbh p.v.4 t., a. b. the armenian christmas and new year. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4°. v. 4, no. 8, p. 4-7.) �*onk terzian, paul. religious customs among the armenians. (catholic world. new york, 1900. 8°. v. 71, p. 305-316, 500-512.) *da economics and industries france.--direction de commerce extérieur. rapports commerciaux des agents diplomatiques et consulaires de france. paris, 1892-1911. 8°. tlg commerce d'erzeroum. 1900. 18 p. series 1899-date, no. 163. commerce du vilayet de diarbékir. 1891. 10 p. series 1890-99, no. 30. situation commerciale, agricole, économique et industrielle du vilayet d'erzeroum. 1892. 5 p. series 1890-99, no. 21. situation commerciale et industrielle du vilayet de siwas. 1911. 15 p. series 1899-date, no. 953. situation économique et mouvement commercial d'erzeroum. 1906. 20 p. series 1899-date, no. 661. situation économique du vilayet d'erzeroum. 1902. 28 p. series 1899-date, no. 303. situation économique du vilayet de siwas. 1899. 28 p. series 1899-date, no. 49. 1901. 16 p. series 1899-date, no. 149. great britain.--foreign office. diplomatic and consular reports. annual series. london, 1887-1914. 8°. tlg report on the trade, etc., of the consular district of erzeroum. 1886. 1 p.l., 11 p., 1 l. no. 192. 1886. 1 p.l., 6 p. no. 212. 1893. 1 p.l., 13(1) p. no. 1426. 1894. 1 p.l., 11 p. no. 1608. 1895. 1 p.l., 5(1) p. no. 1821. 1896. 1 p.l., 11 p., 1 l. no. 1976. 1897. 1 p.l., 15(1) p. no. 2163. 1898. 1 p.l., 19 p. no. 2233. 1899. 10 p. no. 2477. 1900. 15(1) p. no. 2657. 1901. 20 p. no. 2792. 1902. 10 p. no. 3003. 1903. 9(1) p. no. 3224. 1904. 9(1) p. no. 3442. 1905. 9(1) p. no. 3652. 1906. 16 p. no. 3851. 1907. 19(1) p., 1 map. no. 4115. 1908. 18 p., 1 l., 1 map. no. 4389. 1909. 19(1) p. no. 4545. 1910. 20 p., 1 l. no. 4734. 1911. 10 p. no. 4985. 1912. 8 p., 1 l. no. 5159. 1913. 13 p., 1 l. no. 5370. report on the trade of the vilayets of van and hekkiari. 1885/6. 1 p.l., 7 p., 1 l. no. 165. kachouni, manouel v. bardizbanoutiun. [gardening.] venice, 1899. 315 p., 1 l. 8°. *onpa ---bdghapanoutiun. [fruit-raising.] venice, 1899. 308 p., 1 l. 12°. *onpa ---gatnapanoutiun. [dairying.] venice, 1901. 173 p., 1 l. 8°. *onpa ---meghouapoudzoutiun. [bee-culture.] venice, 1895. 237 p. 8°. *onpa langlois, victor. du commerce, de l'industrie et de l'agriculture de la karamanie (asie-mineure). (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1856. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 3, p. 265-280.) *oaa macgregor, john. turkish armenia. (in his: commercial statistics. london, 1850. 2. ed. 4°. v. 2, p. 108-124.) tl morgan, jacques jean marie de. armenian activities. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 229-230.) �*onk nalpandian, mikahel. yergrakordzoutiunu orbes oughigh janabarh. [agriculture.] boston, 1910. 3 p.l., 9-182 p. 12°. *onpa turkish empire. salnamah. [official report of the vilayet of bitlis.] bitlis, 1900. 235 p. 12°. *opk ---salnamah. [official report of the vilayet of diarbekir.] diarbekir, 1903. 7 p.l., 224 p., 1 table. 8°. *opk ---salnamah. [official report of the vilayet of erzerum for the year 1312 a. h.] erzerum, 1894. 270 p. 8°. *opk ---salnamah. [official report of the vilayet of sivas.] sivas, 1907. 272 p., 2 l., 25 pl., 3 tables. 8°. *opk ---salnamah. [official report of the vilayet of van.] van, 1897. 215 p. 8°. *opk varandian, mikael. armenian aptitudes. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 326-327.) �*onk das vilayet erzerum. (germany.--reichsamt des innern. berichte über handel und industrie. berlin, 1912. 8°. bd. 17, p. 6-17.) tlg folklore and mythology bolton, henry carrington. armenian folk-lore, n. t.-p. [boston, 1896.] 293-296 p. 8o. zbg p.v.6 repr.: journal of american folk-lore, v. 9, p. 293-296, hba. c., e. armenian folk songs. (fraser's magazine. london, 1876. 8o. new series, v. 13, p. 283-297.) *da collins, f. b., translator. armenian folk-tales. the youth who would not tell his dream. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 6, p. 82-84.) �*onk gelzer, heinrich. zur armenischen götterlehre. (königlich sächsische gesellschaft der wissenschaften. berichte über die verhandlungen: philol.-hist. classe. leipzig, 1896. 8o. bd. 48, p. 99-148.) *ee haïgazn, édouard. légendes et superstitions de l'arménie. (revue des traditions populaires. paris, 1895. 8o. v. 10, p. 296-297.) zba harris, james rendel. notes from armenia; in illustration of the golden bough. (folk-lore. london, 1904. 8o. v. 15, p. 427-446.) zba huet, g. les contes populaires d'arménie. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8o. année 1, p. 254-259.) *onk keljik, bedros a. see zartarian, r. lalayantz, erwand. légendes et superstitions de l'arménie. (revue des traditions populaires. paris, 1895. 8o. v. 10, p. 1-5, 119-120, 193-197.) zba lehmann-haupt, ferdinand friedrich karl. religionsgeschichtliches aus kaukasien und armenien. (archiv für religionswissenschaft. tübingen, 1900. 8o. bd. 3, p. 1-17.) zaa negelein, julius von. der armenische volksglaube. (globus. braunschweig, 1900. fo. v. 78, p. 288-293.) �kaa seklemian, a. g. armenian folk-tales. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4o. v. 4, no. 10, p. 11-14.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. the bald-headed orphan. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4o. v. 4, no. 12, p. 8-12.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. the betrothed of destiny. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 5, p. 238-240.) �*onk reprinted from his the golden maiden, p. 9-14. ---armenian folk-tales. the bird of luck. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 5, p. 212-216.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. father myriad. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 5, p. 378-379.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. julita. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 6, p. 118-122.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. the man and the snake. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 5, p. 340-342.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. nahabed's daughter. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 5, p. 304-306.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. the poor widow's son. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4o. v. 6, p. 337-340.) �*onk reprinted from his the golden maiden, p. 141-148. ---armenian folk-tales. prince pari and the beasts. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4o. v. 5, p. 83-85.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. reed-maid. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4o. v. 5, p. 110-114.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. reynard and bruno. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 6, p. 23-25.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. shapoor, the hunter's son. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 5, p. 145-147, 174-177.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. the shepherd and the shepherdess. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4o. v. 5, p. 275-276.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. the snake child. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4o. v. 5, p. 15-19, 48-53.) �*onk ---armenian folk-tales. the youngest of the three. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4o. v. 6, p. 185-187, 216-219.) �*onk reprinted from his the golden maiden, p. 15-31. ---armenian folk-tales. zoolvisia. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4o. v. 6, p. 279-284.) �*onk reprinted from his the golden maiden, p. 59-72. ---the fisherman's son. an armenian fairy tale. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4o. v. 4, no. 5, p. 7-11.) �*onk ---the golden maiden and other folk tales and fairy stories told in armenia. introduction by alice stone blackwell. cleveland: the helman-taylor co., 1898. xxi, 224 p., 1 pl. 12o. zbio ---unseen beauty. an armenian folk-tale. (new armenia. new york, 1917. fo. v. 9, p. 360-361.) �*onk tchéraz, minas. notes sur la mythologie arménienne. (transactions of the ninth international congress of orientalists. london, 1893. 8o. v. 2, p. 822-845.) *oaa wilhelm, eugene. analogies in the iranian and armenian folklore. (in: spiegel memorial volume. bombay, 1908. 4o. p. 65-83.) �*oma wingate, mrs. j. s. armenian folk-tales. (folk-lore. london, 1910-12. 8o. v. 21, p. 217-222, 365-371, 507-511; v. 22, p. 77-80, 351-361, 476-484; v. 23, p. 94-102, 220-223.) zba ---armenian folk-tales. translated by mrs. j. s. wingate. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4o. v. 4, no. 8, p. 14-15; no. 9, p. 15-17.) �*onk ---armenian stories. translated by mrs. j. s. wingate. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4o. v. 4, no. 6, p. 11-12.) �*onk zartarian, r. how death came to earth. an armenian folk-lore. [translated by bedros a. keljik.] (armenia. new york, 1910. 4o. v. 4, no. 1, p. 4-5.) �*onk law aptowitzer, v. beiträge zur mosaischen rezeption im armenischen recht. wien: a. hölder, 1907. 42 p. 8o. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. classe. bd. 157, abh. 4.) *ef ---zur geschichte des armenischen rechtes. (wiener zeitschrift für die kunde des morgenlandes. wien, 1907. 8o. bd. 21, p. 251-267.) *oaa avtaliantz, john. on the laws and law-books of the armenians. by johannes avdall. (asiatic society of bengal. journal. calcutta, 1841. 8o. v. 10, part 1, p. 235-250.) *oha basmadjian, k. j. see nerses of lambron. bischoff, ferdinand. das alte recht der armenier in lemberg. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. classe. wien, 1862. 8o. bd. 40, p. 255-302.) *ef brosset, marie félicité. détails sur le droit public arménien, extraits du code géorgien du roi wakhtang, et traduits du géorgien par m. brosset. (journal asiatique. paris, 1832. 8o. série 2, v. 9, p. 21-30.) *oaa karst, josef. armenisches rechtsbuch ediert und kommentiert von josef karst. strassburg: k. j. trübner, 1905. 2 v. in 1. fo. �*onp bd. 1. sempadscher kodex aus dem 13. jahrhundert oder mittelarmenisches rechtsbuch ... hrsg. und übersetzt von josef karst. bd. 2. sempadscher kodex aus dem 13. jahrhundert in verbindung mit dem grossarmenischen rechtsbuch des mechithar gosch aus dem 12. jahrhundert ... erläutert von josef karst. klidschian, arsen. das armenische eherecht und die grundzüge der armenischen familienorganisation. stuttgart: druck der union deutsche verlagsgesellschaft, 1911. iv, 127 p. 8o. snv bibliography, p. 1-2. nerses of lambron. kaghakahin orenk. [political laws, translated by k. j. basmadjian.] paris: banaser, 1907. 43 p. 8o. *onk supplement to banaser, v. 9. science basmadjian, k. j. les livres de médecine chez les arméniens. (journal asiatique. paris, 1915. 8o. série 11, v. 5, p. 383-386.) *oaa brosset, marie félicité. notice sur un manuscrit arménien nouvellement acquis pour la bibliothèque impériale publique. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1879. fo. tome 25, col. 277-282.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1881. tome 8, p. 613-621, *oaa. a manuscript, treating of astronomy and astrology, the author of which is unknown. dirohyan, hagop v. ousoumn pnagan ev pnapanagan kidoutiants. [study of natural and physical science.] venice, 1915. 4 p.l., 532 p. 8o. *onpa dwight, william b. american bank notes and dr. seropyan. (new armenia. new york, 1917. fo. v. 9, p. 309-312.) �*onk gabrielian, m. s. serahin aroghzapanoutiun. [sex hygiene.] boston, 1915. 3 p.l., 9-192 p., 4 l., 1 pl. 8o. *onpa hampartsoumian, hovnan a. arouyesd madaharoutian. [hypnotism.] lynn, mass., 1909. 4 p.l., 100 p. 12o. *onpa hampoian, h. a. see hampartsoumian, hovnan a. kachouni, manouel v. arouisdapanoutiun gam shdimaran kidiliats. [technology or applied science.] venice, 1909. 720 p. 8°. *onpa mkhithar. mechithar's des meisterarztes aus her "trost bei fiebern." nach dem venediger drucke vom jahre 1832 zum ersten male aus dem mittelarmenischen übersetzt und erläutert von dr. med. ernst seidel. leipzig: j. a. barth, 1908. v p., 1 l., 308 p., 1 l. 4°. �*onp at head of title-page: gedruckt mit unterstützung der puschmann-stiftung an der universität leipzig. pilibbosian, hapet m. kordznagan aroghzapanoutiun. [practical hygiene.] boston, 1911. 406 p., 4 l. 8°. *onpa seidel, ernst. see mkhithar. varzhabedian, m. a. veneragan akhder ev abaka hay serountu. [the future of the armenian race.] new york, 1916. 2 p.l., 7-41 p. 8°. *onpa geology and natural history abich, hermann. der ararat, in genetischer beziehung betrachtet. 1 pl. (deutsche geologische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. berlin, 1870. 8°. bd. 22, p. 69-91.) pta ---ein cyclus fundamentaler barometrischer höhenbestimmungen auf dem armenischen hochlande. 55 p. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mémoires. st. pétersbourg, 1880. f°. série 7, v. 27.) *qcb ---die fulguriten im andesit des kleinen ararat, nebst bemerkungen über östliche einflüsse bei der bildung elektrischer gewitter. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: mathematisch-naturwissenschaftliche classe. wien, 1870. 8°. bd. 60, abtheilung 1, p. 153-161.) *ef ---geologische skizzen aus transkaukasien. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin: classe physico-mathématique. st. pétersbourg, 1847. f°. v. 5, col. 321-343.) *qcb ---[observations sur le mont ararat.] 1 pl. (société géologique de france. bulletin. paris, 1851. 8°. série 2, v. 8, p. 265-271.) pta ---über die lage der schneegränze und die gletscher der gegenwart im kaukasus. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1878. f°. tome 24, col. 258-282.) *qcb ---ueber das steinsalz und seine geologische stellung im russischen armenien. 11 pl. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mémoires: sciences mathématiques et physiques. saint pétersbourg, 1859. f°. série 6, tome 7, p. 59-150.) *qcb ---vergleichende grundzüge der geologie des kaukasus wie der armenischen und nordpersischen gebirge. 8 pl. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mémoires: sciences mathématiques et physiques. saint pétersbourg, 1859. f°. série 6., tome 7, p. 359-534.) *qcb ---zur geologie des südöstlichen kaukasus. bemerkungen von meinen reisen im jahre 1865. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1866. f°. tome 10, col. 21-42.) *qcb bonney, t. g. notes on some rocks from ararat. (geological magazine. london, 1905. 8°. new series, decade 5, v. 2, p. 52-58.) pta buhse. vorläufiger botanischer bericht über meine reise durch einen theil armeniens in den monaten april und mai 1847. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin: classe physico-mathématique. st. pétersbourg, 1849. f°. v. 7, col. 101-108.) *qcb chikhachov, piotr aleksandrovich. asie mineure; description physique, statistique et archéologique de cette contrée, par p. de tchihatcheff. partie 1-4. paris: gide et j. baudry, 1853-69. 6 v. in 8. 4°. kcb and �kcb partie 4 published by l. guérin. partie 1. géographie physique comparée. text and atlas. partie 2. climatologie et zoologie. partie 3. botanique. 2 v. partie 4. géologie. 3 v. ---sur l'orographie et la constitution géologique de quelques parties de l'asie mineure et de l'arménie. (institut de france.--académie des sciences. comptes rendus. paris, 1858. 4°. v. 47, p. 118-120, 216-219, 446-448, 515-517, 667-668.) *eo forel, f. a. les échantillons de limon dragués en 1879 dans les lacs d'arménie. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1880. f°. tome 26, col. 571-576.) *qcb gylling, hjalmar. notes on the microscopical structure of some eruptive rocks from armenia and the caucasus. (mineralogical magazine. london, 1887. 8°. v. 7, p. 155-160.) pwa hughes, thomas mckenny. notes on some volcanic phenomena in armenia. (nature. london, 1898. 4°. v. 57, p. 392-394.) oa kharajian, hagop a. regional geology and mining of armenia. new york: nerso press, 1915. 72 p., 1 folded diagr., 4 folded maps. 8°. pvr bibliography, p. 70-72. loftus, william kennett. on the geology of portions of the turko-persian frontier, and of the districts adjoining. 1 map. (geological society of london. quarterly journal. london, 1854-55. 8°. v. 10, p. 464-469; v. 11, p. 247-344.) pta mcgregor, p. j. c. notes on birds observed at erzerum. (ibis. london, 1917. 8°. series 10, v. 5, p. 1-30.) qma martens, e. v. aufzählung der von dr. alexander brandt in russisch-armenien gesammelten mollusken. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1880. f°. tome 26, col. 142-158.) *qcb oswald, felix. armenien. übersetzung von otto wilckens. heidelberg: c. winter, 1912. 40 p., 2 charts, 1 diagr. 8°. (handbuch der regionalen geologie. bd. 5, abt. 3, heft 10.) pvx bibliography, p. 36-39. ---zur tektonischen entwicklungsgeschichte des armenischen hochlandes. (petermanns mitteilungen. gotha, 1910. 4°. jahrg. 56, halbband 1, p. 8-14, 69-74, 126-132.) kaa saparian, hamazasb. pousapanoutiun. [botany.] venice, 1884. 248 p. 12°. *onpa ---yergrapanoutiun. [geology.] venice, 1893. 3 p.l., 215 p. 12°. *onpa schaffer, franz x. grundzüge des geologischen baues von türkisch-armenien und dem östlichen anatolien. 1 map. (petermanns mitteilungen. gotha, 1907. 4°. bd. 53, p. 145-153.) kaa sieger, robert. die schwankungen der armenischen seen. (globus. braunschweig, 1894. f°. bd. 65, p. 73-75.) �kaa ---die schwankungen der hocharmenischen seen seit 1800 in vergleichung mit einigen verwandten erscheinungen. (kaiserlich königlich geographische gesellschaft. mittheilungen. wien, 1888. 8°. bd. 31, p. 95-115, 159-181, 390-426.) kaa strecker, wilhelm. ueber die wahrscheinliche ältere form des wan-sees. (gesellschaft für erdkunde. zeitschrift. berlin, 1869. 8°. bd. 4, p. 549-552.) kaa tristram, h. b. ornithological notes of a journey through syria, mesopotamia, and southern armenia in 1881. (ibis. london, 1882. 8°. series 4, v. 6, p. 402-419.) qma wachter, wilhelm. die kaukasisch-armenische erdbebenzone. (zeitschrift für naturwissenschaften. stuttgart, 1902. 8°. bd. 75, p. 53-64.) pqa wagner, moriz. aus dem tagebuch eines deutschen naturforschers in armenien [moriz wagner]. (ausland. stuttgart, 1846. 4°. jahrg. 19, p. 957-959, 961-963, 966-967, 970-971, 1005-1007, 1010-1011.) �kaa ---beiträge zur kenntniss der naturverhältnisse im türkisch-armenischen hochlande. (ausland. stuttgart, 1851. 4°. jahrg. 24, p. 205-207, 210-211.) �kaa wilckens, otto. see oswald, felix. yeremian, simeon. nor gentanapanoutiun ev martagazmoutiun badmagan ev ngarakragan. [an historical and descriptive treatise on zoology and physiology.] venice, 1896. 3 p.l., 553 p. 8°. *onpa ---nor hankapanoutiun ngarakragan ev badmagan. [a descriptive and historical treatise on mineralogy.] venice, 1898. 4 p.l., 175 p. 12°. *onpa zahn, gustav w. von. die stellung armeniens im gebirgsbau von vorderasien unter besonderer berücksichtigung der türkischen teile. berlin: e. s. mittler & sohn, 1906. vi p., 1 l., 90 p., 2 maps. 4°. (berlin.--universität: institut für meereskunde und geographisches institut. veröffentlichungen. heft 10.) kaa language adjarian, h. classification des dialectes arméniens. paris: h. champion, 1909. 5 p.l., 88 p., 1 map. 4°. (école pratique des hautes études. bibliothèque: sciences historiques et philologiques. fasc. 173.) *en ---lautlehre des van-dialekts. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1903. 8°. bd. 1, p. 74-86, 121-138.) *onl ---s. mesropi ev krerou kiudi badmoutian aghpiurnern ou anonts knnoutiunu. [the history of st. mesrop and the discovery of the armenian alphabet.] paris: banaser, 1907. 40 p. 8°. *onk supplement to banaser, v. 9. aganoon, arratoon isaac. a dissertation on the antiquity of the armenian language. with some notes and observations by the late t. m. dickenson. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1837. 8°. v. 4, p. 333-344.) *oaa agop, joannes. grammatica latina, armenice explicata. romæ: typis sacræ-congregationis de propaganda fide, 1675. 214 p., 1 l. 8°. *onl bound with his: puritas haygica; seu, grammatica armenica. romæ, 1675. 8°. ---puritas haygica; seu, grammatica armenica. romæ: typis sacræ congregationis de propaganda fide, 1675. 3 p.l., 246 p., 2 l. 8°. *onl ---puritas linguæ armenicæ. romæ: ex typographia sacræ congregationis de propaganda fide, 1674. 215 p. 8°. *onl bound with his: puritas haygica; seu, grammatica armenica. romæ, 1675. 8°. alphabetum armenum cum oratione dominicali; salutatione angelica; initio evangelii s. johannis, et cantico poenitentiae. [edited by g. c. amaduzzi.] romae: typis sacræ congregationis de propaganda fide, 1784. 32 p. 8°. rah p.v.2 amaduzzi, g. c. see alphabetum armenum. arachin tasakirk mangants. [first reader for children.] new york, 1866. 131 p. 16°. *onl aucher, paschal. see aukerian, haroutiun. aukerian, haroutiun. a dictionary english and armenian by father paschal aucher. with the assistance of j. brand. venice: s. lazarus, 1821-25. 2 v. 8°. *r-*onl v. 2. a dictionary armenian and english by john brand. with the assistance of father paschal aucher. ---dictionnaire abrégé français-arménien par le p. paschal aucher ... aux dépens de m. garabied duz. [venise: académie arménienne de s. lazare,] 1812-17. 2 v. 8°. *onl tome 2. dictionnaire abrégé arménien-français. ---a grammar armenian and english. by father paschal aucher. venice: armenian academy, 1819. 4 p.l., 334 p., 1 l. 12°. *onl ---grammar english and armenian by father paschal aucher. venice: armenian academy, 1817. 4 p.l., 181 p., 2 l. 12°. *onl aukerian, haroutiun, and g. g. n. byron, 6. baron byron. a grammar, armenian and english, by p. paschal aucher and lord byron. venice: printed in the armenian monastery of st. lazarus, 1873. 144 p. 12°. *onl aukerian, mëgërdich. see avedikian, gabriele, khatchadroh surmelian and mëgërdich aukerian. avdall, johannes. see avtaliantz, john. avedikian, gabriele, khatchadroh surmelian and mëgërdich aukerian. nor parkirk haigasyian lezui. [new dictionary of the armenian language.] venice, 1836-37. 2 v. 4°. �*onl avtaliantz, john, baron. authors of armenian grammars, from the earliest stages of armenian literature up to the present day. by johannes avdall. (asiatic society of bengal. journal. calcutta, 1869. 8°. v. 37, part 1, p. 134-138.) *oha ---on the invention of the armenian alphabet. by johannes avdall. (asiatic society of bengal. journal. calcutta, 1845. 8°. v. 14, p. 522-526.) *oha baumgartner, adolf. ueber das buch "die chrie." (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1886. 8°. bd. 40, p. 457-515.) *oaa bedrossian, matthias. new dictionary armenian-english. venice: s. lazarus armenian academy, 1875-79. xxx, 786 p., 1 table. 8°. *r-*onl bellaud. essai sur la langue arménienne. paris: imprimerie impériale, 1812. viii, 96 p. 8°. *onl beshgeturian, azniv. arachnort anklierin lezvin. [guide to the english language.] boston: hairenik press, 1909. 184 p. 12°. *onl blau, otto. ueber-karta, -kerta in ortsnamen. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1877. 8°. bd. 31, p. 495-505.) *oaa boetticher, paul. see lagarde, paul anton de. brand, john. see aukerian, haroutiun. brockelmann, karl. ein assyrisches lehnwort im armenischen. (zeitschrift für assyriologie. weimar, 1898. 8°. bd. 13, p. 327-328.) *ocl ---die griechischen fremdwörter im armenischen. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1893. 8°. bd. 47, p. 1-42.) *oaa ---ein syrischer text in armenischer umschrift. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1902. 8°. bd. 56, p. 616-618.) *oaa brosset, marie félicité. variétés arméniennes. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1864. f°. tome 7, col. 90-99.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1868. tome 5, p. 65-77, *oaa. bugge, sophus. beiträge zur etymologischen erläuterung der armenischen sprache. (zeitschrift für vergleichende sprachforschung. gütersloh, 1893. 8°. bd. 32, p. 1-87.) raa ---etruskisch und armenisch. sprachvergleichende forschungen. reihe 1. christiania: h. aschehoug & co., 1890. xviii, 171 p. 8°. rie byron (6. baron), george gordon noel byron. lord byron's armenian exercises and poetry. venice: in the island of s. lazzaro, 1870. 167 p., 2 l. 12°. nci p.v.92 ---see also aukerian, haroutiun, and g. g. n. byron, 6. baron byron. calfa, ambroise. dictionnaire arménien-français et français-arménien. paris: l. hachette et cie., 1861. 7 p.l., vi p., 2 l., 1032 p., 1 l. 16°. *onl arménien-français only. chahan de cirbied, jacques. grammaire de la langue arménienne; ou l'on expose les principes et les règles de la langue, d'après les meilleurs grammairiens, et les auteurs originaux et suivant les usages particuliers de l'idiome haïkien; rédigée ... par j. ch. cirbied. paris: éverat, 1823. 3 p.l., lxxxii, 820 p. 8°. *onl reviewed by j. zohrab in journal asiatique, tome 2, p. 297-312; tome 3, p. 169-190, *oaa. ---see also denis of thrace. chakmakjian, h. h. armeno-american letter writer containing a large variety of model letters adapted to all occasions: letters of friendship, letters of congratulation and condolence, letters of love, business letters. examples from great authors. boston: e. a. yeran [1914]. 440 p. 8°. *onl charpentier, jarl. kleine beiträge zur armenischen wortkunde. (indogermanische forschungen. strassburg, 1909. 8°. bd. 25, p. 241-256.) raa ciakciak, emmanuele. dizionario italiano-armeno-turco. venezia, 1804. 26, 896 p., 1 pl. 8°. *onl cirbied, j. see chahan de cirbied, jacques. delatre, louis. place de l'arménien parmi les langues indo-européennes. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1858. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 7, p. 36-46.) *oaa denis of thrace. grammaire de denis de thrace, en grec, en arménien et en français, accompagnée de notes et d'éclaircissemens par m. cirbied. (société royale des antiquaires de france. mémoires. paris, 1824. 8°. tome 6, p. v-xxxii, 1-93.) da bourgeois, h. la grammaire arménienne de denis de thrace. (revue de linguistique et de philologie comparée. chalon-sur-saone, 1911. 8°. v. 44, p. 176-187.) raa dickenson, t. m. see aganoon, arratoon isaac. dirr, a. praktisches lehrbuch der ostarmenischen sprache. wien: a. hartleben [1912]. viii p., 1 l., 182 p., 1 table. 16°. (die kunst der polyglottie. teil 103.) *onl dulaurier, édouard. see patkanov, keropé petrovich. dwight, harrison gray otis. kéraganoutun ankghiaren yev hahérén. [a grammar english and armenian.] smyrna, 1835. 112 p. 8°. *onl dwight, harrison gray otis, and elias riggs. orthography of armenian and turkish proper names. (american oriental society. journal. new york, 1854. 8°. v. 4, p. 119-121.) *oaa esoff, g. d'. aperçu de l'étude de la langue arménienne en europe. (actes du huitième congrès international des orientalistes. leide, 1892. 8°. partie 3, section 2, fasc. 1, p. 73-82.) *oaa finck, franz nikolaus. lehrbuch der neuostarmenischen litteratursprache. unter mitwirkung von stephan kanajeanz bearbeitet von f. n. finck. vagarschapat: druckerei des klosters s. etschmiadsin, 1902. 1 p.l., x, 141 p. 8°. *onl ---see also zeitschrift für armenische philologie. gardthausen, v. ueber den griechischen ursprung der armenischen schrift. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1876. 8°. bd. 30, p. 74-80.) *oaa gauthiot, robert. note sur l'accent secondaire en arménien. (banaser. paris, 1899. 8°. v. 1, p. 321-324.) *onk gjandschezian, esnik. beiträge zur altarmenischen nominalen stammbildungslehre. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1903. 8°. bd. 1, p. 33-63.) *onl ---see also zeitschrift für armenische philologie. gleye, arthur. ugro-finnischer einfluss im armenischen. (keleti szemle. budapest, 1901. 8°. v. 2, p. 157-159.) *oaa gray, louis herbert. on certain persian and armenian month-names as influenced by the avesta calendar. (american oriental society. journal. new haven, 1907. 8°. v. 28, p. 331-344.) *oaa gulian, kevork h. elementary modern armenian grammar. london: d. nutt, 1902. vi p., 1 l., 196 p. 8°. (method gaspey-otto-sauer.) *onl hagopian, hovhan. a pocket dictionary (english-armenian). boston: "ararat" publishing co., 1905. 292 p. 16°. *onl hanusz, johann. beiträge zur armenischen dialectologie. (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1887-89. 8°. v. 1, p. 181-197, 281-313; v. 2, p. 63-70, 124-132, 291-308; v. 3, p. 38-50.) *oaa huebschmann, heinrich. armeniaca. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1881-92. 8°. bd. 35, p. 168-180, 654-664; bd. 36, p. 115-134; bd. 46, p. 324-329.) *oaa ---armeniaca. (indogermanische forschungen. strassburg, 1906. 8°. bd. 19, p. 457-480.) raa ---armeniaca. (strassburger festschrift zur xlvi. versammlung deutscher philologen und schulmänner. strassburg: k. j. trübner, 1901. 4°. p. 69-79.) *c ---armenische grammatik. theil 1. leipzig: breitkopf & härtel, 1897. xxii p., 1 l., 575 p. 8°. (bibliothek indogermanischer grammatiken. bd. 6, theil 1.) *onl theil 1. armenische etymologie. ---iranisch-armenische namen auf karta, kert, gird. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1876. 8°. bd. 30, p. 138-141.) *oaa ---die semitischen lehnwörter im altarmenischen. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig. 1892. 8°. bd. 46, p. 226-268.) *oaa ---ueber aussprache und umschreibung des altarmenischen. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1876. 8°. bd. 30, p. 53-73.) *oaa ---ueber die stellung des armenischen im kreise der indogermanischen sprachen. (zeitschrift für vergleichende sprachforschung. berlin, 1877. 8°. bd. 22, p. 5-49.) raa isaverdentz, hagopos. an easy method of learning english for the use of armenians. part 1-2. venice: armenian typography of st. lazaro, 1881. 255, 216. 49 p. 12°. *onl title from cover. joannissiany, abgar. see zeitschrift für armenische philologie. junker, heinrich. zur flexion der altarmenischen demonstrativa. (zeitschrift für vergleichende sprachforschung auf dem gebiete der indogermanischen sprachen. göttingen, 1910. 8°. bd. 43, p. 331-351.) raa kanajeanz, stephan. see finck, franz nikolaus. karamianz, n. einundzwanzig buchstaben eines verlorenen alphabets. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1886. 8°. bd. 40, p. 315-319.) *oaa karst, josef. aussprache und vokalismus des kilikisch-armenischen. erster teil einer historisch-grammatischen darstellung des kilikisch-armenischen. strassburg: k. j. trübner, 1899. 2 p.l., 74 p., 1 l. 8°. *onl ---beruehrungspunkte in der pluralbildung des armenischen und der kaukasischen sprachen. (verhandlungen des xiii. internationalen orientalisten-kongresses. leiden: e. j. brill, 1904. 8°. p. 144-147.) *oaa ---historische grammatik des kilikisch-armenischen. strassburg: k. j. trübner, 1901. xxiii, 444 p., 2 tables. 8°. *onl meillet, antoine. remarques sur la grammaire historique de l'arménien de cilicie de m. j. karst. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1904. 8°. bd. 2, p. 18-28.) *onl karst, josef. das trilingue medizinalglossar aus ms. 310 der wiener mechitharisten-bibliothek. hrsg. und erläutert von j. karst. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1904. 8°. bd. 2, p. 112-148.) *onl kraelitz-greifenhorst, friedrich von. sprachprobe eines armenisch-tatarischen dialektes in polen. (wiener zeitschrift für die kunde des morgenlandes. wien, 1912. 8°. bd. 26, p. 307-324.) *oaa ---studien zum armenisch-türkischen. wien: a. hölder, 1912. 1 p.l., 46 p. 8°. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften in wien. sitzungsberichte: philosophisch-historische klasse. bd. 168, abhandl. 3.) *ef lagarde, paul anton de. armenische studien. göttingen: dieterich, 1877. 1 p.l., 216 p. 4°. �*onl repr.: königliche gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttingen. abhandlungen. bd. 22, *ee. ---vergleichung der armenischen consonanten mit denen des sanskrit. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1850. 8°. bd. 4, p. 347-369.) *oaa langlois, victor. mémoire sur les origines de la culture des lettres en arménie. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris. 1861-62. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 14. p. 200-223.) *oaa lehmann-haupt, ferdinand friedrich karl. vorschlæge zur sammlung der lebenden armenischen dialekte. (verhandlungen des xiii. internationalen orientalisten-kongresses. leiden: e. j. brill, 1904. 8°. p. 141-143.) *oaa lidén, evald. armenische studien. göteborg: w. zachrisson, 1906. 149 p. 8°. (göteborgs högskolas årsskrift. bd. 12.) nima lusignan, guy de. nouveau dictionnaire illustré français-arménien. paris: typographie morris père et fils, 1900-03. 2 v. 4°. �*onl manandian, agop. see zeitschrift für armenische philologie. margoliouth, david samuel. the syro-armenian dialect. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1898. 8°. 1898, p. 839-861.) *oaa martin, paulin. des signes hiéroglyphiques dans les manuscrits arméniens. 4 facs. (congrès international des orientalistes. compte-rendu de la première session. paris: maisonneuve & cie., 1876. 8°. tome 2, p. 456-458.) *oaa maxudianz, m. le parler arménien d'akn (quartier bas). paris: p. geuthner, 1912. xi, 146 p. 4°. *onl bibliography, p. 1-3. meillet, antoine. de quelques archaïsmes remarquables de la déclinaison arménienne. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1903. 8°. bd. 1, p. 139-148.) *onl ---notes sur la conjugaison arménienne. (banaser. paris, 1900. 8°. v. 2. p. 97-109.) *onk ---observations sur la graphie de quelques anciens manuscrits de l'évangile arménien. (journal asiatique. paris, 1903. 8°. série 10, v. 2, p. 487-507.) *oaa ---recherches sur la syntaxe comparée de l'arménien. (société de linguistique de paris. mémoires. paris, 1898-1911. 8°. v. 10, p. 241-273; v. 11, p. 369-389; v. 12, p. 407-428; v. 16, p. 92-131; v. 17. p. 1-35.) raa mirianischvili, pierre. sur le rapport mutuel entre le géorgien et l'arménien. (revue de linguistique et de philologie comparée. chalon-sur-saone, 1910. 8°. v. 43, p. 233-270.) raa msériantz, lévon. notice sur la phonétique du dialecte arménien de mouch. (actes du onzième congrès international des orientalistes. paris, 1899. 4°. section 1, p. 299-316.) *oaa mueller, friedrich. armeniaca. [no.] 1-6. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. classe. wien, 1865-90. 8°. bd. 48, p. 424-430; bd. 64. p. 447-456; bd. 66, p. 261-278; bd. 78, p. 425-431; bd. 88, p. 9-16; bd. 122, p. 1-8.) *ef ---beiträge zur conjugation des armenischen verbums. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. classe. wien, 1863. 8°. bd. 42, p. 327-342.) *ef ---beiträge zur declination des armenischen nomens. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. classe. wien, 1863. 8°. bd. 44, p. 551-567.) *ef ---beiträge zur lautlehre der armenischen sprache. [part 1-3.] (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. classe. wien, 1862-63. 8°. bd. 38. p. 570-595; bd. 41, p. 3-14: bd. 42, p. 249-258.) *ef ---nicht-mesropische schriftzeichen bei den armeniern. (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1896. 8°. v. 10, p. 129-132.) *oaa ---ueber die stellung des armenischen im kreise der indogermanischen sprachen. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. classe. wien, 1877. 8°. bd. 84, p. 211-232.) *ef ---ueber den ursprung der vocalzeichen der armenischen schrift. (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1894. 8°. v. 8, p. 155-160.) *oaa ---zur geschichte der armenischen schrift. (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1888-90. 8°. v. 2, p. 245-248; v. 4, p. 284-288.) *oaa ---zur wortbildungslehre der armenischen sprache. (orient und occident. göttingen, 1865. 8°. bd. 3, p. 434-445.) *oaa ---zwei sprachwissenschaftliche abhandlungen zur armenischen grammatik. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. classe. wien, 1861. 8°. bd. 35, p. 191-199.) *ef munkácsi, bernhard. über die "uralten armenischen lehnwörter" im türkischen. (keleti szemle. budapest, 1904. 8°. v. 5, p. 352-357.) *oaa patkanov, keropé petrovich. recherches sur la formation de la langue arménienne.... mémoire traduit du russe par m. évariste prud'homme; revu sur le texte original et annoté par m. édouard dulaurier. (journal asiatique. paris, 1870. 8°. série 6, v. 16, p. 125-293.) *oaa ---ueber die stellung der armenischen sprache im kreise der indo-europäischen. (russische revue, monatschrift für die kunde russlands. st. petersburg. 1880. 8°. year 17, p. 70-89.) *qca patrubány, l. von. zur armenischen wortforschung. (indogermanische forschungen. strassburg, 1903. 8°. bd. 14, p. 54-60.) raa pedersen, holger. armenisch und die nachbarsprachen. (zeitschrift für vergleichende sprachforschung auf dem gebiete der indogermanischen sprachen. gütersloh, 1906. 8°. bd. 39, p. 334-484.) raa ---les pronoms démonstratifs de l'ancien arménien. avec un appendice sur les alternances vocaliques indo-européennes. københavn: b. luno. 1905. 51 p. 4°. (kongeligt dansk videnskabernes selskab. skrifter. række 6. historisk og filosofisk afdeling. bind 6, [no.] 3.) *eh ---zur armenischen sprachgeschichte. (zeitschrift für vergleichende sprachforschung auf dem gebiete der indogermanischen sprachen. gütersloh, 1902. 8°. bd. 38, p. 194-240.) raa petermann, julius heinrich. brevis linguae armeniacae grammatica, litteratura, chrestomathia cum glossario. in usum praelectionum et studiorum privatorum. carolsruhae: h. reuther, 1872. xi, 111, 92 p. 2. ed. 12°. (porta linguarum orientalium. pars 6.) *oac ---grammatica linguae armeniacae. berolini: g. eichler, 1837. xii, 264 p., 3 tables. 8°. *onl ---ueber den dialect der armenier von tiflis. (koeniglich preussische akademie der wissenschaften. abhandlungen: philol.-hist. klasse. berlin, 1867. 4°. jahrg. 1866, p. 57-87.) *ee a pocket dictionary of the english, armenian and turkish languages. venice: printed at the press of the armenian college of s. lazarus, 1843. 3 v. 18°. *opf pratt, andrew t. on the armeno-turkish alphabet. (american oriental society. journal. new haven, 1866. 8°. v. 8, p. 374-376.) *oaa prud'homme, évariste. see patkanov, keropé petrovich. riggs, elias. a brief grammar of the modern armenian language as spoken in constantinople and asia minor. [preface signed e. riggs.] smyrna: w. griffitt, 1847. 80 p. 8°. *onl ---inverted construction of modern armenian. (american oriental society. journal. new haven, 1860. 8°. v. 6, p. 565-566.) *oaa ---see also dwight, harrison gray otis, and elias riggs. schroeder, johan joachim. hoc est joh. joachimi schröderi thesaurus linguae armenicae, antiquae et hodiernae, cum varia praxios materia, cujus elenchum sequens pagella exhibet. amstelodami, 1711. 8 p.l., 64, 410 p., 40 l. 8°. *onl seklemian, a. g. the armenian alphabet. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 6, p. 39-45.) �*onk settegast, franz. armenisches im "daurel e beton." (zeitschrift für romanische philologie. halle, 1905. 8°. bd. 29, p. 413-417.) rdta surmelian, khatchadroh. see avedikian, gabriele, khatchadroh surmelian and mëgërdich aukerian. tavitian, s. de l'...(è), ou du positif de l'être, qui est l'objet de la science positive. de l'unité des lettres ou du principe de la voix et de son harmonie absolue, qui constituent l'objet des sciences logique, musique et mathématique. paris: p. schmidt, 1887. 64 p. 8°. *onk p.v.2 tiryakian, h. hahyéreni zeghdzoumneru. [armenian abused.] new york, 1917. 63 p. 12°. *onl torossian, bedros r. self-instructor in the english language, according to the latest pedagogical system, based on new york state education department's six year elementary course of english. new york: violet press, 1913. 714, 20 p. 2. ed. 8°. *onl also armenian title-page. vosgian, gomidass a. artserén parkirk. [an armenian-french dictionary.] constantinople: h. matteosian, 1893. 9 p.l., 929 p., 1 l. 12°. *onl windischmann, friedrich h. h. die grundlage des armenischen im arischen sprachtstamme. (königlich bayerische akademie der wissenschaften. abhandlungen: philos.-philol. classe. münchen, 1847. 4°. bd. 4, abth. 2, p. 1-49.) *ee yeran, edward a. armenian-english conversation illustrated, comprising every-day conversation, letter writing, grammar, english armenian reader, and useful informations. boston: yeran press [cop. 1913]. 380 p. 3. ed. 8°. *onl zanolli, almo. singolare accezione del vocabolo armeno "tirakan." (società asiatica italiana. giornale. firenze, 1907. 8°. v. 20, p. 89-92.) *oaa ---studio sul raddoppiamento allitterazione e ripetizione nell' armeno antico. (società asiatica italiana. giornale. firenze, 1912-13. 8°. v. 24, p. 1-98; v. 25, p. 305-313.) *oaa zeitschrift für armenische philologie. unter mitwirkung von abgar joannissiany hrsg. von franz nikolaus finck, esnik gjandschezian und agop manandian. bd. 1-2. marburg: n. g. elwert, 1903-1904. 8°. *onl zposaran mangants. [recreation for children, or reading lessons in religious poetry and instruction, and in natural history; translated from english into the classical armenian language by a native under the supervision of j. b. adger; with a vocabulary giving definitions in the modern dialect.] smyrna: h. hallock, 1838. 4 p.l., 288 p., 1 pl. 12°. rmz and *onl inscriptions contains in addition to articles on the van inscriptions a few on inscriptions in modern armenian characters. basmadjian, k. j. note on the van inscriptions. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1897. 8°. 1897, p. 579-583.) *oaa ---une nouvelle inscription arméniaque ou vannique. (actes du onzième congrès international des orientalistes. paris, 1899. 4°. section 1, p. 257-259.) *oaa ---une nouvelle inscription vannique trouvée à qizil-qalé. (journal asiatique. paris, 1902. 8°. série 9, v. 19, p. 137-140.) *oaa ---la plus ancienne inscription arménienne. 1 pl. (journal asiatique. paris, 1914. 8°. série 11, v. 4, p. 160-161.) *oaa ---quelques observations sur l'inscription de kelischin. (journal asiatique. paris, 1903. 8°. série 10, v. 1, p. 554-555.) *oaa ---la stèle de zouarthnotz. (recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes. paris, 1901. 4°. année 23, p. 145-151.) *obkg belck, waldemar. eine in russisch-armenien neu aufgefundene, wichtige chaldische inschrift. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1901. 4°. jahrg. 1901, p. 223-226.) qoa ---die keil-inschriften in der tigris-quellgrotte und über einige andere ergebnisse der armenischen expedition. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1900. 4°. jahrg. 1900, p. 443-466.) qoa ---die kelischin-stele und ihre chaldisch-assyrischen keilinschriften. mit einer karte und drei tafeln. freienwalde a. o.: m. rüger, 1904. 1 p.l., 74 col., 1 map, 3 pl. sq. 4°. (anatole. zeitschrift für orientforschung. heft 1.) �*oaa ---mittheilungen über armenische streitfragen. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1901. 4°. jahrg. 1901, p. 284-328.) qoa belck, waldemar, and f. f. k. lehmann-haupt. chaldische forschungen. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin. 1895-97. 8°. jahrg. 1895, p. 578-616; jahrg. 1896, p. 309-327; jahrg. 1897, p. 302-308.) qoa 1. der name "chalder." 2. hrn. sayce's neuester artikel über die inschriften von van. 3. bauten und bauart der chalder. 4. eine canal-inschrift argistis i. 5. eine chaldische backstein-inschrift. 6. tiglatpileser iii. gegen sardur von urartu. 7. zur frage nach dem ursprünglichen standort der beiden assyrischen inschriften sardur's, sohnes des lutipris. ---inuspuas, sohn des menuas. (zeitschrift für assyriologie. berlin, 1892. 8°. bd. 7, p. 255-267.) *ocl ---mittheilung über weitere ergebnisse ihrer studien an den neugefundenen armenischen keilinschriften. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1892. 8°. jahrg. 1892, p. 477-488.) qoa ---ein neuer herrscher von chaldia. (zeitschrift für assyriologie. weimar, 1894. 8°. bd. 9, p. 82-99, 339-360.) *ocl ---über die kelishin-stelen. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1893. 8°. jahrg. 1893, p. 389-400.) qoa ---ueber neuerlich aufgefundene keilinschriften in russisch und türkisch armenien. (zeitschrift für ethnologie. berlin, 1892. 8°. bd. 24, p. 122-152.) qoa bertin, george. abridged grammars of the languages of the cuneiform inscriptions containing: i. a sumero-akkadian grammar; ii. an assyro-babylonian grammar; iii. a vannic grammar; iv. a medic grammar; v. an old persian grammar. london: trübner & co., 1888. viii, 117 p. 12°. (trübner's collection of simplified grammars. no. 17.) *oco brosset, marie félicité. de quelques inscriptions arméniennes, remarquables au point de vue chronologique. 1 fac. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1860. f°. tome 1, col. 399-413.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1859. tome 3, p. 735-756, *oaa. ---explication de diverses inscriptions géorgiennes, arméniennes et grecques. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mémoires: sciences politiques, histoire et philologie. st. pétersbourg, 1840. sq. 4°. série 6, v. 4, p. 315-446.) *qcb ---note sur les inscriptions arméniennes de bolghari. 1 pl. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin scientifique. st. pétersbourg, 1838. f°. tome 3, col. 18-21.) *qcb ---notice sur la plus ancienne inscription arménienne connue. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin de la classe historico-philologique. st. pétersbourg, 1857. f°. tome 14, col. 118-125.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1859. tome 3, p. 1-11, *oaa. ---rapport sur diverses inscriptions, recueillies par mm. jules kästner et ad. berger. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1864. f°. tome 7, col. 275-281.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1868. tome 5, p. 113-118, *oaa. brosset, marie félicité, and e. kunik. notice sur deux inscriptions cunéiformes, découvertes par m. kästner dans l'arménie russe. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1863. f°. tome 5, col. 428-435.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863. tome 4, p. 671-680, *oaa. carrière, auguste. inscriptions d'un reliquaire arménien de la collection basilewski publiées et traduites par a. carrière. 2 pl. (école des langues orientales vivantes. publications. paris, 1883. 4°. série 2, v. 9, p. 167-213.) *oaf série 2, v. 9. mélanges orientaux. foy, willy. zur xerxes-inschrift von van. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1900. 8°. bd. 54, p. 406-407.) *oaa guthe, h. mosaiken mit armenischer inschrift auf dem ölberge. (deutscher palaestina-verein. mittheilungen und nachrichten. leipzig, 1895. 8°. jahrg. 1, p. 51-53.) *pwc guyard, stanislas. études vanniques. (journal asiatique. paris, 1884. 8°. série 8, v. 3, p. 499-517.) *oaa ---les inscriptions de van. (journal asiatique. paris, 1880. 8°. série 7, v. 15, p. 540-543.) *oaa ---inscriptions de van, les estampages de m. deyrolle. (journal asiatique. paris, 1883. 8°. série 8, v. 1, p. 517-523.) *oaa ---note sur quatre mots des inscriptions de van. (journal asiatique. paris, 1882. 8°. série 7, v. 19, p. 514-515.) *oaa ---note sur quelques particularités des inscriptions de van. (journal asiatique. paris, 1883. 8°. série 8, v. 1, p. 261-265.) *oaa ---note sur quelques passages des inscriptions de van. (journal asiatique. paris, 1883. 8°. série 8, v. 2, p. 306-307.) *oaa hincks, edward. on the inscriptions at van. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1848. 8°. v. 9, p. 387-449.) *oaa jensen, peter. die hittitisch-armenische inschrift eines syennesis aus babylon. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1903. 8°. bd. 57, p. 215-270.) *oaa ---die sitze der "urarto-chalder" zur zeit tiglatpileser's i nach belck und lehmann. (zeitschrift für assyriologie. weimar, 1896. 8°. bd. 11, p. 306-309.) *ocl belck, waldemar, and f. f. c. lehmann-haupt. zu jensen's bemerkungen betreffs der sitze der chalder. (zeitschrift für assyriologie. weimar, 1897. 8°. bd. 12, p. 113-123.) *ocl kunik, e. see brosset, marie félicité, and e. kunik. langlois, victor. inscriptions grecques, romaines, byzantines et arméniennes de la cilicie recueillies par victor langlois.... paris: a. leleux, 1854. iv, 58 p., 1 l., 1 pl. 4°. �*onm ---note sur l'inscription arménienne d'un bélier sépulcral à djoulfa. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1855. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 2, p. 135-138.) *oaa lehmann-haupt, ferdinand friedrich karl. bericht über die ergebnisse der von dr. w. belck und dr. c. f. lehmann 1898/99 ausgeführten forschungsreise in armenien. (königlich preussische akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte. berlin, 1900. 4°. 1900, p. 619-633.) *ee ---"chaldisch" und "armenisch." (recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie. paris, 1896. f°. année 18, p. 209-217.) *obkg ---chaldische nova. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1893. 8°. jahrg. 1893, p. 217-224.) qoa ---entgegnung auf hrn. belck's einsendung "über die keil-inschriften der tigris-grotte und über einige andere ergebnisse der armenischen expedition." (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1900. 4°. jahrg. 1900, p. 612-626.) qoa ---eine neue ausgabe der auf russischem gebiet gefundenen chaldischen keilinschriften. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1896. 8°. jahrg. 1896, p. 586-589.) qoa ---neugefundene menuas-inschriften. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1900. 8°. jahrg. 1900, p. 572-574.) qoa ---die neugefundene steleninschrift rusas' ii. von chaldia. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1902. 8°. bd. 56, p. 101-115.) *oaa belck, waldemar. die steleninschrift rusas' ii. argistihinis von etschmiadzin. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1904. 8°. bd. 58, p. 161-197.) *oaa lehmann-haupt, ferdinand friedrich karl. em schlusswort. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1904. 8°. bd. 58, p. 859-863.) *oaa lehmann-haupt, ferdinand friedrich karl. der tigris-tunnel. (berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte. verhandlungen. berlin, 1901. 4°. jahrg. 1901, p. 226-244.) qoa ---zwei unveröffentlichte chaldische inschriften. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig. 1904. 8°. bd. 58, p. 815-852.) *oaa ---zwei unveröffentlichte keilschrifttexte. (hilprecht anniversary volume. leipzig, 1909. 4°. p. 256-268.) *ock ---see also belck, waldemar, and f. f. k. lehmann-haupt. macler, frédéric. mosaïque orientale. 1. epigraphica., 2. historica. paris: p. geuthner, 1907. 90 p., 21. 8°. *oal mordtmann, andreas david. entzifferung und erklärung der armenischen keilinschriften von van und der umgegend. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1872. 8°. bd. 26, p. 465-696.) *oaa ---ueber die keilinschriften von armenien. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1877. 8°. bd. 31, p. 406-438.) *oaa morgan, jacques jean marie de, and j. v. scheil. la stèle de kel-i-chin. (recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes. paris, 1893. 4°. année 14, p. 153-160.) *obkg mueller, david heinrich. drei neue inschriften von van. (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1887. 8°. v. 1, p. 213-219.) *oaa ---see also wuensch, josef, and d. h. mueller. mueller, friedrich. bemerkungen über zwei armenische keil-inschriften. wien: aus der k. k. hofund staatsdruckerei, 1870. 1 p.l., 6 p., 1 fac. 8°. *onm repr.: kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. cl. bd. 65, p. 589-594, *ef. ---zwei armenische inschriften aus galizien und die gründungs-urkunde der armenischen kirche in kamenec podolsk. 8 p., 1 fac. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte: philos.-hist. classe. wien, 1897. 8°. bd. 135, abh. 11.) *ef patkanov, keropé petrovich. de quelques inscriptions de van. 2 facs. (muséon. louvain, 1882. 8°. v. 1, p. 541-547.) zaa ---sur l'écriture cunéiforme arméniaque et les inscriptions de van. (congrès international des orientalistes. compte-rendu de la première session. paris: maisonneuve & cie., 1876. 8°. tome 2, p. 425-432.) *oaa patkanov, keropé petrovich, and a. h. sayce. de quelques nouvelles inscriptions cunéiformes découvertes sur le territoire russe. 1 fac. (muséon. louvain, 1883. 8°. v. 2, p. 358-364.) zaa robert, louis de. étude philologique sur les inscriptions cunéiformes de l'arménie. paris: e. leroux, 1876. 2 p.l., 196 p. f°. �*onm sandalgian, joseph. asorisdaniah eu barsig sebakir artsanakroutiunk. [a treatise on assyrian and persian cuneiform inscriptions with extracts from them relating to the history of ararat.] vienna, 1901. 262 p., 1 l. 8°. *onq ---l'idiome des inscriptions cunéiformes urartiques. rome: loescher et co., 1898. 23 p. 4°. *onm ---les inscriptions cunéiformes urartiques transcrites avec une triple traduction interlinéaire en arménien classique, en latin et en français, suivies d'un glossaire et d'une grammaire. mémoire présenté à l'académie des inscriptions de france. venise (ile de st.-lazare): imprimerie-librairie des pp. mékhitharistes, 1900. l, 506 p., 1 l., 1 map. 4°. *onm saulcy, louis félicien joseph caignart de. recherches sur l'écriture cunéiforme assyrienne. inscriptions de van. [lettres à m. eugène burnouf. signed f. de saulcy.] paris: firmin didot frères, 1848. 1 p.l., 44 p., 1 pl. 4°. *oco sayce, archibald henry. the cuneiform inscriptions of van. (royal asiatic society. journal. london. 1888-94. 8°. new series, v. 20, p. 1-48; 1893, p. 1-39; 1894, p. 691-732.) *oaa ---the cuneiform inscriptions of van. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1906-11. 8°. 1906, p. 611-653; 1911, p. 49-63.) *oaa ---the cuneiform inscriptions of van, deciphered and translated. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1882. 8°. new series, v. 14, p. 377-732.) *oaa ---deux nouvelles inscriptions vanniques. 1 fac. (muséon. louvain, 1884-86. 8°. v. 3, p. 222-224; v. 5, p. 374-378.) zaa ---fresh contributions to the decipherment of the vannic inscriptions. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1901. 8°. 1901, p. 645-660.) *oaa ---the great inscription of argistis on the rock of van. (records of the past. london [1890]. 12°. new series, v. 4, p. 114-133.) *ock ---inscription of menuas, king of ararat, in the vannic language. (records of the past. london [1888]. 12°. new series, v. 1, p. 163-167.) *ock ---les inscriptions vanniques d'armavir. (muséon. louvain, 1883. 8°. v. 2, p. 5-9.) zaa ---monolith inscription of argistis, king of van. (records of the past. london [1890]. 12°. new series, v. 4, p. 134-136.) *ock ---a new inscription of the vannic king menuas. 1 pl. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1914. 8°. 1914, p. 75-77.) *oaa ---a new vannic inscription. (royal asiatic society. journal. london, 1912. 8°. 1912, p. 107-112.) *oaa ---on the cuneiform inscriptions of van. (zeitschrift für vergleichende sprachforschung. berlin, 1877. 8°. bd. 22, p. 407-409.) raa ---see also patkanov, keropé petrovich, and a. h. sayce. scheil, jean vincent. inscription vannique de melasgert. (recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes. paris, 1896. 4°. année 18, p. 75-77.) *obkg ---note sur l'expression vannique "gunusâ haubi." (recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes. paris, 1893. 4°. année 14, p. 124.) *obkg ---see also morgan, jacques jean marie de, and j. v. scheil. schulz, éd. mémoire sur le lac de van et ses environs. 8 facs. (journal asiatique. paris, 1840. 8°. série 3, v. 9, p. 257-323.) *oaa wuensch, josef, and d. h. mueller. die keil-inschrift von aschrut-darga. entdeckt und beschrieben von josef wünsch, publicirt und erklärt von david heinrich müller. 3 pl. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. denkschriften: philosophisch-historische klasse. wien, 1888. f°. bd. 36, abtheilung 2, p. 1-26.) *ef history of literature arnot, robert. the armenian literature. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4°. v. 6, p. 37-39.) �*onk reprinted in new armenia, v. 10, p. 7-8, �*onk. baumstark, anton. die christlichen literaturen des orients. leipzig: g. j. göschen, 1911. 2 v. 16°. (sammlung göschen. nr. 527-528.) *oat bd. 2, p. 61-110. das christliche schrifttum der armenier und georgier. brockelmann, karl, and others. geschichte des christlichen litteraturen des orients. von c. brockelmann, johannes leipoldt, franz nikolaus finck, enno littmann. leipzig: c. f. amelang, 1907. viii, 281 p. 8°. (die litteraturen des ostens in einzeldarstellungen. bd. 7, abteilung 2.) *oat p. 75-130. finck, f. n. geschichte der armenischen litteratur. cayol, henri. littérature arménienne. (journal asiatique de constantinople. constantinople, 1852. 8°. tome 1, p. 73-86.) *oaa chalatianz, bagrat. die armenische literatur des 19. jahrhunderts. eine skizze. (neue heidelberger jahrbücher. heidelberg, 1905. 8°. jahrg. 14, p. 16-38.) eaa chanazarian, g. v. la littérature arménienne. (revue orientale et américaine. paris, 1862. 8°. tome 7, p. 192-196.) *oaa finck, franz nikolaus. see brockelmann, karl, and others; also schmidt, erich, and others. garo, chahen. modern armenian literature. (poet-lore. boston, 1897. 8°. v. 9, p. 122-126.) *da harnack, adolf. forschungen auf dem gebiete der alten grusinischen und armenischen litteratur. (königlich preussische akademie der wissenschaften. sitzungsberichte. berlin, 1903. 4°. 1903, p. 831-840.) *ee macler, frédéric. la chaire d'arménien à l'école spéciale des langues orientales vivantes. (revue internationale de l'enseignement. paris, 1912. 8°. v. 63, p. 5-38.) ssa minas. armenian literature. (armenia. boston, 1907. 4°. v. 3, no. 6, p. 27-35.) �*onk neumann, carl friedrich. versuch einer geschichte der armenischen literatur, nach den werken der mechitaristen frei bearbeitet. leipzig: j. a. barth, 1836. xii, 308 p. 8°. *onp nève, félix. l'arménie chrétienne et sa littérature. louvain: c. peeters, 1886. vii, 403 p. 8°. *onk petermann, julius heinrich. ueber einige neuere erscheinungen der armenischen litteratur. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. zeitschrift. leipzig, 1861. 8°. bd. 15, p. 397-406.) *oaa raffi, aram. armenia: its epics, folksongs and mediaeval poetry. (in: z. c. boyajian, armenian legends and poems. london [1916]. f°. p. 125-191.) �*onp schmidt, erich, and others. die orientalischen literaturen. mit einleitung: die anfänge der literatur und die literatur der primitiven völker. berlin: b. g. teubner, 1906. ix, 419 p. 4°. (die kultur der gegenwart. teil 1, abteilung 7.) *oat p. 282-298. finck, f. n. die armenische literatur. schrumpf, g. a. on the progress of armenian studies. (transactions of the ninth international congress of orientalists. london, 1893. 8°. v. 1, p. 540-553.) *oaa sukias somal, placido. quadro della storia letteraria di armenia. venezia: dalla tipografia armena di s. lazzaro, 1829. xix, 240 p., 1 l. 8°. *onp thumajan, johann. die geschichte der classisch-armenischen schriftsprache. (verhandlungen des vii. internationalen orientalisten-congresses. arische section. wien: a. hölder, 1888. 8°. p. 69-77.) *oaa veselovski, yuri. armianekaia poeziia 19 vieka i eia proiskhozhdenie. (russkaia mysl'. moscow, 1901. 8°. 1901, no. 12, [part 2,] p. 97-123.) *qca armenian poetry of the nineteenth century. ---k kharakteristikie novoi armianskoi literatury. (viestnik vospitaniia. moscow, 1914. 8°. v. 25, no. 4, p. 147-165.) *qca new armenian literature. ---literaturnoe tvorchestvo turetskikh armian. (viestnik evropy. petrograd, 1916. 8°. 1916, no. 3, p. 75-108.) *qca literature of the turkish armenians. zavak. the earliest armenian printing press. (ararat. london, 1916. 8°. v. 3, p. 473-481.) *onk literature poetry alishan, leo m. see alishanian, gheuont. alishanian, gheuont. armenian popular songs translated into english by leo m. alishan, d. d. venice: s. lazarus, 1852. 2 p.l., 85 p., 1 l. 8°. *onp ------venice: s. lazarus, 1888. 83 p., 1 l. 3. ed. 8°. *onp ---the lily of shavarshan. [translated by alice stone blackwell.] (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 8, p. 17-19.) �*onk leist, arthur. pater leo alischan. (in his: litterarische skizzen. leipzig [1886]. 12°. p. 41-51.) *onk armenische bibliothek. bd. 2. antreassian, khorene m. see katchoony, h. armenian poems. metrical version by robert arnot. (in: armenian literature. london [cop. 1901]. 8°. p. 45-54.) *ocy arnot, robert. see armenian poems. beshigtashlian, mëgërdich. kertouadzner ou jarer. [a collection of his poetry and speeches.] paris, 1904. 193 p., 1 l. 8°. *onp leist, arthur. mkrtitsch beschiktaschlian. (in his: litterarische skizzen. leipzig [1886]. 12°. p. 53-64.) *onk armenische bibliothek. bd. 2. blackwell, alice stone. armenian poems rendered into english verse by alice stone blackwell. boston, 1917. 2 p.l., xii. 13-296 p., 3 l. 12°. *onp ---see also alishanian, gheuont; also damadian, mihran; also hayrig, chrimian; also kourghinian, shoushanik; also patkanian, raphael: also portoukalian, m.; also raffi; also tchobanian, archag; also tourian, bedros; also yarjanian-siamanto, atom; also yergat, tigran. boré, eugène. élégie sur la prise de constantinople, poëme inédit et extrait du manuscrit 80 arménien de la bibliothèque royale. (journal asiatique. paris, 1835. 8°. série 2, v. 15, p. 271-298.) *oaa boyajian, zabelle c., compiler. armenian legends and poems, illustrated & compiled by zabelle c. boyajian ... with an introduction by the right hon. viscount bryce ... and a contribution on "armenia: its epics, folksongs and mediaeval poetry," by aram raffi. london: j. m. dent & sons, ltd. [1916.] xvi, 195 p., 12 col'd pl. f°. �*onp bryce (1. viscount), james bryce. see boyajian, zabelle c., compiler. chant populaire sur la captivité de léon, fils du roi héthoum i. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 537-540.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. contes & chants arméniens recueillis, transcrits et traduits par djelali avec préface et note explicative par paul passy. fasc. 1. paris, 1899. 16°. *onp p.v.1 damadian, mihran. furfurcar. translated by alice stone blackwell. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 264.) �*onk djelali. see contes & chants. dulaurier, édouard. le chants populaires de l'arménie. (revue des deux mondes. paris, 1852. 8°. nouvelle période, tome 14, p. 224-255.) *dm ---études sur les chants historiques et les traditions populaires de l'ancienne arménie d'après une dissertation de j. b. émin. (journal asiatique. paris, 1852. 8°. série 4, v. 19, p. 5-58.) *oaa émin, jean baptiste. see dulaurier, édouard. green, g. m. see raffi. gregory dgha, patriarch of armenia. élégie du patriarche grégoire dgha catholicos d'arménie ... sur la prise de jérusalem par saladin. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 269-307.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. hayrig, chrimian. the soldier's lament. [translated by alice stone blackwell.] (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 9, p. 19-20.) �*onk hethoum ii, king of armenia. poëme de héthoum ii, roi d'arménie. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 541-555.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. katchoony, h. to the martyrs of adana. [translated by khorene m. antreassian.] (armenia. new york, 1911. 4°. v. 4, no. 11, p. 12.) �*onk khrimean, mekertich. a meeting of kings. translation of a posthumous work by khrimean hairik. versified by a. g. sheridan. (ararat. london, 1915. 8°. v. 2, p. 436-443, 445-456.) *onk text and translation. kourghinian, shoushanik. the eagle's love. to the nightingale. rendered into english verse by alice stone blackwell. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 545-546.) *onk koutchak, nahabed. vieux chants arméniens. (la revue blanche. paris, 1901. 8°. v. 26, p. 217-221.) *dm lalayantz, erwand. les anciens chants historiques et les traditions populaires de l'arménie. (revue des traditions populaires. paris, 1896. 8°. v. 11, p. 1-12, 129-138, 337-351.) zba miller, miss frank. armenian popular songs. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 2, no. 4, p. 23-28.) �*onk mourey, gabriel. see tchobanian, archag, translator. natalie, shahan. songs of love and hate. the agony of my faith, love, prayers, to thee, flames of hate, persecuted rhapsodist. boston: hairenik press, 1915. 166 p., 1 l. 8°. *onp nerses the graceful, patriarch of armenia. élégie sur la prise d'édesse par les musulmans, par nersès klaietsi, patriarche d'arménie; publiée pour la première fois, en arménien par j. zohrab. ouvrage publié par la société asiatique. paris: dondey-dupré père et fils, 1828. 7 p.l., 6, 112 p. 8°. *onp ---élégie sur la prise d'édesse. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 223-268.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. avtaliantz, john, baron. memoir of the life and writings of st. nierses clajensis, surnamed the graceful, pontiff of armenia. (asiatic society of bengal. journal. calcutta, 1836. 8°. v. 5, p. 129-157.) *oha passy, paul. see contes & chants. patkanian, raphael. cradle song from the armenian of raphael patkanian. [translated by alice stone blackwell.] (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 7, p. 27-28.) �*onk ---the woe of araxes. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4°. v. 4, no. 5, p. 13.) �*onk portoukalian, m. the armenian girl. from the armenian.... rendered into english verse by alice stone blackwell. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4°. v. 5, p. 121.) �*onk raffi. the lake of van. from the armenian of raffi. [translated by alice stone blackwell.] (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 2, no. 2-3, p. 23-25.) �*onk ---the lake of van. translated by g. m. green. (new armenia. new york, 1918. f°. v. 10, p. 90.) �*onk raffi, aram. see boyajian, zabelle c., compiler. sheridan, a. g. see khrimean, mekertich. siamanto. see yarjanian-siamanto, atom. tcheraz, minas. poètes arméniens. bédros tourian. gamar-kathipa. saïath-nova. guévork dodokhiantz. mikaël nalbandiantz. corène de lusignan. paris: e. leroux, 1913. xi, 155 p. 16°. *onp tchobanian, archag. armenia's lullaby. (asiatic review. london, 1916. 8°. v. 10, p. 441-443.) *oaa ---armenian poems rendered into english verse by alice stone blackwell. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4°. v. 5, p. 210-211.) �*onk ---the armenian poetry. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4°. v. 4, no. 1, p. 2-3; no. 2, p. 9-10; no. 3, p. 8-9; no. 5, p. 14-15.) �*onk ---the epic of armenia. translated from the french by alice stone blackwell. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 317-323.) *onk ---haï etcher. [a collection of armenian poems, illustrated from objects in the convent at etchmiadzin and from old illuminated manuscripts.] paris, 1912. 54 p., 1 l., 120 p., 52 pl. 8°. *onp ---lullaby for mother armenia. from the armenian of archag tchobanian. [translated by alice stone blackwell.] (armenia. boston, 1904. 4°. v. 1, no. 2, p. 19-22.) �*onk reprinted in new armenia, v. 8, p. 237-238, �*onk; and in armenian herald, v. 1, p. 43-45, *onk. ---naghash hovnathan ashoughe yev hovnathan hovnathanian nigaritche. [the armenian troubadour naghash hovnathan and a complete collection of his works; illustrated by pictures drawn by his grandson hovnathan hovnathanian.] paris, 1910. 128 p., 1 l., 26 pl. 8°. *onp ---poèmes. aurore. la caravane des heures. angoisse. visions. dans la nuit. sur la colline. traduction française. préface de pierre quillard. paris: société du mercure de france, 1908. xii, 263 p. 12°. *onp ---poèmes arméniens, anciens et modernes. traduits par archag tchobanian et précédés d'une étude de gabriel mourey sur la poésie et l'art arméniens. paris: a. charles, 1902. 104 p. 12°. *onp buss, kate. archag tchobanian. (armenian herald. boston, 1917. 8°. v. 1, p. 40-42.) *onk marshall, annie c. arshag tchobanian. a biographical sketch. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4°. v. 6, p. 298-301.) �*onk torossian, aram. armenian poetry. (armenian herald. boston, 1917. 8°. v. 1. p. 24-39.) *onk tourian, bedros. complaints. repentance. [translated from the armenian by alice stone blackwell.] (armenia. boston, 1907. 4°. v. 3, no. 9, p. 38-42.) �*onk ---little lake. from the armenian. [translated by] alice stone blackwell. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4°. v. 4, no. 8, p. 19.) �*onk ---wishes for armenia. [translated by alice stone blackwell.] (armenia. new york, 1912. 4°. v. 6, p. 141-142.) �*onk reprinted in new armenia, v. 8, p. 363, �*onk. tcheraz, minas. bedros tourian. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9. p. 154-156.) �*onk ---vie et poésies de bédros tourian. (muséon. louvain, 1894. 8°. v. 13, p. 357-366.) zaa tsutsag hishadagarani movsisi zohrabiants artsakhétsvo. [a collection of armenian poetry.] part 1. moscow, 1870. 106 p. 8°. *onp yarjanian-siamanto, atom. song of the knight. from the armenian of siamanto. rendered into english verse by alice stone blackwell. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4°. v. 5, p. 71-75.) �*onk ---the starving. [translated by alice stone blackwell.] (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 449-452.) *onk blackwell, alice stone. an armenian poet: siamanto. (poet lore. boston, 1917. 8°. v. 28, p. 231-241.) *da torossian, aram. atom yarjanian-siamanto. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 438-448.) *onk yeran, edward arakel. zhoghovrtahin yérkaran. [popular songs.] boston, n. d. 748 p., 10 l. 8°. *onp yergat, tigran. poete mourant. the dying poet. translated by alice stone blackwell. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4°. v. 6, p. 54-55.) �*onk zohrabian, john. see nerses the graceful, patriarch of armenia. fiction and drama aharonian, avedis. armenische erzählungen, von awetis aharonean. übersetzt von agnes finck-gjandschezian. leipzig: p. reclam, jun. [1909.] 106 p. 24°. (universal-bibliothek. nr. 5107.) *onp ---guteton da lakto. armena rakonto de a. agaronjan tradukis georgo davidov. budapest: nagy sándor könyvnyomdájából [1907]. 10 p. 12°. (esperanta universala biblioteko. armena serio 2, no. 3.) rax p.v.1 ---honor, from the armenian of avedis aharonian translated by arshag mahdesian. (outlook. new york, 1915. 8°. v. 111, p. 357-359.) *da ---materi; razskazy. avtorizovannyi perevol s armianskago vardgesa, s predisloviem kriia [aleksieevicha] veselovokago. [tales.] moscow: v. antik & co. [19--?] 77(1) p. 24°. (universal'naia biblioteka. no. 712.) *qb p.v.96 ---vers la liberté. l'abime. traduit de l'arménien par m. chamlian et e. s. altiar. préface de a. f. herold. paris: e. leroux, 1912. xix, 219 p., 2 l. 12°. (petite bibliothèque arménienne. v. 4.) *onk ajcatur. armena fabelo. kollektis georgo davidov. budapest: neuwald i. utódai könyvnyomdájából [1908]. 14 p. 16°. (esperanta universala biblioteko. armena serio 3, no. 9.) rax p.v.1 altiar, elias sarkis. see aharonian, avedis. antreassian, khorene m. see raffi. apellian, aleksandir. boedi yrazi. [the poet's dream. a modern armenian drama in one act.] tiflis, 1909. 28 p. 12°. *onp arakélian, hambartzoum. contes et nouvelles; traduit de l'arménien oriental par aram eknayan. préface de frédéric macler. paris: e. leroux, 1916. xxv, 251 p., 1 l., 1 port. 12°. (petite bibliothèque arménienne. v. 7.) *onk armenian literature; comprising poetry, drama, folk-lore, and classic traditions; translated into english for the first time; with a special introduction by robert arnot. london: colonial press [cop. 1901]. viii p., 3 l., 3-142 p., 1 fac. rev. ed. 8°. *ocy contents: proverbs and folk-lore; translated by f. b. collins. the vacant yard; translated by f. b. collins. armenian poems; metrical version, by r. arnot. david of sassun, national epos of armenia; translated by f. b. collins. the ruined family, by g. sundukianz; translated by f. b. collins. ---new york: colonial press [cop. 1901]. 1 p.l., viii p., 3 l., 3-142 p., 1 fac., 1 pl. rev. ed. 8°. (the world's great classics.) *ocy bound with: babylonian and assyrian literature. armenische bibliothek. hrsg. von abgar joannissiany. bd. 1-9. leipzig: wilhelm friedrich [1886-87]. 12°. *onk contents: bd. 1. r. patkanian, drei erzählungen. bd. 2. a. leist, litterarische skizzen. bd. 3. raffi, bilder aus persien und türkisch-armenien. bd. 4. g. a. khalathianz, märchen und sagen. bd. 5-6. p. proschianz, sako. bd. 7. k. sundukianz, die ruinirte familie. bd. 8-9. d. sabrijian, zwei jahre in abyssinien. arnot, robert. see armenian literature. baronian, hagop h. maitre balthasar; comédie en trois actes. introduction et traduction par j. m. silnitzky. paris: e. leroux, 1913. xlv, 196 p., 1 l. 12°. (petite bibliothèque arménienne. v. 6.) *onk bibliography, p. vi-vii. barrileah, a. h. ara keghetsig badmagan vibasanoutiun. [ara the pretty. an historical romance.] venice, 1876. 487 p., 1 l., 1 pl. 16°. *onp berberian, m. see veselovski, y., and m. berberian, editors. calfa, corène. arschag ii. tragédie arménienne. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1863. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 15, p. 185-202, 292-306; tome 16, p. 27-40, 99-112, 147-158.) *oaa chalatianz, grikor. see khalathianz, grigori abramovich. chamlian, missak. see aharonian, avedis. chirvanzadê, pseud. of alexandre movissian. la possédée; traduit de l'arménien par a. tchobanian. préface de frédéric macler. paris: e. leroux, 1910. xiii, 188 p., 1 l. 12°. (petite bibliothèque arménienne. [v. 1.]) *onk colangian, édouard. see zartarian, roupen. collins, f. b., translator. the vacant yard. an armenian story. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4°. v. 6, p. 380-384; v. 7. p. 30-32, 59-64.) �*onk ---see also armenian literature; also sundukianz, kapriel. davidov, georg. see aharonian, avedis; also ajcatur. eknayan, aram. see arakélian, hambartzoum. essayan, grigor. see zartarian, roupen. gjandschezian, agnes finck. see aharonian, avedis. hagopian, hagop melik. see raffi. haroutiunian, hovhannes. "vor megoun yedeven." ["whom shall we follow after?" a drama in five acts.] boston, 1912. 139 p. 8°. *onp joannissiany, abgar, editor. see armenische bibliothek. khalathianz, grigori abramovich. märchen und sagen. mit einer einleitung von grikor chalatianz. leipzig: wilhelm friedrich [1887]. xxxvii p., 1 l., 147 p. 12°. (armenische bibliothek. bd. 4.) *onk lalajan, johannes, translator. see proschianz, pertsch. leist, arthur, translator. see patkanian, raphael. macler, frédéric, translator. contes arméniens. traduits de l'arménien moderne par f. macler. paris: e. leroux, 1905. 2 p.l., 194 p. 16°. (collection de contes et chansons populaires. tome 29.) zbg ---contes et légendes de l'arménie; traduits et recueillis par f. macler. préface de r. basset. paris: e. leroux, 1911. xv, 196 p., 1 l. 12°. (petite bibliothèque arménienne. v. 3.) *onk ---see also petite bibliothèque arménienne. mahdesian, arshag. see aharonian, avedis. mangouni, n. hatsi hamar. [armenian stories.] boston, 1914. 222 p. 8°. *onp marr, n. sbornik pritch vardana, materialy dlia istorii sredneviekovoi armianskoi literatury. st. petersburg: akademiya nauk, 1899. 3 v. in 2. 4°. *qct medieval armenian literature. reviewed by f. c. conybeare in folk-lore, v. 10, p. 462-475, zba. melik, alexander. khordagwadz yerginkner. [an historical novel.] boston: hairenik press, 1917. 4 p.l., 7-352 p. 8°. *onp mourier, j., translator. contes et légendes du caucase traduits par j. mourier. paris: maisonneuve & c. leclerc, 1888. 2 p.l., 112 p., 1 l. 16°. zbg p.v.3 contes géorgiens. contes mingréliens. contes arméniens. movissian, alexandre. see chirvanzadê, pseud. of alexandre movissian. patkanian, raphael. drei erzählungen. aus dem armenischen übertragen von arthur leist. leipzig: wilhelm friedrich [1886]. iv, 164 p. 12°. (armenische bibliothek. bd. 1.) *onk leist, arthur. raphael patkanian. (in his: litterarische skizzen. leipzig [1886]. 12°. p. 19-40.) *onk armenische bibliothek. bd. 2. petite bibliothèque arménienne. publiée sous la direction de f. macler. v. 1-7. paris: e. leroux, 1910-16. 12°. *onk contents: v. 1. chirvanzadê, la possédée. v. 2. m. tcheraz, nouvelles orientales. v. 3. f. macler, contes et légendes de l'arménie. v. 4. a. aharonian, vers la liberté. v. 5. r. zartarian, clarté nocturne. v. 6. h. h. baronian, maitre balthasar. v. 7. h. arakélian, contes et nouvelles. proschianz, pertsch. sako. roman in zwei bänden. aus dem armenischen übersetzt von johannes lalajan. leipzig: w. friedrich [1886]. 2 v. in 1. 12°. (armenische bibliothek. bd. 5-6.) *onk raffi. bilder aus persien und türkisch-armenien. aus dem armenischen übersetzt von leo rubenli. leipzig: wilhelm friedrich [1887]. 1 p.l., 198 p. 12°. (armenische bibliothek. bd. 3.) *onk ---jelaleddin. a picture of his invasion. from the armenian of raffi. [translated by khorene m. antreassian.] (armenia. boston, 1906-07. 4°. v. 2, no. 9, p. 16-28; no. 10, p. 24-34; no. 11, p. 35-40; no. 12. p. 29-33; v. 3, no. 1, p. 19-29; no. 2, p. 28-33; no. 3, p. 41-48.) �*onk ---dzhalaleddin. perevod s armianskago n. bataturovoi. s predisloviem kriia veselovskago. moscow: v. antik & co. [19--?] 74 p. 24°. (universal'naia biblioteka. no. 706.) *qb p.v.96 jelaleddin. translated from the armenian. ---khent. [a romance.] vienna, 1905. 2 p.l., 527 p., 1 pl. 8°. *onp ---schön-vartig ("geghetzig vartig"). eine novelle raffis. deutsch von dr. h. trg. schorn. (geist des ostens. münchen, 1914. 8°. jahrg. 1, p. 745-757.) *oaa boyajian, zabelle c. raffi: the armenian national writer. (contemporary review. new york, 1916. 8°. v. 110, p. 222-228.) *da burchardi, gustav. raffi, der schöpfer der neuarmenischen literatur. (geist des ostens. münchen, 1914. 8°. jahrg. 1, p. 167-169.) *oaa raffi commemoration. armenia's greatest writer, reformer and champion. (ararat. london, 1913. 8°. v. 1, p. 35-40.) *onk rubenli, leo. see raffi; also sundukianz, kapriel. rushdooni. the sixth-and-a-half cousin's inheritance. from the armenian of rushdooni. translated and arranged by a. timourian. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4°. v. 5, p. 86-91.) �*onk saint-martin, jean antoine. analyse d'une tragédie arménienne; représentée à léopol, le 9 avril 1668. [sainte ripsime.] (journal asiatique. paris, 1823. 8°. série 1, v. 2, p. 22-39.) *oaa schorn, h. trg. see raffi. shishmanian, hovsep. toros livoni. [armenian stories.] boston, 1917. 305 p. 8°. *onp silnitzky, j. m. see baronian, hagop h. sumpad purad. pande pand. [from prison to prison. a romance.] part 1-5. constantinople, 1911. 1048 p., 4 pl. 8°. *onp sundukianz, kapriel. the ruined family. by gabriel sundukianz. translated by f. b. collins. (in: armenian literature. london [cop. 1901]. 8°. p. 81-142.) *ocy ---the ruined family. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4°. v. 4, no. 8, p. 11-14, no. 9, p. 7-11, no. 10, p. 17-19, no. 11. p. 13-15, no. 12, p. 26-28; v. 5, no. 1, p. 27-32, no. 2. p. 59-64.) �*onk ---die ruinirte familie. lustspiel in drei aufzügen, aus dem armenischen von leo rubenli. leipzig: w. friedrich [1886]. 1 p.l., 118 p. 12°. (armenische bibliothek. bd. 7.) *onk leist, arthur. gabriel sundukianz. (in his: litterarische skizzen. leipzig [1886]. 12°. p. 123-142.) *onk armenische bibliothek. bd. 2. tcheraz, minas. nouvelles orientales; préface de frédéric macler. paris: e. leroux, 1911. xviii, 133 p., 2 l. 12°. (petite bibliothèque arménienne. [v. 2.]) *onk ---l'orient inédit; légendes et traditions arméniennes, grecques et turques, recueillies et traduites. paris: e. leroux, 1912. 3 p.l., 4-328 p. 16°. (collection de contes et chansons populaires. tome 39.) zbg marshall, annie c. minas tcheraz. a biographical sketch. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4°. v. 6, p. 240-243.) �*onk tchobanian, archag. la vie et le rêve; poèmes en prose, contes, fantaisies. lettre-préface de émile verhaeren. paris: société du mercure de france, 1913. vii p., 1 l., 218 p., 1 l. 12°. *onp ---see also chirvanzadê, pseud. of alexandre movissian; also zartarian, roupen. timourian, a. see rushdooni. tlgadintsi. see haroutiunian, hovhannes. veselovski, y., and m. berberian, editors. armianskie belletristy sbornik. moscow: n. kushnerov, 1893. 518 p. 8°. *qda a collection of armenian fiction. wlislocki, heinrich von. märchen und sagen der bukowinaer und siebenbürger armenier. aus eigenen und fremden sammlungen übersetzt von dr. heinrich von wlislocki. hamburg: verlagsanstalt und druckerei actien-gesellschaft, 1891. viii, 188 p. 8°. zbim zartarian, roupen. clarté nocturne, traduit de l'arménien par archag tchobanian, édouard colangian, et grigor essayan; préface de gaston bonet-maury. paris: e. leroux, 1913. xx, 170 p., 2 l. 16°. (petite bibliothèque arménienne. v. 5.) *onk other literature adanson, karl ludwig. see injijian, ghougas. aharonian, avedis. mother armenia, forgive me. translated by missak turpanjian. (new armenia. new york, 1918. f°. v. 10, p. 46-47.) �*onk alelouia yerousaghem. [a description of jerusalem by a pilgrim.] constantinople, 1903. 158 p., 1 l. illus. 12°. *onp alishanian, gheuont. deux descriptions arméniennes des lieux saints de palestine. (société de l'orient latin. archives de l'orient latin. paris, 1884. 8°. tome 2, documents, p. 394-403.) *oba assises d'antioche reproduces en français et publiées au sixième centenaire de la mort de sempad le connétable, leur ancien traducteur arménien, dédiées à l'académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres de france par la société mekhithariste de saint-lazare. venise: imprimerie arménienne médaillée, 1876. xxiii, 93 p. 4°. �*onp augustin badjétsi. itinéraire du très-révérend frère augustin badjétsi, évêque arménien de nakhidchévan, de l'ordre des frères-prêcheurs, à travers l'europe; écrit, en langue arménienne, de sa propre main, ainsi que l'a reconnu et attesté le révérend frère antoine najari, son parent et son neveu, apracounétsi, envoyé du roi de perse au roi très-chrétien.... traduit sur le manuscrit arménien ... par m. brosset jeune. (journal asiatique. paris, 1837. 8°. série 3, v. 3, p. 209-245, 401-421.) *oaa avakian, hovhannes, and bedros hovnanian, editors. koharnir hai kraganoutian. [gems of armenian literature.] boston: hairenik press, 1916. 366 p., 3 l. 12°. *onp aznavor, cherubino. see injijian, ghougas. basil. oraison funèbre de baudouin, comte de marasch et de kéçoun. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 203-222.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. bayan, g. armenian proverbs and sayings translated into english by g. bayan. venice: academy of s. lazarus, 1889. 58 p. 16°. *onk p.v.1 bittner, maximilian. der vom himmel gefallene brief christi in seinen morgenländischen versionen und rezensionen. 240 p., 8 pl. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. denkschriften: philosophisch-historische klasse. wien, 1906. 4°. bd. 51, abh. 1.) *ef brosset, marie félicité. extrait du manuscrit arménien no. 114 de la bibliothèque royale, relatif au calendrier géorgien, traduit par brosset. (journal asiatique. paris, 1832. 8°. série 2, v. 10, p. 526-532.) *oaa ---sur deux rédactions arméniennes, en vers et en prose, de la légende des saints baralam = varlaam et ioasaph = iosaphat. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1878. f°. tome 24, col. 561-567.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1881. tome 8, p. 535-543, *oaa. ---see also augustin badjétsi. carrière, auguste. un version arménienne de l'histoire d'asséneth. (école des langues orientales vivantes. publications. paris, 1886. 4°. série 2, v. 19, p. 471-511.) *oaf chalatianz, bagrat. see khalathianz, bagrat. conybeare, frederick cornwallis. the barlaam and josaphat legend in the ancient georgian and armenian literatures. (folk-lore. london, 1896. 8°. v. 7, p. 101-142.) zba ---see also the key of truth. conybeare, frederick cornwallis, and others. the story of ahikar from the syriac, arabic, armenian, ethiopic, greek and slavonic versions by f. c. conybeare, j. rendel harris, and agnes smith lewis. london: c. j. clay & sons, 1898. lxxxviii, 162 p., 1 l., 72 p. 8°. *oat armenian text, p. 125-162. translation of the armenian text, p. 24-55. damadian, m. ramgavaroutiun. [democracy.] alexandria, 1910. 158 p., 1 l. 12°. *onp dashian, hagopos, vartabed. vartabedutune arakelotz anvaveragan ganonatz madiane. tought hagopa ar gotrados ev ganonk tattéi. [the canons of the apostles in old armenian.] vienna, 1896. 9 p., 1 l., 442 p., 1 l. 8°. *onn ---zur abgar-sage. (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1890. 8°. v. 4, p. 17-34, 144-160, 177-198.) *oaa dulaurier, édouard. cosmogonie des perses d'après eznig, auteur arménien du ve siècle. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1857. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 5, p. 253-262.) *oaa eznig. see dulaurier, édouard; also wickering, armand de. gjandschezian, agnes finck. see photios. gjandschezian, esnik. see gregory magistros; also photios. gregory of armenia, called illuminator. die akten gregors von armenien neu hrsg. von p. de lagarde. (königliche gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttingen. abhandlungen. göttingen, 1889. 4°. bd. 35, p. 89-120.) *ee lagarde, paul anton de. vita gregorii armeni. (in his: onomastica sacra. gottingae, 1887. 8°. p. 1-24.) *yip gregory magistros. ein brief des gregor magistros an den emir ibrahim. hrsg. von esnik gjandschezian. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1904. 8°. bd. 2, p. 234-263.) *onl ---ein brief des gregor magistros an den patriarchen petros. hrsg. von esnik gjandschezian. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1904. 8°. bd. 2, p. 75-80.) *onl khalathianz, grigori abramovich. fragmente iranischer sagen bei grigor magistros. (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1896. 8°. v. 10, p. 217-224.) *oaa langlois, victor. mémoire sur la vie et les écrits du prince grégoire magistros, duc de la mésopotamie, auteur arménien du xi siècle. (journal asiatique. paris, 1869. 8°. série 6, v. 13, p. 5-64.) *oaa gregory of nazianzen. (nonnos.) die scholien zu fünf reden des gregor von nazianz. hrsg. von agop manandian. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1903. 8°. bd. 1, p. 220-330.) *onl harris, james rendel. see conybeare, frederick cornwallis, and others. histoire de pharmani asman. traduite de l'arménien sur le manuscrit conservé à la bibliothèque nationale de paris, par frédéric macler. (société des traditions populaires. revue des traditions populaires. paris, 1906. 8°. v. 21, p. 417-440, 481-500.) zba hovnanian, bedros. see avakian, hovhannes, and bedros hovnanian, editors. injijian, ghougas. description du bosphore ... traduite de l'arménien en français par f. martin. paris: j. b. sajou, 1813. 134 p., 1 l. 8°. *onp ---nachrichten über den thrazischen bosporus, oder die strasse von constantinopel vom dr. ingigian; aus dem armenischen übersetzt und von k. l. adanson aus dem französischen übersetzt.... weimar: verlag des landes-industrie-comptoirs, 1814. viii, 118 p., 1 l. 12°. (in: m. c. sprengel, bibliothek der neuesten und wichtigsten reisebeschreibungen. bd. 50.) kbd ---villeggiature de' bizantini sul bosforo tracio opera del p. luca ingigi tradotta dal p. cherubino aznavor. venezia: tipografia di s. lazzaro, 1831. xxiii, 330 p., 1 l., 1 map, 1 pl. 16°. gio joannissiany, abgar. armenische sprichwörter. (das ausland. augsburg, 1871. f°. jahrg. 44, p. 403-405.) �kaa ---sprichwörter. (in: g. a. khalathianz, märchen und sagen. leipzig [1887]. 12°. p. 133-147.) *onk armenische bibliothek. bd. 4. kalemkiar, gr. die siebente vision daniels. (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1892. 8°. v. 6, p. 109-136, 227-240.) *oaa the key of truth: a manual of the paulician church of armenia. the armenian text, edited and translated with illustrative documents and introduction by fred. c. conybeare. oxford: clarendon press, 1898. cxcvi, 201 p., 1 l. 8°. zfe khalathianz, bagrat. die armenische heldensage. (verein für volkskunde. zeitschrift. berlin, 1902. 8°. jahrg. 12, p. 138-144, 264-271, 391-402.) yaa lagarde, paul anton de. see gregory of armenia, called illuminator. leist, arthur. litterarische skizzen. leipzig: wilhelm friedrich [1886]. 1 p.l., 174 p. 12°. (armenische bibliothek. bd. 2.) *onk contents: ein volkssänger. raphael patkanian. pater leo alischan. mkrtitsch beschiktaschlian. abowian. die kongregation der mechitaristen. erzbischof gabriel aiwasowski. gabriel sundukianz. das armenische zeitungswesen. ein vater seines volkes. lewis, agnes smith. see conybeare, frederick cornwallis. and others. macler, frédéric. un document arménien sur l'assassinat de mahomet par une juive. (mélanges hartwig derenbourg, 1844-1908. paris, 1909. 4°. p. 287-295.) *oac ---notre-dame de bitlis. texte arménien traduit et annoté par frédéric macler. 7 pl. (journal asiatique. paris, 1916. 8°. série 11, tome 6, p. 357-444.) *oaa ---see also histoire de pharmani asman; also mkhithar gosh. manandian, agop. see gregory of nazianzen. martin, françois. see injijian, ghougas. mkhithar gosh. choix de fables arméniennes attribuées à mkhithar goch, traduites par f. macler. (journal asiatique. paris, 1902. 8°. série 9, v. 19, p. 457-487.) *oaa brosset, marie félicité. rapport de m. brosset sur un manuscrit arménien. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin de la classe historico-philologique. st. pétersbourg, 1849. f°. tome 6, col. 380-382.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1852. tome 1, p. 150-152, *oaa. parechanian, hagop k. tirahauad khilkin hauadatsial ullalou jampan. [the infidel spirit.] boston, 1917. 24 p. 12°. *onp photios. der brief des photios an aschot und dessen antwort. uebersetzt von agnes finck und esnik gjandschezian. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1904. 8°. bd. 2, p. 1-17.) *onl prud'homme, évariste. see vartan the great. sabrijian, dimoteos. deux ans de séjour en abyssinie; ou, vie morale, politique et religieuse des abyssiniens par le r. p. dimothéos, légat de ... le patriarche arménien auprès de théodore roi d'abyssinie. traduit par ordre de ... isaïe, patriarche arménien de jérusalem. livre 1-2. jérusalem: typographie arménienne du couvent de saint-jacques, 1871. 2 v. in 1. 8°. blm ---zwei jahre in abyssinien oder schilderung der sitten und des staatlichen und religiösen lebens der abyssinier von sr. hochw. pater timotheus, legat sr. eminenz des armenischen patriarchen bei könig theodor von abyssinien. teil 1-2. leipzig: wilhelm friedrich, n. d. 12°. (armenische bibliothek. bd. 8-9.) *onk saint-martin, jean antoine. see vartan the great. schmid, johann michael, translator. geschichte des apostels thaddaeus und der jungfrau sanducht. aus dem altarmenischen übersetzt. (zeitschrift für armenische philologie. marburg, 1903. 8°. bd. 1, p. 67-73.) *onl sempad, constable of armenia. see assises d'antioche. srapian, moses, translator. das martyrium des hl. pionius. aus dem altarmenischen übersetzt von pater moses srapian. (wiener zeitschrift für die kunde des morgenlandes. wien, 1914. 8°. bd. 28, p. 376-405.) *oaa terzagian, hagop k. parlamentagan ganonner ev zhoghovavaroutiun. [parliamentary rules.] boston, 1912. 84 p., 2 l. 12°. *onp teza, emilio. il libro dei sette savi nella letteratura armena. (reale istituto veneto. atti. venezia, 1905. 8°. tomo 65, parte 2, p. 383-397.) *er armenian text, 6 pages. turpanjian, missak. see aharonian, avedis. vark nahabedats ev markareits. [bible stories in armenian.] smyrna, 1838. 4 p.l., 292 p. 12°. *ono vartan the great. choix de fables de vartan en arménien et en français. [edited and translated by j. a. saint-martin.] ouvrage publié par la société asiatique de paris. paris: dondey-dupré père et fils, 1825. xii, 96 p. 8°. *onp ---extraits du livre intitulé solutions de passages de l'écriture sainte, écrites à la demande de héthoum i, roi d'arménie par le vardapet vardan; traduits de l'arménien vulgaire sur le texte original par m. évariste prud'homme. (journal asiatique. paris, 1867. 8°. série 6, v. 9, p. 147-204.) *oaa varteresian, hapet. mer poghoknern ou tashnagtzoutean tirku anonts hanteb. [our protests and the position that the tashnagtzoutean has taken towards them.] boston, 1911. 152 p., 1 pl. 8°. *onp vetter, paul. das buch tobias und die achikar-sage. (theologische quartalschrift. tübingen, 1904-05. 8°. jahrg. 86, p. 321-364, 512-539; jahrg. 87, p. 321-370, 497-546.) zea wickering, armand de. eznig de gog'ph, évêque de pakrévant, auteur arménien du cinquième siècle et son traducteur français. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1856. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 3, p. 207-216.) *oaa zavak. armenian proverbs. (ararat. london, 1917. 8°. v. 4, p. 424-426, 466-472.) *onk translations from european languages alishanian, gheuont. see american sacred songs. american sacred songs. translated into the armenian language [by father leo alishan]. st. lazarus--venice, 1874. 85 p. 16°. *onp aristotle. see conybeare, frederick cornwallis. aucher, john baptiste. see ephraim the syrian. aukerian, haroutiun. see milton, john. aukerian, mëgërdich. see ephraim the syrian. avidaranian, h., translator. jarakaitk arevelian. [rays from the orient. a book useful for every class of men. translated from the sanskrit.] part 1. shumla, bulgaria, 1904. 8°. *onp bagratouni, arsen gomidas. see homer; also horace; also virgil. bunyan, john. krisdianosin ou krisdinein jamportoutiuni. [pilgrim's progress; translated into armenian.] part 1-2. smyrna, 1843. 12 p., 1 l., 444 p., 1 l., 353 p., 17 pl. 12°. *neh ------new york, 1858. 532 p., 9 pl. 16°. *neh calfa, ambroise. see fénélon, françois de salignac de la mothe. conybeare, frederick cornwallis. a collation with the ancient armenian versions of the greek text of aristotle's categories, de interpretatione, de mundo, de virtutibus et vitiis and of porphyry's introduction. oxford: clarendon press, 1892. 2 p.l., xxxviii p., 1 l., 184 p., 1 fac. 8°. (anecdota oxoniensia. classical series. v. 1, part 6.) yaem ---a collation of the old armenian version of plato's laws, book iv-vi. (american journal of philology. baltimore, 1893-94. 8°. v. 14, p. 335-349; v. 15, p. 31-50.) raa ---on the ancient armenian version of plato. (american journal of philology. baltimore, 1891. 8°. v. 12, p. 193-210.) raa ---on the old armenian version of plato's apology. (american journal of philology. baltimore, 1895. 8°. v. 16, p. 300-325.) raa ---on the old armenian version of plato's laws. (american journal of philology. baltimore, 1891. 8°. v. 12, p. 399-413.) raa paton, w. r. critical notes on plato's laws, iv-vi. (american journal of philology. baltimore, 1894. 8°. v. 15, p. 443-453.) raa dante alighieri. asdouadzahin gadagirkoutiun. divina commedia. ii. purgatorio tradotto in prosa dal p. arsenio gazikian. venezia, 1905. 4 p.l., 327 p. 12°. *onp dashian, hagopos. see secundus, the sophist of athens. dirohean, atanas v. see georgius, pisida. emerson, frederick. mdavor ev kravor touapanoutiun. [an arithmetic compiled from emerson's north american arithmetic by c. hamlin.] constantinople, 1848. 29, 280 p. 8°. *onpa ephraim the syrian. srpouin yéprémi. [the writings of saint ephraim translated into armenian.] venice, 1836. 4 v. in 3. 8°. *onp ---evangelii concordantis expositio facta a sancto ephraemo doctore syro. in latinum translata a ... ioanne baptista aucher, mechitarista, cujus versionem emendavit, adnotationibus illustravit et edidit georgius moesinger. venetiis: libraria mechitaristarum in monasterio s. lazari, 1876. 2 p.l., xii, 292 p. 8°. *odm erkér ou yéghanagnér. [a hymn-book with music for the use of sunday schools.] constantinople, 1860. 64 p. 8°. *onp fénélon, françois de salignac de la mothe. les aventures de télémaque de fénélon traduction arménienne par ambroise calfa. paris, 1860. 6 p.l., 512. 7 p., 22 pl. 8°. *onp funduklian, k. see shakespeare, william. gallaudet, thomas h. abashkharatsvits. [a book on repentance. translated from english into armenian.] smyrna, 1839. 8, 280 p. 24°. *onp gazikian, arsen ghazaros. see dante alighieri; also tasso, torquato; also virgil. georgius, pisida. vetsoreahk keorkah bisiteah. [hexameron translated into armenian by atanas v. dirohean.] venice, 1900. 191 p. 8°. *onp greek and armenian texts. hamlin, c. see emerson, frederick. harnack, adolf. see irenaeus, bishop of lyons. hauff, wilhelm. badouoh yediuen gam likhtunshtain. ["lichtenstein" translated from german into armenian by vahan mesrob.] boston, n. d. 1 p.l., 11, 374 p., 2 l., 15 pl. 8°. *onp homer. iliagan. [the iliad translated into armenian verse by arsen gomidas bagratouni.] venedig, 1864. 5 p.l., 454 p., 1 l. 8°. *onp horace. arvésd kertoghagan. [quintus horatius flaccus' ars poetica; translated into pleasing metre with explanatory notes by arsen gomidas bagratouni.] venice, 1847. 47 p., 3 l. 4°. �*onp bound with: virgil. mshagagank. venice, 1847. 4°. hugo, victor. innsoun yerek. [ninety-three, translated from french into armenian by avedis kouyoumjian.] boston, 1910. 3 p.l., 530 p., 3 l., 1 port. 8°. *onp ingersoll, robert green. inch e gronu? [what is religion? translated from english into armenian by liumen.] boston, 1910. 1 p.l., 7-34 p. 8°. *onp international bible students association. [scenario of the photo-drama of creation translated into armenian under the title taderangark sdeghdzakordzoutian.] brooklyn: international bible students association, 1914. 96, 96 p. nar. 8°. *onn paged in duplicate. irenaeus, bishop of lyons. armenische irenaeusfragmente mit deutscher übersetzung nach dr. w. lüdtke zum teil erstmalig hrsg. und untersucht von hermann jordan. leipzig: j. c. hinrichs, 1913. viii p., 1 l., 222 p. 8°. (texte und untersuchungen zur geschichte der altchristlichen literatur. reihe 3, bd. 6, heft 3.) ze ---des heiligen irenäus schrift zum erweise der apostolischen verkündigung ... in armenischer version entdeckt, hrsg., und ins deutsche übersetzt von ... karapet ter-mekerttschian und erwand ter-minassiantz. mit einem nachwort und anmerkungen von adolf harnack. leipzig: j. c. hinrichs, 1907. viii, 69, 68 p. 8°. (texte und untersuchungen zur geschichte der altchristlichen literatur. reihe 3, bd. 1, heft 1.) ze jordan, hermann. see irenaeus, bishop of lyons. koran. mouhammed. kouran. [the koran translated into armenian by hagop kourbetian.] varna: iravounk, 1912. 14, 654 p. 8°. *ogd kourbetian, hagop, translator. see koran. kouyoumjian, avedis. see hugo, victor. lerch, p. ueber eine armenische bearbeitung der "sieben weisen meister." (orient und occident. göttingen, 1864. 8°. bd. 2, p. 369-374.) *oaa liumen. see ingersoll, robert green. luedtke, w. see irenaeus, bishop of lyons. mesrob, vahan. see hauff, wilhelm. milton, john. mildovni trakhd gorouseal. [paradise lost; translated into armenian by haroutiun aukerian.] venice, 1824. 4 p.l., 7-503 p., 1 pl. 8°. *onp moesinger, georg. see ephraim the syrian. mueller, friedrich. ueber die armenische bearbeitung der "sieben weisen meister." (vienna oriental journal. vienna, 1890. 8°. v. 4, p. 213-216.) *oaa nemesius. see teza, emilio; also zanolli, almo. payson, edward. hokeshah mdadzoutiunk. [salutary thoughts of the world and the church. translated from english into armenian.] smyrna, 1844. 7, 180 p. 32°. *ono petermann, julius heinrich. ueber das verhältniss der armenischen uebersetzung der briefe des ignatius zu der von herrn cureton herausgegebenen syrischen version derselben. (deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. jahresbericht. leipzig, 1847. 8°. p. 198-203.) *oaa plato. see conybeare, frederick cornwallis. porphyry. see conybeare, frederick cornwallis. rollin, charles. badmoutiun hrovmeagan. [histoire romaine; translated into armenian.] v. 1-6. venice, 1816-17. 4°. �*onq russell, charles taze. [the millennial dawn; translated from english into armenian under the title hazaramiai arshaloisu.] v. 1. brooklyn, n. y.: international bible students' association, 1916. 12°. *onp v. 1. the plan of the ages. armenian title: asdoudzo dzrakiru. secundus, the sophist of athens. das leben und die sentenzen des philosophen secundus des schweigsamen in altarmenischer übersetzung von jacobus dashian. 56 p. (kaiserliche akademie der wissenschaften. denkschriften: philosophisch-historische klasse. wien, 1896. f°. bd. 44, abhandlung 3.) *ef shakespeare, william. andonios ev gleobadra. [antony and cleopatra; translated into armenian by k. funduklian (parnak).] paris, 1911. 19, 108 p. 8°. *onp sue, eugène. taparagan heryah. le juif errant [translated into armenian]. constantinople, 1853. 16, 524 p., 3 l., 17 pl. 8°. *onp tasso, torquato. yerousaghem azadeal. [jerusalem delivered, translated into armenian by arsen ghazaros gazikian.] venice, 1911. 20, 628 p., 1 pl. 16°. *onp ter-mekerttschian, karapet. see irenaeus, bishop of lyons. ter-minassiantz, erwand. see irenaeus, bishop of lyons. teza, emilio. nemesiana. sopra alcuni luoghi della natura dell'uomo in armeno. (reale accademia dei lincei. rendiconti: classe di scienze morale, storiche e filologiche. roma, 1893. 8°. serie 5, v. 2, p. 3-16.) *er thomas à kempis. hamahédévumin krisdosi. [imitatio christi.] amsterdam [1696]. 420 p., 5 pl. 24°. *onp ------romae: typis sacræ congreg. de propaganda fide, 1705. 8 p.l., 611 p., 9 l. 16°. *onp upham, thomas cogswell. darerk imatsagan pilisopayoutian. [elements of mental philosophy translated from english into armenian.] smyrna, 1851. 30 p., 1 1., 524 p. 8°. *onp vartabedoutiun krisdonagan usd haiots. [christian catechism translated into armenian.] amsterdam, 1667. 72 p. 16°. *onp p.v.1 virgil. b. virkileah maroni yeneagan. [the aeneid, translated into armenian by arsen gazikian.] venice, 1910. 4 p.l., 573 p., 2 l., 1 pl. 12°. *onp ---mshagagank. [publius virgilius maro's georgica. translated into pleasing metre, with explanatory notes, by arsen gomidas bagratouni.] venice, 1847. 32, 128 p., 2 l., 1 pl. 4°. �*onp whiting, george backus. jrak hokvoh. [light of the soul. a tract on self-examination, translated from english into armenian.] smyrna, 1849. 47 p. 24°. *onp p.v.1 zanolli, almo. osservazioni sulla traduzione armena del "peri physeôs anthrôpou" di nemesio. (società asiatica italiana. giornale. firenze, 1906-09. 8°. v. 19, p. 213-247; v. 21, p. 81-99; v. 22, p. 155-178.) *oaa armenian church translations of the bible are not included in this list. armenian church. garkavorootun hasaragatz aghotitz. [regular service-book of the armenian church.] venice, 1742. 391, 33 p. 24°. *onp ---liturgia armena trasportata in italiano per cura del p. g. avedichian. seconda edizione adorna di rami. venezia: tipografia di s. lazzaro, 1832. 125 p., 1 l., 8 pl. 8°. *onp ---liturgie de la messe arménienne traduite en français de la version italienne par monseigneur lapostolest. venise: imprimerie des méchitaristes de saint lazare, 1851. 8 p.l., 60 p., 8 pl. 8°. zhkd ---rituale armenorum being the administration of the sacraments and the breviary rites of the armenian church together with the greek rites of baptism and epiphany edited from the oldest mss. by f. c. conybeare ... and the east syrian epiphany rites translated by the rev. a. j. maclean. oxford: clarendon press, 1905. xxxv, 536 p., 1 fac. 8°. zhkd armenians taking stock of their national church. (missionary review of the world. new york, 1907. 8°. new series, v. 20, p. 742-746.) zkva arpee, leon. the armenian awakening; a history of the armenian church, 1820-1860. chicago: university press, 1909. xi, 235 p. 8°. znv asgian, g. la chiesa armena e l'arianesimo. (bessarione. roma, 1899-1900. 8°. v. 6, p. 522-528.) *oaa ---la s. sede e la nazione armena. (bessarione. roma, 1898-1904. 8°. v. 4, p. 330-338; v. 5, p. 1-8, 303-307, 470-488; v. 6, p. 272-294; v. 7, p. 87-91, 282-290, 507-517; v. 8, p. 64-73, 476-491; v. 9, p. 287-295; serie 2, v. 1, p. 41-49, 381-386; v. 2, p. 102-106; v. 3, p. 188-193; v. 4, p. 384-391; v. 5, p. 382-388; v. 7, p. 19-24, 152-156, 254-257.) *oaa aukerian, mëgërdich, vartabed. liagadar vark ev vgayapanoutiun srpots. [vitae sanctorum ecclesiae armeniacae.] venetiis, 1810-15. 12 v. 12°. *ono avedikian, gabriele. see armenian church. bayan, g. see ter israel. blackwell, alice stone. the progress in the armenian church. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 2, no. 11, p. 7-13.) �*onk boré, eugène. de l'arménie. de l'action directe et puissante du christianisme sur la société arménienne.... (journal asiatique. paris, 1836. 8°. série 3, v. 1, p. 209-238.) *oaa brosset, marie félicité. notice historique sur les couvents arméniens de haghbat et de sanahin. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin scientifique. st. pétersbourg, 1842. f°. v. 10, col. 303-336.) *qcb ---notice sur le couvent arménien de kétcharhous, à daratchitchag. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin de la classe historico-philologique. st. pétersbourg, 1855. f°. tome 10, col. 341-352.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1856. tome 2, p. 133-149, *oaa. ---sur les couvents arméniens d'haghbat et de sanahin. (imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. bulletin. st. pétersbourg, 1863. f°. tome 5, col. 215-231.) *qcb reprinted in imperatorskaya akademiya nauk. mélanges asiatiques. st. pétersbourg, 1863. tome 4, p. 603-628, *oaa. conybeare, frederick cornwallis. see armenian church; also sahak, patriarch. dadian, boghos. l'église d'arménie. déclaration adressée à mgr. sibour, archevêque de paris, relativement aux inculpations qui sont faites à l'église arménienne. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1855. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 2, p. 217-226.) *oaa the day of peril of the armenian church in russia. (armenia. boston, 1906. 4°. v. 2, no. 12, p. 37-47; v. 3, no. 1, p. 30-42.) �*onk de kay, charles. the suppression of a faith. (outlook. new york, 1904. 8°. v. 77, p. 525-531.) *da dowling, theodore edward. the armenian church, by archdeacon dowling.... with an introduction by the lord bishop of salisbury.... london: society for promoting christian knowledge, 1910. xvi, 17-160 p., 1 fac., 5 pl., 2 ports. 12°. znv duchesne, louis marie olivier. l'arménie chrétienne dans l'histoire ecclésiastique d'eusèbe. (in: mélanges nicole. recueil de mémoires de philologie classique.... genève, 1905. 8°. p. 105-109.) btgp dulaurier, édouard. histoire dogmes, traditions et liturgie de l'église arménienne orientale avec des notions additionnelles sur l'origine de cette liturgie, les sept sacrements, les observances, la hiérarchie ecclésiastique, les vêtements sacerdotaux et la forme intérieure des églises, chez les arméniens. paris: a. franck, 1857. 2 p.l., vii, 9-186 p. 2. ed. 24°. znv ------ouvrage traduit du russe et de l'arménien par édouard dulaurier. paris: a. durand, 1859. 2 p.l., vii, 9-186 p. 3. ed. 16°. znv dwight, harrison gray otis. christianity in turkey; a narrative of the protestant reformation in the armenian church. [a review of this book.] (eclectic review. london, 1855. 8°. new series, v. 9, p. 532-546.) *da ---see also selim iii, sultan of turkey. ebersolt, jean. les anciennes églises d'arménie et l'effort arménien. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 812-816.) *onk ecclesiae armeniacae canones selecti. (in: angelo mai, scriptorum veterum nova collectio. romae, 1838. 4°. v. 10. p. 269-316.) �nrd epiphanius of cyprus. ekthesis prôtoklêsiôn patriarchôn te kai mêtropolitôn armenisch und griechisch hrsg. von franz nikolaus finck. marburg: n. g. elwert, 1902. 120 p. 12°. *onp esteves pereira, francisco maria. see vida de s. gregorio. finck, franz nikolaus. see epiphanius of cyprus; also nilus doxapatrius. fischer, hans. das kloster des hl. thaddäus. (der christliche orient. westend-berlin, 1897. 4°. 1897, p. 510-513.) �*oaa fortescue, edward francis knottesford. the armenian church founded by st. gregory the illuminator. being a sketch of the history, liturgy, doctrine, and ceremonies, of this ancient national church. with an appendix by the rev. s. c. malan. london: j. t. hayes [1872]. 336 p., 11 pl. 12°. znv galanus, clemens.... conciliationis ecclesiae armenae cvm romana ex ipsis armenorvm patrvm et doctorvm testimoniis. in duas partes, historialem & controuersialem diuisæ. romae: typis sacræ congregationis de propaganda fide, 1650-61. 3 v. f°. �znv armenian and latin texts. gelzer, heinrich. die anfänge der armenischen kirche. (königlich sächsische gesellschaft der wissenschaften. berichte über die verhandlungen: philol.-hist. classe. leipzig, 1895. 8°. bd. 47, p. 109-174.) *ee ---armenien. (in: j. j. herzog, realencyklopädie für protestantische theologie und kirche.... leipzig, 1897. 3. ed. 4°. bd. 2, p. 63-92.) *r-zeb gregory, g. marcar, translator. see ormanian, malachia. gregory of bysantium, metropolitan of chios. yearnings after unity in the east.... with remarks thereon by george williams. london: rivingtons, 1866. iv, 526 p. 8°. (eastern church association. occasional paper, no. 3.) zng hamarod zhamakirk hahasdaneahts sa yegeghetsuoh. [brief breviary.] boston, 1916. 91 p. 12°. *onp isaacus. see sahak, patriarch. kent, w. h. the ancient church of armenia. (dublin review. london, 1904. 8°. v. 135, p. 143-158.) *da langlois, victor. mémoire sur les archives du catholicosat arménien de sis, en cilicie. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1856. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 3, p. 177-189.) *oaa lapostolest, f. x. see armenian church. lichti, otto. see yeshu' bar shushan. maclean, arthur john. see armenian church. malan, solomon c. see fortescue, edward francis knottesford. mémoire de la mission d'erzeron. (in: lettres édifiantes. lyon, 1819. 8°. v. 2, p. 356-372.) kbc missirian, g. m. the national churches of the east. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 80-85.) *onk reprinted from the boston evening transcript, dec. 8, 1917. mkhithar of dashir. relation de la conférence tenue entre le docteur mekhithar de daschir, envoyé du catholicos constantin i, et le légat du pape à saint-jean-d'acre, en 1262. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 689-698.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. monier. lettre du père monier, de la compagnie de jésus, au père fleuriau, de la même compagnie. (in: lettres édifiantes. lyon, 1819. 8°. v. 2, p. 76-169.) kbc neale, john mason. a history of the holy eastern church. part 1. general introduction. london: j. masters, 1850. 2 v. 8°. znb nerses the graceful, patriarch of armenia. preces sancti nersetis clajensis armeniorum patriarchae viginti quatuor linguis editae. venetiis: in insula s. lazari, 1837. 3 p.l., 434 p., 1 port. 16°. zhr ---preces sancti nierses, armeniorum patriarchae, turcice, graece, latine, italice et gallice redditae. venetiis: in insula s. lazari, 1815. 172 p. 32°. *ono nerses of lambron. extraits de l'ouvrage intitulé réflexions sur les institutions de l'église et explication du mystère de la messe. lettre adressée au roi léon ii. (in: institut de france.--académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. recueil des historiens des croisades. documents arméniens. paris, 1869. f°. v. 1, p. 557-603.) ��btr armenian text with french translation. nève, félix. l'hymnologie arménienne. (muséon. louvain, 1885. 8°. v. 4, p. 359-368.) zaa nilus doxapatrius. taxis tôn patriarchikôn thronôn. armenisch und griechisch hrsg. von franz nikolaus finck. marburg: n. g. elwert, 1902. 2 p.l., 46 p. 4°. �*onp ormanian, malachia. the armenian church. (armenia. new york, 1911-13. 4°. v. 4, no. 11, p. 1-4, no. 12, p. 4-6; v. 5, p. 8-11, 42-44, 107-109, 154-155, 178-181, 202-205, 247-249, 279-282, 342-344, 377-378; v. 6, p. 18-19, 62-63, 87-89, 123-124, 147-148, 175-176, 211-212, 247-248, 270-271, 303-305, 334-336, 376-377.) �*onk ---the armenian conversion to christianity. (new armenia. new york, 1916. f°. v. 8, p. 184-185.) �*onk ---the church of armenia, her history, doctrine, rule, discipline, liturgy, literature, and existing condition by malachia ormanian, formerly armenian patriarch of constantinople. translated from the french edition by g. marcar gregory ... with an introduction by the right rev. j. e. c. welldon. london: a. r. mowbray & co., ltd. [pref. 1912.] xxxii, 271 p. 8°. znv ---l'église arménienne: son histoire, sa doctrine, son régime, sa discipline, sa liturgie, sa littérature, son présent. paris: e. leroux, 1910. 2 p.l., x, 192 p. 8°. znv ---unionist tendencies of the armenian church. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 231-232.) �*onk peirce, louise fagan. see peirce, william f., and louise f. peirce. peirce, william f., and louise f. peirce. the armenian church. (the new world. boston, 1897. 8°. v. 6, p. 56-69.) *da proclus, saint, patriarch of constantinople. ein briefwechsel zwischen proklos und sahak. aus dem armenischen übersetzt von p. aristaces vardanian. (wiener zeitschrift für die kunde des morgenlandes. wien, 1913. 8°. bd. 27, p. 415-441.) *oaa ricaut, paul. the present state of the greek and armenian churches, anno christi, 1678. london: john starkey, 1679. 16 p.l., 452 p. 12°. znb sahak, patriarch. the armenian canons of st. sahak catholicos of armenia (390-439 a.d.). [translated by f. c. conybeare.] (american journal of theology. chicago, 1898. 8°. v. 2, p. 828-848.) zea ---isaaci magnæ armeniæ catholici oratio invectiva adversus armenios. (in: andreas gallandius, bibliotheca veterum patrum. venetiis, 1781. f°. v. 14, p. 409-446.) ��zel ---narratio de rebus armeniæ. (in: j. p. migne, patrologiæ cursus completus ... series græca. paris, 1864. 4°. tomus 132, col. 1237-1258.) zel ---sancti patris nostri isaaci magnæ armeniæ catholici, oratio invectiva adversus armenios. (in: j. p. migne, patrologiæ cursus completus ... series græca. paris, 1864. 4°. tomus 132, col. 1155-1238.) zel ---see also proclus, saint, patriarch of constantinople. samuel, polykarp. see vrthanes kherthol. schreiber, ellis. the armenian church. (american catholic quarterly review. philadelphia, 1904. 8°. v. 29, p. 772-784.) *da selim iii, sultan of turkey. translation of an imperial berât issued by sultân selim iii a. h. 1215, appointing the monk hohannes patriarch of all the armenians of turkey, with notes by rev. h. g. o. dwight. (american oriental society. journal. boston, 1849. 8°. v. 1, p. 507-515.) *oaa serpos, giovanni de. compendio storico di memorie cronologiche concernenti la religione e la morale della nazione armena suddita dell'impero ottomano.... tomo 1-3. venezia: nella stamperia di carlo palese, 1786. 3 v. 12°. bbx t., a. b. the armenian christmas and new year. (armenia. new york, 1911. 4°. v. 4, no. 8, p. 4-7.) �*onk tchéraz, minas. l'église arménienne, son histoire, ses croyances. (muséon. louvain, 1897. 8°. tome 16, p. 324-329.) zaa ter israel. le synaxaire arménien de ter israel publié et traduit par ... g. bayan ... [partie] 1-2. paris: firmin-didot & cie., 1910. 4°. (patrologia orientalis. tome 5, fasc. 3; tome 6, fasc. 2.) �*oac [partie] 1. mois de navasard. [partie] 2. mois de hori. ter-mekerttschian, karapet. see timothy, bishop of alexandria. ter-minassiantz, erwand. die armenische kirche in ihren beziehungen zu den syrischen kirchen bis zum ende des 13. jahrhunderts. nach den armenischen und syrischen quellen bearbeitet von e. ter-minassiantz. leipzig: j. c. hinrichs, 1904. xii, 212 p. 8°. (texte und untersuchungen zur geschichte der altchristlichen literatur. n. f. bd. 11, heft 4.) ze ---see also timothy, bishop of alexandria. theorianus. theoriani disputatio secunda cum nersete patriarcha generali armeniorum. (in: j. p. migne, patrologiæ cursus completus ... series græca. paris, 1864. 4°. tomus 133, col. 212-298.) zel ---theoriani orthodoxi disputatio cum armeniorum catholico. (in: j. p. migne, patrologiæ cursus completus ... series græca. paris, 1864. 4°. tomus 133, col. 119-212.) zel timothy, bishop of alexandria. timotheus älurus' des patriarchen von alexandrien widerlegung der auf der synode zu chalcedon festgesetzten lehre. armenischer text mit deutschem und armenischem vorwort, zwei tafeln und dreifachem register hrsg. von ... karapet ter-mekerttschian und ... erwand ter-minassiantz. leipzig: j. c. hinrichs, 1908. ix, v-xxxv, 396 p., 2 facs. 8°. *onp tondini de quarenghi, c. notice sur le calendrier liturgique de la nation arménienne. (bessarione. roma, 1906. 8°. serie 2, v. 10, p. 275-294; serie 3, v. 1. p. 71-114.) *oaa tourian, kevork g. the armenian christmas. (armenia. boston, 1904. 4°. v. 1, no. 3, p. 38-45.) �*onk vardanian, aristaces. see proclus, saint, patriarch of constantinople. veyssière de la croze, mathurin. histoire du christianisme d'ethiopie et d'arménie. la haie: veuve le vier & p. paupie, 1739. 7 p.l., 402 p., 1 pl. 8°. znz vida de s. gregorio, patriarcha da armenia. conversão dos armenios ao christianismo. versão ethiopica publicada por f. m. esteves pereira. [lisboa, 1903.] 42 p. 8°. *oee villari, luigi. the clergy at etchmiadzin. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 300-302.) �*onk reprinted from his fire and sword in the caucasus. ---a visit to etchmiadzin. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 283-284.) �*onk reprinted from his fire and sword in the caucasus. vollmer, philipp. the armenian church. (missionary review of the world. new york, 1896. 8°. new series, v. 9, p. 193-197.) zkva vrthanes kherthol. die abhandlung "gegen die bilderstürmer." aus dem armenischen übersetzt von p. polykarp samuel. (wiener zeitschrift für die kunde des morgenlandes. wien, 1912. 8°. bd. 26, p. 275-293.) *oaa williams, george. see gregory of bysantium, metropolitan of chios. williams, william llewelyn. armenia: past and present; a study and a forecast.... with an introduction by t. p. o'connor, m.p. london: p. s. king & son ltd., 1916. xi, 211 p., 2 folded maps. 8°. bbx ---the armenian church. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 355-359.) �*onk reprinted from his armenia: past and present, p. 99-108, 130-142. ---the armenian church and the schism in christendom. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 86-87.) �*onk reprinted from his armenia: past and present, p. 108-119. ---the struggle of the armenian church. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 101-102.) �*onk reprinted from his armenia: past and present, p. 119-130. wilson, samuel graham. the armenian church in its relation to the russian government. (north american review. new york, 1905. 8°. v. 180, p. 88-101.) *da yeshu' bar shushan. das sendschreiben des patriarchen barschuschan an den catholicus der armenier. by otto lichti. (american oriental society. journal. new haven, 1912. 8°. v. 32, p. 268-342.) *oaa young, george. communautés des arméniens grégoriens. [patriarcat arménien catholique.] (in his: corps de droit ottoman. oxford, 1905. 8°. v. 2, p. 70-106.) *ogm zavak. armenian church music. (ararat. london, 1916. 8°. v. 4, p. 136-140.) *onk mechitharists aharonian, avedis. the armenian academy at venice. an impression of the place and of its members. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 141-149.) *onk ---a visit to st. lazare. from the armenian. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4°. v. 7, p. 10-13.) �*onk aukerian, haroutiun. a brief account of the mechitaristican society founded on the island of st. lazaro. [translated by alexander goode.] venice: armenian academy, 1835. 62 p., 1 pl., 1 port. 16°. zmtb p. box 1 compendiose notizie sulla congregazione de monaci armeni mechitaristi di venezia. [venezia: tipografia armena di s. lazzaro,] 1819. 128 p., 1 pl. 16°. *onr cover title: vita del servo di dio mechitar, fondatore dell'ordine de' monaci armeni benedettini detti mechitaristi, venezia, 1887. goode, alexander. see aukerian, haroutiun. kalemkiar, gregoris. eine skizze der literarisch-typographischen thätigkeit der mechitharisten-congregation in wien aus anlass des 50jährigen regierungs-jubiläums ... kaiser franz joseph i. wien: mechitharisten-congregations-buchdruckerei, 1898. 4 p.l., 99 p. 8°. *gd langlois, victor. la congrégation mékhitariste et le couvent arménien de saint-lazare de venise. (revue de l'orient, de l'algérie et des colonies. paris, 1861. 8°. nouvelle série, tome 13, p. 383-397.) *oaa leist, arthur. die kongregation der mechitaristen. (in his: litterarische skizzen. leipzig [1886]. 12°. p. 81-112.) *onk armenische bibliothek. no. 2. mechitharisten-kongregation in wien. huschardzan. festschrift aus anlass des 100jährigen bestandes der ... kongregation ... (1811-1911), und des 25. jahrganges der philologischen monatsschrift "handes amsorya" (1887-1911). hrsg. von der mechitharisten-kongregation unter mitwirkung der mitarbeiter der monatsschrift und zahlreicher armenisten. wien: mechitharisten-kongregation, 1911. 7 p.l., 435 p., 3 pl., 1 port. f°. ��*onk missions american board of commissioners for foreign missions. historical sketch of the missions ... in european turkey, asia minor and armenia. new york: j. a. gray, 1861. 46 p., 1 l. 8°. zkvn p.v.1 barton, james levi. euphrates college. (armenia. new york, 1910. 4°. v. 4, no. 6, p. 2-4.) �*onk ---what america has done for the armenians. (armenia. boston, 1904. 4°. v. 1, no. 3, p. 3-10.) �*onk conder, josiah. see smith, eli, and h. g. o. dwight. dwight, harrison gray otis. see smith, eli, and h. g. o. dwight. greene, joseph k. leavening the levant. boston: pilgrim press, 1916. xii, 353 p., 2 maps, 34 pl. 8°. zkvn knapp, grace higley. the mission at van; in turkey in war time, by grace higley knapp, with a chapter by clarence d. ussher, m. d., on the future of the mission at van. new york: privately printed, 1915. 48 p., 1 port. 16°. btze p.v.196 national armenian relief committee. brands from the burning. [new york,] n. d. 30 p. 24°. shs ---save the remnant. [new york,] n. d. 32 p. 24°. shs ---the wards of christendom. [new york,] n. d. 31 p. 24°. shs pfeiffer, e. die anfänge der protestantischen kirche in armenien 1813-1850. (der christliche orient. westend-berlin, 1897. 4°. 1897, p. 26-42, 78-85, 120-133.) �*oaa richter, julius. protestant missions in turkey and armenia. (in his: a history of protestant missions in the near east. new york: f. h. revell co. [1910.] 8°. p. 104-180.) zkvi smith, eli, and h. g. o. dwight. missionary researches in armenia: including a journey through asia minor, and into georgia and persia, with a visit to the nestorian and chaldean christians of oormiah and salmas. to which is prefixed, a memoir on the geography and ancient history of armenia, by the author of "the modern traveller" [josiah conder]. london: g. wightman, 1834. lxxii, 472 p., 1 map. 8°. bby ---researches of the rev. e. smith and rev. h. g. o. dwight in armenia: including a journey through asia minor, and into georgia and persia, with a visit to the nestorian and chaldean christians of oormiah and salmas. boston: crocker and brewster, 1833. 2 v. 12°. bby terzian, paul, bishop of tarsus and adana. the church in armenia. (catholic world. new york. 1895. 8°. v. 60, p. 212-226.) *da ussher, clarence d. see knapp, grace higley. west, maria a. the romance of missions; or, inside views of life and labor in the land of ararat. with an introduction by mrs. charles.... new york: a. d. f. randolph & co. [cop. 1875.] 14, 710 p. 8°. zkvn white, g. e. morning light in asia minor. (missionary review of the world. new york, 1898. 8°. new series, v. 11, p. 752-760.) zkva armenian question a., d. g. armianskii vopros v turtsii. (iz perepiski s stambul'skim publitsistom.) (russkaia mysl'. moscow, 1892. 8°. 1892, no. 5, [part 2,] p. 60-77.) *qca armenian question in turkey. abbott, lyman. the armenian question. [new york: national armenian relief committee,] n. d. 16 p. 16°. shs apcar, diana agabeg. russian occupation of armenia. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4°. v. 7, p. 8-9.) �*onk ---what the german foreign minister has said. "the powers," the christians of the east, and the turk. russian occupation of armenia. open letter to the right honorable h. h. asquith. yokohama, 1913. 4 broadsides mounted on 11 leaves. 4°. bbx two of the broadsides are reprinted from the far east, may 3, 1913 and july 5, 1913; and one reprinted from the japan gazette, june 14, 1913. armenia and her claims. memorandum on armenia and her claims to freedom and national independence presented to the democratic mid-europe union by dr. g. pasdermadjian ... and by miran sevasly. part 1-2. (armenian herald. boston, 1918-19. 8°. v. 2, p. 3-8, 72-81.) *onk part 1. turkish armenia and the armenians in turkey. part 2. the situation of the armenians, including transcausasia and turkey, prior to the present world war. armenia and the powers: from behind the scenes. (contemporary review. london, 1896. 8°. v. 69, p. 628-643.) *da armenia rediviva. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 339-347.) �*onk the armenian aspirations and revolutionary movements. album, no. 1. n. p. [1916.] 32 l. ob. 8°. *onk title from cover. title also in turkish, german and french. the armenian question. [signed diplomatist.] (new review. london, 1895. 8°. v. 12, p. 62-66.) *da the armenian question. [signed an eastern statesman.] (contemporary review. london, 1880. 8°. v. 37, p. 533-547.) *da the armenian question in the house of commons. (new armenia. new york, 1916. f°. v. 8, p. 91-95, 108-109.) �*onk the armenian troubles and where the responsibility lies, by a correspondent. new york: [j. j. little & co.,] 1895. 35 p. 8°. bbh p.v.2 arpee, leon. armenia and the peace conference. (new armenia. new york, 1918. 4°. v. 10, p. 180-182.) �*onk barre, andré. l'esclavage blanc (arménie et macédoine). paris: l. michaud [1908]. 320 p. 12°. (in his: collection d'histoire contemporaine.) gih benjamin, samuel greene wheeler. the armenians and the porte. (atlantic monthly. boston, 1891. 8°. v. 67, p. 524-530.) *da benson, edward frederic. crescent and iron cross. london: hodder and stoughton, 1918. x, 268 p., 3 maps. 12°. btze ------new york: george h. doran co. [1918.] vii p., 1 l., 11-240 p., 2 maps. 12°. btze bishop, isabella lucy bird. the shadow of the kurd. (contemporary review. london, 1891. 8°. v. 59, p. 642-654, 819-835.) *da blunt, wilfrid scawen. turkish misgovernment. (nineteenth century. london, 1896. 8°. v. 40, p. 838-846.) *da bowles, thomas gibson. the cyprus convention. (fortnightly review. london, 1896. 8°. new series, v. 60, p. 626-634.) *da bratter, c. adolf. die armenische frage. berlin: concordia deutsche verlags-anstalt, g. m. b. h., 1915. 40 p. 8°. btze p.v.174 bryce (1. viscount), james bryce. the armenian question. (century. new york, 1895. 8°. new series, v. 29, p. 150-154.) *da ---die armenische frage in den letzten 20 jahren. (der christliche orient. westend-berlin, 1897. 4°. 1897, p. 481-505, 529-555.) �*oaa translated from his transcaucasia and ararat, london, 1896. ---the future of armenia. (contemporary review. london, 1918. 8°. v. 114, p. 604-611.) *da translated in la voix de l'arménie, année 2, p. 9-20, *onk. ---the future of asiatic turkey. (fortnightly review. london, 1878. 8°. new series, v. 23, p. 925-936.) *da reprinted in armenia, v. 3, no. 3, p. 3-20, jan., 1907, �*onk. ---transcaucasia and ararat, being notes of a vacation tour in the autumn of 1876. 4th ed. rev., with a supplementary chapter on the recent history of the armenian question. london: macmillan and co., 1896. xix, 526 p., 1 map, 1 pl. 8°. psk morton, oliver t. mr. james bryce on the armenian question. (dial. chicago, 1897. 4°. v. 22, p. 113-115.) *da buxton, harold. side-lights on the armenian question. (contemporary review. london, 1913. 8°. v. 104, p. 789-798.) *da buxton, noel. the russians in armenia. (nineteenth century. london, 1913. 8°. v. 74, p. 1357-1366.) *da cavendish, lucy c. f., lady. the peril of armenia. (contemporary review. london, 1913. 8°. v. 103, p. 33-39.) *da reprinted in armenia, v. 6, p. 229-234, �*onk. charmetant, felix. das sterbende armenien und das christliche europa. (der christliche orient. westend-berlin, 1897. 4°. 1897, p. 289-301, 337-349.) �*oaa clinch, bryan j. the christians under turkish rule. (american catholic quarterly review. philadelphia, 1896. 8°. v. 21, p. 399-409.) *da collet, c. d. the new crusade against the turk. (imperial and asiatic quarterly review. woking, 1895. 8°. new series, v. 9, p. 53-56.) *oaa contenson, ludovic, baron de. the movement for armenian emancipation. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 1, no. 8, p. 6-15.) �*onk ---la question arménienne. (comité de l'asie française. bulletin mensuel. paris, 1913. 4°. année 13, p. 8-16.) �bba ---les réformes en turquie d'asie; la question arménienne, la question syrienne. paris: plon-nourrit & cie., 1913. 3 p.l., vii, 135 p., 1 map. 8°. *onq coulon, henri. l'héroïsme des arméniens. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 290-295.) *onk der-hagopian, nishan. and what of armenia? (forum. new york, 1917. 8°. v. 58, p. 49-56.) *da dicey, edward. nubar pasha and our asian protectorate. (nineteenth century. london, 1878. 8°. v. 4, p. 548-559.) *da dillon, emile joseph. armenia: an appeal. (contemporary review. london, 1896. 8°. v. 69, p. 1-19.) *da ---armenia and the turk. poetic justice. russia's solution of the armenian problem. (contemporary review. london, 1914. 8°. v. 105, p. 126-128.) *da ---the condition of armenia. (contemporary review. london, 1895. 8°. v. 68, p. 153-189.) *da ---the fiasco in armenia. (fortnightly review. london, 1896. 8°. new series, v. 59, p. 341-358.) *da diplomatische aktenstücke zur armenischen frage. (der christliche orient. westend-berlin, 1897. 4°. 1897, p. 66-73, 173-175.) �*oaa doumergue, émile. ce que la suisse a fait pour l'arménie. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 532-543.) *onk dzotsikian, s. m. haigagank. [the armenians and their national aspirations.] providence, 1916. 2 p.l., 207 p. 12°. *onp the eastern question. (blackwood's edinburgh magazine. edinburgh, 1896. 8°. v. 160, p. 847-858.) *da einstein, lewis david. inside constantinople; a diplomatist's diary during the dardanelles expedition, april-september, 1915, by lewis einstein. london: j. murray, 1917. xvi, 291 p. 8°. btze engelhardt, édouard. l'angleterre et la russie à propos de la question arménienne. (revue de droit international et de législation comparée. bruxelles, 1883. 8°. tome 15, p. 146-159.) xba ---l'enquête arménienne. (revue française de l'étranger et des colonies. paris, 1888. 8°. tome 8, p. 31-34.) kaa england's policy in turkey. (fortnightly review. london, 1896. 8. new series, v. 59, p. 286-290.) *da geffcken, f. heinrich. turkish reforms and armenia. (nineteenth century. london, 1895. 8°. v. 38, p. 991-1000.) *da ghulam-us-saqlain. the mussalmans of india and the armenian question. (nineteenth century. london, 1895. 8°. v. 37, p. 926-939.) *da gladstone, william ewart. mr. gladstone on the armenian question. (christian literature. new york, 1896. 8°. v. 14, p. 337-348.) *da gobat, albert. protection of the armenians; appeal to sir edward grey. [yokohama, 1913?]. 1 broadside mounted. 4°. bbx repr.: japan gazette, june 23, 1913. bound with: d. a. apcar, what the german foreign minister has said. grabowsky, adolf. die armenische frage. (zeitschrift für politik. berlin, 1914. 8°. bd. 7, p. 699-715.) sea great britain.--foreign office. turkey. 1896, no. 2. correspondence relative to the armenian question, and reports from her majesty's consular officers in asiatic turkey. london: harrison and sons [1896]. xxiv, 339 p. f°. (great britain.--parliament. sessional papers. 1896, v. 95.) *sdd gulesian, m. h. england's hand in turkish massacres. (arena. boston, 1897. 8°. v. 17, p. 271-282.) *da harris, walter b. an unbiassed view of the armenian question. (blackwood's edinburgh magazine. edinburgh, 1895. 8°. v. 158, p. 483-492.) *da hart, albert bushnell. free armenia. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 2, p. 15-19.) *onk havemeyer, john c. the relation of the united states to armenia. an open letter to the president from j. c. havemeyer. [yonkers, 1896.] 15 p. 16°. bbh p.v.4 repr.: the new york times. haweis, hugh reginald. a persian on the armenian massacres. (new century review. london, 1897. 8°. v. 1, p. 70-76.) *da herrick, george f. armenians and american interests under russia. (american review of reviews. new york, 1916. 8°. v. 54, p. 80-84.) *da heyfelder, o. die armenier und ihre zukunft. (deutsche rundschau. wien, 1890. 8°. jahrg. 12, p. 343-351.) kaa hoberg, otto. die armenische frage und der weltkrieg. (nord und süd. breslau, 1915. 8°. bd. 154, p. 183-185.) *df houghton, louise seymour. the armenian uprising. (outlook. new york, 1904. 8°. v. 78, p. 369-372.) *da how to save alive the orphan children of martyrs in armenia. [new york: national armenian relief committee, 1896?] 27 p. 24°. bbh p.v.4 howard, mary. the worst sufferer of the war. what hope is there for the remnants of massacred armenia? (asia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 17, p. 433-439.) �*oaa howerth, ira w., translator. see tchobanian, archag. ismail kemal, bey. armenia and the armenians. (fortnightly review. new york, 1917. 4°. new series, v. 102, p. 494-509.) *da k armianskomu voprosu v turtsii. (sovremennyi mir. petrograd, 1915. 8°. 1915, no. 8, p. 144-149.) *qca concerning the armenian problem in turkey. kélékian, diran. la turquie et son souverain: la crise actuelle, ses origines, sa solution. (nineteenth century. london, 1896. 8°. v. 40, p. 689-698.) *da khalil khalid efendi. the armenian question. (imperial and asiatic quarterly review. woking, 1895. 8°. new series, v. 10, p. 469-472.) *oaa kovalevski, maksim. armiaiskii vopros. (viestnik evropy. petrograd, 1915. 8°. 1915, no. 6, p. 256-274.) *qca the armenian question. ---armianskii vopros. (viestnik evropy. st. petersburg, 1913. 8°. 1913, no. 12, p. 288-308.) *qca the armenian question. léart, marcel. the history of the armenian question. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4°. v. 7, p. 37-39.) �*onk ---la question arménienne à la lumière des documents. paris: a. challamel, 1913. 76 p., 1 map. 8°. *onq lecarpentier, g. la nouvelle question d'arménie. (revue des sciences politiques. paris, 1915. 8°. tome 34, p. 462-473.) sea leroy-beaulieu, anatole. les arméniens et la question arménienne; conférence faite par m. anatole leroy-beaulieu ... à l'hôtel des sociétés savantes, le 9 juin, 1896. paris: clamaron-graff, 1896. 40 p. 8°. bbx levine, isaac don. armenia resurrected. (asia. new york, 1919. f°. v. 19, p. 323-329.) �*oaa little, edward campbell. armenia and turkey. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 172-190, 239-248.) *onk reprinted from the congressional record, march 4, 1918. lord rosebery's second thoughts. [signed diplomaticus.] (fortnightly review. london, 1896. 8°. new series, v. 60, p. 615-625.) *da lynch, henry finnis blosse. the armenian question. (contemporary review. london, 1894. 8°. v. 65, p. 847-865; v. 66, p. 91-107, 435-456.) *da ---the armenian question: europe or russia? (contemporary review. london, 1896. 8°. v. 69, p. 270-276.) *da mcdermot, george. the great assassin and the christians of armenia. (catholic world. new york, 1897. 8°. v. 64, p. 295-305.) *da macler, frédéric. autour de l'arménie. paris: e. nourry, 1917. 3 p.l., iii-xvi, 326 p., 1 l. 12°. bbx ---the beginnings of the armenian movement. (new armenia. new york, 1916. f°. v. 8, p. 375-376.) �*onk mahdesian, arshag. armenia, her culture and aspirations. [worcester, mass., 1917.] 448-466 p. 8°. *onq repr.: journal of race development, v. 7, p. 448-466, qoa. reprinted in new armenia, v. 9, p. 181-183, 195-198, �*onk. malcolm, james aratoon. an armenian's cry for armenia. (nineteenth century. london, 1890. 8°. v. 28, p. 640-647.) *da ---a cry for armenia. (armenia. boston, 1907. 4°. v. 3, no. 8, p. 5-14.) �*onk mangasarian, m. m. armenia and turkey. (new armenia. new york, 1918. f°. v. 10, p. 24-25.) �*onk ---armenia's impending doom: our duty. (forum. new york, 1896. 8°. v. 21, p. 449-459.) *da manifestations franco-anglo-italiennes. pour l'arménie et la macédoine: mm. m. berthelot, charmetant.... préface de victor bérard, introduction de pierre quillard, rapport de francis de pressensé. paris: société nouvelle de librairie & d'édition, 1904. 3 p.l., vi-xxx, 319 p. 8°. bbx marbeau, édouard. l'arménie et l'opinion publique. (revue française de l'étranger et des colonies. paris, 1887. 8°. tome 6, p. 321-340.) kaa meyners d'estrey, guillaume henry jean, comte. caucase et arménie. avenir de la question d'orient. (annales de l'extrême orient. paris, 1886-87. 4°. tome 9, p. 193-211, 243-251, 267-277, 289-297.) *owb morgan, jacques jean marie de. armenia and europe. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 261-263.) �*onk ---l'arménie instrument de paix mondiale. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 626-631.) *onk ---essai sur les nationalités. paris: berger-levrault, 1917. xi, 136 p., 2 l. 8°. bbx and btze partie 1. le problème des nationalités. partie 2. les arméniens. ---the fate of the armenians. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 214-216.) �*onk ---la transcaucasie et l'arménie clés des indes. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 329-334.) *onk moritz, bernhard. die armenisch-kurdische frage. (grenzboten. berlin, 1913. 8°. jahrg. 72, bd. 3, p. 1-13.) *df mouchek yebiscobos (seropian). europe's duty to armenia. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4°. v. 6, p. 133-134.) �*onk murad, bey. la force et la faiblesse de la turquie. les coupables et les innocents. genève: j. mouille, 1897. 60 p. 2. ed. 8°. gic p.v.2 o'connor, thomas power. armenia and her future. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 245-247.) �*onk ---armenia: united and autonomous. (asia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 17, p. 649-650.) �*oaa o'shea, john j. unhappy armenia. (catholic world. new york, 1895. 8°. v. 60, p. 553-561.) *da our obligations to armenia. (macmillan's magazine. london, 1895. 8°. v. 71, p. 340-345.) *da pasdermadjian, g. why armenia should be free. armenia's rôle in the present war. (armenian herald. boston, 1918-19. 8°. v. 2, p. 20-28, 82-92.) *onk the peace congress and the armenian question. (armenia. boston, 1904. 4°. v. 1, no. 2, p. 39-44.) �*onk pears, sir edwin. turkey and the war. (contemporary review. london, 1914. 8°. v. 106, p. 584-597.) *da peterson, theodore. turkey and the armenian crisis. (catholic world. new york, 1895. 8°. v. 61, p. 665-676.) *da pignot, émile. l'arménie et la question des nationalités. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 145-149.) *onk pinon, rené. l'arménie et la capitulation maximaliste. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 137-144.) *onk ---aux neutres. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 281-289.) *onk ---l'avenir de la transcaucasie. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 201-208.) *onk ---d'où peut naître une arménie indépendante? (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 443-450.) *onk ---l'indépendance de l'arménie. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 863-870.) *onk ---un plaidoyer turc sur la question des massacres. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 513-521.) *onk ---la résurrection de l'asie occidentale. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 681-687.) *onk pressensé, francis de. the turks in armenia. (chautauquan. meadville, pa., 1896. 8°. v. 22, p. 591-594.) *da ---see also manifestations franco-anglo-italiennes. price, m. philips. the problem of asiatic turkey. (contemporary review. london, 1914. 8°. v. 105, p. 211-219.) *da probyn, john webb. armenia and the lebanon. london: eastern question association [1877?]. 19 p. 8°. (papers on the eastern question. no. 10.) bbh p.v.4 la question arménienne. les massacres d'adana. [signed un ancien diplomate.] (nouvelle revue. paris, 1909. 8°. série 3, tome 10, p. 3-16.) *dm quillard, pierre. see manifestations franco-anglo-italiennes. rafiüddin ahmad. a moslem view of abdul hamid and the powers. (nineteenth century. london, 1895. 8°. v. 38, p. 156-164.) *da ramsay, sir william mitchell. the armenian atrocities. (christian literature. new york, 1896. 8°. v. 14, p. 543-552.) *da rassam, hormuzd. the armenian difficulty. results of a local enquiry. (imperial and asiatic quarterly review. woking, 1895. 8°. new series, v. 9, p. 42-47.) *oaa ---the armenian question. (imperial and asiatic quarterly review. woking, 1895. 8°. new series, v. 10, p. 49-57.) *oaa robinson, emily j. the case of our ally armenia. (asiatic review. london, 1919. 8°. new series, v. 15, p. 253-256.) *oaa ---a new armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 323-325.) �*onk ---the regeneration of armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1918. f°. v. 10, p. 147-149.) �*onk ---the truth about armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 362-363.) �*onk rohrbach, paul. aus turan und armenien. studie zur russischen weltpolitik. (preussische jahrbücher. berlin, 1897. 8°. bd. 89, p. 53-82, 256-284, 431-469; bd. 90, p. 101-132, 280-310, 437-185.) *df ---a contribution to the armenian question. (forum. new york, 1900. 8°. v. 29, p. 481-492.) *da safir efendi. the armenian agitation. (imperial and asiatic quarterly review. woking, 1895. 8°. new series, v. 9, p. 48-52.) *oaa safrastian, a. s. the existing position in armenia. (asiatic review. london, 1915. 8°. v. 7, p. 271-278.) *oaa ---germany and armenia. (ararat. london, 1917-18. 8°. v. 5, p. 204-209, 254-259, 296-300, 338-342.) *onk ---russia and armenia. (ararat. london, 1917. 8°. v. 5, p. 154-160.) *onk salmoné, h. anthony. the real rulers of turkey. (nineteenth century. london, 1895. 8°. v. 37, p. 719-733.) *da santini, felice. la questione armena e gli armeni in turchia. (nuova antologia. roma, 1905. 8°. serie 4, v. 119, p. 614-621.) nna scatcherd, f. r. armenia's true interests and sympathies in the great war. (asiatic review. london, 1915. 8°. series 4, v. 6, p. 319-324.) *oaa ---the armenian question. (asiatic review. london, 1914. 8°. series 4, v. 4, p. 319-325.) *oaa sevasly, miran. the armenian question. (new review. london, 1889. 8°. v. 1, p. 305-316.) *da shahid bey, sadik. islam, turkey and armenia, and how they happened. by sadik shahid bey. turkish mysteries unveiled. [st. louis: c. b. woodward co., cop. 1898.] 222 p., 1 l. 12°. *onq siebert, wilbur henry. independence for armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 337-338.) �*onk ---the justice of granting autonomy to armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1916. f°. v. 8, p. 355-357.) �*onk stein, robert. armenia must have a european governor. (arena. boston, 1895. 8°. v. 12, p. 368-390.) *da stevenson, francis s. armenia. (contemporary review. london, 1895. 8°. v. 67, p. 201-209.) *da stride, w. k. the immediate future of armenia: a suggestion. (forum. new york, 1896. 8°. v. 22, p. 308-320.) *da symonds, arthur g. armenia. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4°. v. 6, p. 266-269.) �*onk tchobanian, archag. armenia's loyalty to the allies. (armenian herald. boston, 1918. 8°. v. 1, p. 573-576.) *onk ---the armenian question and europe. [translated from the french by ira w. howerth.] (international monthly. burlington, vt., 1902. 8°. v. 5, p. 149-165.) *da reprinted in armenia, v. 1, no. 1, p. 19-35, �*onk. thoumaian, g. the hour has struck. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 165-167.) �*onk ---the last chance. (contemporary review. london, 1913. 8°. v. 103, p. 797-803.) *da ---turkey and armenia. (contemporary review. new york, 1918. 8°. v. 114, p. 188-194.) *da tonapetean, p. russian and british policy towards armenia. (ararat. london, 1915-17. 8°. v. 2, p. 374-385, 419-428; v. 3, p. 162-170, 320-327, 458-465; v. 4, p. 23-32.) *onk toynbee, arnold joseph. the position of armenia. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 307-308.) �*onk the two eastern questions. [signed w.] (fortnightly review. london, 1896. 8°. new series, v. 59, p. 193-208.) *da upton, edgar w. can armenia be kept alive as a nation? (armenia. boston, 1907. 4°. v. 3, no. 5, p. 12-17.) �*onk varandian, mikael. armenia and the armenian question. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 294-296.) �*onk ---l'arménie et la question arménienne. avec une préface de victor bérard. laval: g. kavanagh et cie. [pref. 1917.] 115 p. 12°. bbx varaztad, puzant. the armenian question. (armenia. new york, 1913. 4°. v. 6, p. 365-368.) �*onk vernes, maurice. l'avenir de l'arménie et de l'asie occidentale. (la voix de l'arménie. paris, 1918. 8°. année 1, p. 522-531.) *onk villari, luigi. the anarchy in the caucasus. a new phase of the armenian question. (fortnightly review. london, 1906. 8°. new series, v. 79, p. 357-367.) *da vorontzov-dashkov, i. i. iz zapisok. (golos minuvshago. moscow, 1916. 8°. 1916, no. 9, p. 139-147.) *qca memoirs. watson, william. the purple east. a series of sonnets on england's desertion of armenia. london: john lane, 1896. 48 p., 1 pl. 3. ed. 12°. ncm ------chicago: stone & kimball, 1896. 49 p. 16°. ncm wheeler, everett pepperrell. armenian independence. (new armenia. new york, 1917. f°. v. 9, p. 275-276.) �*onk williams, aneurin. armenia: is it the end? (contemporary review. new york, 1915. 8°. v. 108, p. 555-561.) *da williams, william llewelyn. armenian aspirations. (new armenia. new york, 1916. f°. v. 8, p. 359-361.) �*onk reprinted from his armenia: past and present, p. 162-174. ---the modern problem. (new armenia. new york, 1916. f°. v. 8, p. 341-343.) �*onk reprinted from his armenia: past and present, p. 147-161. zarzecki, s. la question kurdo-arménienne. (revue de paris. paris, 1914. 8°. 1914, v. 2, p. 872-894.) *dm armenians in other countries avdyeyev. armiane v avstro-vengrii. (kavkazskii viestnik. tiflis, 1900. 8°. 1900, no. 1, [part 2,] p. 102-105; no. 4, [part 2,] p. 79-92.) *qca the armenians in austria and hungary. ---armiane v rumynii. (kavkazskii viestnik. tiflis, 1901. 8°. 1901, no. 4, [part 2,] p. 44-51.) *qca the armenians in rumania. bedikian, dikran m. the armenian-american and the question of immigration. (armenia. boston, 1905. 4°. v. 2, no. 2-3, p. 56-62.) �*onk bent, j. theodore. notes on the armenians in asia minor. (manchester geographical society. journal. manchester, 1890. 8°. v. 6, p. 220-222.) kaa berberov, r. i. polozhenie armian v rossii. (russkaia mysl'. moscow, 1905. 8°. 1905, no. 11, [part 2,] p. 145-158.) *qca the position of the armenians in russia. bischoff, ferdinand. urkunden zur geschichte der armenier in lemberg. hrsg. von ferdinand bischoff. (archiv für kunde österreichischer geschichts-quellen. wien, 1865. 8°. bd. 32, p. 1-155.) faa cons, emma. armenian exiles in cyprus. (contemporary review. london, 1896. 8°. v. 70, p. 888-895.) *da contenson, ludovic de. les arméniens du caucase. (correspondant. paris, 1905. 8°. nouvelle série, v. 185, p. 543-557.) *dm goehlert, vinzent. die armenier in europa und insbesondere in oesterreich-ungarn. (ausland. stuttgart, 1886. 4°. v. 59, p. 489-491.) �kaa gulesian, m. h. the armenian refugees. (arena. boston, 1897. 8°. v. 17, p. 652-662.) *da khakhanof, alexandre. la situation des arméniens dans le royaume de géorgie. (journal asiatique. paris, 1898. 8°. série 9, v. 11, p. 337-344.) *oaa marshall, annie c. the armenians in america. (armenia. boston, 1907. 4°. v. 3, no. 6, p. 36-43.) �*onk ---a visit to the armenian church and to ter-maroukian's studio at paris. (armenia. new york, 1912. 4°. v. 6, p. 7-9.) �*onk mouchek yebiscobos (seropian). americahai daretsoitse, 1912. [armeno-american year-book, 1912.] boston, [1911]. 48, 383 p. 8°. *onk ---manchestry hai kaghoutu. [the armenian colony in manchester, england.] boston, 1911. 13, 270 p., 1 l., 9 pl. 12°. *onr ob armianakh, starinnykh poselentsakh pol'shi. (viestnik evropy. moscow, 1825. 8°. 1825, no. 7-8, p. 111-117.) *qca the armenians in poland. pavlovich, m. rossiia i armianskii narod. (sovremennik. st. petersburg, 1913. 8°. 1913, no. 11, p. 162-179.) *qca russia and the armenian people. pisemski, a. astrakhanskie armiane. pz putevykh zapisok. 16 p. (biblioteka dlia chteniia. st. petersburg, 1858. 8°. 1858, v. 5.) *qca the armenians of astrakhan. sazonov, a. n. nieskol'ko tsyfr ob armianakh na kavkazie. (russkaia mysl'. moscow, 1896. 8°. 1896, no. 9, [part 2,] p. 58-73; no. 10, [part 2,] p. 159-173.) *qca statistics of the armenians in the caucasus. seropian, mouchek. see mouchek yebiscobos (seropian). seth, mesrovb j. history of the armenians in india, from the earliest times to the present day. london: luzac & co., 1897. xxii p., 1 l., 190 p., 1 fac. 12°. *onr tchobanian, archag. la france et le peuple arménien. paris: imprimerie berger-levrault, 1917. 40 p. 8°. *onr thoumaian, g. the armenians in egypt. (new armenia. new york, 1918. 4°. v. 10, p. 186-188.) �*onk ---the armenians in india. (ararat. london, 1918. 8°. v. 5, p. 320-325.) *onk index a a., d. g. armyanski vopros v turtzii, 73. abaza, v. a. istoriya armenii, 21. abbott, k. e. notes of tour in armenia, 7. abbott, lyman. armenian question, 73. abbruzzese, antonio: le relazioni fra l'impero romano e l'armenia, a tempo di augusto, 21. le relazioni fra l'impero romano e l'armenia a tempo di tiberio, 21. le relazioni politiche fra l'impero romano e l'armenia da claudio a traiano, 21. abdullah, séraphin. vérification d'une date, 21. abdullah, séraphin, and f. macler. études sur la miniature arménienne, 20. abich, hermann: der ararat, 46. die besteigung des ararat, 7. ein cyclus fundamental barometrischer höhenbestimmungen auf dem armenischen hochlande, 46. die fulguriten im andesit des kleinen ararat, 46. geologische skizzen aus transkaukasien, 46. hauteurs absolues du système de l'ararat, 7. [observations sur le mont ararat], 46. sur les ruines d'ani, 18. über die lage der schneegränze und die gletscher der gegenwart im kaukasus, 46. ueber das steinsalz und seine geologische stellung im russischen armenien, 46. vergleichende chemische untersuchungen der wasser des caspischen meeres, 7. vergleichende grundzüge der geologie des kaukasus wie der armenischen und nordpersischen gebirge, 46. zur geologie des südöstlichen kaukasus, 46. abuhaiatian, hagop. pastor hagop abuhaiatian von urfa, 41. acogh'ig de daron, étienne. histoire universelle, 40. adadourian, haig. armenian coat of arms, 18. adana massacres, 36. adger, j. b. my life and times, 42. adjarian, h.: classification des dialectes arméniens, 47. lautlehre des van-dialekts, 47. s. mesropi ev krerou kiudi badmoutian aghpiurnern ou anonts knnoutiunu, 47. adontz, n. armeniya v epokhu yustiniana, 21. aganoon, a. i. dissertation on antiquity of armenian language, 47. agathangelos: agathange. histoire du règne de tiridate, 21. agathangelus neu hrsg. von p. de lagarde, 21. badmoutiun, 21. agop, joannes: grammatica latina, armenice explicata, 47. puritas haygica, 48. puritas linguæ armenicæ, 48. aharonian, avedis: armenian academy at venice, 72. armenische erzählungen, 59. guteton da lakto, 60. honor, 60. materi; razskazy, 60. mother armenia, 62. vers la liberté, 60. visit to st. lazare, 72. ainsworth, w. f. travels and researches in asia minor, 7. ajcatur. armena fabelo, 60. akulian, aram. einverleibung armenischer territorien durch byzanz im xi. jahrhundert, 21. alaux, l. p. armenian schools, 7. alelouia yerousaghem, 62. alishanian, gheuont: armenian popular songs, 57. deux descriptions arméniennes des lieux saints de palestine, 62. the lily of shavarshan, 57. sissouan, 8. table bibliographique, 5. topographie de la grande arménie, 8. zartangark avedarani mlké takouhuoh, 20. allen, t. g., and w. l. sachtleben. across asia, 8. alphabetum armenum, 48. american armenian relief fund. cry of armenia, 36. american board of commissioners for foreign missions. historical sketch of missions ... in asia minor and armenia, 72. american committee for armenian and syrian relief: more material for sermon on bible lands, 36. national test of brotherhood, 36. american sacred songs, 65. amfiteatrov, a. v. armeniya i rim, 21. anderson, antony. hovsep pushman, 41. anderson, william. notes on geography, 31. andreasian, dikran. comment un drapeau sauva quatre mille arméniens, 36. apcar, d. a.: betrayed armenia, 36. in his name, 36. on cross of europe's imperialism, armenia crucified, 36. peace and no peace, 36. peace problem, 36. russian occupation of armenia, 73. truth about armenian massacres, 37. turkish constitution and armenia, 22. what german foreign minister has said, 73. apellian, aleksandir. boedi yrazi, 60. aptowitzer, v.: beiträge zur mosaischen rezeption im armenischen recht, 45. zur geschichte des armenischen rechtes, 45. arachin tasakirk mangants, 48. arakélian, hambartzoum: contes et nouvelles, 60. les rapports des arméniens avec l'occident, 22. ararat, 7. der ararat, 8. archaeologische, bemerkungen über armenien, 18. argyll (8. duke), g. d. campbell. our responsibilities for turkey, 37. arisdaguès de lasdiverd. histoire d'arménie, 22. armenia. letter from duke of argyll, &c., 37. armenia and her claims, 73. armenia and powers, 73. armenia rediviva, 73. armenian aspirations and revolutionary movements, 73. armenian church: garkavorootun hasaragatz aghotitz, 68. liturgia armena trasportata in italiano, 68. liturgie de la messe arménienne, 68. rituale armenorum, 68. armenian deportations, 37. armenian documents, 37. armenian herald, 7. armenian huntchakist party.--central committee. memorial, 22. armenian literature, 60. armenian massacre, 37. armenian people and ottoman government, 22. armenian poems, 57. armenian question, 73. armenian question in house of commons, 73. armenian relief association. bulletin, 7. armenian troubles, 73. armenians, 22. armenians and eastern question, 8. armenians taking stock of their national church, 68. armenische bibliothek, 60. die armenischen unruhen, 22. l'armeno-veneto, 22. arnot, robert. armenian literature, 56. arpee, leon: armenia and peace conference, 73. armenian awakening, 68. arzanov, d.: istoricheski vzglyad na armeniyu i georgiyu, 22. zamyechaniya ob armenii i armyanakh, 22. arzruni, andreas. reise nach süd-kaukasien, 8. asbarez, 7. asgian, g.: la chiesa armena e l'arianesimo, 68. la s. sede e la nazione armena, 68. aslan, kévork. études historiques sur le peuple arménien, 22. assassination of armenia, 37. assises d'antioche, 62. les atrocités en arménie, 37. aucher, g. bollettino: armeno, 5. augustin badjétsi. itinéraire, 62. aukerian, haroutiun: brief account of mechitaristican society, 72. dictionary english and armenian, 48. dictionnaire abrégé français-arménien, 48. grammar armenian and english, 48. grammar english and armenian, 48. aukerian, haroutiun, and g. g. n. byron, 6. baron byron. grammar, armenian and english, 48. aukerian, mëgërdich, vartabed. liagadar vark ev vgayapanoutiun srpots, 68. avakian, hovhannes, and bedros hovnanian, editors. koharnir hai kraganoutian, 62. avdyeyev: armyane v avstro-vengrii, 78. armyane v rumynii, 78. avedikian, gabriele, khatchadroh surmelian and mëgërdich aukerian. nor parkirk haigasyian lezui, 48. avidaranian, h., translator. jarakaitk arevelian, 65. avtaliantz, john, baron: authors of armenian grammars, 48. covenant of ali, 22. memoir of hindu colony in ancient armenia, 22. memoir of life and writings of st. nierses clajensis, 58. note on origin of armenian era, 22. on invention of armenian alphabet, 48. on laws and law-books of armenians, 45. short memoir of mechithar ghosh, 41. singular narrative of armenian king arsaces, 22. ayvazian hovhannes, 20. azad, 7. azhderian, antranig. turk and land of haig, 8. azk, 7. b b., e. armenian wedding, 42. bachmann, walter. kirchen und moscheen in armenien, 18. baker, g. p. ascent of ararat, 8. banaser, 7. banks, e. j. to summit of mount ararat, 8. banse, ewald. die türkei, 8. barby, henry. au pays de l'épouvante, l'arménie martyre, 37. barkley, h. c. ride through asia minor and armenia, 42. baronian, h. h. maitre balthasar, 60. barre, andré. l'esclavage blanc (arménie et macédoine), 73. barrès, maurice. tigran yergat, 41. barrileah, a. h. ara keghetsig badmagan vibasanoutiun, 60. barton, j. l.: armenian qualifications for success, 42. daybreak in turkey, 8. euphrates college, 72. what america has done for armenians, 72. who are armenians? 8. basil. oraison funèbre de baudouin, 63. basmadjian, k. j.: armenia, home of grecian architecture, 20. histoire moderne des arméniens, 22. léon vi, 30. les livres de médecine chez les arméniens, 45. les lusignans, 22. note on van inscriptions, 53. une nouvelle inscription arméniaque, 53. une nouvelle inscription vannique, 53. la plus ancienne inscription arménienne, 53. la presse arménienne, 5. quelles étaient les frontières de l'arménie ancienne?, 8. quelques observations sur l'inscription de kelischin, 53. souvenir d'ani. 8. la stèle de zouarthnotz, 53. survey of ancient armenian history, 22. baumgartner, adolf. ueber das buch "die chrie," 48. baumstark, anton. die christlichen literaturen des orients, 56. bayan, g. armenian proverbs, 63. baynes, n. h. rome and armenia, 22. bedickian, s. v. how armenians keep new year and christmas, 42. bedikian, d. m. armenian-american and question of immigration, 78. bedrossian, matthias. new dictionary armenian-english, 48. belck, waldemar: archäologische forschungen in armenien, 18. armenien im altertum, 18. armenische expedition, 18. aus den berichten über die armenische expedition, 18. beiträge zur alten geographie, 8. eine in russisch-armenien neu aufgefundene, wichtige chaldische inschrift, 53. die keil-inschriften in der tigris-quellgrotte, 53. die kelischin-stele, 53. mittheilungen über armenische streitfragen, 53. das reich der mannäer, 18. die rusas-stele von topsanä, 18. die steleninschrift rusas' ii, 55. untersuchungen und reisen in transkaukasien, 18. belck, waldemar, and f. f. k. lehmann-haupt: bericht über die armenische forschungsreise, 18. bericht über eine forschungsreise durch armenien, 18. chaldische forschungen, 53. inuspuas, sohn des menuas, 53. mittheilung über weitere ergebnisse ihrer studien an den neugefundenen armenischen keilinschriften, 53. ein neuer herrscher von chaldia, 53. reisebriefe von der armenischen expedition, 18. über die kelishin-stelen, 53. ueber neuerlich aufgefundene keilinschriften in russisch und türkisch armenien, 53. vorläufiger bericht über die im jahre 1898 erzielten ergebnisse einer forschungsreise durch armenien, 18. weiterer bericht über die armenische expedition, 18. zu jensen's bemerkungen betreffs der sitze der chalder, 54. zweiter vorbericht über eine forschungsreise in armenien, 18. belin, f. a. extrait du journal d'un voyage de paris à erzeroum, 8. bell, m. s. around and about armenia, 8. bellaud. essai sur la langue arménienne, 48. benjamin, s. g. w. armenians and porte, 73. benoit, lucien. les massacres d'adana, 37. benson, e. f. crescent and iron cross, 73. bent, j. t.: notes on armenians in asia minor, 78. travels amongst armenians, 8. berberov, r.: die armenier, 22. polozheniye armyan v rossii, 78. bertin, george. abridged grammars of languages of cuneiform inscriptions, 53. beshgeturian, azniv. arachnort anklierin lezvin, 48. beshigtashlian, mëgërdich. kertouadzner ou jarer, 57. bibliotheca hagiographica orientalis, 5. bibliothèque nationale, paris. catalogue des manuscrits arméniens, 5. bicknell, e. p. red cross and red crescent, 23. bierbaum, p. w. streifzüge im kaukasus und in hocharmenien, 8. binder, henry. au kurdistan, 8. bischoff, ferdinand: das alte recht der armenier in lemberg, 45. urkunden zur geschichte der armenier in lemberg, 79. bishop, i. l. b. shadow of kurd, 73. bittner, maximilian. der vom himmel gefallene brief christi, 63. black, g. f. gypsies of armenia, 8. blackwell, a. s.: armenian poems, 57. armenian poet: siamanto, 59. armenian virtues, 42. battle of avarair, 23. bibliography, 5. progress in armenian church, 68. blau, otto: ueber-karta, -kerta in ortsnamen, 48. vom urumia-see nach dem van-see, 8. bliss, e. m.: armenia, 8. turkey and armenian atrocities, 37. turkey and armenian atrocities; a reign of terror, 37. bluhm, julius. routen im türkischen armenien, 8. blunt, w. s. turkish misgovernment, 73. bodleian library, oxford university. catalogue of armenian mss., 5. bogdanov, artemy. memoirs of life of artemi, 23. bolton, h. c. armenian folklore, 44. bonney, t. g. notes on some rocks from ararat, 46. boré, eugène: arménie, 8. de l'arménie, 68. élégie sur la prise de constantinople, 57. bourgeois, h. la grammaire arménienne de denis de thrace, 49. bowles, t. g. cyprus convention, 73. boyajian, z. c.: armenian legends and poems, 20, 57. raffi, 61. brant, james: journey through part of armenia, 8. notes of journey through part of kurdistan, 8. bratter, c. a. die armenische frage, 73. bresnitz von sydacoff, p. f. abdul hamid und die christenverfolgungen in der türkei, 37. brézol, georges. les turcs ont passé la, 37. british museum.--department of oriental printed books and mss. catalogue of armenian mss., 5. brockelmann, karl: ein assyrisches lehnwort im armenischen, 48. die griechischen fremdwörter im armenischen, 48. ein syrischer text in armenischer umschrift, 48. brockelmann, karl, and others. geschichte des christlichen litteraturen des orients, 56. brosset, m. f.: activité littéraire des géorgiens et des arméniens, 5. analyse critique de la vseobshchaya istoriya de vardan, 41. de quelques inscriptions arméniennes, 53. des historiens arméniens, 23. détails sur le droit public arménien, 45. études sur l'historien arménien mkhithar, 23. études sur l'historien arménien oukhtanès, 23. examen critique de quelques passages de la description de la grande-arménie, 8. examen d'un passage de l'historien arménien oukhtanès, 23. explication de diverses inscriptions géorgiennes, arméniennes et grecques, 53. extrait du manuscrit arménien ... relatif au calendrier géorgien, 63. listes chronologiques des princes et métropolites de la siounie, 23. monographie des monnaies arméniennes, 20. note sur les inscriptions arméniennes de bolghari, 53. note sur le village arménien d'acorhi, 9. notice historique sur les couvents arméniens de haghbat et de sanahin, 68. notice des manuscrits arméniens, 23. notice sur le couvent arménien de kétcharhous, 68. notice sur le diacre arménien zakaria ghabonts, 41. notice sur edchmiadzin, 9. notice sur l'historien arménien thoma ardzrouni, 23. notice sur un manuscrit arménien, 45. notice sur la plus ancienne inscription arménienne connue, 53. le prétendu masque de fer arménien, 41. projet d'une collection d'historiens arméniens inédits, 23. rapport sur diverses inscriptions, 54. rapport ... sur un manuscrit arménien, 64. rapport sur la 2de partie du voyage du p. sargis dchalaliants, 9. rapports sur un voyage archéologique dans la géorgie et dans l'arménie, 9. revue de la littérature historique de l'arménie, 23. samouel d'ani, 34. sur les couvents arméniens d'haghbat et de sanahin, 68. sur deux rédactions arméniennes ... de la légende des saints baralam-varlaam et ioasaph-iosaphat, 63. sur l'histoire ancienne de l'arménie, 23. sur l'histoire composée ... par thoma ardzrouni, 23. variétés arméniennes, 48. brosset, m. f., and p. a. jaubert. description des principaux fleuves de la grande-arménie, 9. brosset, m. f., and e. kunik. notice sur deux inscriptions cunéiformes, 54. broussali, jean. l'arménie, 9. browne, j. g. tartars and armenians, 23. brunhes, jean. le rôle ancien de l'arménie, 23. bryce (1. viscount), james bryce: armenian massacres, 37. armenian question, 73. die armenische frage, 74. ascent of ararat, 9. future of armenia, 74. future of asiatic turkey, 74. on armenia, 9. transcaucasia and ararat, 9, 74. budushcheye ustroistvo armenii, 23. bugge, sophus: beiträge zur etymologischen erläuterung der armenischen sprache, 48. etruskisch und armenisch, 48. buhse. vorläufiger botanischer bericht über meine reise durch einen theil armeniens, 46. bunyan, john. krisdianosin ou krisdinein jamportoutiuni, 65. burchardi, gustav: raffi, 61. der zweifel und das böse, 24. burgin, g. b. armenian at home, 42. buss, kate. archag tchobanian, 59. buxton, harold. side-lights on armenian question, 74. buxton, noel. russians in armenia, 74. buxton, noel, and harold buxton. travel and politics in armenia, 9, 24. byron (6. baron), g. g. n. byron. lord byron's armenian exercises and poetry, 48. c c., e. armenian folk songs, 44. calfa, ambroise. dictionnaire arménien-français, 49. calfa, corène. arschag ii, 60. cappelletti, giuseppe. l'armenia, 24. carlier, émilie: au milieu des massacres, 37. en arménie, 24. carrière, auguste: inscriptions d'un reliquaire arménien, 54. la légende d'abgar, 31. la rose d'or, 30. un version arménienne de l'histoire d'asséneth, 63. cavendish, l. c. f., lady. peril of armenia, 74. cayol, henri. littérature arménienne, 56. chahan de cirbied, jacques: détails sur la situation actuelle du royaume de perse, 24. grammaire de la langue arménienne, 49. mémoire sur le gouvernement ... des anciens arméniens, 24. chakijian, ephrem. badmoutiun hahots, 24. chakmakjian, h. h.: armenia's place, 24. armeno-american letter writer, 49. badmoutiun hahots, 24. chalatianz, bagrat. die armenische literatur des 19. jahrhunderts, 56. chambers, l. p. massacre of armenia, 37. chamchian, michael: badmoutiun hahots, 24. history of armenia, 24. chanazarian, g. v. la littérature arménienne, 56. chant populaire sur la captivité de léon, 58. chantre, b. a travers l'arménie russe, 9. chantre, ernest: l'ararat, 9. les arméniens, 24. de beyrouth à tiflis, 9. mission scientifique dans la haute mésopotamie, 9. premiers aperçus sur les peuples de l'arménie russe, 9. rapport sur une mission scientifique dans l'asie occidentale, 9. chantres. reisen am ararat, 9. charmetant, felix. das sterbende armenien und das christliche europa, 74. charpentier, jarl. kleine beiträge zur armenischen wortkunde, 49. chesney, f. r. russo-turkish campaigns of 1828 and 1829, 24. chesney, g. m. winter campaign in armenia, 24. chikhachov, p. a.: asie mineure, 9, 46. reisen in kleinasien und armenien, 9. sur l'orographie et la constitution géologique de quelques parties de l'asie mineure et de l'arménie, 46. childs, w. j. across asia minor, 9. chirol, sir valentine. a great armenian [nubar pasha], 41. chirvanzadê, pseud. of alexandre movissian. la possédée, 60. chopin, j. de l'origine des peuples habitant la province d'arménie, 9. ciakciak, emmanuele. dizionario italiano-armeno-turco, 49. cilicia, 7. clark, william. armenian history, 24. clinch, b. j. christians under turkish rule, 74. collet, c. d. new crusade against turk, 74. collins, f. b., translator: armenian folk-tales, 44. vacant yard, 60. compendiose notizie sulla congregazione de monaci armeni mechitaristi, 72. condition of armenia, 9. cons, emma. armenian exiles in cyprus, 79. constantinople massacre, 37. constitution nationale des arméniens, 24. contenson, ludovic, baron de: les arméniens du caucase, 79. movement for armenian emancipation, 74. la question arménienne, 74. les réformes en turquie d'asie, 74. contes & chants arméniens, 58. conybeare, f. c.: armenia and armenians, 10. barlaam and josaphat legend, 63. collation with ancient armenian versions of greek text of aristotle's categories, 65. collation of old armenian version of plato's laws, 65. on ancient armenian version of plato, 65. on old armenian version of plato's apology, 65. on old armenian version of plato's laws, 65. conybeare, f. c., and others. story of ahikar, 63. coulon, henri: l'art et l'arménie, 20. l'héroïsme des arméniens, 74. cradle of history, 24. creagh, james. armenians, koords and turks, 10. cuinet, vital. la turquie d'asie, 10. cumont, franz, and eugène cumont. voyage d'exploration archéologique dans le pont et la petite arménie, 18. curtis, w. e. around black sea, 10. d dadian, boghos. l'église d'arménie, 68. dadian, m. b. la société arménienne contemporaine, 42. daghbaschean, h. gründung des bagratidenreiches, 24. dale, darley. armenia and armenians, 10. dalyell, r. a. o. earthquake of erzerûm, 10. damadian, mihran: furfurcar, 58. ramgavaroutiun, 63. damas, andré de. coup d'oeil sur l'arménie, 10. dan, demeter. glaube und gebräuche der armenier bei der geburt, hochzeit und beerdigung, 42. dante alighieri. asdouadzahin gadagirkoutiun, 66. dashian, hagopos, vartabed: vartabedutune arakelotz anvaveragan ganonatz madiane, 63. zur abgar-sage, 63. davey, richard: sultan and his subjects, 10. turkey and armenia, 10. davoud zadour de melik schahnazar. notices sur l'état actuel de la perse, en persan, en arménien et en français, 40. day of peril of armenian church, 68. de kay, charles. suppression of faith, 68. delatre, louis. place de l'arménien parmi les langues indo-européennes, 49. denis of thrace. grammaire ... en grec, en arménien et en français, 49. der-hagopian, nishan: persecuted armenia, 37. what of armenia, 74. des coursons, r. de, vicomte. la rebellion arménienne, 24. desimoni, cornelio. actes passés en 1271, 1274 et 1279 à l'aïas, 24. deutsche morgenländische gesellschaft. armenisch, 5. develay, albert. autour des lacs de van et d'ourmiah, 10. deyrolle, théophile. voyage dans le lazistan et l'arménie, 10. dicey, edward. nubar pasha and our asian protectorate, 74. dillon, e. j.: armenia: an appeal, 74. armenia and turk, 74. condition of armenia, 74. fiasco in armenia, 74. dingelstedt, v. armenians, 10. diplomatische aktenstücke zur armenischen frage, 74. diran, a. etchmiadzin, 10. dirohyan, h. v.: hamarod tasakirk unthanour badmoutian, 40. ousoumn pnagan ev pnapanagan kidoutiants, 45. dirr, a. praktisches lehrbuch der ostarmenischen sprache, 49. dispersion of armenian nation, 10. distribution of armenian nation, 10. distribution des prix du collège arménien de paris, 42. dolens, noël. ce que l'on voit en arménie, 10. dolens, noël, and a. khatch. histoire des anciens arméniens, 24. dominian, leon. peoples of asiatic turkey, 10. doumergue, émile. ce que la suisse a fait pour l'arménie, 74. dowling, t. e. armenian church, 68. dubois de montpéreux, frédéric. voyage autour du caucase, 10. duchesne, l. m. o. l'arménie chrétienne dans l'histoire ecclésiastique d'eusèbe, 68. dulaurier, édouard: les arméniens en autriche, en russie et en turquie, 42. les chants populaires, 58. commerce, tarif des douanes et condition civile des étrangers dans le royaume de la petite arménie, 10. considérations sur les plus anciennes origines de l'histoire arménienne, 24. cosmogonie des perses d'après eznig, 63. ethnographie de l'arménie. 10. étude sur l'organisation politique, religieuse et administrative du royaume de la petite-arménie, 10. études sur les chants historiques, 58. l'histoire des croisades d'après les chroniques arméniennes, 40. histoire, dogmes, traditions et liturgie de l'église arménienne, 68-69. littérature arménienne, 25. les mongols d'après les historiens arméniens, 40. recherches sur la chronologie arménienne, 25. dwight, h. g. o.: armenian traditions about mt. ararat, 18. catalogue of all works in armenian of date earlier than 17th century, 5. christianity in turkey, 69. kéraganoutun ankghiaren yev hahérén, 49. dwight, h. g. o., and elias riggs. orthography of armenian and turkish proper names, 49. dwight, w. b. american bank notes and dr. seropyan, 45. dzotsikian, s. m.: arnutiun, 42. aus ma ani kaghakin, 18. debi pergutiun, 37. haigagank, 74. e eastern question, 74. ebersolt, jean. les anciennes églises d'arménie, 69. ecclesiae armeniacae canones selecti, 69. edschmiatsin, 10. edwards, b. b. ascent of mount ararat, 10. egli, emil. feldzüge in armenien, 25. einstein, l. d.: armenian massacres, 37. inside constantinople, 74. eliot, sir c. n. e. turkey in europe, 25. elisha, vartabed: eliseo, storico armeno del quinto secolo, 25. histoire de vartan, 25. history of vartan, 25. soulèvement national de l'arménie chrétienne, 25. yeghishei vartabedi vasn vartanah, 25. emerson, frederick. mdavor ev kravor touapanoutiun, 66. émin, j. b. recherches sur le paganisme arménien, 25. engelhardt, édouard: l'angleterre et la russie à propos de la question arménienne, 74. l'enquête arménienne, 74. la turquie et le tanzimat, 25. england's policy in turkey, 74. ephraim the syrian: evangelii concordantis expositio, 66. srpouin yéprémi, 66. epiphanius of cyprus. ekthesiz protoklesion patriarchon te kai metropoliton, 69. eritassard hayastan, 7. erk-ura, 10. erkér ou yéghanagnér, 66. eschavannes, e. d': les families d'orient, 25. les rois d'arménie au xive siècle, 25. esoff, g. d'. aperçu de l'étude de la langue arménienne en europe, 49. etesioh sosgali tebkl yev oghperkoutiun godoradzin etesioh, 37. eusebius pamphilus, bishop of caesarea. eusebii pamphili caesariensis episcopi chronicon, 25. excursions in armenia, 10. f fa'iz al-husain: l'arménie martyre, 38. martyred armenia, 38. die türkenherrschaft und armeniens schmerzensschrei, 38. faustus of byzant. bibliothèque historique, 25. fénélon, f. de. les aventures de télémaque, 66. ferriman, z. d. young turks and truth about holocaust at adana, 38. filler, ernst. quaestiones de leontii armenii historia, 25. finck, f. n.: katalog der armenischen handschriften, 5. kleinere mittelarmenische texte, 34. lehrbuch der neuostarmenischen litteratursprache, 49. fischer, hans. das kloster des hl. thaddäus, 69. flandin, eugène: souvenirs de voyage en arménie, 10. ueber altund neuarmenien, 10. fonton, félix. la russie dans l'asie-mineure, 25. forel, f. a. les échantillons de limon dragués en 1879 dans les lacs d'arménie, 46. fortescue, e. f. k. armenian church, 69. foy, willy. zur xerxes-inschrift von van, 54. france.--direction de commerce extérieur. rapports commerciaux, 43. france.--ministère des affaires étrangères. documents diplomatiques, 1897, 25-26. die franzoesischen gelbbücher über armenien, 26. freshfield, d. w.: early ascents of ararat, 10. travels in central caucasus and bashan, 10. fresneaux, marcel. trait d'union. arménie-france, 26. friederichsen, m. h.: die grenzmarken des europäischen russlands, 11. russisch armenien, 11. friend of armenia, 7. furneaux, henry. roman relations with parthia and armenia, 26. g gabrielian, m. c. armenia, 26. gabrielian, m. s. serahin aroghzapanoutiun, 45. gaghapar, 7. gaidzakian, ohan. illustrated armenia, 11. galanus, clemens: conciliationis ecclesiae armenae cvm romana, 69. historia armena, 26. gallaudet, t. h. abashkharatsvits, 66. gardthausen, v. ueber den griechischen ursprung der armenischen schrift, 49. garnett, l. m. j.: armenian wedding, 42. women of turkey, 42. garo, chahen. modern armenian literature, 56. gatteyrias, j. a.: l'arménie et les arméniens, 11. élégie sur les malheurs de l'arménie, 26. gauthiot, robert. note sur l'accent secondaire en arménien, 49. geffcken, f. h. turkish reforms and armenia, 74. gégharvest, 7, 20. gelzer, heinrich: die anfänge der armenischen kirche, 69. armenien, 69. zur armenischen götterlehre, 44. georgius, pisida. vetsoreahk keorkah bisiteah, 66. germany, turkey, and armenia, 38. ghambashidze, d. georgia and armenia as allies, 26. ghazarian, mkrtitsch. armenien unter der arabischen herrschaft, 26. ghévont, vartabed. histoire des guerres et des conquêtes des arabes en arménie, 26. ghisleri, arcangelo. l'armenia e gli armeni, 11. ghulam-us-saqlain. mussalmans of india and armenian question, 74. gibbons, h. a.: blackest page of modern history, 38. "la page la plus noire de l'histoire moderne," 38. gibbons, h. d.: red rugs of tarsus, 38. les turcs ont passé par là! 38. gildemeister, johann. pseudokallisthenes, 31. gjandschezian, esnik. beiträge zur altarmenischen nominalen stammbildungslehre, 49. gladstone, w. e. mr. gladstone on armenian question, 75. gleye, arthur. ugro-finnischer einfluss im armenischen, 49. gobat, albert. protection of armenians, 75. goehlert, vinzent. die armenier in europa und insbesondere in oesterreich-ungarn, 79. gooch, g. p. who are armenians? 11. gotchnag, 7. grabowsky, adolf. die armenische frage, 75. graves, j. t. armenian nation, 11. gray, l. h. on certain persian and armenian month-names, 49. great britain.--foreign office: diplomatic and consular reports. annual series. report on trade, 43. miscellaneous no. 31 (1916). treatment of armenians, 38. turkey. 1895, no. 1. correspondence relating to asiatic provinces of turkey, 38. turkey. 1896, no. 2. correspondence relative to armenian question, 75. [various documents relating to the armenians], 26-27. greene, f. d.: armenian crisis in turkey, 38. armenian massacres, 38. rule of turk, 38. greene, f. v. russian army and its campaigns in turkey, 27. greene, j. k. leavening the levant, 72. gregory, d. s. armenians in eastern question, 38. gregory of armenia, called illuminator. die akten, 63. gregory of bysantium, metropolitan of chios. yearnings after unity in east, 69. gregory dgha, patriarch of armenia. élégie, 58. gregory magistros: ein brief des gregor magistros an den emir ibrahim, 63. ein brief des gregor magistros an den patriarchen petros, 63. gregory of nazianzen. (nonnos.) die scholien zu fünf reden des gregor, 63. gregory the priest. chronique, 27. griselle, eugène. une victime du pangermanisme, 38. grothe, hugo. der russisch-türkische kriegsschauplatz, 11. guinness, walter. impressions of armenia, 11. guiragos of kantzag. extrait de l'histoire d'arménie, 27. gulesian, m. h.: armenian refugees, 79. england's hand in turkish massacres, 75. gulian, k. h. elementary modern armenian grammar, 49. guthe, h. mosaiken mit armenischer inschrift, 54. guyard, stanislas: études vanniques, 54. les inscriptions de van, 54. inscriptions de van, les estampages de m. deyrolle, 54. note sur quatre mots des inscriptions de van, 54. note sur quelques particularités des inscriptions de van, 54. note sur quelques passages des inscriptions de van, 54. gylling, hjalmar. notes on microscopical structure of some eruptive rocks from armenia, 46. h hacobian, a. p. armenia and war, 27. hagopian, hovhan: pocket dictionary, 49. relations of armenians and franks, 27. russification of armenians, 27. haïgazn, édouard. légendes et superstitions de l'arménie, 44. haik, 7. hairenik, 7. hamarod zhamakirk hahasdaneahts sa yegeghetsuoh, 69. hamilton, w. j.: extracts from notes made on journey in asia minor, 11. researches in asia minor, pontus and armenia, 11. hamlin, cyrus: genesis and evolution of turkish massacre, 38. martyrdom of armenia, 38. hampartsoumian, h. a. arouyesd madaharoutian, 45. handbook for travellers in asia minor, 11. hanusz, johann. beiträge zur armenischen dialectologie, 49. harnack, adolf. forschungen auf dem gebiete der alten grusinischen und armenischen litteratur, 56. haroutiunian, hovhannes. "vor megoun yedeven," 60. harris, j. r. notes from armenia, 44. harris, j. r., and h. b. harris: briefe von schauplatz der letzten massacres in armenien, 39. letters from scenes of recent massacres, 39. harris, w. b. unbiassed view of armenian question, 75. hart, a. b. free armenia, 75. hauff, wilhelm. badouoh yediuen gam likhtunshtain, 66. havemeyer, j. c. relation of united states to armenia, 75. haweis, h. r. persian on armenian massacres, 75. hayrig, chrimian. soldier's lament, 58. henderson, b. w. chronology of wars in armenia, 27. henry, j. d. baku, 27. hepworth, g. h. through armenia, 11. herold, a. f. l'amitié de la france et de l'arménie, 27. herrick, g. f. armenians and american interests under russia, 75. hethoum, prince of gorigos: chronographie, 27. histoire orientale, 28. historia orientalis, 28. historie of ayton, 28. relation de hayton, 28. table chronologique, 28. hethoum ii, king of armenia. poëme, 58. heyfelder, o. die armenier und ihre zukunft, 75. hin havadk gam hetanosagan gronk hahots, 18. hincks, edward. on inscriptions at van, 54. histoire de pharmani asman, 63. hittite--armenian? 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"chaldisch" und "armenisch," 54. chaldische nova, 54. die einwanderung der armenier, 30. entgegnung auf hrn. belck's einsendung "über die keil-inschriften der tigris-grotte," 54. materialien zur älteren geschichte armeniens, 30. eine neue ausgabe der auf russischem gebiet gefundenen chaldischen keilinschriften, 54. neugefundene menuas-inschriften, 54. die neugefundene steleninschrift rusas' ii, 54. religionsgeschichtliches aus kaukasien und armenien, 30, 44. ein schlusswort, 55. der tigris-tunnel, 55. von der deutschen armenischen expedition, 19. vorschläge zur sammlung der lebenden armenischen dialekte, 50. weiterer bericht über den fortgang der armenischen expedition, 19. zwei unveröffentlichte chaldische inschriften, 55. zwei unveröffentlichte keilschrifttexte, 55. leist, arthur: gabriel sundukianz, 62. die kongregation der mechitaristen, 72. litterarische skizzen, 64. mkrtitsch beschiktaschlian, 57. pater leo alischan, 57. raphael patkanian, 61. lenormant, françois. sur l'ethnographie et l'histoire de l'arménie, 30. léon iii, king of armenia. décret ou privilège ... en faveur des génois, 30. léon vi, king of armenia. 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mcgregor, p. j. c. notes on birds observed at erzerum, 47. macler, frédéric: les arméniens en turquie, 30. autour de l'arménie, 76. autour de la cilicie, 13. beginnings of armenian movement, 76. la chaire d'arménien, 56. contes arméniens, 61. contes et légendes, 61. un document arménien, 64. indications bibliographiques, 6. miniatures arméniennes, 21. mosaïque orientale, 55. notices de manuscrits arméniens, 6. notre-dame de bitlis, 64. pseudo-sebêos, 30. rapport sur une mission scientifique en arménie, 6, 30. russia and armenians, 30. maghak-teopileantz, m. v. gensakroutiun yérévéli arants, 41. mahdesian, arshag. armenia, 76. maksimov, s. v. armyanski narod, 13. malcolm, j. a.: armenian's cry for armenia, 76. cry for armenia, 76. mangasarian, m. m.: armenia and turkey, 76. armenia's impending doom, 76. mangouni, n. hatsi hamar, 61. manifestations franco-anglo-italiennes, 76. marbeau, édouard. l'arménie et l'opinion publique, 76. marcar, samuel. description of copper coin of leo, 20. margoliouth, d. s. syro-armenian dialect, 50. maribas the chaldean. extraits de la chronique, 30. markoff, a. v. russian armenia, 13. markoff, e. eine besteigung des grossen ararat, 13. marquart, josef. eransahr nach der geographie des ps. moses xorenac'i, 13. marr, n.: kavkazskii kulturnyi mir i armeniya, 30. sbornik pritch vardana, materialy dlya istorii srednevyekovoi armyanskoi literatury, 61. marshall, a. c.: armenian embroideries, 21. armenians in america, 79. arshag tchobanian, 59. minas tcheraz, 62. visit to armenian church and to ter-maroukian's studio, 79. martens, e. v. aufzählung der von dr. a. brandt in russisch-armenien gesammelten mollusken, 47. martin, paulin. des signes hiéroglyphiques dans les manuscrits arméniens, 51. martiros of crimea. liste rimée des souverains de la petite arménie, 30. martyr, bishop of arzendjan. relation d'un voyage fait en europe, 13. les massacres d'arménie, 39. massacres in turkey, 39. matthew of edessa: chronique, 31. extraits de la 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deportation of armenians, 33. roesler, emil, and w. belck. archäologische thätigkeit im jahre 1893 in transkaukasien, 19. rohrbach, paul: armenier und kurden, 15. aus turan und armenien, 77. contribution to armenian question, 77. deutschland unter den armeniern, 39. vom kaukasus zum mittelmeer, 15. rolin-jacquemyns, gustave: actual position of armenia, 33. armenia, armenians and treaties, 33. armenia under treaty of paris, 33. l'arménie, les arméniens et les traités, 33. diplomatic remonstrances, 33. legal position of turkish armenia, 33. period from 1878 to 1881, 33. review of consular reports, 33. rollin, charles. badmoutiun hrovmeagan, 67. roth, karl. armenien und deutschland, 33. roussel, thérèse. souvenirs d'une française en arménie, 15. rushdooni. sixth-and-a-half cousin's inheritance, 61. russell, c. t. millennial dawn, 67. russia.--ministerstvo inostrannykh dyel. sbornik diplomaticheskikh dokumentov. reformy v armenii, 33. russia and armenia, 33. s s., a. g. general yeprem 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inscription of argistis, 56. new inscription of vannic king menuas, 56. new vannic inscription, 56. on cuneiform inscriptions of van, 56. sazonov, a. n. nyeskolko tzyfr ob armyanakh na kavkazye, 79. scatcherd, f. r.: armenia's true interests and sympathies in war, 77. armenian question, 77. schaffer, f. x.: cilicia, 15. grundzüge des geologischen baues von türkisch-armenien, 47. scheil, j. v.: inscription vannique de melasgert, 56. note sur l'expression vannique "gunusâ haubi," 56. schilder, siegmund. eine zweiglinie der bagdadbahn nach südarmenien, 15. schlumberger, gustave. bulles d'or et sceau, 30. schmid, j. m., translator. geschichte des apostels thaddaeus und der jungfrau sanducht, 65. schmidt, erich, and others. die orientalischen literaturen, 57. schreiber, ellis. armenian church, 70. schroeder, j. j. hoc est j. j. schröderi thesaurus linguae armenicae, 52. schrumpf, g. a. on progress of armenian studies, 57. schrumpf collection of armenian books, 6. schulz, éd. mémoire sur le lac de van, 15, 56. schweiger-lerchenfeld, a. von: armenia, 15. erzerum und erzingdjan, 15. secundus, sophist of athens. das leben und die sentenzen des philosophen secundus, 67. seidlitz, n. von: pastuchows besteigung des alagös, 15. pastuchows besteigung des ararats, 15. seklemian, a. g.: armenian alphabet, 52. armenian folk-tales, 44. fisherman's son, 44. golden maiden, 44. unseen beauty, 44. selenoy, g. l., and n. von seidlitz. die verbreitung der armenier in der asiatischen türkei, 15. selim iii, sultan of turkey. translation of imperial berât, 70. sempad, constable of armenia: chronique du royaume de la petite arménie, 34. extrait de la chronique de sempad, 34. serpos, g. de. compendio storico di memorie cronologiche concernenti la religione, 70. seth, m. j. history of armenians in india, 79. settegast, franz. armenisches im "daurel e beton," 52. sevasly, mrs. marie. bedros atamian, 41. seylaz, louis. l'ascension de mont ararat, 15. shahid bey, sadik. islam, turkey and armenia, 77. shakespeare, william. andonios ev gleobadra, 67. shepard, f. d. personal experience in turkish massacres, 40. shiel, j. notes on journey from tabriz through kurdistan, 15. shishmanian, hovsep. toros livoni, 62. shoemaker, m. m. heart of orient, 15. sibilian, clément: numismatique arménienne, 20. ueber 17 unedirte münzen, 20. siebert, w. h.: armenia and turkey, 34. independence for armenia, 77. justice of granting autonomy to armenia, 77. sieger, robert: die schwankungen der armenischen seen, 47. die schwankungen der hocharmenischen seen, 47. sievers, wilhelm. asien, 16. sijalski. erinnerungen aus armenien, 16. situation in russian armenia, 40. slousch, nahum. le caucase, l'arménie et l'azerbeidjan, 16. smith, eli, and h. g. o. dwight: missionary researches in armenia, 72. researches, 72. sobraniye aktov, 34. société de sunie formée à smyrne, 43. soret, frédéric. numismatique de l'arménie au moyen-âge, 20. southgate, horatio, bishop. narrative of tour through armenia, 16. speer, r. 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sundukianz, kapriel: ruined family, 62. die ruinirte familie, 62. suter, henry. notes on journey from erz-rúm to trebizond, 16. svasley, miran: anglo-armenian relations from xii to xiv centuries, 34. armenia in and before 1878, 34. armenian question, 77. sykes, sir mark, bart. caliphs' last heritage, 34. symonds, a. g. armenia, 78. t t., a. b. armenian christmas, 43, 70. tasso, torquato. yerousaghem azadeal, 67. tavitian, s. de l' ... 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"lo, i see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; ... and the form of the fourth is like the son of god." preface many a tale of blood and tears has come to us of late from far euphrates, and from the regions round about. it is not so much the aim of the following pages to tell these over again as to show the light that, even there, shines through the darkness. "i do set my bow in the cloud" is true of the densest, most awful cloud of human misery. as in the early ages of christianity, "what little child, what tender woman" was there "who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh, or wrap the burning robe round, thanking god"? as in later times, of no less fervent faith, "men took each other's hands and walked into the fire, and women sang a song of triumph while the gravedigger was shovelling the earth over their living faces," so now, in our own days, there still walks in the furnace, with his faithful servants, "one like unto the son of god." every instance of faith or heroism given in these pages is not only true in itself, but typical of a hundred others. the tale is told, however feebly and inadequately, to strengthen our own faith and quicken our own love. it is told also to stir our own hearts to help and save the remnant that is left. the past is past, and we cannot change it now; but we can still save from death, or from fates worse than death, the children of christian parents, who are helpless and desolate orphans because their parents _were_ christians, and true to the faith they professed and the name they loved. d. alcock. contents page chapter i the dark river 1 chapter ii father and son 9 chapter iii first impressions 17 chapter iv a new life 26 chapter v baron muggurditch thomassian 44 chapter vi roses and bath towels 59 chapter vii gathering storms 66 chapter viii a proposal 73 chapter ix peace and strife 91 chapter x an armenian wedding 113 chapter xi an adventurous ride 125 chapter xii the use of a revolver 143 chapter xiii what pastor stepanian thought 155 chapter xiv a modern thermopylæ 173 chapter xv dark hours 194 chapter xvi "the dark river turns to light" 214 chapter xvii a great crime 229 chapter xviii evil tidings 241 chapter xix a great crime consummated 256 chapter xx by abraham's pool, and elsewhere 271 chapter xxi "god-satisfied and earth-undone" 287 chapter xxii given back from the dead 301 chapter xxiii betrothal 315 chapter xxiv under the flag of england 323 chapter xxv at home 341 chapter xxvi a sermon 351 appendix 367 chapter i the dark river "a thousand streams of lovelier flow bathed his own native land." the eastern sun was near its setting. everywhere beneath its beams stretched out a vast, dreary campaign--pale yellowish brown--with low rolling hills, bare of vegetation. there was scarcely anything upon which the eye of man could rest with interest or satisfaction, except one little clump of plane trees, beside which a party of travellers had spread their tents. they had spent the day in repose, for they intended to spend the night in travelling; since, although summer was past and autumn had come, the heat was still great. the tent in the centre of the little encampment was occupied by an englishman and his son, to whom all the rest were but guides, or servants, or guards. the syrians, the arabs, and the turkish zaptiehs who filled these offices were resting from their labours, having tethered their horses under the trees. it was about time for them to be stirring now, to attend to the animals, to make the coffee, and to do other needful things in preparation for the journey. but they were used to wait for a signal from their master for the time being--mr. grayson, or grayson effendi, as they generally called him. pending this, they saw no reason to shorten their repose, though a few of them sat up, yawned, and began to take out their tobacco pouches, and to employ themselves in making cigarettes. presently, from the effendi's own tent, a slight boyish form emerged, and trod softly through the rest. "hohannes effendi"--so the turks and arabs called him, as a kind of working equivalent for "master john"--was a bright, fair-faced, blue-eyed english lad in his sixteenth year. he was dressed in a well-worn suit of white drill, and his head protected by a kind of helmet, with flaps to cover the cheeks and neck, since the glare reflected from the ground was almost as trying as the scorching heat above. once beyond the encampment, he quickened his pace, and, fast and straight as an arrow flies, dashed on over the little hills due eastwards. for there, the arabs had told him, "a bow shot off," "two stones' throw," "the length a man might ride while he said his 'la ilaha ill allah!'"--ran the great river. waking some two hours before from the profound sleep of boyhood, he had not been able to close his eyes again for the longing that came over him to look upon it. for this was "that ancient river," last of the mystic four that watered the flowers of eden, witness of ruined civilizations, survivor of dead empires, the old historic euphrates. not that all this was present to the mind of young john grayson; but he had caught from his father, whose constant companion he was, a reflected interest in "places where things happened," which was transfigured by the glamour of a young imagination. on and on he went, for the wide, featureless, monotonous landscape deceived his eye, and the river was really much farther than he thought. he got amongst tall reeds, which sometimes hindered his view, though often he could see over them well enough--if there had been anything to see, except more reeds, mixed with a little rank grass--more low hills, and over all a cloudless, purple sky. the one point of relief was the dark spot in the distance, that meant, as he knew, the trees from which he had started. he thought two or three times of turning back, not from weariness, and certainly not from fear, except the fear that his father might wonder what had become of him. but, being a young englishman, he did not choose to be beaten, and so he went on. at last there reached his ears what seemed a dull, low murmur, but what was in fact the never-ceasing sound of a great river on its way to the sea; while at the same time- "the scent of water far away upon the breeze was flung." he hurried on, now over a grassy place, now through tall, thick reeds, until at last, emerging from a mass of them, he found himself on the edge of a steep precipitous bank, and lo! the euphrates rolled beneath him. he could have cried aloud in his surprise and disappointment. was this indeed the great euphrates--the grand, beautiful river he had come to see? had this indeed flowed through paradise?--this dull, muddy, most unlovely stream? dark, dark it looked, as he stood and gazed down into its turbid waters. "dark?" he said to himself, "no, it is not dark, it is _black_." and the longer he gazed the blacker and the drearier it grew. why stay any longer by "this ugly old stream"?--for so he called it. there was nothing to do, nothing to see. he turned to go back, and then the whole scene in its loneliness and desolation took a sudden grip of his young soul. the awe and wonder of the great, silent, solitary space overcame him. the river, instead of being a voice amidst the stillness, a living thing amidst the death around, was only another death. it seemed to flow from some- "waste land where no man comes, or hath come, since the making of the world." then all at once, by a very common trick of fancy, young john grayson found himself at home--at home really--in happy england. his mother, dead a year ago, was there still. he saw her room: the table with her books and work, and her favourite clock upon it; a shawl she used to wear of some blue, shimmering stuff like silk;--he saw her face. and then, as suddenly, all was gone. he knew that she was dead. and he stood alone with the silent sky, the desolate earth, the gloomy river--an atom of life in the midst of a vast, dead world. before he knew it the tears were on his cheek. this would never do. he was ashamed of himself, though there was no one there to see. dashing the disgraceful drops aside, he started at a run to go back. after a time he stopped, in a space fairly clear of reeds, to look about him. he could see in the distance the clump of trees that marked the camping place, but it looked very far off. the low hills confused him; it would not be such an easy matter as he thought to return. he sat down to rest a little, for disappointment and discouragement made him feel suddenly very tired. but he soon sprang to his feet again with a shout. a familiar sound reached his ear, the long australian "coo-ee-en!" which his father had adopted as the most penetrating kind of call. he gave back the cry with all the strength of his lungs, and waved his handkerchief high in the air. presently he saw his father coming towards him through the reeds, followed by two of the arabs. he ran to him in high delight, his sad reflections gone into the vast limbo that engulfs boyish sorrows. "father! father! i have found euphrates." "yes, my boy, but _i_ had some trouble to find _you_." they stood together, son and father, in that great solitude, as in a sense they did also in the greater solitude of the world. the father was one of those men of whom it is impossible to say he belongs to such and such a type, or, he is cast in such and such a mould. rather was he hand-hewn, as by the great artist's own chisel. he was tall, spare, wiry, with a cheek as brown as southern skies could make it, dark hair and beard showing early threads of grey, dark eyes full of fire, and a mouth as sensitive as a woman's. the boy had inherited his mother's blue eyes and fair hair, but he was very like his father, both in expression and in the cast of his features, especially the shape of his forehead and the moulding of his fine mouth and chin. slight as was the shadow of rebuke conveyed by his father's words, he felt it--it was so rare. he said simply, "i am sorry." "did you think euphrates worth the trouble when you found it?" asked his father, who had seen the far-famed and disappointing river long ago. "very much the reverse, father. an uglier, muddier, blacker kind of a river i never saw." "i suppose we are quite close to it? i will go on and have a look, as there is no hurry about our start. stay here, if you are tired, with one of the arabs." "i will come back with you. i should like it." "come along, then." a short walk brought them to the bank, the two arabs following at a respectful distance stately and indifferent. the sun was setting now, and, behold! a wonder met their eyes. the dark stream was transfigured, as if by the wand of an angel. it poured rejoicing on its way, a torrent of liquid gold; for it had taken to its heart of hearts all the glory of the setting sun, and gave it back to the beholder in a marvel of radiance. so might look to mortal eyes the river of god, the river of the water of life, that runs through the shining streets of the new jerusalem. the boy uttered a cry of wonder and delight. the father gazed in silence. at last he said, "_so the dark river turns to gold._" "but come, my boy," he added presently, "before the sun sets. let us take away with us in memory this look of the euphrates." chapter ii father and son "i cannot rest from travel, i will drink life to the lees." --_tennyson._ while the travellers go back to their encampment, now in full preparation for the start, it may be well to introduce them formally by name. in this respect they were exactly alike; the father's name in full was john frederick pangbourne grayson, and so was the son's. his friends, however, generally called him john, johnnie, or jack, by preference the latter, which was his father's custom also. john frederick pangbourne had made himself remarkable in early life as a bold, adventurous traveller, going into places and amongst peoples little known to the rest of the world. he was in perils of many kinds, often great, sometimes desperate, but he always came through, thanks to his cool courage, his quickness of resource, his tact in dealing with men, and last, but not least, his abounding sympathy and kindness. so other men said; he himself said simply, if any one spoke of his dangers and deliverances, "i got out of it," or "they went away," or "they did me no harm," as the case might be,--"_thank god_." for he feared god; and though he did not go out of his way to tell it to the world, he was quite willing for the world to know it. beside the travel-hunger of the englishman, which is as strong or stronger than the earth-hunger of the celt, pangbourne had another motive in his wanderings. he was smitten to the heart with love and longing for "brown greek mss.," or mss. in any other ancient tongue. he had already made a find or two, chiefly of early copies, or part copies, of the old christian apologists. but these only whetted his appetite for more. he had heard of mss. to be found in the neighbourhood of mount ararat, and was purposing to go in search of them, when two events changed his plans--he got a fortune, and he married a wife. as he was a younger son, the family acres had gone of course to his elder brother, ralph pangbourne, a squire in one of the midland counties. not that they brought him any great wealth; for he suffered like others from the economic changes of the time, there was a heavy mortgage on his property, and his family was large and expensive. therefore he was not particularly rejoiced when miss matilda grayson, a distant connection of the family, left her large fortune to his younger brother instead of to himself. however, as there was the condition attached of assuming the name of grayson, she may well have thought that the representative of the pangbourne family would not choose to comply. "but i wish she had given the chance to one of my boys," thought ralph pangbourne. frederick, as he was usually called by his kinsfolk, behaved with great liberality. he cleared off the mortgage, and virtually adopted one of his brother's children, his god-son and namesake. still, the fortune was his. but it would not have kept him in england if he had not about the same time met his fate, while visiting one of the universities, in the daughter of a learned professor who was interested in his archæological researches. the course of true love in this instance falsified the proverb. he bought a pleasant country seat in the south of england, and settled down to the life of an english gentleman. quiet years followed; and if even in his happy home he sometimes felt the stings of a longing for wider horizons and more stirring scenes, at least he told of them to none. one son, and only one, was born to him. after some fifteen happy years his wife died, very suddenly. no man ever mourned his dead more truly; but it was inevitable that when the first pangs of bereavement died into a dull aching, he should long to resume his wandering life. some special studies, which he had been making when the great calamity overtook him, gave definiteness to his plans. his fancy had been caught by the old legend of agbar, king of edessa, of his letter to our lord, and the answer, fabrications though they manifestly are. an idea possessed him that in the neighbourhood of the ancient edessa, agbar's "fair little city," so early christianized, mss. might be found, dating perhaps from the first century. the thought gave an object to his proposed wanderings in the east, for to the east his heart was ever drawn by strong, mystic yearning. and if his dreams should prove only dreams, there was no duty now which forbade him to pursue them. one duty indeed he had--the care of his boy. always much attached, in the days of their bereavement son and father drew very close together. everybody advised him to leave jack at school, but everybody spoke to deaf ears; for jack entreated him to take him with him, and his own heart echoed the plea. after all, why not? he was a strong, healthy lad, very manly, and full of bright intelligence. might not foreign travel be the best of schools for him? to jack the prospect seemed the most delightful ever unfolded before mortal eyes. grayson could well afford every luxury of travel that might ensure safety and preserve health. had he been alone, he would have cheerfully faced many risks and inconveniences to which he did not care to expose his son. so far they had journeyed in great comfort, keenly enjoying the adventure. they expected next morning to reach a little town on the euphrates called biridjik, where they proposed to rest for a day or two, arranging, as they always did in such circumstances, for the use of a room or rooms in some comfortable house. the journey by night, in that land where night never means darkness, was delicious. the moon was at the full, and bathed in beauty even the desolate, monotonous landscape. its light was quite enough for all travelling purposes; it seemed indeed only a softer, cooler, and more genial day. early morning found them on the stretch of road leading to the river. at the other side was a sort of natural amphitheatre. a picturesque hill rose in terraces from the river, near its summit the ruins of a castle. a semi-circular wall, which had once belonged to the castle, formed a bow, of which the river was the string, and which enclosed the little town with its houses, orchards, and gardens. on each side of their road, as they drew near the river, was a large turkish burying-ground, full of upright tombstones, all very narrow, and some of them very high. then came a solitary plane-tree, and a small rude khan. around it, and down to the river's brink, gathered a noisy, shouting, vociferous crowd. "oh, such a crowd!" jack thought. there were camels from aleppo, with their heavy burdens, and their swearing, screaming drivers; khartijes or muleteers, with their laden mules; stately arabs; zaptiehs in gold-laced uniforms, stolid and indifferent amidst the turmoil; kourds with horses and donkeys, and dresses of every colour of the rainbow. jack was especially amused with a kourdish woman who joined the throng with two little donkeys, which she belaboured vigorously with a short club, her lord and master sitting the while upon one of them, content and passive. but even this sight lost its interest when he thought he discovered in the distance some one on horseback in a european dress, and beside him--wonderful vision!--what looked like a european lady. he could scarcely believe his eyes. but now, every eye was fixed upon the river. floating swiftly down stream, with only a stroke or two from the paddles of the ferry-men, came two enormous wooden boats, each in shape like a woman's shoe. then began a regular stampede, the whole disorderly crowd wanting to get in at once, and fearing to be left behind. as soon as the boats touched the land the rush became frantic. it was like bedlam; the men pushing, swearing, shouting,--the animals, who objected strongly to the whole proceeding, being urged on by their furious or frightened drivers, to the peril of all within reach of them. jack got separated from his father, and carried nearly off his feet, but he found himself at last in one of the boats, which was swaying horribly from side to side. the terrified horses, jammed together in a narrow space, were kicking, biting, and squealing, and the shrieks and curses of their drivers were not likely to soothe them. some of these had dismounted, others kept their seats. jack saw one of their own zaptiehs pushed against the side of the boat, and thought he would be killed. but he called on allah, and used his fists manfully, and in a minute or two had extricated himself, and was sitting safely on the bulwark. jack climbed up beside him, anxious to see where his father was, and soon discovered him, near the other end of the boat, helping to keep the frightened animals under control. it was impossible, however, to reach him through the throng. looking back, he saw the other boat quite close. there, amidst the crowd of men and horses, stood the english lady (as jack supposed her), a tall, slight figure, holding the bridle of her horse. he saw the look of terror in the creature's face, the ears laid back, the nostrils quivering, and red as fire. he was going mad; he would bite or trample her! no; she had snatched off her veil, and, quick as thought, tied it over his eyes. the situation was saved. and jack was gratified by a moment's vision of a girlish face, very fair, very young, and crowned with clustering golden hair. then the boats changed position, and he lost it. after half an hour's swaying and joggling, they all got safe to the other side. then there was more noise and confusion, and then they found themselves slowly ascending the steep, irregular flights of stone steps that formed the streets of biridjik. here jack caught a last glimpse of his lady of the golden hair, now decorously veiled, and seated on her horse--very unsafely, as he feared, for she looked in danger of falling off over his tail, at every step he took in the perilous ascent. but the party to which she belonged went on at once upon their journey, while the graysons remained in biridjik. chapter iii first impressions "manners are not idle, but the fruit of loyal nature, and of noble mind." --_tennyson._ young john grayson stood alone in the large upper room which had been assigned to him and to his father. mr. grayson had gone out to reward and dismiss the zaptiehs and the arabs, and to make arrangements about the syrian servants, whom he meant to keep with him; but jack was looking for his return every moment, to partake of the breakfast which had been just brought in. first, a stool had been placed in the middle of the room, and then a metal tray, much larger, set upon it. handsome embroidered cushions, placed beside, showed where and how the guests were expected to sit. except these cushions, and a few rugs or small carpets, the only furniture the room contained was a divan running along the side, covered with turkey red, and adorned with white embroidered cloths. there were also some beds, or mattrasses, folded up in a niche in the wall; and a few articles belonging to the travellers had been brought and left in the room. there were several windows, large, and very close together. jack stood at one of them, and looked out on the courtyard round which the house was built in the form of a hollow square. there must be a great many rooms, he thought, and wondered if one family occupied them all. the court looked gay and pleasant, with late crocuses, a few fruit trees, and, best of all, a little stream of living water flowing right through it, and filling the air with its cheery murmuring. but the eyes of the hungry boy soon turned back to the well-spread table, where they rested approvingly upon a remarkably good breakfast. there was a dish of pillav, made of a preparation of wheat called _bulghour_, with boiling butter poured over it, and upon the pillav a well-cooked fowl lay in state, as the best part of the banquet. there was queer-looking bread in large cakes thin as wafers, and folded together like napkins; there was a great copper vessel lined with something that looked like silver, and filled with _madzoun_, a kind of cold, sour, boiled milk, and there was a pitcher of tempting pink sherbet, with glasses to drink it from. jack gave a little sigh of satisfaction, and ejaculated, "wish father would come before the fowl gets cold." grayson came, looking white and weary, a thing unusual with him. "let us have our breakfast, father," jack said. "i am sure you are starving,--i am." his exploits on the fowl went far to prove it. but his father gave him little assistance. "you don't eat, father," he said. "i am not hungry. though the sun is up such a little while, it has contrived to give me a headache. i shall sleep it off. _you_ want a sleep too, as your eyes are crying out." "not a bit of them, father. i could not sleep now; i want to go out and see this queer old place. i'll sleep all the better when i come back." "well, do so; but take care of the sun, and get one of the servants to go with you. you will find them about somewhere." grayson spoke with a dull, listless air, quite foreign to his brisk, energetic nature. "he is very sleepy," jack thought, as he put on his protective head-dress, and ran cheerfully down into the court. he looked about for the servants, but could not see either of them. as he was standing there, an open door attracted his eye, and he could not help looking in. a woman was baking bread, in an oven consisting of a large round hole in the clay floor of the middle of the room. she was taking small pieces of dough from a lump beside her, slapping them on the inside of the oven, and promptly removing those already baked sufficiently. two dark-eyed little boys were playing quietly at some game on the ground, and an older lad was standing beside her, talking, apparently about a bundle of cotton in a cloth which he held by the four corners. raising her eyes for a moment from her oven and her dough, the woman saw the stranger at the door. he did not know a word of armenian, nor she a word of english, but she saluted him with great courtesy, bowing almost to the ground; then, as she rose slowly, touching her heart, her lips, and her forehead. the children did the same; the youngest acting his little part so prettily that jack fell in love with him on the spot. as the woman, by signs, invited him to enter, he did so, and the children placed a cushion for him in the corner farthest from the door. the older boy brought him sherbet, flavoured and tinted with rosewater. "this is all very nice," thought jack. "still, when one pays a visit one is expected to talk. and how can i talk to people who don't know a word of my language, nor i a word of theirs?" he tried to solve the difficulty by introducing himself, patting his own breast and forehead, and repeating, "john--john grayson," an experiment attended with only partial success, his new friends learning to call him "yon effendi." then he pulled out his schoolboy silver watch for their edification. the two little boys, who stood gazing at him with their great black eyes, evidently thought he was a far greater wonder himself; but the elder looked at it intelligently, as one who perfectly knew its use. he tried next to get at their names, pointing to each in turn with a look of inquiry. as well as he could make out the unfamiliar sounds, he thought the eldest boy called himself something like kevork, the second was certainly gabriel, the youngest probably hagop. he took gabriel's little brown hand in his own large one, whereupon the child stooped down, kissed the hand that held his, and touched it with his forehead. fearing that he was interrupting the baking operations, he soon rose to go. he happened to notice a picture on the wall; or rather a coloured daub in staring blue, red, and green, representing an impossible warrior, running an impossible sword through the heart of a monster three or four times as large as himself. seeing him look at it, the woman and the eldest boy began an explanation in which he could only distinguish one of the names he had just heard--"kevork." he thought they meant that it belonged to kevork; and did not find out until long afterwards that "kevork" is one of the armenian forms of "george," and that he had lighted upon a picture of the patron saint of his own land, slaying the traditional dragon. he left his new friends after a silent exchange of courtesies; and, forgetting all about the servants he ought to have looked for, began to descend the crooked, winding steps, or streets, that led down to the river. presently he heard a patter of feet behind him, and, looking back, saw gabriel trotting after him. the child came up, and held out to him a little roll of something yellow, with what looked like the kernels of nuts in it. it was evidently to be eaten, for gabriel, smiling, pointed to his mouth; so jack sat down on one of the steps and made his first acquaintance with the armenian delicacy called _bastuc_, a preparation of grape sugar, into which the kernels of nuts are sometimes put. he liked it at first; but it soon palled, and he began to fancy it was making him sick. whatever was the cause, a strange faintness and dizziness came over him as he sat there by the river. "it is too hot here," he thought. "i must go back." he got up, but found it a hard matter to keep his feet. twice or thrice, as he toiled up the steps, he was obliged to sit down and rest. little gabriel had stayed beside him, and he was very glad of it, as without a guide he would almost certainly have missed the gate of the house where their quarters were, since all the houses, built in the same way about their court-yards, looked so exactly alike. feeling worse every minute, he stumbled up the stairs, threw the door open, and got into the room just in time to fall down in a faint. when he came to himself, he was lying on one of the beds; and his father, stooping anxiously over him, put a glass to his lips, from which he drank obediently. "how do you feel now, my son?" he asked. "oh! all right," jack said. "i don't know what came over me down there by the river. i suppose it was the sun. but i am better. i can get up." "don't. lie still and give me your hand. i want to feel your pulse." jack gave it. "father," he said, looking up, "your own hand is shaking. is there anything wrong?" "not much, i hope. you are a little hot and feverish. a dose of quinine will do you no harm." "hot!" said jack. "no; i am shivering with cold. i can't keep still." the dose was administered; and jack, following his father's movements with his eyes, noticed that he took one himself also. "now, my boy," he said, "you have not slept for nearly four and twenty hours, and you spent all last night in the saddle. unless you take a good rest, you may be ill. lie as quiet as you can, and try to sleep." "i will, father; but--i'm so thirsty!" his father gave him some sherbet, and covered him up comfortably with a silk rug. then he sat down, and took out his note-book and pencil; but he wrote only a few words in a faint, irregular hand, difficult to decipher: "have heard from jacob, my syrian, that the plain we have just traversed is noted for its deadly malaria--is, in fact, a perfect hotbed of fever. i fear john has it." after some time jack dropped off into a troubled doze. strange dreams came to him, ending usually in some catastrophe that made him start up in sudden fright. once he thought he was walking by the river, and somehow lost his footing and fell in. he woke up with a cry, "the water is so cold--so dark!" his father was at his side and soothed him. "don't you remember," he said, "the dark river turns to light?" but as soon as the boy was quiet and at rest again, john grayson added one more to the records in his note-book, and it was almost illegible: "we have both caught the fever. god help us! if i can, i will arrange----" chapter iv a new life "among new men, strange faces, other minds." --_tennyson._ after that, for young john grayson, life was a blank. dim shadows came and went like reflections in a mirror, having no continuity and leaving no impression. in a passing way, as a dumb creature might, he felt burning heat and freezing cold, pain and weariness, and nameless, indescribable distress. so too he saw forms around him--kind, dark-complexioned people, who gave him things to drink, and spoke to him in words he could not understand. sometimes he was conscious of a sort of dull relief, or pleasure, when they cooled his burning brow with snow, which had been brought from the mountains packed in straw, and carefully preserved. but throughout all he missed something--some one. at first he knew that he wanted his father, and used to call for him piteously. but this passed at length; he grew too weak even for the pain of longing. with the very ill, as with the very old, "desire fails." yet, in spite of all, he crept slowly back to life. one day he felt himself carried somewhere, and then became suddenly conscious of a delicious coolness after what seemed a lifetime of burning heat. looking up presently, when the sense of fatigue had somewhat passed, he saw that he was lying on a large bedstead, like one of our old "four-posters," in the open air. there were white curtains all around him, which were being softly stirred by a refreshing breeze; while over his head--no roof between, not even the canvas of a tent--glowed the deep, rich blue of the eastern sky. he was on the house-top. for a while after that he recovered more quickly. but the hot weather, coming early that year, brought on a sore relapse, and again for many days his life was despaired of. more than once the watchers thought he was actually gone, and often they thought the question was one of hours. yet in the end the long conflict of death and life ended in the victory--the slow, uncertain victory--of the latter. he came back to life like a little child only just beginning it. for the time, his past was completely blotted out. too weak in mind and body for connected thought, he accepted the things about him without question. he seemed to have been always there, amongst those dark-eyed people, who sat upon the ground, ate rice and bulghour, and wore striped "zebouns" of cotton cloth, and many-coloured jackets. he picked up their speech very quickly, as a child picks up his mother tongue; and at this stage did not remember his own. he came to know those about him, and to call them by their names. between twenty and thirty persons dwelt in the large house in which he was a guest. but they were all one family--the sons and sons-in-law, the daughters and daughters-in-law, and a whole tribe of the grandchildren of a grey-haired patriarch called hohannes meneshian. the whole household were jack's familiar friends. but he loved best the three boys who had been his first acquaintances, and their mother mariam hanum, who throughout his illness had been his devoted nurse. he liked the gentle touch of her hand, and the tenderness in her eyes as she looked at him. sometimes he called her mya--"mother," as the boys did. of the three--kevork, gabriel, and little hagop--gabriel was his favourite. indeed the child was like his shadow, waiting on him continually, and often bringing him beautiful flowers--gorgeous pomegranate blossoms, or roses of many kinds and of most exquisite perfume. or he would bring him fruit--delicious grapes, pears, plums, and peaches. or sometimes he would just steal silently up to kiss his hand, and touch it with his forehead, or stand or sit quietly beside him. there was one thing that soothed him inexpressibly; though, like all else, it was accepted without question or comprehension. when mariam and the other women went about the household tasks that, as he grew better, he liked to watch, they would say, "hesoos ockna menk"--"jesus, help us." when they finished, they would say, "park derocha"--"praise the lord." in everything there was devout acknowledgment of god; and the sweetest of all names that are named in heaven or upon earth was often on their lips, spoken with reverence and love. something that for john grayson still lived on, "in the purple twilight under the sea" of conscious thought, made this very grateful to him, and joined it with what were like the first heavenward thoughts and prayers of a little child. so time passed on. but, as he grew stronger, there awoke again within him a vague sense of want and longing. he had no power to express his feelings, but he felt something was wrong with him--he was not in his proper place. or was it, rather, that there was something wrong with all the people about him? they were very kind; but they and their ways had a queer, distorted, unnatural look in his eyes, like the things one sees reflected in the bowl of a spoon. he longed continually, longed inexpressibly, for something he could not get, for some one who was not there; yet he could not tell who it was he wanted. he grew silent and melancholy, and his friends thought him in danger of another relapse, which would certainly have been fatal. happily, it was now autumn again, the sultriest months of the year being over. so one day they wrapped him up carefully, seated him comfortably on cushions upon a donkey, and brought him with them, to a vineyard which hohannes possessed on a slope of one of the hills above biridjik. he was a man of some property, having flocks and herds also. the great, luscious grapes, "as large as plums," purple, green, and amber, hung in ripe profusion, nearly breaking down the low bushes they grew upon. jack ate of them to his heart's content, and lay in the pleasant shade of a fig-tree, watching the other young people as they gathered them for their various uses. tents had been brought, and it gave him a kind of dreamy satisfaction to sleep in one of these; it seemed somehow to bring him nearer to the things he had lost, and was vaguely feeling after. often hints of them seemed to flash on him unbidden, but when he tried to grasp them vanished as they came, leaving him confused and faint, with a fluttering heart and an aching head. however, his strength improved in the cooler air and amidst the new surroundings. he had soon an opportunity of testing it. one day he happened to be by himself, resting under his favourite fig-tree, when he heard a noise as of something trampling and tearing the vines. looking up, he saw that a flock of goats had got in among them, and were doing terrible damage, not only to the ripe fruit but even to the trees. he got up and called for help, but no one heeded, and he supposed no one heard. it was dreadful to see all this harm done; in fact, he could not endure it. taking heart, he went to the rescue himself, or rather, for the first time since his illness, he _ran_. his steps were unsteady, his limbs shook under him; once indeed he fell, but he was up and on again in a moment. the exercise seemed to give back strength to his muscles and vigour to his brain. he shouted aloud; he took up stones and flung them at the trespassers, sending them flying over the low stone wall. then, the englishman's joy of battle waking in him, he gave chase as fast, or faster, than his limbs would carry him. he heard the others crying out to him; but he thought they were encouraging his efforts. even when they came running up with evident intent to stop him, he thought they were only afraid he would do himself harm. but at last the youngest son of hohannes caught him bodily in his arms, shook the stones out of his hand, and cried breathlessly, "you must _not_! you must _not_!" jack had a good deal of armenian by this time. "_inchu? inchu?_--why? why?" he gasped; "they were destroying your vines." the young man, by name avedis, or "good tidings," looked sadly at the injured trees, but only said, "those goats belong to the kourds." jack stammered in his eagerness to find the words he wanted. "what has that to do with it?" he got out at last. "what right have the kourds to spoil your vines?" "don't you know, yon effendi, that if we dare to stop them doing it, or even to drive their sheep and goats out of our fields and vineyards, they think a great deal less of stabbing or shooting one of us than you would of killing a cat?" "but then they would be hanged for it!" cried jack. "have you no--oh, what is the word for it?--have you no--_police_?" he said the word in english, and a rush of old, new thoughts and impressions came crowding into his brain. "_police?_" "the men who keep order, and take people to prison." "do you mean the zaptiehs? they are worse than the kourds. the turk and the kourd are the upper and the nether millstone, grinding us to powder. if one of us is fool enough to complain of a kourd or a turk, the kamaikan--the governor, i mean--says he will enquire into the matter. and he does. he sends for the man who has complained, throws him into a dungeon, and keeps him there till he confesses all the wrong is on his own side; or perhaps until his people pay a sum of money. or perhaps he may be never heard of again at all." avedis did not say this with fierce looks and indignant gestures, but in a calm, matter-of-fact way, as if such things were part of the everlasting order of nature, which has been from the beginning and will be until the end. jack did not follow every word; but one thing he understood very clearly: they must all stand still and see their beautiful vines destroyed. there was no remedy--why? because this was not england. _england!_ now he knew everything. he was an english boy, left alone here in this strange land. and his father--where was his father? "where is my father?" he cried aloud in english. "what is that you say?" asked avedis. jack repeated his question in armenian. "come and sit down under the tree," said avedis. jack obeyed, silent and trembling. avedis stood, looking at him sadly. "tell me, where is my father?" jack repeated with pleading eyes, into which a new expression was dawning slowly. "you know, yon effendi, you have been very ill," avedis said. "your father, a great english effendi, very wise and good, was ill too. you recovered; your father did not recover. he is gone to god. do you understand me, yon effendi?" jack understood so well that he flung himself face downwards on the ground, and burst into a passion of weeping. in vain avedis tried to comfort him. "god forgive me," he thought, "i ought not to have told him. i fear i have killed him." and he certainly had not acted up to the meaning of his name. the rest of the family blamed him severely, when they heard what he had done. it was the custom of their country for the bearer of sad tidings to go about his task with great circumlocution, carefully "breaking" them, as we say in england. yet the shock, instead of killing john grayson, brought him back to his true life. up to this there had been a serious danger that his brain would never wholly recover the shock of that long and terrible illness; and that, if he lived, he might go through the future years as one whose mind had an important leaf left out of it. but that day's agony of weeping, and the days and nights of distress that followed it, meant that he would either die, or else recover wholly, and claim his intellectual inheritance in the present and the past. this full recovery, however, might well be an affair of time--perhaps of a long time. old hohannes heard with the rest that the english youth knew now that his father was dead, and that he was weeping and refusing comfort, in a manner very likely to make him ill again. "we will take him back to the town," he said; and so they did the next day. the following morning hohannes took him by the hand, led him into a low, dark room on the ground-floor, where bulghour and rice were stored, and shut and barred the door. "sit down," he said. jack did so; and looked on wonderingly while the old man dug a hole in the ground with some implement resembling a trowel. at last he grew impatient, and asked, "will you not tell me about my father?" hohannes looked up. "there is not much to tell," he said. "feeling himself, no doubt, very ill, the english effendi sent for me, and i came. he asked me to take care of you, and if you should recover to try and send you back to your friends in england. and he gave me, to use for you as i thought best, the things i have kept hidden here. he spoke somewhat also of certain papers, but before he could finish what he wanted to say, the fever increased upon him, and his mind began to wander. as to the papers, we never got them. they were stolen away, with his other baggage, by the two syrian servants, who were brothers, and precious rascals. but these i have." he stooped and took out of the hole something wrapped in a skin and tied with cords. these he carefully unfastened, took off the skin, and revealed two books and a belt of chamois leather. the books he gave to jack, who recognised, with a thrill of joy and a pang of sorrow, the pocket bible his father always carried with him, and the note-book in which he used to see him write. "keep these thyself," said hohannes. "this," holding up the belt, "i must keep still. there is gold in it." instinctively his voice dropped lower, though there was none to hear the dangerous word. "i am very glad of it," jack said frankly, as, for the first time, it occurred to him that these people, upon whom he had no claim, had been providing for all his wants. "father hohannes, you and yours have fed and tended me all this time like a child of your own. it ought to be all yours!" "you have a generous heart, yon effendi. and, in fact, i have used it for you as far as was necessary and just. there were medicines and other things when you were ill, and there was the tax to pay for you." "the tax for me?" jack repeated. "what tax?" "know you not we have to pay, year by year, every man and boy among us, for breathing the air? even for the new-born babe the turk exacts it. so your tax had to be found along with our own, and will be next year also. moreover i own, a piece or two went to the kourds as backsheesh, that they might let our cattle alone." "indeed, father," jack said again, "i wish you would take it all; it is yours by right." hohannes shook his head. "and what, then, if you should want to go home?" he said; "or if any way for your doing it should open? moreover we dare not, for our lives, let any one know we have so much gold in the house. the kourds would come down from the mountains and rob us, or the turks would take it from us on pretence of arrears of taxes. it is best for me to keep it here for you. you see where i put it?" "yes, father hohannes; it is all right," said jack. he was longing to go away somewhere by himself, and feast his eyes on his father's handwriting, and on the printed words he loved so well. but, as he was going, a thought came to him that made him turn again. things which he had heard kevork say as he began to get better, and which at the time he had scarcely noticed, came to his mind with a sudden inspiration. "father hohannes," he said, "kevork, your grandson, longs sore to go to aintab, to the great school the americans have set up there for your people. kevork loves learning very much. may he not take some of this gold and go?" again hohannes shook his head. "kevork is a foolish boy," he said. "the cock that dreamed of grain fell from his perch trying to scratch for it. let him stay at home, and mind the cattle; or take to the weaving, if it like him better." jack was sorry for kevork, but the possession of the precious books drove everything else out of his head. he flew upon the spoil; nor was it with a passing joy alone, since during the time that followed the chief sustenance of his life, that which made it worth living, came from these books. he was himself again, but only a childish, weak, discouraged self--a different being from the strong, active-minded, energetic lad who had come with his father to biridjik. his illness and its consequences had thrown him back in his development of body, of mind, and still more of character, for at least a couple of years. he was quite unable at present to look his life in the face, or to take the initiative in any way. nor was there any one about him who could give him effectual help. how to go to england was a problem no one in biridjik seemed able to solve. even a letter was a difficult and doubtful undertaking. it is true the town possessed a turkish post-office, but this, at all events for foreign letters, was a perfect "tomb." in answer to his questions, his friends told him of a certain "cousin muggurditch," a kinsman of hohannes, who lived at "yeatessa," but was a great traveller, going sometimes even as far as constantinople;--he could send a letter safely to england. jack thought yeatessa was the place his father wanted to go to, and which was mentioned in his note-book as edessa, the city of the legendary king agbar. his friends assured him it was; that they knew all about it, and that the story of king agbar was quite true, for his tomb was still to be seen just outside the city, which the franks called urfa, and which was only two days' journey from biridjik. "i shall go there some time," jack said; but he said no more about it, and it seemed as if for the time all thought of change had passed out of his mind. he slipped into the life and the ways of those about him. even his european clothes were out-worn or out-grown, and he adopted the striped zeboun, the gay jacket and the crimson fez of the armenians. mariam hanum (mrs. mary) took care of his wardrobe, and he might be seen every saturday going with the other men and youths to the bath, and carrying his clean clothes with him tied up in a towel. one day he wanted a kerchief to put under his fez and keep off the sun, and he went by himself to the shop to buy it. he came back with one of bright green, which he thought very handsome; but, to his amazement, kevork snatched it from his head and avedis flung it into the fire, with the approval of all the rest. "don't you know that green is the moslem colour?" they said to him. "then be sure i will never wear it," jack answered; "i am a christian." he went with his friends to the gregorian church on sundays and feast days; often too in the early mornings before sunrise, or in the evenings at sunset. it is true he did not understand very much of the service; but the armenians themselves were scarcely better off, as the ancient armenian language is still used in the liturgy of the national church. he was shown, in the adjoining graveyard, the resting-place of his father, marked like all the other graves with a flat stone. then he printed carefully, in english capital letters, his father's full name, and gave it to the best stonecutter in the town, asking him to engrave it for him, with a cross. "i should like it put upon another stone," he said; "one to stand up, as we have them in england." the stonecutter explained that he could not have it here. it was unlawful. mahometans had their tombstones erect, but a christian might only mark the resting-place of his dead with a flat stone. "but," the man added with a smile, "that will not hinder our rising again at the last day." kevork and his brothers continued jack's greatest friends. kevork talked much with him, and told him many things. he said he should like to go to yeatessa, or urfa, because he had a sister there. "a married sister, i suppose?" jack said, rather wondering he had not heard of her before. "_no_," said kevork, lowering his voice mysteriously. "my grandfather had to send her away to our cousins, because the kamaikan who was here before this one wanted to marry her; and we never talk of her, not even before gabriel and hagop, lest any word might slip out about where she is, and the turks might overhear. but i had rather go to aintab than even to urfa, to learn english and greek and latin, and grammar and geography, and all kinds of science." "and what then?" jack asked with a smile. "then i would go, if i could, to america or to england, learn still more, and become at last a famous professor in some grand college in a christian land." kevork had already learned from a friendly priest, der garabed, to read and write armenian, and to read turkish in the arabic character. for the turks, and it is a significant fact, have never reduced their own language to writing; their books are printed either in the arabic or in the armenian character. he was in raptures when jack offered to teach him english, which he promptly began to do, using as a text-book his father's bible, the only book he had, with the exception of a tauchnitz "westward ho," which happened to be in his pocket when he came to biridjik. in return, kevork taught him to read and write armenian, and these lessons were shared by gabriel and hagop. gabriel was a remarkably quick, intelligent boy, all life and fire; hagop was quiet and rather dull, more at home at his father's loom than at his brother's book. both used to listen delightedly to jack, when, chiefly as an exercise for himself, he would translate some simple bible story aloud in armenian. not that such were the only uses jack made of his father's bible. outwardly his character still continued unformed, boyish, passive; inwardly it had begun silently to grow and to deepen. he did not act, but he thought a great deal. his mind was like a stream flowing underground, gathering volume as it flowed, and sure to emerge again to the light of the upper world. its sources were fed by observation, memory, faith, and hope, and most of all by that matchless fount, not only of spiritual but of intellectual inspiration, the english bible. chapter v baron muggurditch thomassian "warbling still amidst the others, wandering with them where they roam, and yet hallowing remembrance, with low gushes about home." no doubt some subtle form of nervous weakness, the relic of his long and terrible illness, still held young john grayson in its grasp. moreover the loss of his father, so intensely loved, had entered like iron into his soul. his mother's death was still, when he left home, a recent bereavement, and he was an only child. he had no near relatives except in his uncle's family, and even amongst them there was only one he cared for much, his father's godson, a cousin five years his senior, whose fag he had been at school. what had he, after all, to go back to in england? he excused his torpor with thoughts like these, whenever it occurred to him to ask himself if he meant to spend his life tending vines, teaching english, and studying armenian, in a little out-of-the-way town on the banks of the euphrates. he spent many months there without taking much note of time. the meneshians were his family; the whole armenian community his friends. he entered more and more into their life, shared more and more their interests. he was especially interested in the culture of the vineyard, wanting to know the how and the why of everything. once--but this was in early days--he proposed taking kevork and a couple of other lads with him, and going to stay there long before the regular vintage time. "we could guard it a great deal better," he said, "than that lazy turk, who does nothing but lie all day on his perch smoking cigarettes, and is always wanting backsheesh."[1] "you could not do it at all," answered boghos, the eldest son of hohannes, and the husband of mariam hanum, "just because you are not a turk. backsheesh is very well spent in setting the turk to watch the kourd, instead of both of them preying upon us. do you not know that yet, yon effendi?" they all continued to give him that name, which he had taught in the first instance to kevork and his brothers. to them all he was a cross between a pet and plaything to be taken care of, and a superior person to be honoured. in both capacities he had every attention, and all his wants were liberally supplied. but he insisted that hohannes should expend for that purpose some of his father's gold, and should give from time to time a small sum by way of compensation to boghos and mariam hanum, with whom he lived. money was so scarce in that region that a very small sum sufficed. at last one day the whole meneshian family, and indeed the whole armenian quarter of biridjik, was thrown into excitement by the news that baron muggurditch thomassian (in english, mr. baptist thomson), was about to honour them with a visit. he was travelling from urfa to aintab, and proposed staying a day or two on his way with his kinsfolk, the meneshians. jack shared in the excitement. he was very curious to see this wealthy, travelled, educated armenian, whom he expected to find of a very different type from the simple folk of biridjik. and now, at last, he was sure to find through him the opportunity of communicating with his friends in england, which, however little eagerness he might feel in the matter, he knew he ought not to neglect. what could the duteous and admiring kinsfolk of baron thomassian do on the occasion, except pay him the attention of riding "three hours distance" to meet him on his way, even although it was midwinter, the rains heavy and the wretched road ankle-deep in mud? boghos led the party, and jack went among the rest. old hohannes had a few fine horses, of which he was very proud; and he had given one of them to jack, to his immense delight and satisfaction. in that district there is scarcely any snow, and the rain had happily cleared off, so it was only a splashed and muddy, and not a drenched and soaking company that drew up by the wayside in the shelter of a little hill, to await the coming of the travellers. at last the jingling of mule bells announced the approach of the caravan. there was a long string of khartijes, or muleteers, there were some servants on horseback, and a few zaptiehs to act as guards. these were fully armed of course, and the central figure of the whole, baron thomassian himself, rode a very fine horse, and actually carried a gun at his side, for which he must have got a special "permit" from the government. he was a good-looking middle-aged man, dressed _à la frank_, or in complete european costume, except that he wore a fez in place of a hat, which was amongst the things forbidden to an armenian. there was something else which gave all the biridjik folk a great surprise. beside him rode a slight young girl, closely wrapped in a long "ezhar" of striped silk, which was drawn as a veil over the greater part of her face, leaving very little of it visible except her large, beautiful, dark eyes. veiled though she was, boghos recognised his daughter, and kevork at least guessed his sister. scarce, for looking at her, could they give their kinsman the customary greeting, "paré yejock" (your coming is a joy), or wait for the response, "paré dessack" (we see you with joy). and thomassian hastened to say, "i have brought your daughter back to you at the request of your cousin, baron vartonian. i will explain the reason afterwards." then boghos kissed his daughter on both cheeks, and she kissed his hand and asked for his blessing. kevork kissed her also; and jack, keeping modestly in the background, thought what a pleasant thing it must be to have a sister. he had already seen lovely faces among the girls and women of biridjik, but never, as he thought, eyes quite so soft and dark, lips quite so rosy, and cheeks of such perfect form and hue. all the rest, who were old acquaintances, came crowding round her; and then boghos turned his attention to jack, and made him known to thomassian, with much polite observance, as their english friend, john grayson effendi. they rode back together to biridjik, boghos devoting himself to the entertainment of thomassian. jack could not help wondering that they all showed so little pleasure at the return of shushan; on the other hand, a sort of constraint and gloom seemed to brood over the whole party. kevork would give him no explanation. even when he said, "i am surprised to see your sister looking so young. she seems scarcely fourteen. i thought, of course, from what you told me, that she must be older than you." kevork only answered, with a quick, guarded look around, "she was but ten years old when she left us." after the festive supper in honour of the guest, thomassian explained the matter in private to hohannes and to boghos. "your former kamaikan, mehmed ibrahim," he said, "has come to urfa. he has got some good office there in the government. somehow he found out that shushan was there with the vartonians, and--he has not forgotten. in short, she must go. there was no other way." "amaan!" or "oh dear!" was all her father said. but he looked perplexed and sorrowful, seeing trouble before them all. hohannes put the trouble into words. "he may find out, and send after her here." "the vartonians thought not. you must keep her as close as you can, or send her in disguise to one of the villages." "how dare we--for the kourds? a bride on her way from the church was carried off the other day from korti, and the bridegroom and her father, who tried to defend her, were both killed. our girls are not safe anywhere, except in their graves." though they sat within closed doors, they all spoke in low tones, and with furtive glances around them. "our only possible protection," thomassian said, "lies in the wealth our abilities and our industry enable us to gain. the turks and kourds consider our peace and safety marketable properties, which they are willing to sell us at a good price." "yes," said hohannes sadly, "until they find we have nothing more to give, or until it suits them to take all together." thomassian, who probably did not much care to talk on these matters, said that he was weary with his journey, and expressed a wish to go early to rest. kevork had been hanging about watching for an opportunity of speaking with him, and now, as soon as the door was opened, he came forward, offering politely to attend him to his sleeping-place. a little later he came quickly, and evidently in much excitement, into the room where shushan was sitting, with her mother and several other women and girls of the household, who had come in to see her. "mother, i have done it!" he cried. "done what, my son?" asked his sad-faced mother. she was sitting, as usual, behind her wheel, but its whirr was silent now. she had enough to do in looking in the face of shushan, and holding her hand. "i have made a conquest of old cousin muggurditch," said kevork triumphantly. "he will take me with him to aintab, and put me to the foreigners' school." a murmur of surprise ran round the room. but his mother asked, with some shrewdness,-"what did you give him?" "what you gave me, mother. i owe all to you. it was those gold coins that did it." the other women looked significantly at mariam. the strings of gold coins which she wears about her person are the armenian woman's only absolute and indisputable possession. they stand to her instead of settlements and dowry. that must be precious indeed for which she will sacrifice them. "he made little of the coins at first," said the quick-witted lad; "but that was all in the way of business. i could see that he thought a good deal of them, and liked well to get them." "how much did you sell them for?" asked mariam. "i did not sell them. not such a fool as that! i mean you to have them again some day, mother. i only gave them in pledge to him--he promising to advance my school expenses--until i should be able to repay him." "but that is for ever and ever," said one of the women. "nothing of the sort. after two years at aintab i shall be a teacher, and able to earn money for myself." here shushan looked up and spoke. she was very beautiful; not only with the beauty characteristic of her race--soft dark eyes, black pencilled eyebrows almost meeting, long curling eyelashes, and olive-tinted, regular features--but with the rarer loveliness of a sweet, pure expression, that suited well her name, shushan, the lily. during her four years of absence the familiar surroundings of home had become strange to her, so she spoke with a certain timidity. "my brother," she said, looking appealingly up to the tall youth whom she had left a mere child--"my brother, will you do something for me when you go to aintab?" kevork protested his willingness, although somewhat surprised. "my dearest friend," said shushan, "the person i love best in the world, next after my father and mother and my brothers, is just now going to aintab, to the school for girls. they hurried me away so quickly that i could not see her to say good-bye. and i shall not see her now; for, although she must pass by this on her way, she will not come into the town, but lodge in the khan outside. will you salute her for me, and give her this as a gift from her poor little friend, shushan meneshian?" she drew from her bosom something resembling a necklace, made of amber beads, and held it out to kevork. he stooped down to take it, saying, "well, then, my sister, what is the name of the girl?" "elmas stepanian; she is the daughter of the badvellie." "badvellie" means "full of honour"; and the armenians usually speak of their priests and pastors by this respectful title. "stay, kevork," said his mother. "you had better not take that _tebish_. shushan is a child, and does not know the world. but do you think that it is possible the foreigners would allow the boys and the girls to speak to one another? they are very good people, else surely our cousins would not have let their own children, and shushan, go to school to them." this certainly was a difficulty, and even shushan looked perplexed. but kevork was equal to the occasion. "yon effendi tells me that the foreign effendis, men and women, talk to each other just as much and as often as they like," he said. "shushan, my sister, i will pray of the effendi who teaches me to give thy token to the effendi who teaches oriort[2] elmas stepanian, and she will find some right way, i have no doubt, of giving it to her." "do so, kevork, and i thank thee many times." she gave him the string of beads, and then her tongue waxed eloquent in praise of her friend. "she is so good, so clever," she said. "she knows, oh, so many things! she can speak and write english, not just a little as i do, but beautifully, like a real american! she knows grammar and geography, and the counting up of figures, and the story of the world. she does not want a thought-string like that to help her." (both turks and armenians are accustomed, when thinking or talking, to finger strings of beads, called _tebishes_, and to obtain some mysterious assistance from the process.) "oh! no. she would never use one at school, nor indeed would most of us. but now she is going where she will have such _very_ hard lessons to learn, that perhaps she may be glad of it. at least it will remind her of her poor little shushan. tell her, kevork, that shushan puts a prayer for her on every bead she sends her." "i think it is a very foolish plan to teach all those things to girls," one of the old women observed. "they will be fit for nothing else in the world but reading books, and who will mind the babies? and what will become of cooking and washing and baking bread, not to talk of spinning and sewing?" "the girls of the american school at urfa cook and bake and spin and sew right well for their years," shushan spoke up bravely. "and those who go to aintab, like elmas, learn those things even better there. oh, i wish you could see elmas in her home, working to help her mother, and taking care of her little brothers and sister; you would know what she was worth then." this did not fall upon unheeding ears. young kevork made a mental note of it; then turned quickly to ask his mother what she could manage to give him in the way of clothing, as his cousin wished to set out on his journey the morning of the day after next. meanwhile jack was busily employed writing to his uncle, and to his uncle's son. the former he told, briefly enough, of his father's death, his own long illness, and the care and kindness of the people amongst whom he had fallen. he asked him to write to him, and to send him money for his journey home, and also to recompense those who had been so good to him. he knew, of course, that he would have a considerable income of his own, so he felt no difficulty in making this request. he concluded with love to his relatives and enquiries after their welfare. to his cousin he wrote more freely, and gave more particulars. but even to him his words did not flow easily. he could not take up his life in his hand, and look at it from the outside, so as to describe it to another. he could only give details of his surroundings, and of this he soon tired, being unaccustomed to write in english, or indeed to write at all. he broke off abruptly, folded up the two letters in one, sealed the packet, directed it to his uncle, and brought it to thomassian. baron muggurditch thomassian was emphatically the courteous, cultured, cosmopolitan armenian. he had amassed a considerable fortune in his business, which was that of a merchant of drugs; and to which he joined some cautious and lucrative money-lending. moreover, he had travelled far, and seen much. he could speak several languages quite well enough to make shrewd bargains in them; and he knew the art of spending as well as of making money. he could appreciate music, poetry, and painting, no less than luxuries of a more material kind. yet jack felt as if he could never love him, never trust him even, as he did his friends in biridjik. "i don't know what it is," he said to himself; "for there is nothing amiss with his looks, except perhaps something a little shifty about his eyes." nothing, however, could have been more courteous than his response to jack's request that he would take charge of his letter, and see it safe into some really reliable post-office. "i am asking my friends to send money to bring me home," he added, by way of explanation. "how did you tell them to send it, mr. grayson?" asked thomassian. "i never thought of telling them how. i thought they would know themselves," jack answered simply. "it is not so simple a matter as you think," said thomassian. "then what must i do? stay, could it be managed this way? you are going to aleppo?" "yes, effendi." "the english consul there was my father's friend, and very kind to us. he would let my uncle send the money to him, and would know how to send it to me. i daresay he would write to my uncle too. you will ask him, will you not, baron thomassian?" "i will do it without fail." "and i am very grateful to you," jack said, giving him his hand in english fashion, though the courteous eastern did not fail to bow low over it. next morning muggurditch thomassian went his way, taking with him jack's letter and jack's chief friend kevork, but leaving behind him what was destined to be of still more importance in the life of the english youth. footnotes: [1] the "perch" upon which the turkish guard reposed was a kind of booth, erected on the top of four poles, twelve or fifteen feet high, planted firmly in the ground. [2] miss. chapter vi roses and bath towels "he moved about the house with joy and with the certain step of man." --_tennyson._ "good-morning, mr. john, i give you my salvation." very softly and sweetly fell the english words from the pretty lips of shushan. jack stood before her (it was spring now) with a great basket of spring flowers--glorious red anemones, fragrant wild roses, pink and yellow--wild heliotrope, wild hyacinths, and other flowers for which we have no name in england. they were not alone together, of course; mariam hanum was there at her wheel, and two or three other women or girls of the family, spinning or sewing. shushan herself was bending over a piece of the beautiful silk embroidery she had learned in urfa, when the entrance of the young englishman with the flowers they all loved so well made all look up together. only the men and boys of their own family might come in thus freely to the room where the women sat; for any others the younger ones would have withdrawn, or at least have veiled their faces modestly. shushan, at her first home-coming, used to do so for jack; but the practice had gradually and insensibly fallen into disuse. she had been learning english in the school in urfa, and at this time it was the greatest pleasure jack had in life to hear her speak it. she was not unwilling to do so, being most anxious to remember all she had been taught. "is that right said, mr. yon?" she asked. "it is very nice. and now, for my _salutation_, i give you my flowers. here are enough for everybody." he laid the basket down beside mariam, having first taken out a fragrant nosegay of roses and heliotrope, carefully chosen and tied with grass. "it is for saying a good lesson," he explained, as he offered it to shushan. jack was now a tall, handsome youth of eighteen. of late he had grown strong and active, and he took part as much as he could in outdoor life, especially in riding. in the saddle he was utterly fearless, and he began to be very helpful to hohannes in the training of his young horses. a month after the departure of thomassian, he began to look out for answers to his letters. but in vain he watched and waited; nothing came for him. weeks passed away, and then months; still the silence was unbroken. jack was astonished, disappointed; sometimes, by fits and starts, he was angry. it looked as if his english friends did not care for him any longer, as if they chose to forget him. if it were not so, why had they, all this time, made no effort to find out what had become of his father and himself? very well; if so it were, he could do without them. he could not just then feel any pressing anxiety to leave biridjik; although of course he always meant to go back to england some time or other. when he came of age, he would certainly go, for then he could claim his inheritance. but it was pleasant here. how richly glowed the eastern sky! how glorious the wealth of roses! how sweetly smelled the blossoming vines, as he rode past the vineyards on the hills! at last the vintage time came round again. one fine autumn morning a string of horses, mules, and donkeys stood at the door of the meneshians' house. upon them were packed two tents of coarse black cloth--that cloth of cilicia which the tent-maker of tarsus used to weave. some thin mattrasses and rugs were thrown over the bright-coloured saddles, and in the saddlebags were provisions, cooking utensils, and a few changes of dress. then the whole family, from old hohannes down to the youngest child, seated themselves, or were seated, on the animals as best they could find a place; and the yearly visit to the vineyards--the great autumn holiday of the armenians--began. if ever they shook off the deep melancholy which ages of oppression had stamped upon their race, it was in the simple pleasures of those sweet vintage days. the days were all too short for them, so they began them very early, with the singing of a psalm or hymn together. then they dispersed to the different kinds of work allotted to them. some stripped the low trees of their wealth of clusters, others trod out the juice in wooden troughs; again, others made it into sherbet, or into a kind of sugar, or mixed it with starch and with the kernels of nuts for the preparation of bastuc. again, a company of happy children plucked the large grapes singly from their stalks and laid them in the sun, on great white linen cloths, to turn themselves into raisins. their labours were lightened with talk and song, and sometimes even with jests and laughter. one morning john grayson, gathering grapes apart from the rest, heard a piteous cry for help. the voice was shushan's; she was in pain or danger. dropping his basket on the ground, he tore along, leaping over the low vines, making a straight line for the spot whence came the cry, whence came also horrible sounds--the yelps, the snarls, the growls of savage dogs. in a corner of the vineyard shushan and little hagop clung together, just keeping at bay, with loose stones from the low wall, five or six wild, half-famished, wolfish dogs. their strength was nearly gone. another minute and they would be torn to pieces. jack dashed in amongst the dogs, dealing frantic kicks and blows about him. no matter what came next, if only he saved shushan. "run! make for the tent!" he cried to her and hagop. the brutes being for the moment occupied with him, the thing was possible, and they did it. the sunshine flashed on something bright in the belt of his zeboun--the great scissors used for cutting grapes. he seized it, and drove it with all his might into the neck of the nearest dog. yelping with pain, the creature ran off. but the stoop was nearly fatal; two or three sprang on him at once;--he felt fierce teeth meeting in his flesh. "done for!" he groaned, conscious only of agony and blackness. but the next moment a tumult of cries and shouts rang in his ears; the dogs were flying in all directions before the sticks and stones of his friends, who had hurried in a body to his help. they had heard the yelping even before shushan and hagop, trembling and exhausted, were able to reach them. the creatures belonged to some kourdish shepherds, who chanced to be passing that way, and the low wall of the vineyard was no protection against their attacks. jack was brought back to his tent amidst the praises and condolences of the whole company. mariam hanum bound up his wounds, weeping and blessing him, and saying many a hearty "park derocha" ("praise to the lord") for the deliverance of her children. shushan did not say much; but, after they went home from the vineyard, she was observed to be very busy over some choice embroidery. she did not take the time for it from her ordinary work, or from any of her domestic tasks, but she worked diligently all her spare time, and sometimes far into the night. at last, one day, she laid a parcel of considerable size at the feet of the astonished english youth, saying timidly, "yon effendi, you saved my life. i want to thank you." the parcel contained what an armenian lady considers the most graceful and most appropriate gift she can offer to a gentleman, especially if it be all her own work--a set of beautifully embroidered bath towels! but a day was to come when john grayson would have given all he possessed, nay, his very life, that he had _not_ heard shushan meneshian's agonized cry for help in the vineyard, or had heard it too late. chapter vii gathering storms "if thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they."--_eccles._ v. 8. after this adventure jack matured much more quickly. his manhood grew in him apace, and with it came courage and energy, and the spirit of enterprise. he thought often of england now, wondering at the silence and inaction of all his relatives. that, _before_ he wrote to them, they made no sign, he would not have wondered at, if he had known all the truth. the syrian servants of his father, who had abandoned him in his illness and stolen his baggage, brought back word to aleppo that both father and son were dead of the fever. for obvious reasons they did not remain in the city; but the story came to the ears of the consul, and he had no reason to doubt its truth. he opened some letters which had been sent to him for grayson, and having thus discovered his brother's address, wrote to tell him what had happened. ignorant of all this, jack was sometimes tempted to unkind thoughts of his relatives in england. he even occasionally allowed himself to think, with a touch of bitterness, that they were finding the grayson money very convenient, and that it might go hard with them to give it up if he should reappear. but the thought, like snow in a warm climate, did not _rest_. jack's was essentially a generous nature. it was an added wonder, however, even greater than the first, that they never answered the letter sent them through thomassian. but wondering and watching was idle work; and jack, now a man grown, began to ask himself why, if he really wanted to go to england, he did _not_ go? it would be difficult, and it might be dangerous, but all the better for that! what hindered his borrowing a horse, asking hohannes to give him whatever remained--if anything did remain--of his father's money, hiring a turkish servant, and making a dash for aleppo? once there, the consul would help him; and soon after his return to england he would be of age, and able to act for himself. what hindered him? certainly not the perils of the way, though these were very real. he had passed beyond that stage now, finally and for ever. the thought of peril, far from daunting him, now made his blood tingle in his veins. then what hindered him? he was an englishman, and he had his life to live, his inheritance to claim, his birthright to recover. but still more he was something else, and that something--not yet expressed, not yet acknowledged even in the depths of his own heart--held him fast in the little town by far euphrates. at shushan's first home-coming he had been very shy of her. but in brotherly intercourse that had worn off, and a pleasant "camaraderie" had grown up between them. he read english with her, using the two books he had, his father's bible and "westward ho"; and she had an armenian bible which they used to compare with the english. well she loved its sweet words of promise, and often she would point them out to jack and to gabriel, who generally shared the lessons. but their talks were not all grave; they had many a quiet laugh together over her broken english, and sometimes jack would tell her stories of his own country, and of things that happened there. she in return would talk of urfa: of the dear american school, of her beloved elmas stepanian, and her other friends. she would describe the american ladies of the mission: tall, grave miss celandine, revered as a mother, and her bright young colleague miss fairchild; jack's fair-haired lady of the ferry-boat, whom, however, he entirely failed to recognise from her description. but since the battle with the dogs and the gift of the towels, his shyness had returned in full force. so much so that when, with great trouble, he caught in hunting, and brought back to her, one of the pretty little gazelles the armenians love to keep as pets, it cost him more trouble still to present his offering. but he was rewarded by the light in shushan's lovely face, and the smile with which she spoke her gentle "much very thanks, master john." yet the passion that began to grow in john grayson's heart was two-fold. love and burning indignation were so closely twined together, that he could not have severed them if he tried. as his whole development since his illness had been slow, so it was but slowly and gradually that he grew to understand the conditions under which shushan and all the rest were living. but when he came to realize them fully, he wished at first to escape and fight his way to the coast, so as anyhow and on any terms to get out of that horrible country. but he wished afterwards to stay, and stand side by side and shoulder to shoulder with these, the desolate and oppressed, whom he so loved. never, perhaps, has oppression been at once so comprehensive and so minute. the iron entered into their souls; and at the same time their fingers were vexed with innumerable pin pricks. jack had seen a hundred times, without much notice, the rude wooden ploughs in use in the district--mere hurdles with pieces of iron stuck in the end; but one day it occurred to him, on some provocation, to abuse them roundly, and to ask if there was not a smith in the country who could make a decent ploughshare. "our smiths could make anything yours could," said avedis, with whom he was walking. "then why don't they?" "i thought you knew." he lowered his voice and whispered, "_daajek_"--the turk. "you mean they won't allow you?" avedis nodded. "wait till we get home," he said. the conversation was resumed, where alone such conversations were safe, though not always even there, within closed doors. "i know," said jack, "that the turks hate machinery." "they detest it, and they fear it. they think every machine the work of shaytan--the devil." "i can't help thinking," said jack, "of the dark ages, and of what i read of them before i came. here are men of the twelfth century, with their feet on the necks of men of the nineteenth. it's bad for both. _they_ must be puzzled with you, and afraid of you, as a norman baron would have been of his saxon serfs if they had understood all about steam and electricity, while he thought those things mysterious works of the devil. but i wonder how long he could have kept them serfs?" "as long as he had arms, and they had none. more especially if he was backed up from outside," avedis answered sadly. then he sang softly, as if to himself, two lines of an old armenian national song- "if i cannot have a christian home, i will have a christian grave." "yon effendi," he resumed, "their hate of us is growing every day. and now, i think, they mean to make a full end of us." for rumours of terrible and wholesale massacres were reaching them every day. now it was about sassoun, now about zeitun, now about marash and trebizond, that these things were whispered from lip to lip. such rumours kept them in a continual state of apprehension and panic; for they knew not what to believe, and had no means of learning the truth. it was easier to know in england what happened in any town of armenia than to know it in another town of the same country. the turks of biridjik triumphed openly; and some of them boasted to their giaour neighbours that they would soon have all that belonged to them. some of the christians thought they were all sure to be murdered; others remembered there had been just such a scare seventeen or eighteen years before, but that then it had come to nothing; so they thought that now also things would just go on as usual, neither better nor worse. others again thought anything between the two extremes that their fears or their fancies prompted. john grayson thought, for one, that certainly for the present he would stay where he was. "it is not in the hour of danger one rides away and leaves one's friends behind," he said to himself. more than four years had passed now since his first coming to the country. he was twenty years of age, full six feet with his slippers off, with light brown hair and beard, fair complexion well tanned by the sun, english blue eyes, and frank, fearless english face. chapter viii a proposal he either fears his fate too much, or his desert is small, who spares to put it to the touch and gain or lose it all. --_marquis of montrose._ jack often went to the service held daily, a little after sunrise, in the gregorian church. so did many members of the household, mariam, shushan, and gabriel especially being constant attendants. one day the returning party was met at the door by hagop, weeping bitterly. asked by every one what was wrong, he sobbed out, "the cattle! the cattle!" "what is wrong with the cattle?" "they are not wrong--they are all gone. the kourds have taken them away--every one." "every one? the kine, and the sheep and goats as well?" "there's not a cow left to low nor a lamb to bleat of them all. the shepherds have come in, wounded and beaten, to tell us. grandfather says they did all they could. amaan! amaan!" by this time the women were all weeping. for them it meant ruin--almost starvation. but gabriel touched his mother's hand caressingly, and whispered a word from the psalm they had just sung in church: "his are the cattle upon a thousand hills." "but that is unbearable!" jack burst out. "it _has_ to be borne," mariam said sadly. "we shall see! i cannot believe such things are done--here even--and there is no remedy. a man's whole possessions swept away at a stroke. hagop, where are the men?" "in the great front room." "i will go to them. come, gabriel." but hagop pulled his brother back. "_you_ won't be let in," he said. "i was not." "i am two years older." "but you are not a man. father said, 'this is for men,' and took me by the shoulder and turned me out." jack rather wondered what had to be talked of which intelligent boys of twelve and fourteen ought not to hear, but he said nothing, and went in at once. he found all the men of the household, with a few of their intimate friends, gathered in the large room of which hagop had spoken. as he entered all were silent. they stood together in a dull stupor, like cattle before a thunderstorm. in their faces was profound sadness, mingled with fear. jack looked around on them, and cried out impetuously, "are we going to stand this outrageous robbery? is there nothing to be done?" there was no answer. some bowed their heads despairingly; others put their hands on their hearts, and said, "amaan!" others, again, looked up and murmured, "god help us!" jack turned to hohannes. the old man was weeping, his face buried in his cloak. the sight touched him. "father, do not weep," he said gently. "we will try to recover at least something." hohannes flung his cloak aside with a gesture of passionate pain. "dost think i am weeping for sheep and oxen?" he said. "friends, this young man is to me as a son, and to shushan as a brother. tell him--i cannot." pale with a new alarm, jack turned to the rest, "what is _this_?" he cried. "tell me, in god's name." they looked at each other in silence. at last avedis, who seemed fated to belie his name, found his voice. he said hoarsely, "just after the shepherds came to tell about the flocks, my father was called aside. it was a private message from the kamaikan, who is not so bad as some. he sent to warn us that mehmed ibrahim has found out shushan is here. he will send to demand her for his harem, and we will have to give her up." jack groaned, and turned his face away. silence fell upon them all--a silence that might be felt. after a while some one said, "he has not sent yet. the kamaikan's warning was well meant." "yes," said avedis, "we have given gold. he will get us a respite if he can." "what use in a respite," boghos, shushan's father, moaned in his despair--"except to dress the bride?" "the _bride_!" a younger man repeated,--rage, hate, and shame concentrated in the word. there was another pause, and a long one. then john grayson strode out into the middle of the room and stood there, his form erect, his eyes flashing, his arm outstretched. "listen!" he cried, in a voice like the sharp report of a rifle. every one turned towards him, but old hohannes said hopelessly, "it is no use; yet speak on, yon effendi; thou dost ever speak wisely." "there is one way of saving shushan." "let me speak first," an old man, as old as hohannes, broke in hastily. "englishman, thou hast lived long among us, but thou art not of our race. thou dost not yet understand that we are born to suffer, and have no defence except patience. i wot thou wouldst talk to us of fighting and resistance; for thou art young, and thy blood is hot. but i am old, and my head is grey. i have seen that tried often enough--ay, god knows, too often! did not my son die in a turkish prison, and my daughter, whom he struck those blows to save--well, she is dead now, and shushan--as we hope--will die soon, for god is merciful. but let there be no word spoken of resistance here; for that means only anguish piled on anguish, wrong heaped on wrong." without change of voice or attitude, jack repeated his words, "there is one way of saving shushan." avedis spoke up boldly. "let us hear what yon effendi has to say. he saved her once already from the wild dogs." jack looked round the room. "do i not see a priest here? yes, der garabed." the priest had been ill, and had come out now for the first time, drawn by sympathy for the troubles of the meneshians. he was sitting in a corner on some cushions, but when his name was spoken he rose, in his long black robe with large sleeves, like an english clergyman's gown. "what do you want of me, yon effendi?" he asked. "i want you to marry me to-morrow morning to shushan meneshian." a murmur of astonishment ran round the room. old hohannes was the first to speak. "dear son, thou art beside thyself. forget thy foolish words. we will forget them also." "i am not beside myself, and i speak words of truth and soberness," said jack, to whom bible diction came naturally now. "there is no other way." "one cannot do things after that fashion," the priest said vaguely, being much perplexed, "nor in such haste. one must be careful not to profane a sacrament of the church." "where is the profanation? i love her--more than my life." crimson to the roots of his hair, and with the blood throbbing in every vein, john grayson stood, in that supreme moment, revealed to his own heart, and flinging out the revelation as a challenge to all that company of sorrowful, despairing men. "it is a strange thing, a very strange thing," said hohannes, stroking his beard. he expressed the sense of the whole assembly. the proposal was a breach of every convention of their race, amongst whom betrothal invariably precedes marriage. "it cannot be done in that way," was their feeling. jack knew their customs as well as they did; but, being an englishman, he thought necessity should and must override custom. he spoke again, with that curious calmness which sometimes marks the very heart of an intense emotion, the spot of still water in the midst of the whirlpool. "as the wedded wife of an englishman, no turk will dare to molest her. i should like to see him try it! he would have england to reckon with, and england can keep her own." now, if any hope survived in the crushed hearts of these oppressed, downtrodden armenians, it was hope in england. the english were christians, so they would have the will to help them; they were mighty warriors and conquerors, so they would have the power. themselves under the pressure of a malignant, irresistible power, they had perhaps an exaggerated idea of what power could accomplish, if combined with beneficence. certainly for a young man to marry a girl in that way, without preparation, without betrothal, without even time to make the wedding clothes, was a thing unheard of since the days of st. gregory. yet, what if it were the only way of saving shushan? hohannes spoke at last. "yon effendi," he asked, "have you the _right_ to do this? is there in your own land no head of your house, no kinsman, without whose leave this thing ought not to be done? answer, as in the sight of god." jack held up his head proudly. "there is none," he said. "i am my own master." "then," hohannes resumed, "it is my mind to say to you, do what is in your heart, and may god bless you." "then," said jack, "with your leave, father, i will ask her." "and i, the head of her house, give her to you in the name of god." jack looked around in perplexity. "but you know i have got to ask her," he repeated. boy as he was when he left england, he knew that when a man wished to marry, the one indispensable preliminary was to "ask" the lady of his choice. then arose boghos, who had been nearly silent hitherto in a sorrow too great for words or tears. "i too her father, i give her unto thee in the name of god," he said solemnly. "i have only, then, to ask her," jack persisted. "thou _hast_ asked, and we have given her." it was hohannes who spoke now. "what yet remains to do?" jack pulled himself together, and tried to explain. "but if she--does not like me--i can't--you know.--don't you understand?--i must speak to her, and ask her if she will have me." the men stood silent, looking at each other. had they spoken their thoughts, they would have said, "heard ever any man the like of that?" scarcely would they have been more surprised had jack, wishing to sell his horse, announced that he could not conclude the bargain without the creature's express consent. at last avedis threw out a modest suggestion. "this may be one of the customs of the english people, which we do not understand. no doubt they have their customs, as we have ours." jack turned to him gratefully. "you are right, avedis. it _is_ the custom of my country to take the 'yes' or 'no' only from the lady's lips. "a very strange custom," muttered boghos. "but if it _is_ the custom, we ought to conform to it, however strange or unsuitable it may appear to us," der garabed advised. "we should do all things in order; and moreover, should we fail in this, it might happen that in the english country the marriage would not be recognised. therefore this is what i propose: let us send for the young maiden, and let the englishman, in our presence, do after the manner of his country." this was too appalling! jack tingled all over at the thought of such an ordeal for shushan, and for himself. "oh, i can't! for heaven's sake, let me go to her," he said. "if that also is according to the custom, it shall be duly observed," said hohannes, with the air of one who humours a sick person. "let us all go." happily for jack, some of those present had the sense to reflect that the women's apartment would not hold them all, and that therefore their assistance might be dispensed with. still the grandfather and father of the maiden, two of her uncles, the priest, and three other persons thought it behoved them to go and witness the due performance of this ceremony of the english. jack was conducted by this solemn group to the room where shushan sat with her mother. as with trembling footsteps he approached her, the rest fell back and stood in a grave half-circle, their ears and eyes intent upon his every word and motion. "heaven help me!" thought jack. "had ever man to propose in such a way? what shall i say?" but no words would come to him; sense and speech seemed both to have departed from him. the silence throbbed in his ears like a pulse of pain--the awful silence, which he knew he ought to break, which he _must_ break, for his life, and more than his life--and yet he could not. not a word could he utter. shushan, meanwhile, not knowing what all this might portend, hastily veiled her face, and clung to her mother. mariam had a copper dish which she had been cleaning in her hand, and in her surprise and alarm she let it go. it slipped slowly down her dress, and fell at last with a slight sound upon the floor. in the strained silence every one started, and shushan dropped her veil with a little frightened cry. jack saw her sweet face, pale with anguish, her soft, dark eyes, heavy with unshed tears. every thought was lost in an unutterable longing to snatch her from the fate that threatened her. "will you let me save you, shushan?" he pleaded, coming close to her,--and his voice was the voice of a strong man's infinite tenderness. shushan stood up, looked around upon her father, her grandfather, and all the rest, then looked calmly and steadily in the face of the englishman. "_yes_," she said softly. for she knew there was one way of escape for the christian maiden in a strait like hers. there had been often in armenia christian fathers strong enough to say, like virginius,- "and now, my own dear little girl, there is no way but this." what more likely than that the brave, kind englishman--whom it would not hurt so much, as he was not of her own blood--might do for her that which her kindred would find too hard? there was a strange fascination, a sort of rapture in the thought of dying by his hand. "i am not afraid," she said, with a firm sweet look,--"not afraid to die." "_to die!_" jack cried in horror. "who talks of dying? no, you shall not die, but live. you shall live for me, my own true wife, in happy england. say 'yes' to that, shushan." she looked at him in wonder. at last the colour mounted to her pale cheeks, her lips parted softly, and a low murmur came, "if god wills." hohannes turned gravely to the rest. "no doubt," he said, stroking his beard, "yon effendi has done after the manner of the english, when they would take their wives. if he is satisfied, we may go our way, thanking god, who has sent him to the help of our dear child in her peril." jack's heart beat thickly, as one by one they went, and he was left alone with shushan and her mother. hohannes had looked back to see if he were following; but no, he stood rooted to the spot. "the custom of his country," thought the old man, and passed on. jack stood looking on the ground, not daring to raise his eyes to shushan's face. but when the last retreating footstep had died away, he looked up, and there was that in his face which she had never seen before. the question of his heart was this: "does she care for _me_, or am i only better than a turk?" it spoke in his eyes, and thrilled her with a sense of something strangely new and sweet. he had been kind and good to her for so long a time, but _this_--what was this? instinctively she turned from him to her mother. mariam's tears of joy and thankfulness were falling drop by drop. she could have thrown herself at the feet of the deliverer of her child. but, true to the custom of her race when a maiden is in the presence of him who has chosen her, she drew the veil over her daughter's face. "ah!" jack exclaimed involuntarily. but he had seen enough--enough at least to assure him that he could teach shushan to love him as he loved her. "dear mother," he said, "you have been a mother to me for so long; now i am going to be your son altogether, and take care of your lily." scarcely had the men reached the court when the priest said gravely, "there is one thing we have left out of our account, which is serious, and may not be disregarded. an englishman cannot marry a subject of the sultan without a written permission from his own consul--even if he can do it except in the consul's presence. under the circumstances, i dare not perform the ceremony; terrible harm might come of it; and moreover it might not be valid in england." most of the party knew this already, but in their excitement they had disregarded or forgotten it. they stood just as they were in the court, and looked at one another; "all faces gathered blackness." "call forth yon effendi and tell him," said hohannes. avedis called him, and he came, his face flushed and glowing with a shy, half-hidden rapture. der garabed explained the difficulty. jack tossed his head impatiently, like a young horse restrained unwillingly by bit and bridle. "what a plague!" he cried in boyish indignation. then, his face changed and sobered as the man within him asserted himself; he seemed to grow years older all at once. "this is what we will do," he said: "bring shushan well disguised to one of the christian villages near--you know them all, and which is best to choose--and hide her there for a few days. i will take horse this very hour and ride to urfa. you know it is reported the consul is there at present. if he is, i can see him; if not, i can go after him. i daresay he can give me some writing, or document, which will make everything straight for us. but if he cannot, and the thing must be done in his presence, i will bring shushan to him, were he at the end of the world. for i carry this thing through, or i die for it--so help me god!" "good. and before you go, we will betroth her to you," hohannes answered. then he took him privately into the room where his father's things were hidden. he gave him all the gold that remained; and then, with an air of mystery, took out another parcel, and having unwound its many wrappings, displayed to jack's astonished eyes a small revolver and a belt of cartridges. "i did not know you had these," he said. "no; i was afraid to tell you while you were but a boy; lest some chance word to your companions might betray that we had firearms here, and ruin us all; or else you might have been too eager to get hold of them, and unwilling to wait. but now you are a man, and have sense and understanding; and on the way to urfa, where there are robbers, they may be of use to you." jack took the revolver in great delight, and went off to examine it. in england he had been a good shot for a boy of his age, though only with an ordinary gun. but he had sometimes cleaned the revolver for his father, so he knew what to do. he found it in a terrible condition from rust and damp, and feared it would be quite useless. however, he managed with great difficulty to clean two barrels out of the six, and to load them; more it would be useless to attempt. as he was thus engaged some one knocked at the door. knowing his occupation to be a very dangerous one, he did not say, "come in," but went and opened it cautiously. gabriel stood there. "yon effendi," he said, "the post is going to-night." "well?" "that means that you may get to urfa in nine hours instead of in two days; for you know they go the whole way at a hard gallop. it means safety too, for they have zaptiehs to guard them." "good, gabriel. 'tis _thou_ shouldst be called avedis (good tidings). i will go at once and settle to go along with them." "you will hide _that thing_," said gabriel, with a frightened glance at the revolver. "'twould mean death. and oh, yon effendi, one word, please!" he stooped, kissed his hand, and pressed his forehead to it. "tell them a boy comes with you. take me, i pray of you, yon effendi!" jack hesitated. "there would be danger for you," he said. "no more than here." "but your father and mother, and your grandfather, gabriel?" "they give me leave; nay, they wish it. they say it is for my sister you are doing all this; therefore if i can help you--and i can. i know turkish well, and that will be very useful. i know the ways of the turks too, much better than you do. and i love you, yon effendi." there was reason in what he said, and in the end he had his way. that evening all the meneshian family met together in the largest room of their house, the men and boys sitting at one side of it, the women at the other. at an ordinary time they would have "called their neighbours and chief friends," but now they were afraid to do it; so der garabed was the only outsider, and his presence was official, for he read certain prayers of the church and a passage of scripture. then jack stood up, and walked over to the place where shushan sat, beside her mother. in his hand was his father's bible and another book--an armenian hymnbook. shushan rose and stood before him with bowed head and veiled face, as with a few low-breathed words he gave her the books. she took them from him, and laid them on the table. no word was spoken by her; in taking them she had done enough. the betrothal was sealed. then, according to custom, the boys handed round bastuc and paclava, (a kind of paste made with honey,) and also coffee and sherbet. but this was rather a sacrifice to use and wont than a genuine festivity. the little gathering soon broke up, and jack and gabriel prepared for their journey. at nightfall they said to their friends and kindred the usual "paree menác" (remain with blessing), and were answered by the usual, and in this case most heartfelt "paree yetac" (go with blessing). chapter ix peace and strife "they that have seen thy look in death no more may fear to die." john grayson and gabriel meneshian were threading their way through the narrow, unsavoury streets of urfa, the gutters which ran down the middle often not leaving them room to walk side by side. they had left their horses at a khan, and were now seeking the dwelling of the vartonians, to which they had been directed. emerging at last into a wider thoroughfare, they saw a church, standing in the midst of its churchyard, of which the gate was open. "we must be in our own quarter," cried gabriel, delighted, "for this is a christian church." jack stepped inside the gate and looked at it with interest. the door of the church was open also; and gabriel, seeing him look towards it, said, "you might go in there, yon effendi, and rest a little, for i see you are tired to death; i will run on and try and find the house. it cannot be far off now." "but you are tired too." "not a bit. i would feel quite fresh this minute if i only had a drink. and, by good luck, there goes a fellow outside, a turk too, with a bucket full of _iran_ to sell." the turk, who had been crying his ware, stopped at the moment, for he saw an armenian boy coming down the street with a large empty pitcher in his hand. "you want this?" said he, preparing to pour his sour milk into it. the boy said he wanted nothing of the kind. he had been sent for water, and water he must bring. his people were waiting for it, and would be very angry. he tried to pass on, but the turk laid hold on him, seized his pitcher, and emptied the bucket of _iran_ into it, not without spilling a good deal in the street. "now pay me my money," he said. "but the thing is no use to me," the boy protested ruefully. "what does that matter, dog of a giaour? you got it; and, by the beard of the prophet, you must pay for it." as the boy, crying bitterly, searched for the few piastres he had about him, jack's honest english face flushed with wrath, and gabriel would have sprung to the rescue had he not laid his hand on him and whispered, "wait." they waited until the turk had turned down a side street, then jack hailed the lad, who was standing quite still, gazing dolefully at his useless pitcher of _iran_. "will you give us a drink?" he asked, coming out of the gate. "we are dying of thirst." the boy checked his sobs; and for answer held up his pitcher to the lips of the stranger. jack took a long deep draught, then passed it on to gabriel, while he made the boy happy with more piastres than the turk had taken from him. his tears all gone, he blessed the strangers for good christians, and thanked them in the name of the lord. "what church is that?" asked gabriel, giving back the pitcher. "that? oh, that is the church of the protestants." "is it english then?" jack asked, feeling a pull at his heart strings. "no; it is armenian. but it is of the religion of the foreigners, who talk english. they are good people, and very kind to the poor." "perhaps there is service going on, as the church is open," jack said. "i will go and see." "do," said gabriel; "meanwhile, this lad will help me to find the vartonians, and i will come back for you." jack passed through the churchyard, and, leaving his shoes on the threshold, entered the church. the interior was very handsome, all of white stone, and adorned with fine pillars and beautiful carving. it was not unlike a gregorian church, save for the absence of pictures. in the window, over what the gregorians called the altar and the protestants the table of the lord, was a small red cross. there was a very low partition, separating the places where the men and the women sat, and the floor was covered with rushes. before the holy table, on a kind of couch, all draped in snowy white, and covered with flowers, something lay. jack knew what it was, for he had seen the dead laid in the church at biridjik, to await their final rest. with bowed head and reverent footsteps he drew near to look. venturing gently to draw aside the face-cloth from the face, he saw it was that of a woman. not, evidently, a young and lovely girl like shushan, but one who had lived her life, had borne the burden and heat of the day, and, it well might be, was glad to rest. perhaps yesterday there were wrinkles on the cheek and furrows on the brow; now death,--"kind, beautiful death,"--had smoothed them all away, and stamped instead his own signet there of which the legend is "peace." the closed white lips had that look we have seen on the faces of our dead, as if they are of those "god whispers in the ear,"--and they _know_, though they cannot tell us, _yet_. english words, that he had heard long ago, came floating through the brain of john grayson. "the peace of god that passeth all understanding." he found himself once more in the church of his childhood, while a solemn voice breathed over the hushed congregation those words of blessing. then, coming back to the present, he thought, "it takes away the fear of death to see a dead face like that." he reverently replaced the veil, and withdrawing somewhat into the shadow, knelt down to pray. as he knelt there, he heard the footsteps of one who came to look upon the dead. rising noiselessly, he saw a tall, noble-looking man, dressed _à la frank_, approach the bier. his bent head was streaked with grey, his face pale with intense, though quiet sorrow. as he knelt down silently beside his dead, john grayson knew instinctively that the love of those two had been what his love and shushan's might become, if god left them together for half a happy lifetime. for a few minutes the silence lasted, then came that most sorrowful of all earth's sounds of sorrow, the sob of a strong man. jack kept quiet in the shadow of his pillar, in reverence and awe; not for worlds would he have betrayed his presence there. afraid gabriel might come in search of him, he looked round for some chance of escape. he saw, to his relief, a small side door, near where he was standing. he crept towards it noiselessly, found it unlocked, withdrew the little bolt, and going through the pastor's study, slipped out into the churchyard to wait for gabriel. yes, there he was, just coming in at the gate. he went to meet him. "did you think me long, yon effendi?" asked the boy. "i have found the vartonians, and i am to bring you to them at once. baron vartonian himself is away from home, but one of his sons would have come with me to bid you welcome to their house, only they are in great trouble to-day, for pastor stepanian, their badvellie, whom they love, has just lost his wife. shushan will be very sorry, for oriort elmas stepanian, the badvellie's daughter, is her greatest friend." "i know," jack answered softly. "i have seen the face of the dead. gabriel, i do not think _now_ that it can be very hard to die." "no," said gabriel. "it would not be hard to die for christ's sake, yon effendi." "it reminds me," jack went on, as if talking to himself, "of the last words i heard my father say, 'the dark river turns to light.'" jack was received with open arms by the whole vartonian household. it was even a larger household than that of the meneshians in biridjik. its head, a prosperous merchant, was absent in aleppo, but there was his old infirm father, and there were his numerous sons and daughters, two or three of them married, with children of their own, but the youngest still a child. there were also many servants. some of the family were gregorians and some protestants, but there was no friction or jealousy between the two. being people of substance, their house, built as usual around a court, was large and very handsomely furnished, the wood-work carved elaborately, and the curtains, rugs, and carpets of rich materials, and beautifully embroidered. the vartonians considered jack in the light of a hero. but they were uneasy at shushan's being left, even for the present, in a village exposed to the attacks of the kourds; for much more was known at urfa than at biridjik about the disturbed state of the country, and the terrible massacres that had taken place in many towns and villages. was not the armenian quarter still full of the miserable refugees from sassoun, who had come there during the past winter--diseased, starving, wounded, sometimes dying, and with horrible tales of the cruelties they and theirs had suffered? it was agreed on all hands that the best thing jack could do was to refer his case to the lady at the head of the american mission, whose school shushan had attended. we shall call this heroic lady, who is happily still living, miss celandine. she thought the best plan would be to bring shushan, as soon as she was married, back to urfa in disguise, since under her charge and in the mission premises she would be, for the time, absolutely safe. she believed the english consul would be able to give permission for the marriage without being personally present. but she was not certain as to where the consul was to be found. very likely he was at the baths of haran, the season being august, and very hot. she would find out as soon as possible, and put mr. grayson into communication with him. two or three days later, jack was setting out, with one of the young vartonians, to explore the hill that overhangs urfa, and to visit the remains of the ancient citadel, and the other interesting ruins with which it is strewn,--when kevork meneshian walked in. as soon as they had got through the usual salutations, barkev vartonian and john grayson asked him together, "what has brought you here?" and barkev added, "it is not the time for vacation." "true," answered the young man, smiling; "i did very wrong to come away. and i am very glad i came." "you speak in a riddle," said jack. "it is easily read. when pastor stepanian's wife died, the news came by telegraph to oriort elmas in aintab. it was in her heart to go home at once to her father and her young brothers, who must need her sorely. but what a journey for a girl, and a girl all alone, with only khartijes for companions and protectors! only think of it, four long days on horseback, and three nights in the wayside khans! and then the perils of the road--wild kourds everywhere, not to speak of other robbers, more treacherous, if less violent. i could not have it! so i told no one, but just wrote a note of apology, and left it for the principal, slipped out without waiting for leave, put on a servant's dress, and became her shadow, from the moment her lady teacher bade farewell to her in aintab until she fell fainting into her father's arms here in urfa, last night." "a proper person _you_ were to act as a young lady's guardian!" said barkev laughing. "i did not say 'guardian,' i said 'shadow,'" kevork returned coolly. "one's shadow is always before or behind. so i took care to keep; only letting her know i _was_ there, if i was wanted. there were many ways i could help her. that is how i came to be here; and i suppose the mission folk at aintab will have no more of me, since i have broken all their rules. but i have got a good deal of their learning already," he added with some complacency. "yon effendi, how are my father and my mother, and all our house in biridjik, for we did not stay there on our way? and what in the world has brought _you_ here?" jack answered his questions, marvelling the while at the mixture in his character. shrewd, practical, and almost selfish in the pursuit of his ambition as he used to think him, he had served elmas stepanian with a delicate, self-sacrificing chivalry of which any lover might have been proud. "i think," said barkev, "you would do well to go to the badvellie. he is very learned, and might give you the lessons you have missed." "i will not trouble the pastor _yet_," answered kevork with decision--"not until i can go to him for something else. no; i shall beg of miss celandine to give me work, teaching the boys that come to her school, and study for myself in the evenings." "you'll get on," said barkev approvingly. "for you know what you want. 'a polished stone is not left on the ground.'" "i might, in any other country. but," lowering his voice, "what is this i hear of fresh massacres?" "oh, rumours, rumours! there are always rumours. i would not think too much of them--not until we hear more." "you may well talk of rumours," kevork returned. "some of the things people say are past thinking for foolishness. do you know i heard in aintab that some people say in europe it is _we_ who are massacring the turks? as if we _could_, even suppose we would! without firearms, or weapons of any kind, so much as to defend ourselves from the kourdish robbers--good for _us_ to think of killing turks! 'twould be striking the point of a goad with one's fist." "the wolf eats the lamb, and cries out that the lamb is eating him," said barkev. "but," he added, glancing round apprehensively, "is there any talk of the english coming to help us?" "much talk there is of the sultan's having consented, moved thereto no doubt by the english and the other christians, to grant us certain privileges." "we do not want privileges," said barkev; "we want _justice_. we want security for our lives and properties, and, above all, for our women." "well, that is what these reforms are intended to give us." "i'll believe in them, when i see a moslem punished for a crime against one of _us_. and that is what my grandfather, in his seven and eighty years, has never seen, nor i think will little nerses, who is not weaned yet, live to see it." "where is the use of that kind of talk, true though it be?" said kevork; "it only brings trouble." the heart of kevork meneshian was not just then attuned to trouble. the deepest gorges of the alps have every day their gleam of sunshine, though it be but for one short hour; so even in the most shadowed lives there is usually some brief, golden moment, when the light in a soft eye or the smile on a dear lip is more than the fate of nations or of empires. it was such a moment now with kevork; and it ought to have been such a moment with john grayson, only, for him, it was love itself that hung suspended in the balance of fate. fate, for the time, seemed to have turned against him. the ride from biridjik to urfa had been done at headlong speed, and he had not reached his destination until it was almost noon, and the sun's heat absolutely overpowering. he thought his miserable sensations afterwards were only the result of fatigue, and kept up bravely until the coming of kevork, when he had to own to overpowering headache, and feverish alternations of heat and cold. he just managed somehow to write a letter to the consul, which he asked the vartonians to get miss celandine to forward for him, if she could. then he yielded to destiny. for eight days he tossed in fever, with kevork as his special nurse, his kind hosts also giving him every care and attention in their power. once the fever left him however, he recovered rapidly, his good constitution, strengthened by a simple and healthy life, coming to his aid. as soon as he was able to be about again, he said he would go to the mission house, and ask miss celandine if she had any tidings for him. as he spoke, he was standing near one of the few windows of the vartonian house which looked out upon the street. something he saw there made him break off suddenly, pause a moment, then utter an exclamation of pity and horror. "what is it?" asked kevork, coming to the window, followed by barkev, and two of the ladies of the house, who chanced to be present. along the street passed slowly, by twos and threes, in a straggling procession, some of the most miserable creatures the eye of man has ever looked upon. gaunt, half famished, with limbs reduced to skin and bone, or else swollen out of all shape by disease, they walked on with uneven, tottering footsteps. all were in filthy, ragged garments; some had rags clotted with blood tied about their heads or their arms, others limped along with the aid of sticks. just under the window a woman dropped in the street, and lay as one dead. the man who was walking beside her stood and looked, without doing anything to help. how could he? both his hands were gone. the three young men ran to the street together. jack proved the quickest, and was already kneeling on the ground and trying to raise the poor woman when the others came up. "it is no use," said the man beside her in a dreary, almost indifferent, tone. "she is dead." "i don't know that," said jack. "give her air, for heaven's sake. kevork, keep back the others. barkev, you could fetch us some cordial." it was not so easy to obey him; for those before had stopped, while those behind came crowding up, and with the strangers a few armenians of the town. one of these pushed through the rest with an air of authority. "make way, good people," he said; "i am a doctor." he did not seem a very prosperous member of the fraternity, to judge by his dress; but then he was young, and had the world before him. he felt the woman's pulse and her heart, and said presently, "she is not dead; but she soon will be unless she gets proper care and nourishment. who will help me to carry her into my dispensary close by?" jack volunteered, quite forgetting his recent illness; but barkev raised an objection. "better bring her to the mission house," he said. "miss celandine has food and medicine, and will take good care of her." "miss celandine will have her hands full. besides, my place is near. yes, sir, take her feet,"--he nodded to jack. "i'll manage the rest. this way, please." "you are a good fellow, melkon effendi, and i believe you are right," said barkev, his attention claimed by another of the miserable group, who was begging in god's name for a bit of bread, as they had eaten nothing for several days but grass and roots. jack helped melkon to lay his patient on the surgery table, and watched his efforts to restore animation. "who are they?" he asked. the young doctor answered in broken phrases without stopping his work. "from one of the villages--rhoumkali--fugitives--there has been a massacre--wholesale--of our people--by turks and kourds." "horrible!" "horrible? if you had seen the sassoun refugees when they came here last winter, you might talk of horror. i believe the young mission lady, miss fairchild, sacrificed her life to them." miss fairchild, shushan's friend! "is she dead then?" jack asked anxiously. "they sent her away still hanging between life and death, and we know not yet which will conquer. but, as for massacres--to-day there, to-morrow here." "not _here_, in a great city like this--not here surely," jack said. "but the villages, the little towns like biridjik, for them one's heart trembles," he added, his thoughts flying to shushan. "she is coming to," said melkon cheerfully, the duty of the moment shutting out the terrors of the future. "well, my lad, what do _you_ want?"--this to a youth who appeared in the doorway. "oh, i see; you are one of baron thomassian's people, and come just in time to fetch what i want. i am out of these drugs," and he handed him a list. "you shall have them, melkon effendi," said the young man. "but my business now is with the other gentleman. i have just met baron barkev vartonian, who told me i should find him here." "with _me_?" said jack, a little excited; for what possible business could thomassian have with him, except to give him a letter from england; or, at least, a letter or a message from the consul? "with you, sir. my master salutes you with all respect, and begs of you to honour his poor dwelling with a visit, and to drink his black coffee." still under the same impression, and with bright visions floating before him of bringing his young bride in triumph to england, jack only waited to see the poor woman fully restored to consciousness, and to give melkon a little money to supply her immediate necessities. he then accompanied the youth to the house of thomassian, leaving a message on his way for the vartonians, to say whither he had gone. he was rewarded with the first specimen of genuine oriental wealth and splendour he had seen in armenia. he had thought the house of the vartonians a model of luxury, but this was a fairy palace! muggurditch thomassian himself, in a faultless european costume, met him at the door. he had heard nothing of his illness, which was not surprising, as he seldom saw his kinsfolk the vartonians. he explained that he had taken the freedom of asking him to visit him at the earnest request of his wife, who had a great desire to see an englishman once more. "she is from constantinople," he said a little proudly. "there she used to have much intercourse with the franks, and especially with the english, whom she greatly esteems." then he led his visitor across the spacious marble court, with its beautiful fountain in the midst, its bushes laden with fragrant roses, its flowers of many kinds and hues. some of them, which were rare and newly brought to the country, he pointed out to the englishman. jack admired them duly, and expressed the satisfaction he would have in waiting on "the madam"; but, the claims of courtesy thus fulfilled, he could not help adding, "i hoped you might have a letter to give me from my friends in england, or at least a communication from the consul." "have you had, yourself, no answer to your letter, effendi?" thomassian asked, as he stopped to gather for his guest some roses he had particularly admired. "none whatever." "djanum!" (my soul! a common exclamation) "then i fear it must have gone astray in the post. you know how often, unfortunately, that happens here." "but the consul?" jack asked eagerly; "you spoke to him, did you not?" "he was absent when i went to aleppo," thomassian answered. "i wrote to him about your matters; but i fear that letter may have miscarried, like the other one." "that consul is always _somewhere else_," jack thought despairingly, as he took off his shoes at the beautifully carved and polished door that led to the apartment of the ladies. he found himself, on entering, in a large room heavy with perfume. silken hangings, richly embroidered, adorned the walls. silk and satin cushions of all colours, often heavy with gold and silver, lay about in profusion. the only other furniture the room contained was the long satin-covered divan which occupied one side of it, and upon which there half sat and half reclined a very handsome lady. her dress was of the costliest materials, and of a fashion partly eastern and partly european. jack made the usual compliments in his best style; and was invited to sit upon luxurious cushions, and by-and-by to partake of choice coffee, sherbet and sweetmeats, which were handed to him on silver trays by pretty, dark-eyed girls in silk zebouns and jackets. meanwhile his host entertained him with what he could not help calling, in his disappointed soul, vapid and uninteresting commonplaces, the lady putting in now and then a languid but courteous word or two. his heart full of his own perplexities and of what he had just seen of the wretched fugitives from rhoumkali, he began a question about the massacres there, but his host, with a warning glance directed towards his wife, turned the conversation immediately. jack could understand his not wishing to alarm her, or to wring her heart with terrible details; especially as she did not look very strong. but the time seemed long to him; and as soon as he thought it consistent with good manners, he rose to take his leave. the lady called one of her attendants, and gave her a brief direction. the girl left the room, and speedily returned, bearing a pretty card-board box about a foot square, covered with coloured straw wrought in patterns. "will you do me a kindness, mr. grayson?" said "the madam." "will you take charge of this box of turkish sweetmeats from constantinople, and present it, with my salutations, to the little vartonians, the cousins of my husband? but, i pray you, take toll of it in passing. open the box, and eat the first sweetmeat yourself." as she said this her dark eyes, for one instant, met and _fixed_ the english blue eyes of jack grayson; the next, she was bidding him good-bye with perfect eastern courtesy, just touched with the dignified nonchalance of the typical fine lady. when jack was once more alone with thomassian, he spoke again of the horrors of rhoumkali. thomassian shrugged his shoulders. "it is very dreadful," he said. "can nothing be done?" "_nothing_, mr. grayson. foolish people, who run about talking of things they do not understand, only get themselves and other men into trouble. here is what happens many a time--there is some wild talk going of help from england, or some such nonsense, and on the strength of it some hot-headed fellow kills a kourd, or resists a zaptieh, and then all hell is let loose upon us." "but if the zaptieh is torturing his father for not paying a tax he does not owe, or giving up a rifle he has not got? or, if the kourd is taking--well, you know what i mean; the word chokes me," said jack, thinking of shushan. "let be! let be! 'speech is silver, silence is golden.' 'the heart of the fool is in his tongue, the tongue of the wise man is in his heart.'--mr. grayson, i thank you for honouring me with a visit. i beg of you to salute my cousins in my name. i hope old father hagop's cough is not so troublesome now? and how is the little one? does he begin to walk yet? i hope to have the pleasure of visiting them very shortly, but business is pressing just now." with such talk as this he led jack once more to the outer door; and he, as he took his final leave, remembered an english word which he had hardly thought of since he left the shores of his native land. he confessed himself decidedly "bored." as soon as he got home, he opened the box of sweetmeats and looked anxiously for what the giver might mean by the "first." each of the dainty morsels was wrapped up separately in thin paper; but one of them looked, on close inspection, as if the paper had been removed, and then carefully replaced. he took it off, and found--traced upon it in very fine, faint handwriting--the following words: "mr. john grayson.--shushan is in danger. the chief wife of mehmed ibrahim is my friend. she does not wish shushan to be found. she tells me mehmed has discovered the name of the village where she is, and will set on the kourds to attack it, and to make her a prisoner. there is no safe place for her, except the house of the american missionaries here--if only you can bring her to it secretly, in some disguise--for the turks do not dare to enter it. i may not write to the mission ladies myself, as my husband forbids me to have any communication with them, therefore i write to you. you will know what to do. god bless you.--yevnega thomassian." chapter x an armenian wedding "'till death us part'--oh, words to be our best for love the deathless." --_e. b. browning._ at biridjik, in the house of hohannes meneshian, and in the very room where john grayson had caught his first glimpse of armenian domestic life, two women sat at work. mariam, looking old and careworn, was behind her wheel as usual; shushan was bending over her beautiful embroidery. the room looked much barer than in the olden days, most of the curtains and rugs had disappeared, and there was no sign of any cooking in progress. this mattered the less however since grapes were in season now, and a basket of great, luscious clusters lay in the corner, destined to form, with rye bread, the evening meal of the family. the villagers with whom shushan had been staying had brought her home the day before. she was no longer safe with them. a kourd, who had shown them a little friendliness, and to whom they had given backsheesh, had called to one of their men over the wall of the vineyard where he was working, "take care! you have got a lily our sheikh wants to gather." so they acted on the hint. shushan was once more with her kindred, and in the place of her birth. but little joy had she, or they, in the meeting. her presence was a danger to her friends. she was hunted from place to place, like a partridge the dogs start from its cover that it may fall by the gun of the sportsman. happy partridge, that would fall at once, gasp its little life out on the grass, and rest! no such rest for the moslem's victim! more than once indeed, across the sad texture of shushan's life, there had shot a gleam of gold. she had been a happy girl in urfa, when she went with her cousins to the mission school, and learned beautiful things from the dear foreign ladies there. afterwards in biridjik, for a little while, she had been still happier, though with a different kind of happiness. the brave, strong, splendid english youth had come into her life and transfigured it. he had saved her from the savage dogs; he had done a still more wonderful thing than that. he had come to her help in her direst need, choosing her, claiming her for his own. her heart throbbed yet with the fearful rapture of that day, the wonder-day of her short life--the day of her betrothal. but now yon effendi was gone from her. all her joy seemed to have melted from her like the snow on the mountains, like the dreams of the night. it had left instead a yearning, painful in its sweetness, an "aching, unsatisfied longing," for him who was its core and its centre. yon effendi was gone; but mehmed ibrahim, whom she had never seen, yet regarded with unutterable dread and loathing, seemed by his agents and instruments to be ever present, all around her, pressing her in on every side. she feared death far less than she feared him; but she was not yet quite sixteen, and since she had known yon effendi, she would have liked to live. the well-taught pupil of the mission school thought more clearly and felt more keenly than her simple-hearted mother, who had never had her chances; but the more capacious vessel only held in larger measure the bitter wine of pain. she had once or twice to turn her head aside, lest her tears should fall upon the work she was doing and spoil it. "mother," she said at last, "i think, if god willed it, it were better i should die. there seems no place in the world for me." "child, it is wrong to speak so," mariam answered. "we must live in the world as long as god pleases. to go out of it by our own act were a sin." "except it were to avoid a sin," said shushan gravely, raising her sad eyes to her mother's. both were silent for a moment. then the mother spoke again. "daughter, before you went away you used to tell me the good words you learned in the school. i liked them, and they often came back to me when i was anxious and frightened. you remember how sore afraid i was that day the zaptiehs came for the taxes? thy father had gabriel's tax and hagop's all right, but he thought kevork's would be paid in aintab, and never thought of getting ready to pay it here. but they demanded it all the same, and i thought--'now surely they will beat or torture him or your grandfather, because we have it not.' but i remembered that word you told me from the letter of the holy st. peter, 'casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you.' so i said, 'jesus, help us!' with all my heart,--and he did. for though they found and took away all our rice, they never saw the barley, or the bulghour, so we have that to live upon. and they went away content." shushan put a few stitches in her embroidery before she answered. she was working, with crimson silk, the deep red heart of a rose. richly the colours glowed beneath the skilful touch of her slight brown fingers, but out of her own life all the colour seemed to have gone. and now it was the strong that failed, and leaned upon the weaker for support; it was the better taught that turned wistfully to the simpler for words of cheer. "oh, my mother," she said, "my heart is weary, my heart is sad! sometimes even it asks of me, and gets no answer: 'does he care for us armenians?" does he care for armenians? not only from the trampled land herself has that cry gone up in the ears of the lord of sabaoth,--from many a quiet home in countries far away, wherever the tale of her woes has come, it has echoed and re-echoed. "strong spirits have wrestled over it with god" in the silent watches of the night, even until the breaking of the day; "tender spirits have borne it as a terrible and undefined secret anguish." is there any answer, _yet_, except this one, "what i do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter"? mariam had no wise words of comfort to give her child; but she had the mother's secret of love, which so often is better than wisdom. she folded shushan tenderly in her arms and kissed her. then the girl recovered a little. "i ought not to talk so to you, mother," she said. "we know he does care." "amaan! god is good," mariam said. "he cares for every one; even, i suppose, for the turks." there was a silence during which mariam resumed her spinning, and shushan her embroidery. "i am not easy about the grandfather," mariam said presently. "i wish we could get him to eat a little more. since the fright about thee, and the loss of his flocks and herds, he has scarcely been his own man. and that last visit of the zaptiehs did him no good--what is that noise in the court? some one has come." the whirr of the spinning wheel ceased, and shushan dropped her work, growing very pale. neither thought of going forth to see, for neither expected any good thing to come to them. shushan would have hidden herself, but there did not seem time; so they sat in silence, listening to a confused babel of sounds outside. but presently both cried at once,-"the voice of kevork, my son." "the voice of yon effendi, my betrothed." "cover yourself, my daughter," said mariam hastily. and shushan veiled her face, and sat still where she was, while the mother went forth to welcome her son, whom she had not seen for more than eighteen months. that night, for once, the voice of joy and thankfulness was heard in the house of hohannes meneshian. jack had taken kevork into council over the communication made to him by the wife of thomassian. the two young men had agreed that no time was to be lost in returning to biridjik and bringing shushan back with them to urfa, even if they had to disguise her for the purpose as a boy. thinking the knowledge of their plan might imperil the vartonians, they did not tell them of it. they told no one in fact except miss celandine, whose promise to receive and shelter shushan was readily given. jack went to muggurditch thomassian, and asked him to lend him a sum of money. to this the merchant made no objection, for he felt certain the young englishman would eventually have funds at his command. jack gave him a written acknowledgment and promised him good interest, requesting him at the same time not to mention the matter to the vartonians, who might be hurt at his not applying to them in the first instance. there was indeed little danger of his doing so, for the cousins, at the time, were not upon friendly terms. the vartonians, like other armenians, rich and poor, had contributed liberally to the needs of the unfortunate fugitives from rhoumkali, even taking some of them into their house. they were indignant with their wealthy kinsman, who had given a handsome subscription to the cause, but seemed to be recouping himself by heavy charges upon the drugs and medicines supplied to the sufferers; and the younger members of the family expressed very freely their opinion of his conduct. with part of thomassian's money jack bought kourdish dresses for himself and for kevork, and also a smaller one, fit for a boy of about fourteen. he had still the good horses upon which he and gabriel had ridden to urfa. after a sharp conflict with himself, he decided not to wait for the consul's communication. shushan could be still his betrothed; as such he and kevork could bring her to urfa, and place her under miss celandine's protection. the marriage could take place afterwards. however, to his great delight, just as they were starting, the necessary papers arrived. miss celandine's influence had obtained them, and she also procured for the travellers a zaptieh to guard them on their journey. they took an affectionate farewell of the vartonians, whom they told simply that they were returning to biridjik, and of gabriel, now an ardent and delighted pupil in the missionary school. their journey to biridjik was without adventure. on the way they agreed together that they would not say much to their friends about the massacres. but the precaution was a needless one, for already they knew enough. as it was september and very hot, they travelled by night, arriving in biridjik on the morning of the second day. the remaining hours were given up to talk, to rest, and to making arrangements for the future. in spite of all the dangers that surrounded them, kevork could not be unhappy as he sat with his mother's hand in his, his father looking on with interest, and his brother hagop with adoring admiration, while he told of his wonderful eighteen months in the missionary school at aintab. and if the name of elmas stepanian slipped sometimes into his story, was there anything wrong in that? did he not see her every sunday in church, and did he not hear of her splendid answering at the examinations, and of the prizes she gained? had not his teacher told him and the other youths about it, that they might be stirred to emulation by the grand achievements of the girls? for jack there were even sweeter joys that day. it is true that he was only permitted to see shushan veiled, and in the company of her mother, or of some of the other women. still, he could whisper a few words of cheer about the home they hoped to have by-and-by in free, happy england. and when she murmured doubtfully, "but my people, yon effendi?" he said the whole household must follow them to england. there kevork could find a career, the younger boys an education, and all of them peace and safety, and bread enough and to spare. it is true the difficulties in the way of these arrangements would have seemed to him, in his sober moments, almost insurmountable; but in certain moods of mind we take small account of difficulties. there was much to be done that day in arranging for the wedding, which all agreed should take place the next morning. according to custom, jack ought to have provided the dress of the bride; but this, under the circumstances, he could not do. avedis however came to him privately, bringing a beautiful robe of blue satin with long sleeves, trimmed with gold embroidery. "you know," he said, "i was to have married alà krikorian. sometimes i think it was well she died, for she has escaped the woes that are coming on our people. but i had the bridal robe all ready; and i shall never marry any one else. take it as my gift to you; give it yourself to shushan; and god bless you both." his own best garments jack laid ready, with care, for the morning. rising very early, he put on his ordinary clothes, and went forth to meet der garabed, who came by appointment to bless the bridegroom's apparel. this ceremony accomplished, jack arrayed himself for the wedding, and, with hohannes and the other men of the family, went to the church. he sat in his own place on the men's side, shushan coming in afterwards with her mother and other female relatives, and sitting among the women. the service proceeded as usual, until, at the appointed time, jack, with a beating heart, stepped out of his place, and came and stood before the altar. shushan also was led to the spot, and stood there beside him. neither dared to look up. der garabed read from the holy book of the first bridal in paradise; and again, from its later pages, of how christian wives and husbands ought to love and cherish one another. then, as they turned and stood face to face, each for one instant looked into the other's eyes, and read there the secret of the love that is more strong than death. they had to clasp hands, and to bow their heads until each forehead touched the other. old hohannes took a cross from the hand of the priest, and, his own trembling with many emotions, laid it on the two bowed heads. the priest recited a few prayers, and put the solemn questions that the ritual of every christian church prescribes. then, raising their bowed heads they stood together, with the right, before god and man, to stand together until death should part them. the psalm was sung, and the benediction given; and john grayson led forth his lily--all his at last. there was deep, solemn gladness in his heart; he felt as if, in the expressive scottish phrase, "his weird was won." peril might be behind them, before them, all around them, yet this one hour must be given to joy. it is true he had no mother to "crown him in the day of his espousals," no father to breathe the blessing his filial heart missed so sorely. still he believed in blessing, divine and human. his faith was strong, his hope was high. he thought it would be no hard task to bring his bride in safety to his english home--and hers. once there, they could both work together for the deliverance of her people--"_our_ people" was what john grayson thought, with a throb of joy, of sympathy, and--is it strange to say it?--of _pride_. chapter xi an adventurous ride "what if we still ride on, we two, with life for ever old yet new, changed not in kind but in degree, the instant made eternity." --_r. browning._ about noon kevork came to jack with a pale, anxious face. "you see the state men's minds are in here?" he said. "it is only too easy to see," jack answered. "did you notice the scared faces in church?" kevork went on. "there is nothing talked of here among our own people but death and massacre; and among the turks, but how they are going to kill us and take all we have. and our own house is in the greatest danger of all. my uncle and the rest are afraid we will be held accountable for shushan; and heaven knows what the turks will do to us when they find she is gone. in a word, they are all saying that if you go to urfa and take her with you, the whole household must go too. they think they will be safer there, lost in a crowd." "but are they not afraid of coming so near mehmed ibrahim?" "they think that very nearness will save them. he will never think of looking for them at his own door. one and all, at least, are quite determined to go, except perhaps my grandfather, who is rather passive about it, and my father, who is doubtful. still they do not oppose the rest. my grandfather says 'heaven is as near in urfa as in biridjik.'" "very good," said jack, "but then, can they go to-night?" "to-night!" exclaimed kevork. "heaven bless you! it will take them a fortnight or three weeks to get ready; they must do it all quietly, you know, for fear of the turks." "then, look here, kevork," jack said, with a determined air, "i am not going to leave shushan in this place another day; the rest may follow as they like." "you are right," kevork answered. "but as for me, i must stay. think of it! here are three-and-twenty souls, for the most part women and children, to be brought to urfa; and not one of them has been twenty miles from home before--not even my uncle avedis, who is so shrewd and clever. and then we shall have to make all our preparations, and to sell off everything we can, but with the greatest secrecy, lest the turks should find out and stop us. yes, i must stay. you shall take the horses." jack nodded. "we must start at midnight," he said. "i am going now to arrange matters, and to tell the women." he went, and was fortunate enough to find shushan for the moment alone. he held in his hand a large bundle, which he laid on the ground beside her. "my shushan," he said, taking her hand tenderly, "i know you trust me utterly. i am going to ask you for a proof of it." she looked up at him, and her eyes said for her, "but prove me what it is i will not do." "dearest, put on this clothing i have brought, kiss your father and your mother, and be ready at midnight to ride with me to urfa." she looked at the garments, as he unfolded them, with an involuntary shudder. "they are kourdish clothes," she said. jack smiled. "at least they are clean," he answered. "they have never been worn. and there is no law, that i know of, against sheep in wolves' clothing." "oh, but all want to go, father, and mother, and hagop--all of us." "they shall follow us, my shushan." "but to leave them in such peril! and, yon effendi, it is i who have brought it on them." "not altogether, my beloved. now it is not one here and there who is persecuted; the danger threatens your whole race--_our_ race," he said, with a sudden throb of the passionate, pitying love that was springing up in his heart for the people of his adoption. "without you," he added, "their danger certainly will be less. and if god wills, we will all meet again, in urfa." "i will do what you tell me,--my husband," shushan said, and the words, if low, were quite steady. the whole trust of her simple heart was his; and although tender, modest, refined, it was still a hot, impulsive eastern heart. at midnight a group assembled in the courtyard of the meneshians house. there was no moon,--all the better for their purpose; but from the cloudless sky the great, beautiful stars shone down upon them. avedis brought out a lantern, which showed two strange figures. in the midst stood a young kourdish warrior, his head protected by a gay "kafieh" of yellow silk, bound about it with rolls of wool, and having the front thrown back to reveal the face, which was nearly as dark as a mulatto's. his zeboun was of bright scarlet, and it boasted, instead of a skirt, four separate tails, or aprons, which showed beneath them turkish trousers of crude and staring blue, while a crimson belt contained the perilous revolver, its two available barrels loaded. it was not necessary now to conceal it, for it was part of the equipment. a kourdish boy, attired in similar fashion, and with face and hands yet more carefully blackened, clung to the breast of mariam, as if they could never part. "come, my daughter," boghos said at last; "the moments are precious." "'tis not as if the parting were a long one," kevork said cheerfully. "a few weeks, at most, and we follow you to urfa." "as we stand now," old hohannes said solemnly, "_every_ parting may be as long as life, or death; but we christians are not afraid of death. shushan, my lily, in christ's name i bless thee, and bid thee god-speed." shushan had been given into his arms by her mother, and now her father stood waiting for the last embrace. as he gave it with tear-dimmed eyes, jack turned to hohannes; "you have been as a father to me," he said. "bless me also, as a son." in a broken voice, the old armenian spoke the words of blessing. the englishman bowed his young head in reverence, then shook hands with the others, and turned to lift into her saddle the shrinking girl in her boy's attire. next, he sprang lightly upon his own horse, which kevork was holding for him. "good-bye, _brother_," he said, stooping down to wring his hand. slowly and silently they moved along, the good horses climbing the terraces that led out of the town. a bribe,--cleverly administered beforehand by hohannes, who had a life-long practice in these matters,--opened to them the ancient gate of biridjik, and they found themselves in the road outside. "softly, softly," jack whispered, stroking the neck of his steed, who seemed quite to understand him. he wondered if, in this strange country, even the dumb creatures learned to accommodate themselves to the exigencies of a hunted life. both their horses might almost have been shod with felt, for all the noise they made. when the terraces and gardens were left behind, a running stream or two had to be crossed, and they found themselves beside the ancient reservoir which supplied the town with water. after passing this, they came to a place where three roads met, and where a turkish guard was always stationed. this was a serious danger; he might demand their passports, and they had none. "what shall we do if he does?" shushan whispered. jack pointed to his purse. but, happily, the turk gave them no trouble, being fast asleep in his little booth by the roadside. when they got into the open country, their road lay over rocks, which rang to the feet of their horses. at first the sound almost scared them, used as they were to fear. but for the present, in all the wide landscape, there was no one to hear, and nothing to dread. they rode out into the still night--no mist, no dew, the stars flashing down, the great planets bright enough to cast perceptible shadows. the brilliant, shimmering starlight lent the campaign a beauty not its own; there was a kind of glamour over everything. jack's spirits rose with the sense of freedom and solitude. he and shushan put their horses at full speed, and they seemed to be flying through the clear still air,--not cold, but cool enough after the hot day to be refreshing. "are you frightened, love? are we going too fast for you?" he asked, hearing a little sigh, and slackening his pace accordingly. "no; but i never rode like this before. when cousin thomassian brought me to biridjik, it was "_jevash!_ _jevash!_" (a turkish word, which may be rendered in english, "take it easy"). "do you like it, my lily?" "i like it well," she answered, breathless but rejoicing. "go on fast again; i like it well." did jack like it? there was a light in his eye, a bounding rapture in his every vein, as they flew along, alone with each other in that desolate waste, which to them was as the garden of eden. after a while they drew rein again, that they might talk. "they tell me"--jack spoke dreamily, out of a depth of half-realized delight--"they tell me the garden of eden was _here_, in this land of yours." "so our fathers say," shushan answered. "and it is lovely enough, at least in spring, when the flowers are out. if only we were not afraid,--always." "that was what struck me," jack said, "when, after my long illness, i began to get strong, and to notice what went on about me. always, over every one, there seemed to hang the shadow of a great fear." "but i suppose, in your england also, there are sin and sorrow." "a great deal of both, my lily. but in england law is _against_ wickedness and cruelty, and stops them if it can. then there is the same law in england for all. there are not two kinds of people, one booted and spurred to ride, and the other bridled and saddled to be ridden. it took me a good while to understand that was the case here, and i was among the bridled and saddled." "because you were not born here. you know, yon effendi, we always _expect_ to suffer, because we are christians. ever since i can remember, every one was afraid--afraid of the turks in the street, afraid of the kamaikan, afraid of the zaptiehs, afraid of the kourds. kevork and i were great companions, but i do not think we played much. sometimes i played with the little ones, but i liked better to help my mother, or to hear the talk of the elders. then came the dreadful time when mehmed ibrahim, our kamaikan----" "don't talk of it! you shall never see his face again, my shushan." "i never have seen it, to my knowledge. i was only ten years old." "when a little english girl would still be playing with her doll, as my cousins used to do. poor child!" "my childhood ended then. they sent me to urfa, with some merchants from our town, who were going there. oh, i was happy there! i had the school, and the dear foreign ladies, and my cousins the vartonians, and, above all, elmas stepanian." "do you know, my lily, that kevork loves elmas, just a little bit in the way i love you?" "how could he help it?" shushan said, and smiled quietly. "in the school," she went on, "i learned many things about the bible, and about our dear lord, that i did not know before, though i think i always loved him. they helped me to understand why all the troubles came to us. has he not said, 'in the world ye shall have tribulation'? but he has said also, 'i am with you always.' if one is true, so must the other be." "yes," said jack thoughtfully, "i think i can believe it now." "it all seemed so real in the happy years at school; and afterwards, when i first came back to biridjik, i felt as if all day long he was close by me; and then all the fear went out of my heart. there was no room for it when he was there." jack was silent. he feared god, prayed to him devoutly, and desired sincerely to do his will; but this experience of his personal presence and nearness was beyond him as yet. "but i could not help seeing how things went on about me," shushan resumed. "and for a year and more we have been hearing of worse things yet. i did not talk of them, for what was the use of frightening everybody? we could do nothing; we were helpless. but they sank into my heart. then the horror--about mehmed ibrahim--came again. i began to think god had forsaken us. do you know the sad things about that in the psalms? they seem just written for us. 'but now thou art far off, and puttest us to confusion ... so that they that hate us spoil our goods. thou lettest us be eaten up like sheep, thou sellest thy people for nought, and takest no money for them. thou makest us to be rebuked of our neighbours, to be laughed to scorn, and had in derision of them that are round about us. for thy sake also we are killed all the day long, and are counted as sheep appointed to be slain.'" "oh, shushan, stop! it is too sad." "only one word more. 'up, lord, why sleepest thou? awake, and be not absent from us for ever. wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our misery and trouble?' that was what i feared--that he forgot--that he did not care." shushan's head bent low. jack stretched his hand out to touch hers; she raised her head, and turning her face to his in the dim light, said, "he did not forget _me_, he sent me you. and it is not likely he has remembered shushan meneshian, and forgotten all the rest." in talk like this, passing gradually into lighter topics, they rode along, now fast, now slow. shushan, little accustomed to riding (save to the vineyard on a donkey), grew very tired, though she would not have confessed it for worlds. they had a mountain gorge to go through, where the narrow path, only wide enough for one, winds along the mountain side, a slope above, a deeper slope--almost a precipice--beneath. one false step, and the unlucky traveller would lie, a mangled corpse, in the rocky gulf below. they had only starlight to guide them, and the mountain on the other side increased the obscurity. "trust your horse, my shushan," jack said. "horse sense is better here than ours." shushan did so; and though she trembled, no cry, no word of fear, passed her lips. only she murmured the favourite prayer of her people, "hesoos okné menk"--jesus, help us. her prayer was heard: they emerged safely from the perilous gorge. then presently, in the soft starlight, there fell upon their ears a perfect burst of song--sweet, liquid notes, rising and falling in thrills and gushes of delicious melody that seemed to fill the air around them. "the nightingale!" shushan whispered; "listen, oh, listen!" hitherto, not a tree had relieved the monotony of the waste and dreary path, which indeed was rather a mule track than a road. now they were drawing near a couple of stunted thorn-bushes, one of which gave a shelter to the sweet songster. "there is a well here," jack said. "kevork tells me travellers always rest and sup--or breakfast as the case may be--beside it. ah, there it is!" he sprang from his horse, and helped shushan down from hers. then he spread the saddle cloths beneath her on the ground, and took from the small bag strapped beside him on the horse the viands it contained--bread, white delicious cheese in small squares, apples, pears, and peaches. he had with him his father's little flask and cup, one of the few things that had escaped the rapacity of the syrians; and they needed no better beverage than the cold, pure water with which the well supplied them. very happily they ate and drank together in the starlight. shushan refused the last peach, saying, "no more, i thank you, yon effendi." "my lily must not call me that again. english wives do not speak so to their husbands. '_mr. john!_' how odd it would sound!" "i think it has a very pleasant sound--_mis-ter john_." "no, dearest, you must call me, as my father used--_jack_." "shack? oh, that is so short, so little of a name for a great, tall effendi like you!" "but i love it best, shushan. and i will love it, oh, so much better! when i hear it from _your_ lips." "now i will say it--shack." "not 'shack'--_jack_, like _john_, which you say quite right." "i will say that quite right too. don't you think we ought to ride on, shack?" "not 'shack'--those naughty lips of yours, shushan, must pay me a fine when they miscall me so." he exacted the fine promptly, saying, "i have the right, you know." nevertheless shushan adhered to the name of "shack," which she softened until it sounded like the french "jacques." evidently she thought the harsher sound uncouth, if not disrespectful. "but don't you think we ought to ride on?" she resumed. "presently. in three or four hours we shall come to that queer little village with the black, egg-shaped mud huts--charmelik, that is the name. the people are kourds, and will want to talk to us. what shall we do? you do not know kourdish, any more than i." "no; but i know turkish. some kourdish tribes speak turkish, and we can give them to understand we come from one of these. i will talk for us both," said shushan, whose courage was rising to meet the exigencies of her life. jack, as yet, knew only the few words of turkish he could not fail to pick up in a town partly inhabited by turks, like biridjik. "they will think that odd," he said, "unless i were deaf and dumb." "_be_ deaf and dumb then," she answered, after a thoughtful pause. "you are going to urfa, to be cured by a wise frank hakim there; and i, your young brother, go with you, to be ears and tongue to you." "a splendid notion!" jack said. it was not the first time he had had occasion to admire the armenian quickness of resource, and dexterity in eluding danger. these were nature's weapons of defence, developed by environment, and the survival of the fittest. yet they had their own perils. does the world recognise how hard--nay, how impossible--it is for oppressed and persecuted races to be absolutely truthful? just as they rode on, the glorious sun shot up with tropical splendour and tropical swiftness. it was late september now; the heat was still great, and the travellers were not sorry when at last they saw in the distance the black huts of charmelik, the walls of the khan, and the minaret of the little mosque. shushan, in spite of her fatigue, seemed to have changed places with jack. she planned and exhorted; he listened to her meekly. for fighting, the englishman comes to the front; for feigning, the armenian. "now, i pray of you, yon effendi--that is, shack--remember, you are not to speak; and also, which is harder, you are not to _hear_--not if a pistol goes off close to your head. you may talk to me by signs, or on your fingers." jack gave his promise; and, as both their lives depended on it, he was likely to keep it. at first they thought the khan might be safer to stay in than the huts, but a caravan from urfa had just stopped there, and both the open enclosure and the rooms round it (if rooms they may be called) were quite full. moreover, the kourds of the village came about them with welcomes and questions and offers of hospitality. so jack gathered from their looks and gestures. he stood among them, gazing about him with as vacant an expression of face as he could manage to assume, only praying they might not be rough with shushan, for such a set of wild-looking savages, as he thought, he had never seen before; although, of course, since coming to the country, he had seen many kourds. after a while shushan touched him, and motioned to him to come with her. one of the kourds led them to a hut; and, as it appeared by his looks and gestures, invited them to consider it their own mansion, with the same magnificent air with which a spanish grandee might have said, "this is your own house, señor." as soon as he had attended to their horses and brought in the saddle cloths, jack surveyed the miserable hovel--some twelve feet in diameter, and with no furniture save a couple of dirty mats and cushions--and wished with all his heart for a decent english pig-stye! "you _must_ get a sleep, shushan," he said aloud. "but how i am ever to make you comfortable here----" "_hush!_" shushan breathed rather than spoke, with a warning hand laid upon his arm. "well?" said jack, speaking low, but surprised at her evident alarm. she pointed to the one little unglazed hole in the mud wall that served as a window. "they sit under that, and listen," she said. "i know their ways." after that, only low whispers were exchanged. a meal of pillav, with kabobs (little pieces of roast meat), was served to them by their hosts, who were presently--as shushan ascertained with much relief--going in a body to some neighbouring vineyard, to cut grapes. when they had finished eating, jack spread the two horse cloths for shushan, and exhorted her to lie down and sleep. he thought he was far too anxious to do so himself. he sat up manfully near the door, with his back against the wall, for fear of a sudden surprise; but nature in the end was too strong for him, and even in that unrestful position she managed to steep his senses in a profound slumber. chapter xii the use of a revolver "so let it be. in god's own might we gird us for the coming fight." --_whittier._ it was shushan who awoke her guardian, near the going down of the sun. "shack," she whispered, "let us get the horses and begone. i like not the looks of these people. some of them have come back from the vineyard; and i saw them looking in at the window, and whispering." jack shook himself. "so i have slept," he said, surprised. "i did not mean it. what time is it?" they ate of the provisions they had with them, went together to make ready the horses, bestowed some silver on their hosts, and rode away. as soon as they were really off, jack asked shushan if she thought the kourds were content with their backsheesh. "oh yes, content enough," she said. "still, i do not like their looks. let us ride on, as fast as we can." they had some hard riding over the bare, burned-up ground, where not a blade of grass or a leaf of any green thing was to be seen; and then they came again to a mountain gorge. the sun had gone down now--a great relief, for it had been very hot. shushan, who had scarcely slept at all, was suffering much from fatigue; and though she tried to answer cheerfully when jack spoke to her, she was evidently depressed and anxious. he asked tenderly what was troubling her. "nothing," she said,--"nothing, at least, that i ought to mind. this morning one of those kourds asked me if we had come down from the mountains to help in killing the giaours, and to get some of their goods. i asked, why we should kill them when they have done us no harm. and they asked me again where i had come from that i did not know it was the will of allah and the sultan, and that the true believers, who helped in the holy work, were to have their gold and silver and all they possessed. then they began a story that made my blood run cold--i will not tell it thee. but, shack, i fear the worst--especially for my people in biridjik." "let us ride on," said jack, after a sorrowful pause. "it will not do for us to stop and think. and certainly not here." the darkness, or rather the soft half-darkness, of the starry eastern night had fallen over them quickly, like a veil. and now they were getting among the mountains, and the wretched track called a road was growing more and more indistinct. presently they entered another narrow gorge, deeper and gloomier than the one before charmelik. but for their dependence on their sure-footed horses, they never could have faced it, so narrow was the level track, so steep the precipice below, so dark and frowning the heights on either side above them. but even the horses seemed to get puzzled. the track became fainter and more broken, until at last the travellers found themselves on sloping ground where it was hard to secure a foothold. not all shushan's self-command could keep back a little frightened cry: "i shall fall! hold me, shack!" jack turned to help her, heard the slip of a horse's foot in the dry, loose clay, and for one awful moment thought both were lost. however, foothold was regained somehow; and shushan's fervent "park derocha!" gave him strength to breathe again and to look about him. he saw distinctly before them another gorge, crossing almost at right angles the one beneath them, and cutting off their path, as it seemed to him. how were they to traverse it? how had it been done before, when he rode in hot haste with the zaptiehs and the post, or back again, with kevork? and where was the path itself, from which they had wandered--he knew not how far? great jupiter shone above them, bright enough to outline their forms in shadow on the bare brown earth; and, looking carefully, he had light to discern a narrow, crooked thread of white winding some thirty feet below their standing place. he pointed to it. "we must get back," he said. shushan drew her breath hard, and looked, not at the perilous slope, but at _him_. "yes," she said. jack would have proposed to dismount, trust to their feet, and let the horses follow, but he knew it was not best. he knew too that he must restrain his longing to take shushan's bridle and lead her horse--_that_ was not best either. how she held on he did not know, nor did she know herself. they were getting down the steep incline with less difficulty than they expected, and had nearly regained the path, when shushan cried out suddenly, "shack, i hear shouts." in another moment horse and rider both were on the ground. jack could not tell until the end of his life what happened next, or what he did, until he found himself sitting on the path with shushan's head in his lap, seeing nothing but her face, white through its dark staining. her horse had narrowly escaped slipping down into the gorge, but had found his feet somehow, and now stood beside jack's, gazing solemnly at the two dismounted riders. happily, jack had his flask in his wide sash. he got at it, sprinkled shushan's face with the water, and put some between her lips. after a few moments--it seemed like an age--she looked up. he began to lavish tender words and caresses upon her, asking anxiously if she was hurt, but she stopped him quickly. "oh, what does it matter?" she said. "listen, shack!" he had been deaf as well as blind to all except her state. now he listened. the mountain echoes rang with wild, discordant shouts. "the kourds! they are pursuing us," said shushan, sitting up. terror had restored her senses more rapidly than all the arts of love could have done. "another set of them?" asked jack, bewildered. "no. the kourds of charmelik," said shushan in a frightened whisper. "i feared it. they heard us speak, and knew we were no kourds." even in that moment's agony she said "heard us speak," as jack remembered afterwards,--lest he should blame himself. "i will run round the corner, and look," he said. "do you fear a moment alone, my shushan?" "no; but take care. keep under cover of the hill." jack ran to a turn that gave him a view of the road from charmelik. as far as he could see along the track no creature was visible. but high up on the hill he saw dark forms, descending, doubtless by some goat-track known to themselves alone. they could reach shushan almost as soon as he could. he tore back to her, possessed with the thought that he would set her on horseback, and make a race for it. but when he came near, he saw their horses had moved away, and were both out of sight. the shouts sounded nearer and nearer; he saw the flash of a gun, and heard the report. "shack!" said shushan. she was still sitting on the ground, having sprained her ankle in the fall. "shack!" he bent down to her. he had been looking to his revolver, and held it in his hand. "if the worst comes," she said, "you will kill me with that--promise." jack set his teeth for an instant: then he said firmly, "so help me god." another pistol shot--not near enough to harm them. but the kourds were upon them now. jack saw the face of the man who had given them his hut--an evil face. he took aim, fired, and the kourd fell in a heap, and rolled down the sloping ground to his very feet. but there were twenty following him, and most of them had guns, while jack had no other shot--_for them_. he stood at bay between his wife and the robbers, keeping his hand on the revolver as if just about to fire. the kourds desire close quarters with a dead shot as little as other men. they wavered,--hesitated. presently one fellow, braver than the rest, discharged his gun, the shot passing close to jack's head, then sprang down the slope and flung himself upon him. they closed in mortal conflict, hand to hand, foot to foot, eye to eye. at last jack turned suddenly, dragged his foe to the edge of the abyss, tore himself loose with one tremendous effort, and with another, flung him over. down--down--down, still down, he rolled and fell, fell and rolled, till he lay a mangled heap amongst the boulders at the bottom of the gorge. jack would assuredly have followed him, had he not fallen, or rather thrown himself, backwards at full length on the path. as he lay there two or three bullets whizzed over him. they were the last salute of the departing foe. the kourds by this time had had enough of it, and beat a retreat more rapid than their advance. when they found out their guests were not what they appeared to be, brethren from a distant tribe, they had supposed they might be armenians carrying communications from the revolted zeitounlis[3] to urfa, and that therefore they would be worth intercepting. but now they came to the conclusion they were too well armed to be molested any further. it was long before jack and shushan dared to breathe again. "park derocha!" said shushan at last. "thank god!" jack responded. he had risen to his feet, and was looking anxiously around to see that all was safe. "shack," said shushan presently, "my foot hurts dreadfully now--praised be the lord!" jack had no linen, but he tore his sash, poured on it all the water remaining in his flask, and wrapped it round the ankle, which was beginning to swell. "i meant that word," shushan added smiling, "for pain is not felt until danger is past, and danger is--oh, so much worse than pain! but, shack, the horses!" "true, we must get them; i daresay they have not gone far. dare i leave you here while i go to look for them?" "you _must_. our lives hang on it. god will take care of me." jack drew her gently into a sheltered place under the rock. then he set off at a brisk run, not letting himself think there was danger for her, since he _had_ to go, and yet intensely, cruelly anxious about her. he had a much longer chase than he anticipated, for the horses had quite disappeared from view. still he went on, keeping the path, and uttering now and then the calls they were sure to recognise. on account of the intervening gorge, the path descended almost to the very bottom of the valley, through which there ran a little mountain stream with a narrow fringe of green, stunted herbage on each side. instinct had led the horses to this desirable spot, where having quenched their thirst, they stood contented, cropping the few mouthfuls of short grass. happily, in this position, the kourds could not see them. jack lost not a moment in leading their reluctant steps from the haunts of pleasure to the very dry and very stony path of duty. joyfully he brought them back to where shushan was, and met her joyful welcome. "is the pain _very_ bad now, my shushan?" he asked. "no," she answered, smiling. "it is only _a little very bad_, as you say in english. is not that right? now you shall lift me on my horse again, and we will go." in a few minutes more they were on their way. when they came near the little stream, they halted for a while, that jack might bring water for shushan to drink, and bathe her ankle with it. she was very weary, and suffering considerable pain, but she kept on bravely, making no complaint. "it would be very ungrateful," she thought, "when god has been so good to us." "shushan," said jack, as they rode along, "do you know what they call this gorge we are coming out of? they call it 'bloody gorge,' from the robberies and murders there have been in it. kevork told me when we rode back together, but i did not want to tell you until we had passed it." "yesterday the kourds told me the same," said shushan, "but _i_ did not want to tell _you_." at length the mountain gorges were left behind, and a roman road was reached, leading to the plain, which now began to assume an appearance of cultivation. there were wheatfields, and many fine vineyards laden with grapes. but if the prospect was pleasing, the road was vile. the great cobble stones the romans loved had fallen apart, and the mud and gravel between them had caked into a hard cement. not the surest-footed of steeds could avoid constant slips and stumbles, which filled up the measure of poor shushan's suffering. she could scarcely hold herself upon her horse. a little comfort came when the sun shot up in splendour. about the same time they got upon a smoother piece of road, and presently jack said: "my shushan, art thou too weary to look up, and see old edessa in the morning light?" shushan looked up. "it is a sight to take weariness away," she said, faintly, but joyfully. before them rose a hill, crowned with a magnificent ruined castle, and the slopes beneath it covered with buildings, interspersed with fair green patches, telling of shady trees and pleasant gardens. but still the eye turned back to the noble ruin, with its two very tall pillars, the use whereof no man knows, rising upwards towards the sky. fragments of a great wall remained, enclosing not the castle alone, but all the hill on which the large town is built, with its dense mass of flat roofs, varied by minarets and mosques. everywhere white was the prevailing colour; so that, in the fair morning light, the old city of king agbar seemed to have donned a mantle of spotless snow. a very high, very long roof of white attracted the eye. it belonged to the great gregorian cathedral, a noble structure, of enormous size, capable, it is said, of holding eight thousand persons. jack turned to point it out to shushan, but a glance at her face made him say instead: "my shushan, you are ready to faint. you shall rest a little here. i will lift you from your horse." "no, shack, no. we are just at home now. i will keep up till i see miss celandine's face." through the city gate they rode, unchallenged and unhindered. then they passed a little market place, rode on through narrow streets, and round the protestant church and churchyard, till they reached the gates of the mission premises. eyes that loved must have been looking from the window above the front door, for jack had scarcely time to knock with a trembling hand, and to lift shushan from the saddle, when the door opened, and a tall, spare figure stood within. the face was the face of one who had thought much, done much, suffered much, and above all, loved much. jack gave shushan into the motherly arms that opened wide to receive her; she laid her weary head upon that strong, kind shoulder, and fainted entirely away. "do not be afraid for her, mr. grayson," miss celandine said. "peace and safety are good physicians." footnote: [3] see the appendix. chapter xiii what pastor stepanian thought "but he was holy, calm, and high, as one who saw an ecstasy beyond a foreknown agony." --_e. b. browning._ john grayson left his young bride, for the present, in the care of miss celandine. "she is safe; she is absolutely safe!" he kept saying to himself, that one thought swallowing up all the rest. he went constantly to see her, and was relieved to find that she very soon recovered from the effects of her sprain, which indeed was not serious. meanwhile he stayed with the vartonians, and watched anxiously for the coming of the meneshians to urfa. until he saw them settled there, and in some measure safe, he did not think he ought to apply for a passport for himself and shushan, or, as she would then be called, lily grayson. it was october now. the gloom of a great terror seemed gathering over the town. so accustomed had jack grown to fears and apprehensions that he did not notice it as anything unusual. but he could not fail to notice a most astonishing and unexpected outburst of rejoicing and festivity that came suddenly in the very midst of the gloom. as sometimes in a day of storm, when the great thunderclouds sweep across the sky, the sun looks out for a moment, flashing a shaft of light through the darkness,--so here, when all seemed blackest, a sudden rumour passed from heart to heart, from lip to lip, "_the sultan has granted the reforms._" not only did the armenians of urfa whisper it within closed doors--as they were wont to do with anything bearing, however remotely, upon politics; men said it aloud to each other in the streets and in the shops; and women talked of it as they baked their bread, or drew their water from the fountains. what did these reforms mean? did they mean--men said they did--no more plundering kourds, no more tyrannous zaptiehs, no more dungeons and tortures for innocent men, and, best of all, no more of that wordless, nameless terror that made the life of the armenian woman one long misery? if indeed they meant _this_, ought not the whole community to go mad with joy? the tidings came officially, by telegraph, and were read aloud in the gregorian cathedral. there followed, throughout the armenian quarter, tearful rejoicings, and many services and meetings for prayer and thanksgiving to almighty god. one day, while these were still going on, jack was walking in one of the narrow streets, when he met a young girl and a boy about gabriel's age. the girl was wrapped from head to foot in an _ezhar_, and closely veiled, but the boy he knew well, having often seen him with the vartonians and with gabriel--young vartan stepanian, the pastor's eldest son. so he knew the girl must be oriort elmas, shushan's friend, and he saluted both very cordially in passing. he had not gone on twenty paces when a cry from vartan brought him back. a tall, powerful turk had come suddenly through a door in the wall, and being close to elmas, for the street was scarcely two yards wide, seized her veil to pull it off. vartan sprang upon him and tried to drag him away, but was not strong enough. "none of that!" cried jack in good english. he had no weapon, but he clenched his hand, and putting forth all his strength, dealt the turk a blow between the eyes that sent him staggering against the opposite wall. "allah!" cried the discomfited follower of mahomet, looking at him with a dazed, astonished air. an armenian to strike a blow like that! surely shaytan had got into him! "come--come quickly," vartan said, hurrying his sister on, for fear of pursuit. "more dajeeks may come," he explained to jack, who mounted guard on the other side of elmas. "let us go to the church. it is the nearest place where we can be safe." "the cathedral?" "no; that is a long way off. my father's church." they walked quickly, and were soon there. when in urfa before, jack had always attended the cathedral services; he had not entered the beautiful protestant church since he saw the dead lying there in her peaceful rest, on the morning of his first arrival. vartan led him through it; then, by the little side door, into his father's study. all around the room there were bookshelves, filled to overflowing, and with books in several languages. the pastor was seated in a chair, before a little deal table, reading. he was dressed _à la frank_, and when, after a few words from vartan in armenian, he rose and greeted his visitor in excellent english, jack thought himself back in his own land again. he almost thought himself back again in the study of the good old clergyman who had been the pastor and teacher of his childhood. it broke the illusion a little when that stately gentleman touched his own forehead, and stooped down to kiss the hand jack stretched out to him, instead of taking it in a hearty grasp. but this was in especial thanks for the service rendered to his children, and a few earnest words just touched with eastern grace were added. the pastor said a word or two to elmas and vartan, who left the room. then he invited jack to take the one chair, and seated himself on the little divan under the window. delighted at hearing his native tongue so perfectly spoken, jack said impulsively and in english,-"pastor, you are more than half an englishman." pastor stepanian shook his head rather sadly, but did not speak. then jack remembered the nationality of the missionaries, his friends. "i beg your pardon," he said, "i meant--you are more than half an american." "neither english nor american," said hagop stepanian proudly. "every drop of my blood, every pulse in my heart, belongs to my own race. but i am very grateful to the americans, our benefactors." the blood rushed to the face of john grayson. "i am afraid," he said, "you have no cause to be grateful to _us_." the pastor waved his hand. "i say nothing against the english," he said.--"pardon me a moment." he rose, looked carefully round, and opened both doors of the study, ascertaining in this way that there was no one within earshot, either in the churchyard or the church. then he closed the doors again, sat down, lowered his voice, and began: "have you been long enough in this country, mr. grayson, to have seen a dead horse, with half a dozen hungry dogs snarling round it? each wants a bit, yet each is so jealous of all the rest, that if one dares touch it the others fall on him, and drive him off. can you read my parable?" "yes; the nations, england and the others, stand thus around turkey. would it _were_ dead, pastor!" "take care, my young friend, lest some such word escape you as you walk by the way, or ride among the vineyards, or sit with a friend over your coffee in his private room, where the very hangings may conceal a spy." "oh, i am cautious enough. i have been here nearly five years." "were you here fifty, you might still have failed to learn your lesson. a word, a whisper, a scrap of paper found upon you,--nay, the assertion of some one else that you have given him a scrap of paper--may consign you any moment to a horrible dungeon, where you will be tortured into saying anything your accusers wish. nor is that the worst. men have been flung into prison, and tortured almost to death, without being able to guess the crime laid to their charge. i knew of one who was used in this way, and at last they found they had mistaken him for another of the same name. he was brought half dead before the kadi, who said to him coolly, 'my son, regard it not. it was an error. go in peace.'" "the stupidity of these people would be ridiculous, if the horror were not too great," jack said. "nay, mr. grayson, it is not stupidity. it is savagery, and savagery dominating civilization, but that savagery is armed with an ingenuity almost devilish for the bringing about of the designs in view. all _special_ outrages upon the christians are cleverly timed for some moment when the eyes of christian europe are turned elsewhere. our people are first entrapped, made to give up their arms if they have any, cajoled with false promises of safety, if possible induced or forced to accuse each other, or themselves, of seditious plans they never even thought of." "then, pastor, are all the rumours of plots and seditions here and there mere fabrications?" "there are plots, no doubt, _outside_ armenia. bands of desperate exiles, in the great cities of europe, have committees, hold meetings, make revolutionary plans. and i do not say their emissaries may not find a foothold and gain a hearing in some of our towns, those near the russian frontier, for instance. but _i_ know of none such. and i do know what happened here a short time ago. a young man, with an air of importance, and dressed _à la frank_, appeared one day in the cathedral. the bishop noticed him, sent for him, and asked his business in the town. he said he had come to ask help for the zeitounlis, and to establish communications between them and the urfans. the bishop answered him, 'in two hours you will be either outside the city gate, or in the guard-house. you have your choice. it is not that i do not desire the deliverance and the freedom of my people, but they will never gain it in this way. this is only pulling down our house upon our own heads.' so much, and no more, sedition and disloyalty has there been in this city, mr. grayson." "but do you not think the worst for your country is over now? these reforms----" the pastor shook his head. "only another snare," he said. "at least, i forbode it. the sultan gives us reforms on paper to lull us into security, and to deceive our european friends, while he sharpens the dagger for our throats." "you think then that the reforms are worth--" "the paper they are written on. if the sultan meant them even--which he does not--who are to carry them out? the pashas, valis, kamaikans? they are our deadliest enemies. they want our lands, our houses, our gold; they want--the dreadful word _must_ be said--our wives and our daughters. and the zaptiehs, the redifs, the hamidiehs, the kourds and the turkish rabble of every town want to share the spoil." "do they not think too that in killing us they do god service?" jack said "us" quite naturally now. "in literal truth. have you never heard the prayer they recite daily in their mosques? 'i seek refuge with allah from shaytan the accuser. in the name of allah the compassionate, the merciful! o lord of all creatures! o allah! destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion! o allah! make their children orphans, and defile their abodes! cause their feet to slip, give them and their families, their households and their women, their children and their relations by marriage, their brothers and their friends, their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands, as booty to the moslems, o lord of all creatures!' rather a contrast this to 'our father which art in heaven!'" "is it possible they think god will answer such a prayer?" said jack. "they _do_ think it. you must remember their god is not the god and father of our lord jesus christ, nor the father of mankind. he represents will and power apart from love and righteousness. 'the will of allah' means everything to them, but it is not necessarily a holy or a loving will." "still people are often better than their creed, you know." "they are. moreover, the moslems' creed has in it some grand elements of truth. they acknowledge one god, and they believe in the duty and the efficacy of prayer. oh yes,--and there are some good and generous turks, who are as kind to us as they dare to be. i have known such. there was one, a pasha, who tried to rule according to the avowed intentions of the sultan, _not_ according to his secret instructions. he was deprived of his office, and banished to a distant part of the empire. there a friend of mine, a missionary, visited him not long ago. at first my friend was disappointed, for though the turk received him with all cordiality, he could not be got to talk. but when he returned the missionary's visit, and in his lodgings felt tolerably safe, he told him that every step he took was dogged, every word he said reported by the sultan's spies: even in his most private chamber he never knew what safety meant; a spy might lurk behind the tapestry or outside the door. 'i count my life,' he said, 'by days and hours. soon or late i am sure to be murdered.' if he is, i think he who said, 'inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these,' will have something to say to him." "surely in this land," jack observed, "'he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey.' but what do you think of the outlook here just now, pastor?" "do you want to hear the truth, mr. grayson?" "certainly." "then i think, in the words of your own poet, it is 'dark, dark, dark, unutterably dark,' and the darkness is over all the land." "darker than it has been yet? is that possible?" jack queried. "yes, what was meant before was oppression. what is meant now is, i fear, _extermination_." "but," said jack, raising his head suddenly, while a new light shone in his eyes, "there is god to be reckoned with. does _he_ mean it?" "'his way is in the sea, his path is in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known.' did you notice the name of my boy, whom you helped so kindly just now?" "vartan,--in english, 'easter.'" "it is a name dear to every armenian heart, the name of the hero saint of our race. and yet, saint vartan died in a lost battle. he fought against the persians, who summoned the armenians to submit to them, and to exchange the law of the christ for the creed of the fire-worshipper. the persians were strong and many, the armenians were few and weak; but this was their answer, and vartan's: 'we are not better than those before us, who laid down upon this testimony their goods and their bodies. ask us no more, for the covenant of our faith is not with men, but in bonds indissoluble with god, for whom there is no separation or departure, neither now, nor ever, nor for ever--nor for ever and ever.' that is what we said fifteen hundred years ago, that is what we say to-day, when the darkest hour of the darkest night is falling over our land." a pause followed, broken by stepanian. "he died in a lost battle. the battle is lost, but the cause triumphs." jack had covered his face with his hands; but at these words he looked up again. "then you see, beyond the darkness, a gleam of light?" he said. "mr. grayson, i will tell you a parable. last spring my little son armenag came with me one day to the vineyard. i showed him two vines. one of them was beautiful, covered with luxuriant leaves and tendrils; the other, a dry, bare stick, with branch and leaf and tendril cut away by a ruthless hand. 'which of these two will you have for your own, to bear grapes for you by-and-by?' i asked the boy. of course he chose the beautiful, leafy vine. but the other day, in the ingathering, i brought him there again. lo! the vine that kept its leaves and branches had only a few poor stunted grapes, while the tree that had been stripped and cut down, was bending beneath the weight of its great clusters of glorious fruit." "and?" said jack, his eyes eagerly fixed upon the pastor, who went on-"i see some clusters ripening even now. is it nothing, think you, that men and women, and children even, have been witnessing fearlessly unto death for the lord they love? in very truth, like the witnesses of old, they have been tortured, not accepting deliverance. many have already joined the noble army of martyrs. and many more are coming--ay, even from this place. never of late have i stood up to preach, and looked down on the faces beneath me, without the thought that these, my people, may soon be standing in the presence of christ. and i too--i shall see him soon." "are you a prophet?" john grayson asked, looking with amazement at the calm, refined, intellectual face of this gentleman of the nineteenth century, who spoke of his own martyrdom as certainly, as quietly, and as fearlessly, as if he had said, "i am going to france, or to england." "i am no prophet, mr. grayson; but i think i can read the signs of the times. and though it becomes no man to answer for himself, there are things in which we may trust god to answer for us;--and things which he does not ask of us. he does not ask the shepherd to save himself when the sheep are smitten." "but death is not the _worst_ thing that happens here," jack said very low, "nor even torture--would to god it were!" "don't you think i know that?" said the pastor hoarsely, as a shade of anguish crossed his face. "don't you think i thank god every hour for my dead--my dead, who died by _his_ hand?" jack remembered what he had seen in the church that day, and held his peace. a great silence fell upon them; then hagop stepanian stretched out his hand to jack, and looked straight into his eyes. "mr. john grayson," he said, "do you trust god?" jack's frank blue eyes fell beneath the gaze of those dark, searching eyes, that seemed to have looked down into unfathomed depths of anguish and come back from them into peace. "i trust in god," he said very low. "i am sure of it. but here, where we stand now, we want more. to overcome in this warfare, a man must have laid, wholly and without reserve, his own soul and body, and the souls and bodies that are dearer than his own, in the hands of his faithful creator and redeemer." "do you mean we must be willing, not only to suffer, but to see them suffer?" jack asked in a broken voice. "that's against nature--impossible." "therefore god does not ask it of us. all he asks is that we should be willing for his will." "_not_ his will--oh, _not_ his will!" jack said almost with a cry. "the will of wicked men--of devils!" "even so;--but he is stronger than they, and will prevail. mr. grayson, will you take my counsel?" "except it be to leave this place and save myself, which at present i cannot do." "i know it: you have others, you have _another_ to think of,--no; you share our peril, and unless you share also our strong consolation you will be as those that go down into the pit, and your heart will die within you. remember, you must trust god, and trust him utterly. in all the generations he has never yet broken faith with one man who trusted him so. he will bring you up out of the depths again, and you shall behold his righteousness, and one day you shall see his face with joy, and know wherefore he let these things come upon us." the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of vartan and a younger boy, bringing coffee and sweetmeats. the pastor drew the little one towards him, saying in armenian, "tell the english effendi, armenag, what our fathers in st. vartan's day said to the persians, when they bade them deny the lord jesus." the child answered steadily, and as if he meant every word: "ask us no more, for the covenant of our faith is not with man, but with god, for whom there is no separation or departure, neither now, nor ever, nor for ever, nor for ever and ever." "and what has god said to them, and to us?" the boy's young voice rang clear and high as he repeated his well-remembered lesson. "'the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the lord that hath mercy on thee. o thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted, behold, i will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. and i will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.'" "i teach my children words like these," the pastor said, reverting to english, "that they may know we are watchers for the morning. which assuredly our eyes shall see, here or elsewhere," he added with a bright glance upwards. jack sat in silence for a space. then, rising to take his leave, he grasped and wrung the pastor's hand in true english fashion. "i will remember what you said about trusting god," he murmured. "god, who is not only above you in heaven, but underneath you in the depths," the pastor said. "there is no abyss you can sink into, where you cannot sink down on him. and yet," he added with a smile, "i have good hopes of your safe return at last to your native land, along with your sweet bride shushan, the daughter of our people. for you are an englishman, and such are always protected here. and, when god gives you deliverance, think then of this church of his, which is afflicted, tossed with tempests, and not comforted. may yours be the hand he uses to comfort her." then, once more in armenian, "vartan, do you go with mr. grayson to his home; you can take him by the shortest way." "yes, father, but i want to tell you"--the boy lowered his voice--"osman has just been here, to let us know privately we should not try to hold a meeting for thanksgiving to-night. the zaptiehs will disperse it by force." "i will see what ought to be done.--so much for the reforms, mr. grayson. but do not speak of this. osman is a young turk who bears us good will, as i have told you some do; and an incautious word might bring him into trouble. once more, farewell; god bless you." chapter xiv a modern thermopylæ "in yon strait path a thousand may well be stopped by three; now who will stand on either hand, and keep the (way) with me?" --_t. b. macaulay._ jack often went after this to the protestant church to hear pastor stepanian preach. he had been much impressed by his words, and still more by his remarkable personality; and there was the added pleasure of worshipping with shushan, who sat demurely by miss celandine on the women's side of the church. oriort elmas was there too--a noble-looking girl, a good deal taller than shushan, and far less regularly beautiful, but with a face full of intelligence. he heard much of her courage and charity in ministering to the poor and sick, as well as of her loving care of her young brothers and sister. he met her once or twice at the vartonians, with whom she was very intimate; and he thought kevork a fortunate man; with the mental reservation that he was much more fortunate himself--a reflection which makes it easy to "rejoice with them that do rejoice." jack heard from shushan, when he visited her, many lamentations over the departure of her beloved young teacher, miss fairchild. many stories lingered in urfa, and were told him by the vartonians, of those loving ministrations to the poor, and especially to the sassoun refugees, which had nearly cost the young missionary her life; and also of the gratitude and affection with which they were repaid. once during her illness, when her life was almost despaired of, a poor man, a seller of antiquities, heard that she had asked for fish. this seemed impossible to procure, for it was summer, and the euphrates, from which fish was brought in winter, was two days' journey off. but, in the midst of the city is the beautiful pool of abraham, where are kept the sacred fish, which every one feeds, and which the moslems esteem so highly, it is death to touch one of them. the poor armenian watched by the pool until the darkest and most silent hour of the night; then, at the peril of his life, he caught some of the fish, and brought them to the mission house. david's three mighty men, who brought the water from the well of bethlehem, did no more. very touching also was the story of the service held in the cathedral to pray for her recovery. the gregorian bishop, and all the priests in the city took part in it, and the great building was thronged from end to end. "god _must_ give her back to us," the armenians said. on sunday, the 27th of october, jack attended pastor stepanian's church. after the service he went to meet his friends, who had most of them gone to the cathedral. he saw, before he reached it, that something unusual was going on. all the armenians he met seemed to be in a curious state of excitement; most of them were hurrying somewhere in hot haste. whatever possessed them this time however, it was certainly not fear. the scraps of conversation that reached his ear savoured of hope, and of confident appeal to law. "have him up,"--"go to government house,"--"see what they will do," and words like these. "oh, gabriel, is that you?" he cried, seeing the boy come towards him. "you will tell me, what is all this about?" gabriel, who had been at the cathedral, explained: "there was a crowd of us standing about in the churchyard after service, when a turk came in. he looked from one to another, no one caring to say anything to him--though of course he had no business there--till at last he lighted upon poor baghas, the money-changer. he began to curse him by the prophet, and to give him all sorts of foul language. how had he, a dog of a giaour, dared to come to _his_ house, and ask him for money? baghas stood his ground, with a courage that astonished us all. he told the turk plainly it was all his own fault. what business had he to buy gold coins of him, if he could not pay for them? let him give him the money he owed him, and make an end, that was all he wanted. there came to be a crowd round the two of them; yet was no man quick enough to stop the turk when he flashed out his scimitar, and stabbed poor baghas to the heart. 'take that for payment, giaour,' saith he. but he said no more; for our people closed upon him with a cry of rage. i heard them saying, 'now we shall see the good of the reforms!' 'now we shall have justice!' 'djanum[4]! are our men to be killed like dogs?' and more of that kind." "heaven send they have not harmed the turk," jack said; "the bill for that would be too heavy." "i don't think they have. they got him in the midst of them, and they are taking him to the government house, to lodge a complaint against him there." "i remember once, in england, seeing a sparrow fly at a cat, in defence of her young. it reminds me of that," said jack. "gabriel, i want to see this thing through, but i don't want _you_ to come. there may be rough work." "oh, i should _like_ to come. i am not afraid." "but, if you were hurt, shushan would not like that; we must think of her." "yes," said gabriel slowly. "yon effendi, i will go home." with a self-denial jack scarcely appreciated at its full value, he turned away and ran quickly down a side street. jack went on his way, and he had no difficulty in finding it, for cries and shouts, and the trampling of many feet directed him to a market place, some distance off. here, at first, he could not see the wood for the trees. all the place seemed full of turks and armenians mixed together, shouting, struggling, swaying, and pushing, now this way, now that. it seemed to be a free fight, but what they were all fighting about was not clear to an onlooker. still, not to be left out when good things were going, jack took his share by snatching a knife from the hand of a turk who was threatening an armenian with it. presently half a dozen turkish horse--regulars, with a splendid-looking officer at their head, came dashing into the square, and sending both turks and christians running in all directions. but one turk did not run, for he lay dying on the ground. it was the murderer of baghas. the soldiers took up the wounded man and set him on a horse. and then the turks began to return; a number of them gathered round the group, with a few christians also. jack heard them cry out that the man was dying. "how did you get here, yon effendi?" said the voice of barkev vartonian beside him. "i met gabriel, and came. what are they going to do?" "going to take the man to the government house, i suppose. they will never get him there alive." "barkev, who killed him?" "the zaptiehs, of course, when they could not get him from us. i _saw_ one of them stab him with a bayonet." "i thought one of our people might have done it, seeing they wanted to take him from us." "how, save with sticks or stones? we have nothing else, as you know. but the turks will try to put it on us, no doubt. come along to the government house, and let us see what happens." as they reached the place, barkev exclaimed, "djanum! there is dr. melkon, of all men, in the hands of the zaptiehs. what can _he_ have done?" "not arrested as a criminal, i hope, but called in as a doctor," said jack, as they came up. if so, the wounded turk was beyond his skill. they heard those around him saying he was dead. at the same time melkon's voice reached their ears. he could do no good now, he pleaded, entreating the turks to let him go about his business, which was urgent. he had a serious case to attend to--a mussulman effendi. no; he must stay, and certify to the cause of death. barkev and jack followed the crowd, which streamed into the government house--an open court, where they could see all that passed. they saw the body laid on a divan, and they saw melkon approach to examine it. the turkish officer stood beside him, a drawn sword in his hand. "this man has been killed by the blows of sticks or bludgeons," he said, in a loud voice. melkon stooped over the body; the officer stooped also, and whispered something in his ear. almost instantly melkon stood up, his face pale as that of the dead man who lay before them. for once the noisy, chattering eastern crowd kept a profound silence. melkon's low, firm voice reached every ear,-"this man has died of wounds inflicted by the bayonet." "no case against us," barkev said. but melkon had sealed his own death warrant, and he knew it. for one moment he faced the crowd-"i can die, but i cannot lie," he said. his voice was drowned in a howl of execration, and a dozen furious hands laid hold on him at once. "to the rescue!" cried jack and barkev together, dashing in amongst the throng. "keep quiet!" muttered a voice beside them, and a turk they knew laid his hand on barkev's shoulder. "keep quiet and go home," he went on in a whisper; "my brothers have got the doctor, and will hide him in our house. he has attended us; we like him, and we will not let him be killed." somewhat comforted, the young men went home. as they passed through the streets, the moslems greeted them with threats and insults. "we will soon make an end of you, dogs of giaours," they cried. boys threw stones at them, and women screamed curses--foul and hideous turkish curses--at the top of their shrill voices. "i do not like the look of things at all," said barkev, when they got into their own quarter. "nor i," jack answered. "i think it would be no harm for some of us to keep watch to-night. i volunteer, for one." and he went apart to clean his precious revolver, and to load the two serviceable barrels. he had not dared to get it set in order; that would have been far too dangerous. the night, so far as they knew, passed quietly away. many armenians had shops or booths, or other business to attend to outside their own quarter, and this was the case with some members of the vartonian family. on monday morning the women prayed of them to stay at home, and, indeed, the greater number did so. but others thought it the part of wisdom, as well as of manly courage, to go about as usual. barkev vartonian was amongst these, and jack went with him for company. they had not gone far beyond the limits of their own quarter when a boy ran against them, screaming with terror, and caught jack by the zeboun. "what is it? what is the matter, poor child?" he asked; then looking more closely cried out, "hagop! hagop meneshian! how is this? have you all come? where are you?" "we came in at the gate," hagop gasped out. "then the dajeeks set on us with sticks and stones and knives. oh, they are going to kill us! what shall we do?" "don't be afraid; we will protect you. where are the rest?" "down there--in the market place--the corner, by the dead wall. kevork and the others are defending the women and children as well as they can. i slipped through somehow, and ran on to tell you." "don't come back with us. run along that narrow street, keep to the right, and once in our quarter you will be safe. ask any one for baron vartonian's house. you can send us any men you find to help." barkev and jack hurried on to the rescue of their friends. they were met on their way by a hideous rabble of turkish men and boys, the very scum of the city, who were dragging along at the end of a rope, with shouts and ribald laughter--_something_. was that a human form, so horribly torn and mutilated? was that a human face? was it the face they saw, not four and twenty hours ago, white and set, yet calm in its brave resolve? "it is melkon," jack whispered in horror; "they have killed him. oh, god, what things are done here!" "come on! come on! don't look," said barkev. "we have my cousins to save from a like fate." they found the meneshians in a corner of the market place, still keeping the foe at bay. they had the advantage of being, most of them, on horses or on mules; but the density of the hostile crowd, and the number of women and children they had with them, had kept them from breaking through, while they made all the better mark for stones and mud. however, their tormentors were getting tired of a kind of sport which yielded no profit. rather a pity, when their brethren were looting the well-stocked armenian shops in the bazaar! so the crowd soon gave way sufficiently to enable jack and barkev to extricate their friends, and they led the terrified party towards the armenian quarter. some were bleeding from the stones that had been thrown at them; all had their clothing torn and disfigured with mud. the children were crying, and two or three of the women were ready to faint. meanwhile, there was a roar behind them like the roar of many waters, breaking on a rock-bound shore. the mob--the savage mob of an eastern city--was "_up_." "death to the giaours!" was the cry that rose and surged, surged and rose again. the luckless armenians who had ventured into the turkish town were fleeing before the storm,--fleeing for their lives, many of them streaming with blood. would that mob pour on, like sea waves in a storm, into the narrow streets of the armenian quarter? would they slay utterly young and old, men and maidens and little children? no, the weak should not die, if the strong could protect them. barkev, kevork, jack, and other young men sent the rest on before them, and took their stand in a narrow street at the entrance of their quarter. it bade fair to be a little modern thermopylæ. surely neither greek nor roman ever fought in a holier cause, or for dearer issues; nor against greater odds, nor with more determined courage. gabriel, just back from school, came with the rest. jack sent him for his revolver. "you know where to get it," he said. the others armed themselves, as they could, with sticks and stones. not another firearm was seen, save this revolver. the turks had plenty of firearms. with the rabble were mingled regular soldiers, zaptiehs, redifs, hamidiehs, kourds, all fully armed, all thirsting for blood and plunder. the armenians could scarcely have held their own had they not had good allies on the flat roofs of their houses. these had all parapets of loose stones, treasuries of effective weapons for the men, the women, and the boys, who flung them down on the heads of the moslems. jack's two barrels were soon emptied, as two of the turks knew to their cost. but he could not reload, so a friend behind him snatched the weapon out of his hand, and thrust into it a stout bludgeon. with this he played the man, his whole soul in the blows he dealt. he was fighting for dear life--for dearer lives than his own. was it minutes, hours, years that he stood there, struggling in that desperate _mêlée_? were the moslems giving ground at last? what did it mean? there certainly was a space growing before the defenders; they had room now to breathe. two or three turks lay in the street dead or dying, others were well bruised with bludgeons or cut with stones. a panic began among them. and presently--for an eastern crowd does nothing by halves--the street was cleared with a rush. it was a regular stampede. the christians drew breath, and looked one another in the face. "safe at last!" jack said. "for the present," said kevork, wiping his brow. but the next moment he cried in horror, "my father! he is dying!" the christians, of course, had suffered in the fray. several lay dead, others were sorely wounded. one of these was boghos, who, though no longer young, had chosen to take part in the defence. jack and kevork, in great distress, carried him into a house at hand; the owner, a carpenter named selferian, cordially inviting them in, and his handsome, intelligent wife, josephine hanum by name, bringing linen and cold water, while the eldest boy ran for the nearest doctor. fortunately, the wound, when examined by him, did not seem to be immediately dangerous, though it was certainly serious. when the armenians had time to compare notes, it appeared that all the principal entrances to their quarter had been defended with the same desperate courage and with equal success. there was considerable loss of life, inevitable when their assailants had firearms and they had none, but at least for the present they were safe, with their wives and children. that is to say, they were safe within the limits of their own quarter; outside of it, even at its very entrance, every armenian was mercilessly slain. at least, to be accurate, the men and the boys were slain. armenian shops, of which there were many, including the best and richest in the town, were given over to plunder, and armenian houses shared the same fate. still, at first, in the armenian quarter, the feeling was one of relief. when a naked sword that has been held at your throat is suddenly withdrawn, your first sensation is delightful, whatever the next may be. it took the armenians some days at least to realize two awful facts: that their friends and relatives outside were hopelessly lost, and that they were themselves straitly shut up and besieged. had the meneshian family been twelve hours later in entering the town, not one of them, probably, would have been left alive. their journey from biridjik to urfa had been a most perilous one, as every moslem in the country seemed to be in arms against them. they could scarcely have accomplished it at all but for an expedient of kevork's. jack had provided a kourdish dress for him, as well as for himself and for shushan, supposing that he would return with them to urfa. he wore this during the journey, and rode boldly in front of the party, whose guide and protector he was supposed to be. he had changed it, however, before entering the city, as he never dreamed of danger _there_, and imagined it would expose him to ridicule. great anxiety was felt about miss celandine, and the other inmates of the mission premises. but this, as far as jack was concerned, was soon allayed, though in a way that caused his friends a terrible alarm. two zaptiehs came to the vartonian house, enquiring for one grayson effendi. every one thought nothing less than that he had been identified in the crowd at the gate as the man who used the revolver, and that this summons meant imprisonment, as bad or worse than death. great was the relief when it proved to mean only a polite request to visit miss celandine. true to his system--and he does everything upon system--the turk would not willingly injure a foreign subject. miss celandine therefore was not only left unmolested, but given a guard of zaptiehs to protect her premises from the mob. these zaptiehs did their work faithfully; and it seems that some of them at least were won to regard their charges with respect and liking. jack went to the mission house, as safe in reality as if he had been walking in a london street, though under the escort of men who, at a word from their captain, would have torn him limb from limb with the greatest pleasure in the world. he found the mission premises crowded with persons who had taken refuge there during the late disturbances. many of them were wounded, and all were destitute. the courtyard was filled with them, as well as most of the rooms of the house. miss celandine--who, since the departure of her youthful fellow-worker, had stood completely alone--looked ten years older than when he saw her last. thinner she could scarcely be, but her eyes had dark circles round them, and her face an abiding look of horror. she led him into the only private room she had left, and made anxious enquiries about the state of the armenian quarter, which, although it was at her very gates, it was practically impossible for her to enter. then she said, "mr. grayson, i am sending to the pasha to ask for a passport." "it is what any one would do in your place--what any one else would have done long ago," he answered. "this is why i do it. the danger seems over here. the massacre is stopped. yet i cannot resume my work amongst the people; that is not permitted to me. here i am useless; i am only witnessing misery i cannot relieve. but in england or america i could do a great deal. i could tell the truth--the very truth--about what is done here. if england and america knew _that_, i think it would change everything. i am persuaded better things of my fellow-christians than that they would sit still and tolerate the destruction--with every aggravation of refined, diabolical cruelty--of a nation of christians, only because they _are_ christians." miss celandine seldom spoke in this way; but her heart was hot and sore within her, she had just been hearing a recital of horrors such as may not be mentioned here, and was in no mood to guard her words. the hatred of turks for armenians is a growth of centuries, rooted in complex causes; but the fact that they are christians lifts the bridle from the jaws of the oppressor, making every act of cruelty to them a merit--their extermination a holy war. and since by embracing islam they would come under the protection of the prophet, it is because of their firm adherence to their faith that these unhappy ones are given over to the sword, _and worse_. "you are right to go," jack said simply. "and oh!" he added, his eyes kindling and his whole face changing, "you will take shushan with you? that is what you mean--why you sent for me. god bless you, ten thousand times!" the smile that lit up the worn face made it very sweet to look upon. "yes, my dear boy," she said. "i do mean that. but i dare not take her with me, either as shushan meneshian, or under the name she has now a right to bear. it would cause too much remark and enquiry. no; she had better pass as one of my servants, a certain number of whom i have the right to take. but this is what i sent for you to ask: will you also apply for a passport, and come with us?" jack was silent. indeed, he could not speak, for the fierce hope, the passionate longing that arose within him was too strong for words. to leave all this misery, to stand with shushan on the shores of england--_free_! "the thought grew frightful, 'twas so wildly dear." but soon reflection came. it could not be. all at once he threw back his head with a sharp, sudden "no," very startling to the lady, whose nerves were already strung to their utmost tension. "in the first place, everything would come out. i should be known as the englishman, john grayson, who married an armenian in biridjik, and who afterwards killed kourds, and fired on mussulmans with a revolver." "they would probably be afraid to meddle with you." "they might. you know their ways much better than i do. but i suspect they would find a way of paying me back my revolver shots in kind--or worse--before i left the country. and even suppose i got safe out, and shushan too, what would be the fate of the meneshians? would not sevenfold vengeance descend on them--which, even if _i_ could bear to think of--what of shushan? there is another thing, though i scarce like to say it," jack added in a different tone, and with a kind of relapse into boyishness: "all the people here, the meneshians, the vartonians and the rest--in some queer way i cannot explain--seem to cling to me. they give me far more credit than i deserve for the repulse of the turks the other day, and somehow they fancy i can protect them. i suppose it is because i am an englishman, come of fathers and mothers who have not been afraid--because they had nothing to be afraid of--for generation upon generation. so i want to stay, at all events, till this affair is over." "john grayson, you are a brave lad," said miss celandine, stretching out her thin, worn hand to him. jack took it with all reverence. what deeds of kindness and pity, and heroic beneficence that weak woman's hand had done! like the people he dwelt amongst, he bowed over it, touching it with his lips and his forehead. then he said, smiling, "but also i am a man now. if it please you, miss celandine, may i see my wife?" "certainly. i will go and fetch her." in a few minutes shushan entered. she had grown a little pale with the anxieties of the last days, but he thought she looked sweeter than ever. she had much to hear from him about her family, and about her father, of whom he was able to give her a hopeful report. an hour passed in earnest talk; but what each said to the other, neither told afterwards. when at last the moment of parting came, neither cared to think how long a parting it might be. lip met lip, heart throbbed against heart. shushan was the braver now. "you know, shack," she said, "the cross of christ was laid on us together. nothing can keep us parted after that." "the cross laid on us together," jack repeated; "indeed, it looks like it. but do not droop, my lily. with god's help we will win through yet, and have a joyful ending to all our troubles." but something in his own heart gave the lie to his hopeful words, as he took one last lingering gaze, and sadly turned to go. "yertaak paré," said shushan softly. "menaak paré," he responded, and went. footnote: [4] djanum="my soul." a common exclamation. chapter xv dark hours "oh, thou that dwellest in the heavens high, above yon stars and beyond yon sky, where the dazzling fields need no other light, nor the sun by day, nor the moon by night; though shining millions around thee stand, for the sake of him at thy right hand, think on the souls he died for here, wandering in darkness, sorrow and fear! the powers of darkness are all abroad, they own no saviour, they fear no god; and we are trembling in dumb dismay- oh, turn not thou thy face away!" --_cameronian midnight hymn._ if the armenians were safe, for the present, in their own quarter from actual murder, it was the most that could be said. they dared not stir an inch beyond its boundaries; and within it, the redifs who were quartered upon them, ostensibly as protectors, but really as spies, committed many horrible outrages. they were continually pressed to surrender firearms, which they did not possess. to satisfy the authorities, any pieces that could be found by diligent search amongst the few who had dared to conceal them, were given up; and this, much to his regret, was the fate of jack's revolver. still the turks persisted in the assertion that the armenians had a large number of martinis, supplied to them by foreigners, and that these must be produced before they could promise them security for their lives and their possessions. vain were their protestations that these martinis had no existence--that they had never even heard of them. in the end, the persecuted community actually _purchased_ arms from the turks themselves, which they then gave back to the government. this might appear at first a mere trick of the officials, to secure a trifle of dishonest gain. it was much more; it was part of the subtle, skilful, elaborate plan by which a net was drawn around the doomed race, and they were made to appear, in the eyes of those who might have befriended them, as the doers, not the sufferers, of violence. in a european newspaper, english or german, the transaction might have read thus: "at urfa, a town on the euphrates (_sic_), a disturbance was caused by the armenians, who attacked a party of zaptiehs as they were conveying a prisoner to the guard-house. they overpowered the zaptiehs, and killed the prisoner, against whom they had a grudge. some rioting ensued; shops were plundered, and several persons, both mussulmans and armenians, were killed. but the armenians having surrendered their fire-arms, and being restricted, for the present, to their own quarter, order and tranquillity have now been completely restored, through the firmness of the government." this was the sort of thing john grayson might have been reading if he had stayed in england. he would probably have dismissed the subject with the careless comment, "people are always fighting and killing each other in those out-of-the-way places," and turned with quickened interest to the great cricket match on the next page. but now he was himself in the midst of the agony, which made all the difference. he was shuddering and starving with the thousands packed together in those close, unhealthy streets. at first a danger threatened them, almost as terrible as the sword of the turk. the water of the fountains they used came to them through the great ancient aqueduct; and this supply the turks could, and did, cut off. but there were, in their quarter, some old, unused wells, which they cleaned out and made available, though the water obtained in this way was neither pure nor healthful. their stores of rice, bulghour, and other kinds of food, which happily they had just laid in for the winter, were husbanded with all possible care. jack took an active share in everything that was done. his leisure time he employed in learning turkish; for he saw how greatly his own and shushan's dangers, on their journey, had been increased by his want of it. it was not a difficult task; many turkish words and phrases, which were in common use, he already knew; the turkish language moreover is very poor and scanty, containing, it is said, not more than seven hundred really indigenous words. he continued to live with the vartonians; and indeed the whole meneshian family contrived to stow itself away in their large and hospitable house, with the exception of the wounded boghos, now slowly recovering, and his wife, who remained for the present with the selferians. it was thought that thomassian might have received some of the meneshians, as they were his kinsmen also; but his mind at this time seemed to be wholly absorbed in grief for the destruction of his property. his large, well-stocked shop had been looted; and fresh stores coming to him from aleppo had been intercepted and seized. unhinged by these catastrophes, and by the apprehension of worse to come, he fell into a state of morbid depression. he used to rouse himself however to take part in the meetings for consultation which were held, with many precautions, by the armenian "notables"; and he often gave very good and sensible advice. he was not fond of giving anything else. "'tis making a hole in the water to ask _him_ to do anything for you," said the younger vartonians. "but he might comfort himself, under his losses, with the thought that the turks are sure to poison themselves with some of his drugs, not knowing the use of them." communication with the mission house had now become very difficult, though the armenians knew that their friends were still in safety there. it was no longer practicable to hold service in the protestant church; so jack's opportunities of seeing shushan, and kevork's of seeing elmas, were no more. miss celandine however contrived occasionally, through her zaptiehs, to send news of shushan to jack, and to get tidings in return for her, of him and of her family. in this way she informed him also that she had not yet succeeded in obtaining her passport. the pasha made fair promises; but continually put off the granting of her request on the plea of the disturbed condition of the country. the gregorians still assembled, very constantly, for the prayer they so much needed, in their great cathedral; and it was before or after these services that they used to deliberate together on the state of affairs. in one of these consultations they were lamenting, as they often did, the impossibility of sending news of their condition to those outside who might help them. post and telegraph were closed to them; and, as they surmised, to miss celandine also. two or three messengers, with letters concealed about them, had gone forth secretly, and at terrible risk, but they had never been heard of again. the presumption was that they had fallen into the hands of the turks. what more could the armenians do? then john grayson rose up in his place, between kevork and avedis, and these were the words he said,-"friends, i will be your next messenger. will you trust me?" a murmur of astonishment ran round the assembly. the personal friends of jack, and they were many, began to protest against his exposing himself to so great a danger; and indeed every one thought his life too valuable to be lightly risked. "what would my sister say?" kevork whispered. and jack answered, "she would say, 'der-ah haadet allà' (the lord be with you)." then raising his voice, "it is the best way all round, if you will look at it. you need not endanger me or yourselves by writing anything; for i know all, and can tell it. if i am caught, i have still a good chance of escape; for i will tell the turks i am an englishman, and that they touch me at their peril." "they will not believe you, and you have no proof to offer," said old hohannes, with a face of much concern, for he loved yon effendi as a son. "i _have_ proof, father. i can speak and write english for their edification, and talk big about consuls and international law, and the power of england. whereas, if i am _not_ taken, the gain is great. an englishman who has seen what i have, can say things the english--and the rest of the world--ought to hear, and there is none to tell them." "amaan! that is true," several voices said. "and do not forget, for _i_ do not," jack went on, "what i stand to win. once free, i think i can help myself, and you too, far better than by staying here. if it were to abandon you, i would never go. here or there, i mean to see this thing through with you. but it seems to me that i can do more, just now, there than here." "how will you disguise yourself?" some one asked. "i can wear the kourdish dress that served me coming here." "but you do not know the country," another objected. "as far as biridjik i know it well. trust me to find out the rest." finally, jack's proposal was agreed to by all; except indeed by hohannes, who kept silence, but did not change his mind. the meeting broke up, as soon as the heads of it had arranged for jack to come to them at a later hour, to receive messages and other instructions for his dangerous mission. as they went out together, kevork laid his hand on his shoulder: "brother," he said, "do you not desire to see shushan again before you go? i think it might be managed for you, with backsheesh to the zaptiehs." jack thought a moment; then he answered with a decided "no. we have had our farewells," he added. "it is best not to alarm her." in his own heart he said, "i had rather keep the last words she spoke to me, 'the cross of christ has been laid upon us together. nothing can part us after that!'" but he took his father's note-book, the one precious relic that remained to him, wrote a few tender words in it, wrapped it up carefully and gave it to kevork to give her, in case anything happened to him. at the later consultation it was decided that jack should not wear the kourdish dress: it was thought he could not keep up the character sufficiently to disarm suspicion. a proposition that he should go dressed _à la frank_ was negatived also, since a person so attired would never be found travelling alone. at last a disguise was found for him,--the dress of an armenian peasant of the very humblest class, a countryman. it was hoped that the appearance of utter poverty and of ignorance might secure his safety. it was december now, and the nights were dark, as dark as they ever are in that southern land. there are many places in which the ancient wall of urfa is much broken down, in some it is only three feet high, with stones and rubbish and broken masonry all about. stealthily and noiselessly jack crept towards one of these. there was no difficulty in getting over the wall, but then at the other side there was a natural rock to be descended--almost a precipice. this also however the agile youth accomplished, and stood in safety at the bottom. his next difficulty was to elude the turkish patrol, which passed frequently during the night. seeing it at a distance, he laid himself down quite flat amongst the stones, until the men had passed, and everything was perfectly quiet. then he cautiously set out upon his journey, passing through fields and vineyards, and striking into the roman road where he had ridden with shushan three months before. although the weather was now cold, he intended to travel by night, and rest during the day, in order to minimize the dangers of discovery. yet, three hours later, the die was cast, and his fate was sealed. a party of turkish horsemen, who were conveying some prisoners into the town, saw at a distance in the morning light his dark figure thrown out by the white path behind him. he knew they had seen him, but there was no place near where it was possible to conceal himself, so his only chance was to pass on boldly in his assumed character. the captain of the troop took little heed of him, just flinging him a curse in passing as one beneath his notice. unhappily, amongst the band of wretched prisoners--all the more wretched for having had to keep up on foot with the riding of the turks--jack saw a face he knew, der garabed, the priest of biridjik. no fear of consequences could keep the look of grief and pity out of his eyes. it was observed, as also was the captive's quick glance of recognition, changed though it was immediately into the dull, vacant stare his race have a wonderful power of assuming. the captain gave a rapid order, and jack was surrounded and seized. asked what his name was, he answered boldly, "john grayson. i am an englishman." this was received with a shout of laughter. "by the prophet, a likely story!" the captain said. "english effendis do not go about the country alone and in rags. more probably a zeitounli prowling about to stir up rebellion." "i can prove my words," jack said. "i am an englishman. i put on this dress to get down to the coast in safety, as the country is disturbed. i have never been in zeitoun. i can prove what i am. those who hurt the english have to pay for it. those who help them get well paid themselves, in good medjidis." the last word had rather a softening influence. "of what religion are you?" the captain asked. "of the religion of the english," jack answered promptly. the captain hesitated for a moment. "captain," shouted a turk from his following, "the giaour is lying. he is no english effendi, but an armenian of urfa. i saw his face that day there was fighting. he had a revolver in his hand, and shot true believers with it." "is that so? then he goes to the kadi," said the captain, his momentary hesitation at an end. "bind him, men, in the name of allah, the merciful. you are an impudent liar, like all your race," he said to jack, turning away with a curse. jack hoped he might be able to speak to the priest; but this boon was denied him. he was placed at the other end of the file of captives. the man to whom he was bound seemed either afraid, or too thoroughly crushed and dejected to speak to him. his own state of mind was not enviable. his first feeling was that he had failed. he meant to do such great things; he had gone forth full of hope and courage, as one who should work a great deliverance in the earth. and now?--and now?--what would they all feel, all the friends who loved and trusted him so? they would be waiting, wondering, speculating about his fate. their anxiety would change into suspense, their suspense would deepen at last into sad certainty. yet, most likely, there would be none to tell of his fate. and shushan? the thought of her sorrow swallowed up all other thoughts, all other regrets. and shushan? for her dear sake he would not give up hope, he would struggle on even to the end. his english name and his english race might save him yet. not likely, after those fatal shots. meanwhile, at the present moment, where was he? whither was he going? all the stories which, in the last five years, he had heard spoken with bated breath of the horrors of turkish prisons rushed like a sea of bitter waters over his soul. they brought with them a sensation absolutely new to him--utter, unreasoning, overpowering _fear_. terror and anguish took hold on him; large drops, like the touch of cold fingers, stood upon his forehead; he shivered from head to foot. he had faced death before this, and it had seemed to him but a light thing. "after that, no more that they can do." after that; but how much before--oh, god of mercy, how much before! all at once stepanian's voice seemed sounding in his ears. "you must trust god utterly." wherever they might bring him, whatever they might do with him, _god would be there_. he could not get out of that presence, nor could they. a thrill shot through him of hope restored and strength renewed; a vision of conflict over, and victory won at last. as a cry "unto one that hears," his prayer went up: "oh, god of my fathers, i beseech thee, suffer me not through any pains of death to fall from thee. suffer me not to deny my faith, nor yet to accuse my brethren, in the name of christ, my redeemer!" while he thought of god he was calm. when he thought of his chances, of what might happen to him, of whether any one would believe his story, the dark fears came again. even of shushan it did not do to think too much just now--he could only commend her to god. constitutionally, he was brave and fearless. but to think of a turkish prison without shuddering requires much more than constitutional bravery,--either nerves of adamant, or faith to remove mountains. perhaps not either, perhaps not both together could prevent the anguish of anticipation, whatever strength might be given for actual endurance. back again in urfa, and at the government house where he had seen melkon witness his brave confession, jack found that his story would not be listened to for a moment. some of the captives were taken away, he knew not whither; others, along with himself, were led within the gloomy gates of the prison, and after passing through several dark passages, thrust into a room or cell. as well as he could discern by the light that streamed from a narrow window high up in the wall, this cell was already full--nay, crowded--men standing packed together as those who wait for a door to open and admit them to some grand spectacle. "i suppose," he thought, "they will take us out by-and-by for some sort of trial. but what stifling, foetid, horrible air! enough to breed a pestilence!" it was utterly impossible to sit down, difficult even to raise a hand or move a foot, so dense was the crush. occasional thrills through the living mass told that some wretch was making a frantic effort to get a little air, and thus increasing the misery of his neighbours. jack contrived to say to a companion in misfortune, whose ear touched his mouth, "how long will they keep us here?" at first the only answer was a mournful "amaan!" followed by piteous groans. he repeated the question--"how long will they keep us in this horrible place?" "as long as they can," gasped the man he had addressed;--"until death sets us free.--why not?--it is the prison." but another hissed into his ear, "no; it is hell--_hell_." "'if i make my bed in hell, behold thou art there,'" john grayson thought. with a brave effort to cling to his faith and his god, he said aloud, "god is here. let us cry to him." "god has forsaken us," said the last speaker; but from two or three others came the feebly murmured prayer, "jesus, help us!" "jesus, help us!" time passed on. jack would have given all the wealth he could claim in england, were it here and in his hand, simply for one square yard of the filth-stained ground beneath his feet to rest upon. it was long since every limb had ached with intolerable weariness; now the dull ache was succeeded by shooting, agonizing pains. he was too sick for hunger, but the thirst was terrible, and the sense of suffocation came in spasms that made him want to tear a passage with teeth and nails through the living mass about him. once the pressure, becoming heavier, made him try to look round. near him a man had swooned. was it a swoon, or was it death? he caught a glimpse of the livid face between two others; for there was no room for the fainting, or even for the dead, to fall. time passed on. he felt his strength forsaking him. he tried to speak, but his voice sounded hollow and unlike itself. was he dying? he thought this numbness and faintness might mean _that_; but then perhaps the wish was father to the thought. he was young and strong, and such do not quickly die. time passed on. shushan was in his thoughts continually, with the wish--with the prayer often--that she might never know. thank god--there was something to thank god for even here--she did not know now! miss celandine would take care of her,--and sometime, somewhere, when all this agony was over, they would meet again. was _this_ the cross of christ? time passed on. the numbness in his limbs increased. he began to lose himself a little now and then. he was at pastor stepanian's church--in biridjik--in england even; then he would come suddenly back again, with a thrill of anguish, to the horrible present. yet he was not dying, he was not fainting even; strange to say, he was only falling asleep. even upon the cross, men have slept. at last no more light came in through the little grated window. it was night. time passed on. a sounder slumber than before came mercifully to steep his senses in oblivion. he was in england, in his old home. in the orchard was one particular tree he used to be very fond of climbing, in spite of his father's warning, "take care, my boy, you will break your bones some day." he thought now that he had fallen from the highest branch, and was laid on his bed, a mass of fractures and bruises, calling on the surgeons, whose faces he saw distinctly, to give him chloroform--anything to stop the pain, and bring unconsciousness. was he crying out at the pitch of his voice, and doing shame to his manhood? he awoke in horror. shriek after shriek, though not from _his_ lips, rent the midnight air. to those who only know what the human voice can do by the cries of childish pain or fear, a strong man's shriek of agony is an unimaginable horror. "oh, what is it?" jack cried aloud, his own voice a wail. "some one is being tortured in the next cell to this," a weary, indifferent voice made answer. the shrieks went on, interspersed with short intervals of silence, and with deep, heavy groans. there were words too, heard more or less distinctly, cries for mercy, agonized prayers. then in a higher key, "i know nothing--nothing. you are killing me." and again, "kill me, in the name of god. i implore of you to kill me!" once more, as if flung out with all the remaining strength of dying lips, "no!--no!--no!--no!" "it is only," said the man who had spoken last, "some one who refuses to accuse his friends." "god help him!" jack murmured feebly. for a little while the cries died away; then they began again, culminating in a shriek so appalling that jack's senses failed him with the horror, and at last unconsciousness took him out of his misery. a waft of cooler air revived him. when he came to himself, he lay amongst a number of fallen or falling bodies. then some one was dragging him along, as it seemed, through some passage towards the light. "where am i?" he asked, trying mechanically to shake off the hand that held him. then he saw that he was between two zaptiehs, who were laughing at his feeble efforts to get free. he thought it very likely they were going to kill him, and he did not care. yet their intentions did not seem at the moment particularly cruel. one of them pointed to a place near the wall, and told him to sit down and rest; the other fetched him a cup of water, incomparably the most delicious draught he had ever tasted. then they half led, half dragged him into an open court, where many other prisoners were waiting. he looked on dreamily while several of these were led up to the kadi, who sat in state on the divan at the end of the room, and after a brief examination, sometimes a few words only, were led away again by the zaptiehs. at last his own turn came. he could manage to stand alone now, though he still felt confused and bewildered. he was asked his name, and he gave it in full. but here strength and memory seemed to fail him together. he knew there was _something_ he wanted to say, but he could not remember what it was. he looked around him blankly, helplessly--and the next moment would have fallen to the ground, if one of the zaptiehs had not caught him and held him up. the next thing he heard was the voice of the kadi addressing him again. "listen," said the zaptieh; "his excellency condescends to enquire if you are a true believer." "i am," said jack. "are you then of the creed of islam?" he stood up straight, and looked the kadi in the face. "no," he answered. "will you become a convert to the creed of islam?" "no," he said again. "since we are inclined to mercy, we will give you a week to think the matter over. after that, if you refuse again, you must die." "i had rather you would kill me at once," jack said. "it is not the will of allah," the kadi replied. "guards, take the prisoner away." he was led presently to another dungeon, where at least there was room to stretch his weary, aching limbs at full length on the ground; and where, from utter exhaustion, he almost immediately fell asleep. chapter xvi "the dark river turns to light" "the thousands that, uncheered by praise, have made one offering of their days; for truth's, for heaven's, for freedom's sake, resigned the bitter cup to take, and silently, in fearless faith, bowing their noble souls to death." john grayson awoke from his long sleep. though still aching all over, he was much refreshed and strengthened. nature was putting forth her recuperative powers in his young and vigorous frame. for a while he lay quite still. the light was dim, the ground beneath him foul and muddy; and he could see nothing, not even a mat, in the way of furniture. but he soon became aware that he was not alone. there were several persons in the room, or cell, and they were conversing together in low tones, mingling their words with many a sigh, and many a murmured "amaan!" or "jesus, help us!" one spoke of his large family of little children--how hard to leave them destitute! another of his wife; a third of his aged father, who was blind; a fourth of his brothers and sisters; and in him jack recognised the voice of a friend of the vartonians, who had been away at the vineyards when the storm burst upon his people. he raised his head. "is that you, kaspar hohanian?" he asked. "djanum!" cried the young man, coming towards him and looking at him attentively. "friends, this is yon effendi, the englishman who married oriort shushan meneshian." most of the twelve or fifteen prisoners who were shut up there together knew his story, and all gathered round him with sympathy and interest. in the awful strain of their position any momentary distraction was a relief. "how had he come there?" they asked. it happened that they had all been imprisoned before he set out on his desperate errand: some, like kaspar, had been found outside the armenian quarter; others had been arrested by the redifs, on various pretexts, within it. but jack, before he told his story, asked if they could give him any food, for he was exhausted with hunger. all they had to offer was a piece of hard black bread, defiled by the mud and filth into which it had been purposely thrown by their jailors; and a draught of water, by no means either clean or fresh. but even for these he was very thankful, and ate and drank with eagerness. kaspar hohanian quoted to him a proverb of their race. "'eat and drink, and talk afterwards,' says the turk. 'eat and drink, and talk at the same time,' says the armenian." "at all events, while i eat you can talk to me," jack said, with his mouth full. "your people thought you were dead, baron kaspar." "the turks killed all my companions--oh, and so cruelly!" he answered with a shudder. "but an acquaintance i had among them persuaded them, instead of killing me at once, to tie me to one of the tall, upright tombstones in their cemetery outside the gate. their thought was to leave me there to die of hunger; my friend's, as he whispered, was to come back at night and release me. but, amaan! the patrol came along before he did, took me, and brought me here. and now i have a week given me to choose between islam and death. it is hard." they were all, as it seemed, in like case, only the period of respite varied a little. meanwhile, it relaxed the intolerable tension of their thoughts, and wiled away a few weary hours, to tell and to hear each other's histories. jack accordingly gave his, expressing sorrow for the fate of der garabed, the priest of biridjik, and asking if any one present knew anything about him. no one did; and while they were discussing the matter, the prison door was opened, and another captive led--or rather thrust--in, to join their mournful company. he was a man of middle age, good-looking, and well dressed in european fashion. but his head was bowed down and his fez pulled low over his face, his arms hung helplessly by his side, and his whole manner and bearing showed the most utter dejection. jack sprang up and came to him at once, with an exclamation of pity and sorrow. "baron muggurditch thomassian!" he said. "don't speak to me!" said thomassian, turning on him a look of unutterable anguish. he went to the most distant corner of the prison, the rest making way for him. no one ventured to approach him with enquiries or condolences, though they all knew him by sight, and several were amongst his acquaintances. he sat down--or rather, lay down--upon the ground, and turned his face towards the wall. low, furtive whispers passed among the others. "so much to lose. what can all his money do now?" "better had he shown mercy and given to the poor." but these were quickly hushed, lest he should overhear. they did not want to hurt the feelings of the unhappy man, whom indeed they would have gladly comforted, if they had known how. but, as this seemed impossible, they left him to himself; and their talk soon wandered back to their own situation, and the momentous choice that was set before them. some were steadfast and comparatively serene. others wavered, and two or three seemed disposed to give way. all prayed much and often. most of them could sing, and, led by a few of the braver spirits, they made the gloomy walls resound with psalms and hymns, especially with that favourite of the armenians,- "jesus, i my cross have taken." once john grayson's voice broke down in singing it, for he heard shushan saying to him, "the cross of christ has been laid on us together." only, if it could be, that he might bear the heaviest end, and that she need never know of all this! meanwhile, thomassian never spoke, and scarcely ever moved from the place where he sat, or lay, his face turned away from the rest. he ate little, and they could not see that he slept. once or twice they noticed that his tears were falling silently. but not even a groan or sigh told of the anguish of his soul. the days seemed unending, but still they drew towards an end. ay, and far too quickly for those who looked forward with unutterable dread to what was to come after! the only breaks in the monotony were the jailor's daily visits with bread and water. generally he came and went without a word; but on the evening of their last day of grace he broke the silence. "you giaours had better be learning your 'la illaha ill allah' to-night," he said, "for if you have not got it off by to-morrow morning, you die like the dogs you are." then he shut the door, and left them to themselves. there was a long silence, only interrupted by a few sorrowful "amaans!" it was broken at last by the youngest in the room, a lad of some eighteen years. "i would not be afraid," he said plaintively, "if i thought they would kill us at once. were it only a shot or a sword-thrust, that were easy to bear. but to be killed slowly--cut in little pieces--or perhaps like some----" "hush, boy!" kaspar hohanian interrupted. "whatever they do to us, it must be over sometime. and then--there is heaven beyond." "ay," said an older man, "there is heaven for _us_, after a brief agony. but, friends, we have not ourselves alone to think of; there are our wives and children." "true," another chimed in; "if we die, they starve." "if we die, they do worse than starve," the former speaker resumed. "to _what_ fate do we leave our women, our girls? you know it _all_, brothers. whereas, if we turn moslems, they will be safe, and under protection." "you are speaking well," observed a third. "and i cannot think, for my part, that the lord jesus will be angry with us when he knows all. has he not given us our families to take care of? does not his holy apostle say in his letter, 'if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel'? if we _must_ deny the faith, and be infidels, it seems as well to do it one way as another." "and i have my old father to think of; he will die of grief," a sad voice murmured. "'he that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me,'" said another voice, unheard till then amongst them. thomassian rose up in his place, and looked around him on the group. his whole appearance was changed--transfigured; his look firm and fearless, his eyes shining as if with some inner light. "my brothers," he said, "you think i have no right to speak to you, that it ill becomes _me_ to take upon my lips the words of my lord and saviour. and you think that which is true." "no, no," murmured two or three, unwilling, in that supreme hour, to give pain to a fellow-sufferer. but kaspar said more frankly, "to confess the truth, we none of us thought you were a religious man, baron thomassian." "i was _not_. i lived for the things seen, not for the things unseen, which are eternal. very early i said to myself, 'i am an armenian, one of an oppressed, down-trodden race. i cannot rise, make a mark in the world, and win its splendid prizes. yet i have brains. i have the power to will, to plan, to execute. what can i do?' there was but one answer--'i can get wealth, and wealth means safety, enjoyment, influence.' so i tried to get wealth, and i got it by honest industry. at least in the beginning, my hands were clean enough. i prospered; i surrounded myself with comforts, with luxuries. i took to wife a lady, whom--god help me!--i love as truly as any man among you loves his own. but--ah me!--i forgot god." "so no doubt have we all, some more, some less," said kaspar hohanian. "if there is any one here who feels _that_, let him look up and take comfort," thomassian went on, "for not one among you has gone from him so far as i. but, though i forgot him, he has remembered me. i was led on from one thing to another; until, for the sake of gain, i did some things of which the thought can sting me even now. i was hard upon the poor, and upon my debtors. i did wrong in various ways, and even to some who trusted me. mr. john grayson, you are one of those i wronged." jack started at the unexpected utterance of his name. "it is no time now to think of wrongs," he said. "no, for him who has suffered--yes, for him who has done the wrong. after that time i saw you in biridjik, i went indeed to aleppo, but i did not take your letter with me, nor did i speak for you to the consul. for he and i, just then, were at daggers drawn. i had used his name and influence, and the presence of his dragoman, to pass through the custom house some prohibited drugs. he was angry, and with reason. i did not dare to face him. i wanted to be rid of your letter, for fear of complications; so i just dropped it into the post office at tel bascher, where i have little doubt it lies until this day." "then my friends have _not_ been false to me," jack said, much moved. "and, if my letter had come to them, they might have saved me--and shushan," his heart added. thomassian came over close to him, and stretched out his hand. "can you forgive me?" he asked. jack was silent for just a moment. then he said slowly, "'_as_ we forgive them that trespass against us.' yes, baron thomassian, i _do_ forgive you, in his name whom we hope so soon to see." "but, oh! how i wish you had spoken!" he could not help thinking, tho' he crushed back the words in time. "don't think it would have made a difference," he said. "i _do_ forgive you, with all my heart." "it might have changed everything, or it might not," thomassian said mournfully. "i have no power now to undo that wrong, or any of the others i have done. friends, while i sat in silence yonder, my face turned from you all, the sins of my whole life came upon me. they swept over my head like black waters, they seemed to choke my very life out. the thought of death was terrible. i _could_ not die, and go into god's presence thus. and yet, to give up my faith would only be to add another sin, and one for which there is no pardon." "oh, no!" jack threw in. "that is too hard a saying." "surely," thomassian said, "if you go away from the light, you must remain in darkness; if you go away from the christ, you must remain unforgiven. that was what i came to in those days of anguish. i thought i _could_ not let christ go. i know now it was christ that would not let me go. my brothers, all that time that i lay silent there, not joining in your prayers, your hymns, your counsel-taking, my whole heart has been one desperate cry to him, 'oh, christ, forgive me! even now, at this eleventh hour, take my spoiled life, and receive me into thy kingdom!'" there was a silence. "has he heard?" kaspar asked at last. thomassian bowed his head low, and veiled his face with both hands. "i stand among you confounded and ashamed," he said. "because god was silent to you?" said the youth dikran, in a pitying voice. "because god was _not_ silent to me," thomassian answered, removing his hands, and turning on them a face full of awe-struck gladness, "because to me--the last and least of you--to me, who had forgotten him and sinned against him so, even to me he has revealed himself." "how?" asked two or three, drawing near him with looks of reverence. "how, i cannot tell you. that may no man tell, or understand, myself least of all. 'i called upon thy name, oh lord, out of the low dungeon. thou drewedst near in the day that i called upon thee; thou saidst, fear not.' after all, though no man may understand it, yet it is a very simple thing. i, the worst among you, have taken god at his word, and claimed his promise of forgiveness for the lord christ's sake. i had so much to be forgiven, there was no other way. and he has forgiven. he has done more; he has given peace, such peace as i could never dream of. i am _glad_ to die for him now. i have no fear of man--not from the fear, but from the love of him. not because if i forsake him he will forsake me, but because i know he never will forsake me, neither in life nor in death, nor in the life beyond." there was silence when he ended. at last the oldest man amongst them stretched out his hand to him and said, "baron thomassian, you have taught us a lesson." "you are better than the rest of us," another said impulsively. "better? no; worse, a thousand times. not worthy to stand amongst you as one of christ's martyrs. but since he has this joy to give to me, the last and least, think what gifts he must have for _you_, his true and faithful servants!" "certainly he will not forsake us in the hour of death," kaspar said. "baron thomassian, i take this answer of god to your prayer as a token of good for us all." "my mind is made up," said a quiet, elderly man, who had not spoken hitherto. "let them do their worst. i stand by the lord christ; and i trust the lord christ to stand by me." then dikran, the youngest of them all, spoke up too. "i think it is scarce so hard for me as for the rest of you. for i am an orphan, and my only brother was killed in the fighting two months ago. all through, it was not death, it was agony i feared. but now, i know christ will help me through that." "and he will care for those we leave after us," another said in a low voice. "yon effendi, _you_ have not spoken yet," said kaspar. john grayson started, as if from a dream. "there is only one thing to say," he answered firmly, "i stand by christ." "so likewise said they all." in prayer, and mutual counsel-taking and encouragement the long night wore on. amongst them all, there was only one who slept. worn out with his long and bitter conflict, and at rest in the ineffable peace in which it ended, thomassian fell into a dreamless sleep, with his head pillowed on john grayson's knee. jack himself feared to sleep, on account of the waking that must follow. he prayed, thought of his past life, of his father and all his friends; above all, of shushan. often his mind would wander for a little amongst unconsidered, half-forgotten trifles, but it always turned back again to the things which made its home. the morning light stole at last through their narrow grated window. thomassian stirred, and sat up. he looked round upon them all with a smile; but his eyes grew grave and full of thought as they rested on the face of john grayson, who, just then, was absorbed in what he thought might be his last prayer for shushan. "yon effendi," he said, "are you ready to die?" jack looked at him steadily for a moment, then bowed his head in silence. "but you would rather live, if it were the will of god? is it not so?" "i do not seem to care _now_, not greatly," jack said. "it seems easy to die _now_, with you all. but"--his voice sank low--"but there is shushan." "and if i can, in some slight measure, atone for the harm i have done you, you will be glad, for her sake? but do not build on it--it is but a chance. rather, since there is no chance really, it will be as god wills." "hush!" some one suddenly exclaimed. the key was grating in the door. in another minute it was thrown open, and the jailor entered. he did not waste words. "come," he said. the band of confessors rose to their feet, and looked one another in the face. "one moment, i pray of you," kaspar said in turkish to the jailor. then in armenian, "let us bid each other farewell." "not so," thomassian answered, smiling. "it is not worth while, we shall meet so soon with joy in the presence of our lord." as they went forth, john grayson thought once more of the last words he had heard his father say, "the dark river turns to light." it was the morning of christmas day, 1895. chapter xvii a great crime "the clinging children at their mother's knee slain; and the sire and kindred one by one flayed or hewn piecemeal; and things nameless done not to be told: while imperturbably the nations gaze, where rhine unto the sea, where seine and danube, thames and tiber run, and where great armies glitter in the sun, and great kings rule, and man is boasted free!" --_"the purple east," by william watson._ meanwhile, over the crowd of anxious hearts the mission house sheltered, the sad days went slowly by. shushan's fears for her husband could find no relief, and they were intensified by apprehensions about her father, of whose state disquieting rumours reached her. her entreaties prevailed on miss celandine to send a couple of her zaptiehs to ascertain the truth. the zaptiehs brought back word that boghos meneshian was dying, and prayed that his daughter might be allowed to come to him, in order that he might give her his blessing. miss celandine sent her accordingly, in the charge of a trusted armenian servant, and with a guard of four zaptiehs. this was early on the morning of saturday, the 28th of december. she was left by her escort at the house of the selferians, where her father had been staying, and was still supposed to be. the zaptiehs promised to return for her in an hour. the armenian said he would be close at hand; he was going to see a friend in a neighbouring house. "oh, my dear oriort shushan," said hanum selferian, hurrying to meet her, "in the name of god, what brings you here?" shushan looked at her in amazement. "i have come to see my father," she said. "how is he?" "well enough, i suppose. he went to the vartonians, cured, with your mother, mariam hanum, about a week ago." "thank god!" said shushan, drawing a long breath of relief. "they told me he was dying." "_who_ told you such a story, my dear? he is dying as much as we all are, no more." shushan felt surprised and uneasy, though she did not yet know, perhaps she was destined never to know, that she was the victim of a plot. "it may be," she said, a shadow crossing her face, "that they told me wrong about the house. i ought to go to my cousins." "what? through the streets? you cannot--not even if my husband went with you. besides, if the zaptiehs should come back, and find you gone? no, oriort shushan; this is what we will do--my husband will go to the vartonians, and, if possible, bring your father to see you here." "i like not to take him from his work, josephine hanum." "what signifies his work? there is little enough to do here now, and more than time enough to do it in." hagop selferian, who was at work, stood up from his board, wiped his brow, and threw on his jacket. "yes, i will go," he said. shushan remained with the women and children, and shared the pillav that formed their early meal, afterwards helping josephine hanum in her pleasant household tasks. but, as time passed on, she grew increasingly anxious. "i wonder the zaptiehs do not come back," she said. it was now between ten and eleven in the forenoon. josephine hanum went to the window that looked out upon the street. "there is no sign of them," she said. "but here comes my husband." he crossed the court and came in, looking pale and frightened. "my father?" shushan breathed, only one cause of distress occurring to her mind. "he is well. but there is an army on the slope of the hill. in the town, the minarets are black with men, and the roofs of the turkish houses with women and children. jesus help us, what is going to happen?" "i would give my right hand to have you back in the mission house, oriort shushan," said josephine hanum, looking at her guest in a sort of despair. "hagop, dost think thou couldst bring her there?" selferian shook his head. "it is not _my_ life i think of," he said. "wife, i met in the street that syrian who used to work with me, mar tomas. he had a black turban on, and was hurrying to his church. he is a roman catholic, you know. it seems there is an order that all christians who are not armenians are to go to their churches, and stay there all the day. and they are not to let a single armenian cross the threshold, at their peril." here krikor, the eldest boy, came running in. he had been up on the roof. "father, mother, come up," he said. "come and look. such a wonderful sight you never saw!" "a sight that bodes no good to us. what is it, boy?" "oh, so much, father! i could never tell you. come and look." all four mounted the stairs that led to the flat roof. the younger children followed them, eager to see. the slope of the hill above them glittered with turkish and kourdish soldiers, the gay dresses of the latter lending animation to the scene, and the swords and bayonets of all flashing in the sunlight. every point at which the armenian quarter could be entered bristled with soldiers drawn up in battle array, while behind them surged and swayed a savage mob, men and boys, and even young children amongst them. all were armed, many with guns, the rest with daggers, knives or bludgeons. in the turkish quarter the housetops swarmed with women; and above the confused noises of the great city, above the hoarse murmurs of the soldiers and the mob, was heard their peculiar throat-sound, called the zilghit: "tchk, tchk, tchk, tchk," which means, "go, men, and fight for mahomet. we are with you." white to the lips, selferian turned to the women. "this means death," he said. as he spoke, a glittering crescent shone out on the fort above the hill, catching the sunshine on its glassy disc. at the same moment, a green flag appeared on a minaret at the opposite side of the armenian quarter. from another minaret a muezzin sang out over the town the moslem call to prayer,-"la ilaha ill allah, mohammed resoul oullah." then came the shrill blast of a trumpet, and shushan, who was looking at the troop of soldiers nearest them, saw them deliberately open their ranks, and allow the mob behind to pass with them into the armenian quarter. all the family rushed down again from the roof. selferian barred the door, and his wife drew the shutters across the windows. the children began to cry with terror; though, except krikor, they scarcely knew what they feared. selferian's aged mother was there also, weeping and wringing her hands. soon the sound of shots, the noise of hurrying feet outside, and the shrieks and cries that filled the air, told that the killing had begun. how is it with men and women, and little children, in these dire extremities? thank god that we do not know,--that we are never likely to know! "oh god, do not let them kill us!" children sobbed in their terror. "oh god only let them kill us at once!" men and women prayed, their lips white with a deadlier fear. it was deliberate, organized, wholesale murder. first came the soldiers--zaptiehs, redifs, hamidiehs,--then the turks of all classes, especially the lowest, well furnished with guns and knives. their little boys ran before them as scouts to unearth their prey. "here, father, here's another giaour," they would cry, espying some unhappy armenian in an unused well or behind a door. then the moslem, perhaps, would put his knife or his dagger into the hands of his little son, and hold fast the giaour till the child had dealt the death blow, winning thus, for all his future life, the honourable title of _ghazi_. after the murderers came the plunderers, a miscellaneous rabble, who took away what they could, and destroyed the rest. they would heap the provisions together in the midst of the living-rooms, mix them with wood and coal and other combustibles, then pour kerosene on the mass, and set it on fire. the vartonians, the meneshians, and a few others, were gathered in the courtyard of the large vartonian house. the two families were all there, except baron vartonian, who was still in aleppo, old hohannes meneshian, who happened to be visiting some friends, kevork, who had gone in search of him--and shushan. they clung together, the women and children weeping, the men for the most part silent in their terror. above the sorrowful crowd rose a voice that said, "let us die praying." immediately all knelt down, and their hearts went up to heaven in that last prayer, which was _not_ the cry of their despair, but the voice of a hope that, even then, could pierce beyond the grave. thus the murderers found them, when they burst in the gate. even in their madness the sight arrested them--for one moment. so the giaours prayed! then let them pray to allah, and acknowledge his prophet, and they might be allowed to live. cries were heard, "say 'la ilaha ill allah.' no, you need not speak. only lift up one finger--we will take it for 'yes.'" brave answers rang through that place of death. "i will not lift up one finger." "i will not become a moslem." "i believe in god the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in jesus christ----" ere the confessor could complete the sentence, he stood in the presence of him in whom he believed. boghos and mariam meneshian died in each other's arms, slain almost by one stroke. nor did mariam greatly care to live, for she had seen hagop, her youngest born, slain first, clinging in vain to his father. gabriel remained; and something in the boy's look and attitude seemed to touch the moslems. they made a special effort to save him. "only acknowledge the prophet; only lift up your finger," they said. the boy stood erect before them, and looked at them fearlessly, face to face. "am i better than my father, whom you have killed? am i better than my mother, whom you have killed, and who taught me the way of holiness? no; i will _not_ become a moslem, and deny my lord and saviour christ." and he tore his clothing open to receive the death blow. they were angry enough now, far too angry to kill him at once. blows and cuts rained on him, till at last he fell at their feet, bleeding from one and twenty cruel wounds. it is enough. we can look no farther. "they had heaped high the piles of dead" reads well in song and story; and it is not too horrible to think of, when brave men fall in equal fight. but those slain, lying in their blood, with their faces raised to the wintry sky,--it is best for us not to see them. not now. it may be we shall see them one day, when those who were slain for the word of god and the testimony of jesus christ have part in the first resurrection. in the large courtyard of another house near by, there were many men together. the women of their families were gathered, for the most part, in a great room looking out on the court. the men were trying to conceal themselves, some in a disused well, some on the roof, some within the house. one man, however, made no effort to escape. he stood calmly at the top of the flight of steps which led to the room where the women were. it was stepanian, the pastor. by his advice, the gate of the courtyard was left open, that the turks might see they had no thought of resistance. the howling, shouting mob came near, and nearer still. they poured in through the open gate; and, being men of the town, at once they recognised the pastor. "here is stepanian; let us make an end of him," was the cry. "fellow townsmen, you ought to spare us," he said, "for we have done you no wrong. we are unarmed and defenceless, our little ones depend upon us, and will be left to starve." "down with him!" cried the mob. "it is the will of allah!" "preach us a sermon first," added a mocking voice in the crowd. "do not touch me here; i will come out to you," said the pastor calmly, and began to descend the steps. but ere he reached the last, a shot went through his breast, and he fell. no sound was heard, and no blood was seen. elmas, standing at the window, had witnessed all. strong in her great love, that frail girl went out amongst the murderous crowd, knelt down beside her father, and put her hand upon his forehead. he opened his eyes, looked up at her, and smiled. "father," she prayed, "father, speak to me! only once; only one word more!" that word was given to him, and to her. "fear not, the lord is with you. i have no fear, for i am going to my dear saviour." again he closed his eyes, and in another moment, without struggle or suffering, he saw him face to face. she "sat there in her grief, and all the world was dark--blank" (the words are her own). she seemed to have no consciousness of the terrors all around her. the first sound that touched her broken heart was the wailing of her little brother, a babe of three, who wanted "father." he had followed her down the steps. she took him in her arms, and held him up that he might see. his sobs grew still at once. "father is asleep," he said. so he giveth his beloved sleep. could they but have all lain down by his side and slept! but their rest was yet to be won. more moslems crowded into the yard, slaying all the men they could discover. then they seized the women, the girls, and the children, tore off their clothing and their jewels, and drove them in their midst as a flock of frightened sheep and lambs are driven to the slaughter. the last thing elmas ever saw of that beloved form on the ground, was that some moslem had brought a mule, upon which he seemed about to place it. she was dragged from her dead father to the unutterable horror that followed. oh, that endless walk, with bare, bleeding feet, through the blood-stained streets! oh, the clinging hands, the terrified faces, the piteous sobs and wailing of the children! thus the crowd of women and girls, almost without clothing, were paraded through the town between files of brutal soldiers--and every now and then, some of them seized and dragged away, in spite of their shrieks and cries. vartan pushed his way to his sister, and whispered, "do not fear, elmas. i have the knife my father gave me hid in my zeboun. it will do to kill you." that was all elmas remembered afterwards with any clearness--that, and the clinging of her baby brother's arms about her neck. at last they came to streets that had no stain of blood, over which no storm of agony had passed. they were in the moslem quarter. on and on they went, until they reached the destined place--one of the great mosques of the city, the kusseljohme mosque. the iron gates swung open to receive them, and closed again on that mass of helpless misery, shutting out all mercy, save the mercy of god. chapter xviii evil tidings "it is not in the shipwreck or the strife we feel benumbed, and wish to be no more; but in the after-silence on the shore, when all is lost, except a little life." --_byron._ john grayson sat alone in his prison room. it was a very different prison from the two he had known before--a room of convenient size, fairly clean, with a divan along one side under the grated windows, a mattress to sleep on, a rug, and several cushions. a comfortable meal--almost untouched however--lay near him on a stool. moreover, he had been permitted a bath, and allowed to purchase clothing, anything he wished. he had chosen to have an ordinary jacket and zeboun, and a crimson fez. he sat on the divan in an attitude of deepest dejection, his face covered with his hands. continually the scenes of four days ago were passing through his mind, and before his eyes. he saw them all again; he thought he should see them always, till his life's end. the band of confessors were led out of prison; they stood before the turkish kadi. a single question was put to them: would they become moslems, or would they not? thomassian, in every way the foremost man amongst them, answered for the rest: "we follow christ; we are ready to die for him." with one voice all signified their assent. the executioner began with dikran, the youngest. john grayson veiled his face, but not till he had seen too much. could he ever cease to see it? a deadly faintness swept over him, from which he was roused by thomassian's brave words of comfort and encouragement, spoken to the victim: "dear boy, be strong; it will soon be over! you will soon be with christ." then came the poor lad's own murmured words of confession and of prayer, ending at last with one strong, joyful "praise to jesus christ!" john grayson looked up again. it was time; he was wanted now. his turn had come. at that supreme moment, faintness and sickness, and every trace of fear, passed from him. one thought possessed him wholly--_god was there_. yet, he could have shaken like a leaf at thomassian's sudden call to the executioners, "hold, i have something to say!" martyrdom could be borne, but the moments of suspense that followed seemed the most unbearable he had ever lived through. he heard thomassian protesting, "it will be on your peril if you touch this man. he is an englishman; i know it. he can prove it if you give him time; which, for your own sakes, you ought to do." jack might have said this himself till he was hoarse, and the turks in their present state of frantic excitement would not have listened to, still less have believed, him. it was different when a man of mark, a "notable" like thomassian, averred it solemnly and at the point of death. their orders not to kill foreigners were precise and stringent, and hitherto had been wonderfully well obeyed. there might be trouble if they were transgressed. jack was informed that it was not the will of allah he should die that day; and, to his sorrow, was led away, without seeing what became of his fellow captives. he was transferred that evening to a comfortable room, and told he might order any conveniences he desired and could afford. he begged to be told the fate of his friends, and was informed that several of them had died "with unparalleled obstinacy"; the rest were reserved for another time. "was baron thomassian amongst the dead?" "no," said his informant, with an evil smile. he was much the worst, and should stay till the last. as for himself, what were they going to do with him? let the effendi give himself no uneasiness on that score. his highness the pasha had been informed of the circumstances, and would take care of him. probably he would send him, under a safe escort, out of the country. but nothing could be done until order was restored, and the town quiet. "let the effendi be patient, and put his trust in allah. the effendi knew things had to go--_jevash_--_jevash_." jack was very miserable. how could he take pleasure in the comfort of his surroundings, when he knew what his friends had suffered and were suffering? only for shushan, he would not have cared at all to live. he asked if miss celandine was gone yet.--no, not yet. there was some delay about her passport, his informant thought. but no doubt all would be ready soon, and she would go. would the effendi like to take exercise in the prison court? if so, he was quite at liberty. no one wished the effendi to be incommoded; it was entirely for his own safety he was placed under restraint, until the rebellion amongst the armenians should be put down. two long, slow days, thursday and friday, wore on. on saturday morning he was aware of some unusual excitement in the court of the prison. the prisoners there, who were all moslems, hung together in groups, talking eagerly, and more than once a word reached his ears about "killing the giaours." moreover, he heard shouts and cries from outside, increasing gradually until the uproar became terrible. the extraordinary sound of the "zilghit" reached his ears, but he could not understand it. the guards who brought him his food shared in the general excitement and exhilaration. after returning their "salaams," he said casually, "it is a fine day," to which one of them answered, "it will be a bad one for the giaours"; and the other added, "it will be wet in the armenian quarter,--but the rain will be red." he entreated them to tell him more; but they would not. evidently they had their orders. did the effendi want anything more? no. then peace be with him. they departed, securing the door behind them, as he thought, with unusual care. peace was _not_ with him. instead of it, a fierce tumult raged in his heart. on that strange christmas morning, when he thought himself about to die for the name of christ, there had been a calm over him which was wonderful, "mysterious even to himself." the conflict was not his, but god's. god had called him to it, and would bring him through. he was very near him, and would be with him, even to the end. but the chariots and horses of fire, which the prophet of old saw about him, did not stay. when the hostile hosts departed, the resplendent vision vanished too. martyrdom at a distance, martyr strength seems at a distance also; sometimes it even seems unimaginable. patient, powerless waiting is often harder than heroic doing or suffering. perhaps the hardest thing of all is to be brave and strong _for others_, when they have the peril and the suffering, and we the bitter comfort of compulsory safety. but the longest day must end at last. evening brought to john grayson the doubtful pleasure of a companion in misfortune. this was a handsome young turk, who seemed much amazed, and still more annoyed, at the predicament in which he found himself. paying little heed to his companion, he walked up and down, cursing certain persons, apparently his own kinsfolk, in the name of allah and the prophet, with true eastern volubility. in one of these perambulations he accidentally kicked over jack's tray of food, and stopped to ask his pardon very politely, of course in turkish. "i think," he said, looking at him attentively, "i think you are a christian?" "yes," said jack. "in fact, i am an englishman; though i have been in this country for some years." "oh! then i suppose you are the mr. grayson i have heard my friends speak of?" jack bowed, then added immediately, "i am unutterably anxious about dear friends of mine who are in the armenian quarter. can you tell me how it has been with them to-day?" the young man turned his face away and did not speak. "for god's sake, say _something_," jack cried; "say _anything_; only tell me all!" "it was the will of allah," said the turk. "have you killed them?" jack gasped out. "yes, a great many. chiefly men and boys. but i did not see the end. that uncle of mine--allah give him his deserts!--had me taken up and clapped in here." "what? for killing our people?" the turk stared. "that were merit," he said. "no; what i did was to resist a soldier, a hamidieh. in fact, i struck him. but what would you have? a man must have friends." he sat down, and taking out his tobacco pouch began leisurely to make cigarettes, apparently with the purpose of restoring his calmness, imperilled by the thought of his wrongs. "the matter was this," he resumed: "i passed by a long row of giaours, fine young men, lying on the ground with their throats cut. in one of them i recognised a friend, and looking closer, saw he was not dead, for the work had been very ill done. just then this hamidieh came by, and wanted to finish him. like a fool instead of giving him a couple of medjids, i gave him the butt end of my gun. i took my friend to my house, and thought no more of it; but, by the beard of the prophet, what did that rascal do but go and complain to his captain, who knows my uncle, and must needs go to him? then my uncle informs against me, and has me put in here, to keep me out of mischief, as he says. curse his mother, and his grandmother, and his wife and his daughters, and all his relations, male and female, unto the fourth and fifth generations!" apparently, the turk forgot that amongst these relations he was cursing himself. jack listened in horror. "only tell me who are slain," he said. "how many?" "how should i tell that? i could only see what i saw with my own eyes." "do you know aught of the meneshians?--or of the vartonians?" "yes; i fear that all of both families are killed, with perhaps one exception," he added slowly, stroking his beard. "i saw the mob burst into their courtyard." "oh god, it is horrible!" jack said with a groan, and covering his face. after a while he spoke again. "the stepanians?" "of them i know more. with my own hand i shot the pastor." jack sprang on him, his eyes blazing, his hand at his throat. he had nearly been a martyr, but he was an englishman, and a very human englishman too. "let be," the turk gasped, cool though choking. "a moment, if you please." jack loosened his hold. "you can strangle me, of course, if such be the will of allah," the turk continued. "but you may as well hear me first. for, if you get free, you can tell your people the words of osman." "_osman!_ are you then the turk i have heard the pastor speak of so kindly? that you should sit there before me, and tell me you have killed him!--_killed him!_ how could you?" "can't you understand?" the turk returned with an expressive look. "there were his daughter and all his children looking on. his last thought was for them. 'do not touch me _here_,' he said. was i going to let them see him cut to pieces? at least, i could save him--and them--from _that_. he had not a moment's pain." jack stretched out his hand to him impulsively, but drew it back again. "i cannot touch your hand," he said; "but i can say from my heart, god bless you!" the turk went on: "i could save the dead from insult, and i did. i wanted to save the children too, and might have managed it, but for my fool of an uncle." "is miss celandine--are the people with her in the mission house all safe?" jack enquired. he had little doubt of it, yet he could not help the beating of his heart. "oh, yes; they have a special guard of zaptiehs. only an hour before the killing began the pasha sent to miss celandine, to say that now she might leave the city; everything was safe and quiet. but she has not gone. perhaps she thought she could help the other giaours by staying. that however she cannot do. even her own people are not safe beyond the mission premises. a young lady in her charge had gone into the town with a guard of zaptiehs, to see her dying father at the house of one selferian. she never returned. mehmed ibrahim, who has long wanted her for his harem, took care of that. in fact, i believe the summons to her father was a pretence, and the whole thing a plot of his. i saw them leading her away--_allah!_" with a cry of agony john grayson fell senseless on the floor. the turk sat gazing at him, without stirring hand or foot. to use any means for his restoration was the last thing he would have thought of. allah had stricken him, and allah would restore his senses--when he pleased. a logical western might ask, why he did not reason thus in the case of his armenian friend, or of the pastor and his family; but a man's heart may be sometimes better than his logic. jack at last recovered consciousness and struggled to his feet. osman did not know the story of his marriage, but he drew his own conclusions from what he saw "how hard you franks take things!" he remarked by way of consolation. "now there are in the world a great many girls, any of whom a man can marry, if he pleases." "don't," jack said hoarsely. "my dear fellow," the turk went on kindly, "i am very sorry for you. see the advantage it would be to you now, if you were only a true believer. we lose a wife, and we are very sorry--oh, yes! but then, you see, we have so many, it is only just like losing a cow. there are others quite as good." jack, fortunately, did not hear a word of this. he stood as one bewildered; then made a sudden rush to the door, which he pulled and shook with all his might. "what are you doing?" asked the turk serenely. "i must get out!" cried jack. "i must get out and save her." "you cannot save her. she could not be more out of your reach if she were up there in yonder sky. take my advice, and be quiet. it is the will of allah." "i must get out!" jack shouted, once more shaking at the door. "you had much better stay where you are. if you were out, you would do something rash, and bring trouble on yourself." "on _myself_?" jack repeated in a voice of despair. "for myself, there is no trouble any more." "i could tell you how you might get out, if it were really good for you," osman mused; "but the truth is, i do not want more of you to be killed. i am sick of all this misery and bloodshed." "osman effendi, i think you have a kind and pitying heart; therefore i pray you to help me now, and so may god help you if you ever come to a bitter hour like this. i must get out, or i shall go mad." "i wish i could do you a better service--but if you will try it, wait until the morning light. then the killing will begin again. they are going to let the moslem prisoners out that they may take part in it, and thus deserve their pardon from god and the sultan. tell the jailor, when he comes to us, that you want to walk in the courtyard. that he will allow. once there, you may be able to slip out unnoticed among the rest. take my scarlet fez instead of your crimson one, and see, here is a green kerchief to tie over it." "the fez i take, and thank you; the kerchief--no." "as you please. i wish you well, grayson effendi, and if i can help you in anything, i will. should you want a refuge, come to my mother's house. you know where it is. in fact, that is the best thing you could do," he added. "my people will make it known you are an englishman, and then no one will even wish to hurt you. there will be a mark set upon you, as it were." "ay," cried jack wildly--"the mark of cain--'lest any finding him should kill him.' to save my own miserable life, and see all i love perish around me! is _that_ what it means, the mark of cain? he saved himself, others he did not save." "i do not understand you." "how should you? i don't understand myself. i think i am going mad. only i know it was not _that_ mark which was put upon her forehead and mine; it was the cross of christ, and that means just the contrary--'he saved others, himself he did not save.'" the young turk took the cigarette from his lips and stared at him, wondering. into his hard, black eyes there came for an instant a perplexed, wistful look, like that of a dumb creature who longs and tries to understand, but cannot pass the limitations of his being. at length he said in a softened voice, "when i get out of this cursed place, with the help of allah and a handful of good medjids, i will try to do what i can to help your people. but now it is the hour of prayer. i will pray, and then try to sleep. grayson effendi, you ought to pray too. it may be allah the merciful will hear you, though you do not acknowledge his prophet. he may remember you are a frank, and make allowance." for john grayson there was no prayer that night. his anguish was beyond words; and as for tears, their very fount seemed dried up within him. even the simplest cry to god for help seemed to freeze upon his lips. where was the use of it? he had prayed with all his soul, and god had _not_ heard. how that long night passed, how he watched and waited for the morning, none would ever know. the morning light came at last, though it brought no joy with it. he continued however to hold off the anguish of his soul, as it were at arm's length, while he made himself carefully up to look as like a moslem as possible, though avoiding the green _kafieh_ for conscience sake. assuming a tone of indifference, he made his request of the jailor, who, with his mind running on killing giaours, muttered a careless assent. for a good while he lingered about the court, joining one group or another so as to avoid suspicion. at last the prison gate was opened, and, lost amidst a crowd of moslem criminals, who were rushing out with tumultuous joy to earn at the same time paradise and pardon by killing giaours, john grayson made his way into the street. chapter xix a great crime consummated "god's spirit sweet, still thou the heat of our passionate hearts when they rave and beat. quiet their swell, and gently tell that his right hand doeth all things well. "tell us that he, who erst with the three, walked (also) with these in their agony; and drew them higher and rapt them nigher to heaven, whose chariot and horses are fire." --_c. f. alexander._ dread were the watches of that december night, amidst the unutterable agonies of half a city. in the armenian quarter the only sleepers were those--thrice happy!--who would never awake again- "until the heavens be no more." they were very many, like the slain in some great battle that decides a nation's destiny. they lay in heaps, in the open street, in the court-yards, in the houses. tearless, wild-eyed women, strong in the strength of love, came and sought their own amongst them. sometimes a wife who found her husband, a mother who embraced her son, wept and wailed and made sore lamentation, but for the most part they were still enough. sometimes they thanked god that they had found them--_there_. it went worse with those who sat in their desolate homes, and watched the slow ebbing, often in cruel anguish, of the lives they loved. the number of the wounded and the dying was enormous. for one thing, the murderers were unskilful, for another they were often deliberately--_diabolically_--cruel. moreover, it was better economy to hack a giaour to pieces with swords or knives than to shoot him, since every bullet cost two piastres! it went worse still with the women, the girls, the little children even, who were dragged to the mosques and shut up there, in hunger, cold, and misery, until the murderers of their fathers, their husbands and brothers had leisure to come and take them, and work their will upon them. oh god of mercy and pity, that these things should be in this world of thine! had he quite forsaken urfa? not always, standing outside the furnace, can we see therein the form of one like unto the son of god. _in the furnace_, men know better. that night, in the vast gregorian cathedral, a great congregation met. many, no doubt, came there as to a place of refuge, hoping that even moslems would respect that sacred spot. but many more came to worship, perhaps for the last time, in the courts of god upon earth. a band of heroic gregorian priests--men who were ready to be offered, and who knew that the time of their departure was at hand--made of this last service a solemn and sacred feast. they showed forth the death of their lord, giving the bread and the wine, which he ordained for all time as its hallowed memorials, to the kneeling, awe-struck multitude. men, and women, and little children, thinking thus upon his death for them, were strengthened to meet death for him in faith and patience. on one of the pillars of that church, now in ruins, some hand, now cold in death, has traced the record that eighteen hundred persons partook of that solemn sacrament. never again should they eat of that bread or drink of that cup- "until the trump of god be heard, until the ancient graves be stirred, and with the great commanding word the lord shall come." for those still left in the doomed city, that seemed indeed the last trumpet which sounded in the early dawn of sunday, the 29th of december. it sent a thrill of horror through every armenian heart. they knew it was the signal for resuming the massacre, and completing the work of death and ruin left unfinished the previous day. an orgie of blood and crime, worse than all that had gone before, began then. many moslems of the lowest class, who had hitherto been kept in check by the fear that the christians might defend themselves, now joined the murderers. moreover, all passions are blunted by indulgence, and require stronger and yet stronger stimulants. the passion of cruelty is no exception. where it really exists, where men kill and torture--not for rage or hate, or greed, or fear--but for the joy they have in doing it, it is as a demon possessing the soul. it lives, it grows, it thirsts, it craves sacrifices ever greater and more ingenious. it develops a horrible, a satanic subtlety. it inspires deeds at the mere recital of which humanity shudders. we may not tell, we may not even think of them. involuntarily we close our eyes, we stop our ears. but ought we not sometimes to remember that our brothers and our sisters have _endured_ them all? hanum selferian was sitting in what had been only yesterday the best room of her comfortable home. now not a single article of furniture remained unbroken or unspoiled. curtains were torn down, presses were smashed open, and their contents either taken away, broken into fragments, or strewn about. in the midst of the floor lay all the food in the house--bulghour, rice, meal, coffee, vegetables, bread--tossed together in a confused heap, over which charcoal had been thrown and kerosene poured. but no eyes for this, or for aught else, had the broken-hearted wife. on a bed in the corner lay her husband, dying. he was horribly mutilated; but the hand of devoted love had bound up the fearful wounds, and done the little that was possible to assuage their anguish. all the long night she had watched beside him, her children clinging round her weeping and praying, the elder ones trying to help her when they could. no joy came in the morning, but a new and terrible fear. what if the turks should return? flight and concealment were out of the question _now_. the gate of their courtyard was broken the day before; and now some one pushed open the door of the room where they were. hanum selferian started to her feet. a man stood before her, his eyes wild and bloodshot, his face stamped with an expression of unutterable horror. one short hour had passed since john grayson went forth from the gate of the prison. in that time he had seen things which he never afterwards told to any one, and which he would have given a king's ransom for the power of forgetting. now, like one walking in a dream--seeing nothing, hearing nothing--he strode up to her and asked, "where is my wife?" hanum selferian had seen him often, and knew all about him. but how could she recognise, in this broken, horror-stricken man, the bright, fearless english youth? he looked full fifty years of age. besides, her own sorrow filled her heart, and dulled her senses. "speak low," she said;--"my husband"-"i am sorry," jack answered mechanically. "but where is my wife, shushan meneshian?" "shushan?" she looked up now, her thoughts diverted for a moment. "you are not the englishman?" "would i were _not_! no one will kill me. there is a mark set upon me, that none may hurt me. it is the mark of cain.--where is my wife? i was told she came here." "yes; to see her father, boghos, who was not here at all. it was all a trick," said the poor woman. "amaan! do not ask me more." "don't cry, dear effendi," broke in the youngest of the little girls, taking his hand caressingly, and touching it with her forehead. "mother hid me in the storeroom while the turks were here, but i looked through the crack of the door and saw--i saw dreadful things. they hurt poor father, oh, so terribly! but they did not hurt oriort shushan at all--not the very least. they only took her away with them. i am sure they will be very kind to her, she is so dear and beautiful." "_hush!_" said the next sister, just a little older. krikor, the eldest boy, came running in. "mother! mother! let us all go to the church. the neighbours--those of them who are _here_--say it is the best thing to do. the turks will not touch us there." one loving glance she gave to her dying husband, then she looked at jack. "perhaps," she said, "the kind english effendi would take you children there. and your grandmother--parooz, where is she?" "not one of us will stir a step without you, mother; there is no use in asking us. we live or die all together," the boy said firmly, disregarding the looks and gestures with which his mother tried to stop him. then a feeble voice was heard, speaking from the bed. "in god's name, let us all go. i think i could walk--with help." in john grayson's broken heart the instinct of helpfulness survived. it was as if he were dead within, and his shell, his outer self, went on mechanically, acting out the impulses impressed, and the habits formed, during his life-time. "i will help you," he said, going over to the wounded man and preparing to raise him from the bed. almost dying as he was, he was still able to stand, and even to walk a little. parooz, the eldest girl, fetched the white-haired grandmother, who had gone apart to weep, and was found in an upper room sleeping for sorrow. the children gathered round them. jack put his strong arm about the dying man, his wife supported him on the other side, and they all went out together. the state of the streets was indescribable. people were rushing through them wildly, shrieking, screaming, crying for help; and the dead and dying lay about under their very feet. happily, the cathedral was near at hand; but, for one of the little party, peace and safety were nearer still. as they came in sight of it, selferian's strength failed. "let me rest a moment," he prayed. they put down some of their upper garments, and laid him gently on them; and there he rested--from all his weariness and all his pain. there was no time to mourn the dead. the old grandmother went on first, taking with her the reluctant krikor. then jack said to the new-made widow, "for your children's sake," and pointed to the cathedral. the sights of horror they had seen, even in their short walk, quickened their footsteps. they found the churchyard and the buildings around it, the dwellings of the priests and the school-houses, already full of people. making their way through the throng, they got at last into the cathedral; and, after some further delay, went up into the gallery, some people the selferians knew being there already. jack kept with them; his behaviour outwardly was quite rational, but he had entirely lost control over his thoughts. once he imagined he was back again in england, wildly imploring the queen, the government, the whole nation, to send men and guns and bayonets to armenia--not to save the people, but to kill them--to kill them mercifully, all at once, and make an end of this agony. shushan and shushan's race seemed in his mind to have blended together into one. "'and in these days,'" he thought, "'shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.'" all this time there were people pouring in, filling the vast spaces of the church till scarce standing room remained. at last the great iron door swung to, and was shut. not one moment too soon. the mob was already thundering at it. the yells and howls of the frenzied crowd outside mingled with the cries and groans of the terrified crowd within. at the same time shots came in through the windows, wounding some and killing others. at last the storm prevailed, the iron door smashed in, and then the work of murder began in earnest. but the very density of the crowd of victims checked its progress. it was hard to cut through that mass of living flesh. one incident jack saw which stamped itself upon his mind; though at the time he felt neither that nor anything else. some turk, mounted on a bench or stone, saw a face in the crowd he knew--that of a young armenian singer, whose sweet voice was already winning him gold and glory, and who was a special favourite with the moslems. he and others called to him by name. the youth sprang upon a pedestal, and in a minor key, with a voice of exquisite pathos and melody, began a plaintive armenian song. then a strange thing was seen and heard--there were tears on moslem faces, and sobs that broke from moslem breasts. this would not do! guns were pointed at the too successful singer. "stop!" cried the voice of one having authority. "dear youth, be a moslem. we will save you alive, and give you wealth and honour, as much as you will." "_never!_" the dauntless word rang through the church, sweeter than melody of harp or lute sweeter than voice of song. it was the young singer's last utterance--the end came then, for him. the work of death went on, the murderers hewing a way for themselves through the crowded aisles. meanwhile, in the vast gallery, which ran quite round the building, the terrified multitude, mostly women and children, shrieked and wept and prayed, calling aloud on the name of jesus. a few men tried to climb out through the windows; but this was impossible, and would have been useless, for the mob were waiting outside with firearms to pick off the fugitives. jack stood where he was; for his own life he did not care the turning of a straw, and his instinct of protection kept him beside the selferians. he saw all the work of murder going on in the church below. and now the moslems had reached the altar. some of them sprang upon it, while others tore the pictures, smashed the woodwork, and broke open anything they thought might contain treasure. there was on the reading-desk a large, beautiful, and very ancient bible, bound and clasped with silver. with a yell of triumph, a moslem seized it, tore out the leaves, and flung down the desecrated volume. "now, prophet jesus," he shouted, "save thine own if thou canst! show thyself stronger than mahomet!" for one brief moment a wild ecstatic hope sprang up in the heart of john grayson. he looked up, and half expected the solid roof to open, revealing god's heaven above them, and in it the "sign of the son of man." his christian lips re-echoed the moslem cry, "save thine own! show thyself stronger than mahomet!" "there was no voice, neither any that answered." the silence of the ages--that strange, mysterious, awful silence--was not broken; it lasted, as it lasts still. in the over-wrought brain of john grayson some chord snapped then. "there is no christ," he said. "he cannot hear us; he is dead long ago. there is no god; he is nothing but a dream--a dream of happy men, who sit at ease in quiet homes." he did not know that he spoke aloud, but a woman near him heard the words. "how can you say there is no god?" she remonstrated. "it is not true;--but _god has gone mad_!" the next moment a shot from below struck the speaker, and she fell into jack's very arms. the turks were firing up into the crowd in the gallery. but that process was by far too slow. now they were dragging mattrasses, rugs, clothing, light wood work from the adjoining priests' houses, and piling them on and amongst the heaps of dead and dying in the church. then they carried in great vessels of kerosene, and poured their contents over the whole mass. to this horrible sacrifice they set fire in several places. the flames arose; the crowd in the gallery saw the awful fate prepared for them, and one wild, wailing shriek of terror drowned every other noise. turks, meanwhile, were rushing up the gallery stairs, seizing the younger women and girls, and carrying them out. a turk forced his way between jack and hanum selferian, "do you know me?" he asked her. "i killed your husband yesterday because i want to marry you. come with me, and i will save you and your children." he seized her zeboun, but with an effort she freed herself from his grasp. jack helping her, and the children keeping close to her, they pushed on to the front of the gallery, and looked down. a sea of fire was beneath them; its hot breath scorched their faces. the turk was following them. then the armenian mother lifted her youngest child, a boy of eight, in her arms, and looked at the three little girls clinging to her side. "children," she said, "will you go with that man and be moslems, or will you die for christ with me?" "mother, we will die with you," said the little voices, speaking all at once. she could do for them one thing yet. they should not suffer. in another moment they should be with christ. twenty feet down, right into the heart of the hottest fire, she flung her youngest child. then followed the little girls; and then, just as the turk's hand touched her shoulder, her own rest was won. that was the last thing jack saw in the burning church. oh, christ, who that day didst keep silence in thy heaven, help us to remember that other day, when around thy cross the mocking voices sounded, "if thou be the christ, save thyself,"--and thou wert silent too. help us to hold fast by that faith in thee that lies between us and madness. make us understand that these thy people are indeed "members incorporate in thy mystical body." not _with_ them alone through sympathy, but _in_ them through vital organic union thou sufferest still. in them thou art "in thine agony until the end of the world"; until the last member is complete, the last sheaf of the great harvest gathered in. thou lovest them too much for the mockery of thy foes, or even for the passionate prayer of thy friends, to move thee to come down from the cross until the work of the cross is finished, and the earnest expectation of thy suffering creatures changed into the joy unspeakable of the manifestation of the sons of god. chapter xx by abraham's pool, and elsewhere "but thou hadst gone--gone from the dreary land, gone from the storms let loose on every hill; lured by the sweet persuasion of a hand, which leads thee somewhere in the distance still." --_bayard taylor._ a group of moslems were loitering idly beside the beautiful pool of abraham, watching the sacred fish and feeding them with crumbs and corn. they were talking over the events of the last few days. some of them--who would not have hurt one of those little fishes for any consideration--were boasting how many christian dogs they had killed, or detailing yet more horrible deeds of devotion and of prowess. "but now," observed one of them, "we are not to kill any more. the '_paydoss_' has gone forth." "truth to say," another answered, "there are but few left to kill. and those are mostly old women and little children." "it were well," a third remarked, "to take some order about the burying, and that quickly, or we shall have a pestilence among us, and true believers have no charm against that any more than christians. allah, who comes here?" a weird, ghastly figure strode in amongst them, coming down to the very margin of the pool. his clothing was scorched and torn, his hair grey--almost white--and his hollow cheeks and wasted face gave the more awful expressiveness to large eyes full of horror. he looked down into the bright, pure waters of the pool. "much water there," he said; "but it will not put out the fire. there is nothing will put that out, for ever and for ever." one tried to lay hands on him, another drew a dagger. but his pale lips only curled with a scornful smile. "you cannot kill me," he said; "i am an englishman. there is a mark set upon me that no man may hurt me. it means, 'he saved himself: others he did not save.'" "put that up," said one of the turks to his comrade with the dagger. "do you not see the man is mad?" moslems think it wrong to kill a madman; they even honour him, as one inspired by allah. nor does their law allow them to receive a madman as a convert to islam. "englishman?" another queried. "nonsense about englishmen! there are no englishmen here." "that, no doubt, is part of his madness. he is a giaour, whom it is the will of allah to save alive." a young man, dressed _à la frank_, joined the group. "whom have you got here?" he asked. "some giaour, driven mad by the loss of his friends," answered one of the others. the giaour turned, and looked the new comer steadily in the face. the turk looked at him, with a perplexed, bewildered air. "osman effendi, how many giaours have _you_ killed?" the christian asked. "_one_," osman answered. "but he was a prince amongst them. it was enough. madman, i seem to know your eyes. who are you?" he gave him another long, scrutinizing look. then he said with a start, "can it be? is it possible? are you grayson effendi? how have you come here? i sought for you; and heard you had gone to the church. then i gave you up for lost." "i _am_ lost," jack said. "nay, friend, you are saved, thanks to allah the compassionate. but how, in his name, did you get out?" "i have not the least idea," jack said. "the last thing i saw was those children, falling down into the fire. the first thing i remember after that, i was walking among dead bodies in the churchyard. there were plenty of turks about, but they did not kill me. no one will kill me." "i fear you are right enough," said osman aside to the others. "it is a pity." then to jack, "come home with me, grayson effendi. i will take care of you, and give you meat and drink. then you shall lie down and sleep----" "no; i shall never sleep again. i dare not. i should see the burning church, and the woman who threw her children into the fire." "poor fellow! he is certainly mad," said another turk. jack turned and faced him. "i am not mad," he said. "i remember all my past life. i am an englishman. my name is john grayson. you have taken my wife away." "_that_ at least is madness," some one observed. "not altogether," whispered osman. "there was a betrothal, or something, to a beautiful armenian girl. franks take these things hard." then aloud, "but come with me, grayson effendi, you will be quite safe." jack yielded so far as to walk away with him from the group. but when they had gone a little distance he stopped, and said, very quietly, "osman effendi, i thank you. but i cannot enter the house of a turk. i must go back to the ruined dwellings of my friends. i would say 'god bless you!' if, in the face of what i have seen, i could still believe in god. i cannot. farewell." he took the nearest turning which led to the armenian quarter, and soon found himself in the midst of horrors which the effects of no siege, no battle known to history, could have equalled. the dead--and the dying too, who lay undistinguished amongst them--were being dragged to the great trenches outside the town, which the moslems had dug to receive them. there were many houses, like that of the vartonians, in which no human creature, not even the babe in arms, was left alive. on and on he wandered, from one horror to another. what he saw, in its details, is best left untold. he was _not_ mad; the consciousness of the past was coming back upon him, every moment more clearly and fully. as the human heart will ever do, in the most overpowering, most universal agony, he still reverted to his own. "shushan! shushan!" was his cry, amidst the reeking ruins of the devastated city. always, everywhere, it is not the "all" we care for, but the "one." we are made so. he bore his burden alone, in the blank unbelief of utter despair. "cold, strong, passionless, like a dead man's clasp," there closed about his heart the horror of "the everlasting no," choking it to death. no hope, no love, no god, no christ. how long he wandered in that ghastly scene of death he could not tell. some desultory plundering was still going on; parties of turks, chiefly of the lowest class, sometimes met him, but no one thought of killing him. the killing was over, and even if it had been otherwise, his supposed madness would have secured his safety. sometimes he saw an armenian in the distance, gliding ghost-like in the shadow of a wall; but if he hailed the phantom, it would vanish instantly into some hiding-place near at hand. he barely noticed the change of day into night or of night into day again. as the claims of his physical nature asserted themselves he took food, almost without thinking; plenty of it lay about, uncared for, in the desolated homes. the one thing he did not dare to do was to sleep. he feared the dreams that would be sure to come--he feared still more the awakening. after what seemed to himself a long time, he thought he heard a faint cry from the interior of a house in the courtyard of which he was standing. he went in, and was guided by the sound to a store closet, where food had been laid up. there, on the ground, her head upon a sack of bulghour, lay a woman quite dead, beside her a little baby, probably dying also. better let it die so, reason would have said, and perhaps kindness too. nature is stronger than either. jack stooped down, took up in his arms the little wailing babe, and tried to soothe its cries. evidently it was starving. what should he do? he could not give it rice or bulghour, and hard, dry bread, even dipped in fruit syrup, would not be more suitable. how could he feed a baby? then all at once he thought of the mission house. miss celandine would know what to do. he had often thought of her before; but either he supposed her out of reach, as for some time past she had almost been, or else unconsciously he shrank from going where he used to find shushan. moreover, for aught he knew, she might by this time have left the place. he thought osman told him she had got her passport at last. however, he soon found himself treading the familiar way by which he had gone so often to visit shushan. how clearly he saw her now, in all her winning loveliness, her sweet eyes full of joy, coming to meet him with her little hand stretched out, english fashion, and on her lips the one word, "_shack!_" he had not seen her so clearly since osman's tale turned his heart to stone. as he went he held the little babe close to his breast to keep it warm, and half feared it would die by the way. he found the great gate of the mission house, and saw forms, like shadows, creeping in and out--wretched objects, most of them with bandaged limbs or heads. the spacious courtyard seemed turned into a hospital; men, women and little children sat or stood about, waiting to be treated. he asked some one where he might find miss celandine, and was directed to the church. what a transformation that beautiful church had undergone since he saw it last! if the yard was the hospital for out-patients, the church was the ward where those lay who could not be removed. it was crammed from end to end with men and boys--the wounded and the dying. their mats were placed on the floor, so close together that it was hard to move among them. still, the first thought of relief and softness came to jack as he stood there and looked around him. there at least love reigned, not hate. once more he was amongst beings who were human, and who pitied and helped one another. he did not see miss celandine there, but an armenian woman, with a sweet, serene face, came towards him and enquired what he wanted. he showed her the babe. "can you save it?" he asked. "we will try," she answered, taking it gently from him. "poor little one! i fear it is too late. does it belong to you? is it perhaps your little grandchild?" she asked, looking up at him. it occurred to jack that the question was a strange one; but--was anything strange now? he answered, "no; i found it just now, beside its dead mother. i know not who they are." "where is miss celandine, anna hanum?" asked a servant, coming up. "there is a boy here in great distress, who wants to speak with her." "she will be here just now," said the woman who was speaking to jack. "where is the boy?" he came running in after the messenger, pale and crying, as one in sore trouble. he seemed to know anna hanum, and began to pour out to her his tale of sorrow. its burden was, "i have denied my lord. i have denied the lord jesus christ! will he ever forgive me?" "how was it, my poor child?" the woman asked pityingly. "they killed my father and my mother," he said. "then they held a knife to my throat, and asked me to be a moslem and save my life. in my terror i said--i know not what. but it must have been 'yes,' for they spared me, took me to a turkish house, and gave me food. they kept me shut up until now, when i ran away and came here. will christ ever forgive me? oh, do you think he will ever forgive me?" ere she could answer, there came a faint weak voice from one of the sufferers lying at their feet. "christ will forgive you. only, you have lost a grand opportunity." something in the voice sent a thrill of strange, sweet memories through the heart of john grayson. he turned towards the spot from whence it came. "who said that?" he asked. a man, horribly mutilated, pointed out to him a boy who was lying beside him, with a light rug thrown over him. threading his way with difficulty through the mats on which the patients lay, jack came to his side and knelt down. he saw a young face, white, wasted and drawn with pain, yet full of a strange, unutterable peace. and he knew it was the face he loved best in the house of meneshian--after the _one_ through whom his heart had got its death blow. "_gabriel!_" he said. "who is it?" asked the boy. "is it--no, it is not, it cannot be! and yet you have the eyes of yon effendi." "you used to call me that in the old days. oh, gabriel! i thought they had killed you all." "yes, _all_," gabriel said; and into his eyes there came, instead of tears, a light from beyond the sun, beyond the stars. "we have all come home now, except me. i am just a little late for the first gathering-up there, but i forget my pain in thinking of their happy meeting all together, and of the joy they have in seeing the face of christ. besides, he is here with me too; and i think he will let me go to them soon." then a wave of bitter pain surged over the soul of john grayson. he supposed gabriel did not count as any longer one of them her who, in the earthly home, had been the dearest of them all. could he think the heavenly home would be complete without her? "_what_ you must have suffered, yon effendi!" gabriel went on, looking at his changed face and grey hair. "but i never thought to see you again! we all made sure the turks had taken and killed you." "would they had!" jack said. "gabriel, how did _you_ escape when all the rest were killed?" "when they killed us all, and our cousins the vartonians too, they cut and wounded me, and left me for dead. i suppose i was a long time unconscious. when i came to myself, i was lying among the bodies, almost under them. i pushed my way out a little, that i might see. i did not want to live; but i knew how they would drag the dead--and the dying too--out of the town, and fling them into the ditches beneath the wall. i was afraid of _that_. so i lay very still until night came and all was quiet. then i managed somehow to get myself free. i crept along slowly, i know not how; i think i fainted often by the way, but at last i came here, to the place in all the world most like to heaven. and here they will let me stay until i go to heaven itself." the boy's voice was beginning to fail through weakness. "don't try to speak any more," jack said. "oh, but i _want_ to tell you--can you give me a drink?" jack saw a pitcher of water cooled with snow, and a cup beside it, not far off. he poured out some and brought it. "will you lift my head a little and put it to my lips?" gabriel said. "my hands are cut in pieces. thank you. that is good. i _want_ to tell you how god brought home the three who were away from us that day." "the _three_?" "you did not know that our dear grandfather had gone, the night before, to visit his old friends the nazarians? and he found them so frightened, with only women there in the house, that he stayed. but in the morning, when we knew what was coming, kevork went to seek for him, that we might die all together. neither of them ever came back to us. only yesterday did we hear about kevork. one of the sheiks made his followers bring him all the strong, fine-looking young men he could find. about a hundred were brought to him. he had them held down hand and foot by his followers, while he cut their throats with his own hand, reciting all the time verses from the koran. kevork was among them." "and our dear father hohannes?" "he was at the nazarians, as i said. he thought that perhaps the turks, having killed the men, might be satisfied and go away. so he bade the women conceal themselves, and sat calmly at the door reading his bible. when they saw him there, they said, 'you are an old man with white hair; we will spare you, if you will only acknowledge the prophet. you need not speak; just lift up one finger.' 'i will not lift up one finger,' said he. then they dragged him out into the street to kill him, and--and--yon effendi, i can tell you no more. spare me!" he turned his white face away with a look of agony. "dear boy! dear child! tell me no more if it hurts you so," jack whispered soothingly. "however dreadful it may have been, it is over now." "it was not so _very_ dreadful," gabriel said, after a pause. "it was soon over. but oh, yon effendi, there is _more_! i said _three_ were absent from us." his dark, wistful eyes, so full of pain, gazed piteously into the wondering face bent over him. a distant suspicion of who the third might mean dawned for the first time on john grayson. "you said three were brought home to heaven--hohannes, kevork, and----" "_shushan._" in unutterable anguish john grayson turned his face away. "_no_," he murmured hoarsely, "shushan is not in heaven but--_in hell_." gabriel half raised himself in his intense excitement. "then you don't know----" "it is _you_ who don't know," jack interrupted bitterly. "there is no such blessedness as death for her--or for me." "oh, but you don't know," gabriel said again. "yon effendi, listen--you _must_ listen to me. i have comfort for you." "what comfort possible for me?" "the comfort of god; our shushan is with him." jack turned, and looked again in the face of gabriel. his own was set and drawn in its anguish of suspense. his lips moved, but only one word would come--"speak." "as they were killing my grandfather, zaptiehs passed by with shushan guarded in their midst. she saw his white hair,--his face,--and broke through them all to throw her arms around him and plead for his life. they were taken by surprise, and did not stop her in time. no one knows how it happened, but, in the confusion, a sword meant for him went right through her heart." john grayson sprang to his feet, with a cry that made all the wounded round them turn on their mats and look up in wonder. he never even heard gabriel's concluding word: "so, as i said, they are all now with christ." but in another moment he was on the ground again beside him, his whole frame shaking with a storm of sobs--hoarse, heavy, uncontrollable,--surging up from the very depths of a strong man's soul. after the sobs came tears--tears again at last! no longer were the heavens iron and the earth brass; all the flood-gates were open now, and there was a very great rain. he knew nothing until miss celandine's firm, gentle hand was laid upon his shoulder. "my friend," she said, "i know not who you are, nor what your grief may be. but i cannot let you disturb all the others who are here. especially, you are doing great harm to my patient beside you." "don't you know me, miss celandine?" jack faltered out, struggling for composure. "don't you remember john grayson?" "john grayson! but he was a youth, and your hair is grey." "with anguish. but now i remember no more my anguish, for god has had mercy upon me. my shushan is with him." "yes, we know it, and thank god for her." chapter xxi "god satisfied and earth undone" "and if with milder anguish now i bear to think of thee in thy forsaken rest; if from my heart be lifted the despair, the sharp remorse with healing influence press'd, it is that thou the sacrifice hast bless'd, and filled my spirit, in its inmost cell with a deep, chastened sense that all at last is well." john grayson had been directed by miss celandine to go to the parlour where shushan had bidden him farewell, and to wait for her there. it looked as if it had had many occupants since, and as if some of them were still in possession. yet for the moment he was alone, a thing unusual in that crowded house. his heart was filled with a sense of unspeakable rest;--and, after rest, came thankfulness;--and with thankfulness a fresh burst of weeping, his tears growing ever gentler, ever softer and more full of healing. in those blessed tears he found again his hope and his god. christ was no dream, but a living, loving power, strong to save. he had been with his beloved one, and had delivered her. once more, in the darkness, his hand touched that right hand, so strong and so tender, which at once upholds the universe, and supports the failing heart of every tried and tempted "wrestler with the spirit until the breaking of the day." so already the cross of christ, laid upon both their heads, had been taken from shushan's young brow, and she had received instead of it the crown of life! while he--who loved her, who would love her until his life's end--he had to bear it still. but it _was_ the cross of christ, and not the brand of cain. not _that_. never that again! never more would he wander aimlessly amidst the dying and the dead,- "beating in upon his weary brain, as though it were the burden of a song" that hideous travesty of the enemy's splendid, unconscious testimony to his crucified lord: "he saved himself, others he did not save." rather perhaps might he be permitted, in some humble way, to follow him, and help to save others. of himself, there seemed little left to save now. the traveller whose purse is empty sings before the thieves; and if he has been just relieved of a crushing, killing burden, his song may even be one of thanksgiving. he did not know how long he had been waiting in that room, when another person came in and sat down, waiting also. she had with her three pale, frightened-looking little children. had he judged by her dress alone, he would have thought her an armenian woman of the very poorest class; but one look in her face made him know her as a lady. it was a very sorrowful face--what armenian face was not sorrowful then?--but it was also very beautiful, and it bore the unmistakable impress of a refined and cultured mind. he felt sure he had seen her somewhere before; she was associated somehow in his mind with a box of sweetmeats, an odd fancy, for which he could find no reason. but his thoughts soon left her, and returned to their own engrossing theme. "thomassian effendi," said one of the children presently, in a wailing voice, "won't you take me up in your lap? i am tired." jack looked round in surprise. could this be indeed the beautiful, luxurious, cherished wife of muggurditch thomassian? he spoke his thoughts aloud. "madame," he asked, "do i speak to the wife of baron thomassian?" "to his widow," she answered calmly. so much jack knew already, and he wondered if the lady knew any more. "have you had certain tidings of his----" he paused for an instant, unwilling to voice the word. "of his martyrdom?" the widow said proudly. "yes; he has gone home to god. the way was long and rough, but the end was peace." "then you know how nobly he witnessed for his lord?" "we know that he was found faithful." "i was with him almost to the end," jack said. then he told the story of his imprisonment, and of thomassian's courage and faithfulness. every word was as balm poured into the bleeding heart of the new-made widow. "and now, madame," he said at last, "how is it with you in your loneliness?" "as i suppose you know, we have been robbed of everything. my husband was known to be a rich man, and our house was one which invited plunder. what does it matter? when a scorpion has stung you, you do not feel the prick of a gnat. all i want is a handful of rice to feed these poor little ones." "are they--relatives perhaps?" asked jack. he knew she had no children. "no; they are poor orphans i found in the street crying for their mothers. it helps me in my desolation to have them to think and work for. that is why i have come to miss celandine. i think she may give me something to do, i care not what. anything to keep these from starving, and me--in another way." "perhaps you can help her in caring for the wounded." "i fear i have no skill for it. i am not like anna hanum, whom you may have seen, and who is to miss celandine as another hand." jack remembered, with a pang, that he himself owed baron thomassian money, which he had no means of repaying. other people dropped in gradually, to wait for miss celandine, and began to comment upon her long delay. "amaan! something fresh must have happened," they said. of course they meant some fresh calamity. what else could happen there? at last food was brought in, great dishes of pillav and of soup, with bread--meat there was none. "i would miss celandine were here," madame thomassian said to jack. "she will not have tasted food since the early morning. only that god gives her strength, for our sakes, she would have been dead long ago." presently there was a stir amongst them all. "here she comes," passed from lip to lip. she came, but not alone. her arm was around the waist of a tall, slender girl, who but for its support might have fallen to the ground. another girl, much younger, clung to her side, and two boys followed, the elder carrying in his arms his little brother, a child of three. her wasted, sorrow-stricken face was lit up with a glow almost of triumph. "we have got them _all_!" she said. those in the room rose up and crowded round. some said, "park derocha!" others wept aloud for joy, for all knew the pastor's children. "oh, if the badvellie could only look down and see them all safe here!" some one cried. "he does not want that," madame thomassian answered quietly, "for he knows the end of the lord." the children were soon seated on the divan. every one wanted to kiss their lips, their hands, their feet even. their clothing was an odd mixture; elmas wore a dress of miss celandine's, the rest, whatever garments had come first to hand, for the turks had stripped them of almost everything. "my zaptiehs have just found them in a mosque, and brought them to me," miss celandine explained. "they are starving." indeed the lips of little ozmo were already quite blue; he seemed unable even to cry. some one ran to get milk for him, and in a short time all were being fed and tended by loving hands. then everybody ate, in a primitive, informal way. jack had his handful of rice and his piece of bread with the rest, and no food he had ever tasted seemed to him more wonderful than this. he was eating with christians again. there sat miss celandine, in her frail womanhood, a tower of strength to them all; there were the dear pastor's rescued children, pale and changed indeed from the unfathomed depths of suffering they had passed through, but all there, not one lacking from the little flock. there was the sweet face of elmas, his shushan's friend. and shushan was safe too. god had _not_ forgotten to be gracious, nor had he in anger shut up his tender mercies from them. jack went over to elmas. "dear oriort elmas," he said, "do you know me? i am john grayson. my shushan loved you well. and you will be glad to know that she is--_safe_; so are all the rest, although gabriel only is with us still." but now miss celandine was clearing the room, that the pastor's children might have the rest and quiet they so sorely needed. there was not another spot in the crowded mission buildings that could be given up to them. with those who needed her she would speak in the passage outside. jack waited patiently for his turn, and it came at last. it may have been a relief to the lonely woman to use the tongue of her native land again, for she took time to tell him how the pastor's children had been saved. "the captain of my zaptiehs saw my anguish during the awful days," she said. "he was moved, and asked me was there anything he could do for me. i said, 'stop these horrors.' he answered that he could not. 'it is the will of allah,' he said, as they all say. then i answered, 'find those children for me, and bring them here. they are mine; they belong to the mission.' and i described them all to him. i believe he sought them diligently; and now here they are at last, after nights and days of cold and hunger and of agonizing fear. yet god has kept them. now, as for you, mr. grayson, will you come with me? i have something to give you." he followed her to another room filled with people, where washing and cooking were going on. motioning him to stay at the door, she made her way over beds, mats, babies and cooking utensils, to a press, which she opened, took something out, and came back with it. they went to the court together without speaking, and there, under the leafless branches of a fig-tree, john grayson got back his father's bible, the book of his betrothal. "shushan said to me one day that if her end of the cross was the first lifted off, i was to give this to you. see, there is a bit of silk put in, to mark the place she was reading when she was sent for to receive her father's blessing." jack opened the book, and these were the words his eyes fell upon: "speak ye comfortably to jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of the lord's hand double for all her sins." he pointed them out to miss celandine, who only said, "'_of the lord's hand_,'--it is _that_ that makes it possible to live. but, mr. grayson, what will you do now?" "anything _you_ tell me." "for the present, you will stay here with us, until the way opens for your safe return home." "miss celandine, _you_ did not go home." "the passport, which i asked for more than two months ago, was only sent to me on saturday, one hour before the massacre began. then the pasha was most anxious to get me away; he advised, he even urged me to go. so i knew that evil was determined against this people; and, of course, i stayed." "if you had gone, i suppose that not one of them would now be left alive," jack said. "certainly not one of the three hundred that were in our premises then," miss celandine answered quietly. "mr. grayson, it is but poor hospitality i have to offer you. not a room even, only a place to lie down in somewhere, and day by day a morsel of bread." "_and_ safety, _and_ peace," jack said. "if you permit me, miss celandine, i might spread a mat in the church, and give a little help, especially at night, to the wounded who are lying there. then i could be near gabriel, the only living thing left to me--of my own." "so you can. here you _must_ work, or you will die. but here also, if you serve christ in his brethren, you will find him. another thing you can do for us: your strength is sorely needed to bring to us our out-door patients, and to help them back again to their homes, or rather to the desolated ruins that were once their homes." all this john grayson did faithfully. in body he was never alone, by day and by night he lived in a crowd--a crowd of suffering men. but in spirit he "sat alone, and kept silence," because he bore "upon him the yoke," or rather, the cross of christ. he "put his mouth in the dust, if so there might be hope." and there _was_ hope for him, though the light was kindled at no earthly shrine. it was his greatest comfort to wait upon gabriel; but gabriel did not think it well that time and trouble should be spent on him. "it is waste," he said to jack; "there are so many wanting your help who have hands to work with; better go to them, for what should _i_ do, if i live?" "god will see to that, brother." "i know; only, if you drop a handful of piastres in the street, you try to pick up the good ones first." elmas stepanian loved well to steal a few moments from the care of her young brothers, to sit by gabriel and minister to his wants. his eyes used to brighten wonderfully when he saw her. "you are so good and sweet," he used to say. once he added, "and, oriort elmas, our kevork loved you so." elmas did not blush or turn her face away; she only said quietly, "my dear father liked your brother well." for indeed- "death was so near them, life cooled from its heat." contrary to every one's expectation, the little babe john grayson saved took hold of its life with a will. two or three times it was very near dying, but it always rallied. in spite of tainted air, imperfect nourishment, and other disadvantages, it gave promise of growing into a bright, healthy child. anna hanum, miss celandine's helper, who had taken it first from john grayson's arms, brought it one day to show to him with pride and pleasure. but, as she held it up, he was far more struck with her own face than with that of the babe in her arms. it was full of peace, profound and utter, such peace as one may see in the faces of the happy dead, only this was a living face, glowing with some inner light of love and blessedness. when she was gone, he turned to madame thomassian, who chanced to be at hand, waiting for some work. "it does me good to look at that face of anna hanum's," he said. "she comes among these suffering, broken-hearted people like a light in the darkness; ever ready to soothe the sorrows of others, because, alone of all here, she seems to have none of her own." "none of her own! oh, mr. grayson, how little you know! have you ever heard her story?" "i have not." "her husband was a long time ill--paralysed. the years went on, and she had a weary life of it, waiting on him night and day, and earning bread for both of them. nor, they say, did he make her toil light by loving gratitude. she never complained, but the neighbours knew that sickness had soured his temper, and things went not easily with her. but she had one great joy, god's good gift to her." the childless woman who told the tale repressed a little sigh, as she went on,-"her bright, beautiful, gifted boy was the pride of all the neighbourhood. she loved him with more than a mother's love; and she toiled, and slaved, and almost starved herself to give him the learning she set such store by, and he thirsted for so ardently himself. he was the best pupil in the school here, and then he went on to aintab and to marash, where every one had the highest hopes of him. you may guess his mother's pride when he came back with all his honours to see her, before beginning active life. he was just in time to receive his father's blessing, and to close his eyes. but he stayed on a little while with her; and it was god's will that he should still be here when the storm broke upon us. mr. grayson, they killed him slowly, with cruel torture, before his mother's eyes. she stood by, strengthening him to the last, and bidding him hold fast to his faith and his god." "and she has come through _that_!" jack said, much moved. "she has come through _that_, and she has come forth on the other side. god has satisfied her with himself. now, her own burden gone, she goes about helping and comforting all the rest, with heaven in her face, and heaven in her heart." "'for i have satisfied the weary soul, and i have replenished every sorrowful soul,'" john grayson repeated to himself. "yes, _he can do it_. these are the miracles he works now, instead of dividing seas and scattering hostile hosts." meanwhile madame thomassian gathered up the needlework she had come to fetch--coarse garments for some of the many who needed them--and jack could not help remembering the soft, luxurious life, surrounded by every indulgence wealth could procure, which had once been hers. now she toiled on from day to day, content with the pittance which was all miss celandine had to give to the poor women who were thus employed, and contriving out of that pittance to feed the little waifs she had taken from the street. even as she turned and went her way, he heard her softly singing to herself that favourite hymn of the persecuted armenians:- "jesus, i my cross have taken all to leave and follow thee; destitute, despised, forsaken, thou from hence my all shalt be; "perish every fond ambition, all i've sought, or hoped, or known, yet how rich is my condition! god and heaven are still my own." chapter xxii given back from the dead "when we can love and pray over all and through all, the battle's past and the victory's come--glory be to god!" --"_uncle tom's cabin._" one day jack roused himself to go to the desolated house of the vartonians. very few of the surviving armenians dared to be seen walking in their own quarter; and, it was said by an eye-witness, no man was ever seen to walk upright there. they crept furtively about with bowed heads, slipping from shadow to shadow, afraid of the face of day and the eyes of their fellow men. jack's object in going was to find, if possible, his father's note-book, which he had entrusted to kevork to give shushan in case of his own death. it was to him a very precious relic, and he thought it might probably be amongst the things that had escaped the plunderers, as there was nothing in its plain appearance and binding to attract them. it was agony to enter that blood-stained court, knowing all that had happened there, and to pass through those desolate rooms, associated in his mind with all the pleasant trifles of domestic life, thinking that every voice which he had heard there, save gabriel's, was now hushed in death: every foot that trod those floors was dust. even that dust had no quiet resting-place in the shadow of a christian church. those horrible trenches outside the gate, those hotbeds of fever and pestilence, told that, if the living were dumb, a cry that "shivered to the tingling stars" was going up from the desecrated dead. jack passed sadly through the rooms he knew, yet did _not_ know as they looked now, but failed in any of them to find what he sought. at last he came to a chamber upstairs, where he was startled to see a human figure lying at full length on the floor. if it were a dead man, the death must have been very recent. but when he came near he saw at once that this was not death, but quiet, natural sleep. the man's dress was _à la frank_, good and new; and his side face, which was all jack could see, had the look of life, almost of health. it had a look besides which made jack cry aloud in amazement, "kevork!--my brother!" the voice aroused the sleeper. he sat up and looked about him. "who is it?" he asked. then, after a moment's astonished gaze, "if yon effendi's father were not dead, i would think he had come to look for his son in this charnel house!" "brother, i _am_ yon effendi. how have you come back to us from the dead?" "what does it matter? are they not dead, all of them? you too, they told me you perished in the burning church." "and they told _us_ your throat was cut." kevork put his hand to his throat, where a red mark still remained. "the work was done, but not well enough," he said. "would it had been! why spare this blood, of which no drop flows any more in the veins of any living man?" "that is not true, kevork. gabriel lives." "gabriel? how did he escape? not--not--do not say he denied the faith!--not _gabriel_." "no; he was heroically faithful. he was left for dead, but he lives still. how he will rejoice to see you again, my brother!" a deeper shade passed over the face of kevork, and he stretched out his hand to jack. "my _brother_," he repeated, pausing on the word. at last he went on in a low voice, "i know all--_the worst_;--your anguish and mine are the same. our shushan and oriort elmas----" "are _saved_--saved!" jack cried, pressing his hand in a mighty grasp, and looking in his sorrowful face, his own radiant with thankfulness. "_my_ treasure is safe in heaven, yours still on earth--in the mission house with miss celandine. _all_ the pastor's children have been rescued, and are there, thank god!" kevork meneshian bowed his head, and did what john grayson himself had done in the hour of his blessed relief from an anguish too great for tears. jack let him weep for a while, then he said gently, "come, brother, let me bring you to our friends, who will rejoice over you as over one given back to them from the dead." on the way kevork told his story. "that morning," he said, "when we knew what was coming, i went to fetch our grandfather, that we might all die together. there was no more danger, and no less, in the street than at home; but i was soon caught by the turks." "yes," said jack; "that we heard; and your throat was cut." "there is the mark. but there were a hundred of us, so the sheikh's hand grew weary ere he finished. i was near the end of the long line, and i only got a hasty gash. i did not even lose consciousness; but i was afraid to stir, so i lay there in my pain, thinking i should bleed to death. by-and-by some soldiers came along, and looked at the bodies. they saw i was not dead, and were going to finish me, when a turk interposed, and bade them let me alone. he had hard work to protect me from them, nor did he succeed without striking one of them pretty sharply with the butt end of his gun. then i saw his face, and recognised that osman we met once or twice--a friend of the pastor's." "osman! he told me he rescued an armenian, an acquaintance. i wonder he did not name you." "where did you meet him?" "we were together in the prison." "i suppose he suspected some spy within hearing. well, he took me to his house, bound up my wound, and hid me in an inner chamber. there he left me, promising soon to return; but for three days and nights i saw him not again, nor any one. you may guess what i suffered shut up there, thinking of all our friends." "and you must have been nearly starved." "no; he left me some food, though i was too miserable to care for it. at last he came, and told me he had been imprisoned for assaulting the soldier who wanted to kill me; his relatives, as he suspected, having contrived the thing to keep him out of harm's way, since he knew they thought him lacking in a proper zeal for islam. but, on my account, and still more on that of the badvellie's children, whom he wanted to save, he had been very eager to get out, and managed it at last, with large backsheesh. he told me all the terrible news--of those who were dead, and of those who, less happy, were living still." after a sad pause he went on. "for myself, i am grateful to him. he supplied all my wants, and kept me concealed there many days. at last, yesterday, he came to me and said, 'i can hide you no longer. people are beginning to suspect something. if they find you, they will kill you, and kill me also for giving you shelter.' i said, 'for myself i care not, for what have i left to live for?' but added that i could not bear he should suffer on my account. so he said the best he could do for me was to give me a frank dress, arranged as mussulmans wear it, and money enough to keep me for the present. which he did, and may god reward him, and number him--if it so may be with any turk--amongst his redeemed!" "amen!" jack said. he did not like to tell kevork, what osman evidently had not told him, that the father of oriort elmas had fallen by his hand. there was no need for more, for now they were at the gate of the mission house. "it is best," jack said, "that i should bring you first to miss celandine; she will know what to do. for we must not tell gabriel too suddenly; he is ill and weak. you must be prepared, kevork, to see him greatly changed." yet the meeting between the brothers seemed to fan the feeble, flickering spark of gabriel's life into a flame. it was another tie to earth to feel he had one brother there left him still--"no, _two_ brothers," as he said, looking lovingly at jack. a little while afterwards, jack was sent for one day by miss celandine. "franks have come to her from aintab," said the excited messenger. delighted to think that miss celandine's long loneliness was over, jack went to her at once. he found her in earnest converse with a grey-haired american missionary, whom, in introducing jack to him, she called dr. sandeman. then she said to jack, "i want you very much, mr. grayson. baron vartonian is in there," glancing at the door of an inner room. "he came with dr. sandeman. he has just heard that of all his large family there remains to him now not one. you know more about them than any one else who is living now, save gabriel. will you go in and speak to him, and comfort him if you can?" though his heart fainted within him at the thought of such a sorrow, jack went into the inner room. there were two persons there. old baron vartonian sat on the divan, his head bowed down upon both his hands, his face hidden. now and then the sound of low, deep moans--such moans as only come from a strong man's deepest heart--broke the stillness. beside him stood a young man with a face incredibly pale and worn and wasted, as if with some great agony, though its look was one of past rather than of present suffering. "the look of one that had travailed sore, but whose pangs were ended now." his hand was laid tenderly, and with a caressing touch, on the old man's shoulder; for that was all the human sympathy he was able to bear just yet. he motioned jack to sit on the divan. "you were their friend, you loved them," he said. "and received from them much kindness," jack answered in a low voice. after a pause he went on, "she that was dearer to me than my life was as a child in their house. it was they who brought her to the mission school, where such joy and help were given her." "why do i live?" the old man broke out suddenly. "it is wrong! it is horrible! it is against nature! no reaper reaps the green and leaves the ripe. no gardener leaves the dry stick in the ground and uproots the flourishing tree. i am alone--alone--alone! i came back, after all those long months of suffering, thinking, 'now i will rest, now i will end my days in my home with my dear ones; my son--my firstborn--shall close my eyes, and my children, and my children's children, shall lay me in the grave.' and i find all gone--sons and sons' sons, with the mothers and the children, and the children's children--even the little babe i had never seen. oh, my god! oh, my god!" then letting his hands fall and looking at the two who stood beside him: "but i do not believe it. it is not possible. surely _one_ at least is left alive. let us go and see." the pale-faced young man rose also. "it were best for us to bring him to his own house," he said to jack. "perhaps, when he sees it, he will be able to weep." so jack went, for the second time, to the house of the vartonians. the old man, burdened with a weight of sorrow nature seemed scarce able to bear, asked them after a while to leave him in the family living-room, which had been the centre of his home. while he sat there, alone with his memories and his god, the two young men waited together in the court. jack found that his companion was a theological student almost ready for the ministry, to which he had been looking forward with eager hope, when one day he was suddenly seized by zaptiehs and flung into a dungeon. dr. sandeman--who was to him as a father, young mardiros vahanian said with kindling eyes--had done all in his power to help him, or even to find out of what he was accused. at last it was discovered that another person had been arrested, upon whom there was found an english newspaper containing a notice of the massacre at sassoun. this man, probably under torture, said that he had it from young vahanian,--and that was all his crime. on one occasion dr. sandeman got leave to visit him, though he only saw him in the presence of turks, and was only allowed to speak to him in turkish. as they parted, he ventured to whisper in english just this, "do not give up hope"--and terrible things had the poor lad suffered afterwards on account of this one word. not then, and not at any time from his own lips, did jack hear the true story of that prison year, heaped with agonies, with tortures, and with outrages to us happily inconceivable. during a short time, towards the end, he had shared the cell of baron vartonian, who also had been imprisoned on some futile charge. a strong friendship had grown up between the young man and the old, thus thrown together; and now, in the old man's utter loneliness and desolation, vahanian wished to take the place of a son, and to cherish and comfort him. jack could not help doubting, when he looked at him, that he would be long left in the world to comfort any one. but not liking to express his doubt, he asked him how it was that in the end he got out of prison. "i do not very well know," the young man answered. "dr. sandeman never ceased to work for me; and i think that, somehow, he got the british consul interested in my case, and that he interceded for me, as i know he did for baron vartonian, against whom indeed there was no charge that the turks themselves believed in. it was one of those false accusations that any man can get a turk to bring against a christian for a couple of medjids, and the hiring of two false witnesses to back him up; and christians being disqualified from bearing witness in a court of law, the accused of course has no chance of proving his innocence. however, thanks, i suppose, to the consul, baron vartonian was released, and so was i." jack asked him if he thought he was recovering his health. "oh yes, i grow stronger every day. if you had seen me when i first came out of prison, you would wonder at the change." so he said; but jack wondered, instead, what he could possibly have looked like then. "no doubt," he said, "while you were in prison, you often wished to die." "i did--_sometimes_," he answered, his eyes kindling--"not that i might be away from my pain, but that i might be with my saviour. but for the most part, i felt him so near me there, that i thought death itself could scarcely bring us any closer." jack's look softened. "in spite of all your suffering, i call you blessed," he said in a low voice. "still, after all, that was knowing him by faith. in heaven, it will be sight." "which will be different, and _must_ be better, though it is hard to see how it can. i thought i knew something before of the mystery of communion with him, but i felt as if i had never tasted it till then. i did not know there could be such peace, such joy." "has it stayed with you since you came out?" "no, and yes. when a child is hurt, the mother takes it in her arms and fondles it; when it is well, she lets it run by her side. but she does not love it the less." "perhaps it seems strange to you now to come back to life? perhaps you would rather not?" "i would rather die, you think, and go to him? not just yet. there are too many in the world that he wants me to help." "like these poor people here who have suffered so much?" "yes; but there are those more worthy of our pity than even they." "_more_ worthy? truly on god's earth it seems to me that there are none. but i know what you mean," jack added in a lower voice. "you are thinking of those, in harems or elsewhere,--for whom we only dare to ask one thing--_death_" vahanian's face grew sad. it was some moments before he spoke again. at last he said, "there are those still more pitiable. no man has compassion--no man cares for the soul of--the turk." jack started, as if he had been shot. "how _could_ we?" he asked. "yet you say every day, 'forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.'" "i never thought of it in that way. and i tell you, if i ever get back to england, i will _not_ forgive the turk! i will _not_ keep silence about his evil deeds, about the things i have seen and heard of here!" "nor should you. to stop them would be to show the very kindness of god even to the turk himself. but i would it were god's will to stop them, not with his wrath, but with his love." "how could that be?" "as he stopped st. paul's. do you not believe christ died for the turk as well as for the christian?" "he died for all," jack said reverently. "and i know he commands us to forgive. but this thing is not possible--to man. and yet, it is strange, but i remember that when i was led out to die, as i thought, by their hands, i felt no anger against them--indeed i scarcely thought of them at all. yet afterwards, when i knew _all_ they had done, i could have torn them limb from limb." "friend, you suffered more than i, because you suffered in others. it is only written 'when they revile _you_,--persecute _you_.' but am i to think god has no better thing for you than what he gave me? because i have had a few drops of this wine of his, of which he drank himself, am i to doubt that he can fill the cup for you, even to the brim? it is for our sorest needs that he keeps his best cordials. and now i will go back again to my friend, baron vartonian. i think he has been long enough alone." he went, and jack looked after him, wondering,--and learning a new lesson of what christ can do for his suffering servants. this is no fiction, it is literal truth. except, indeed, that these poor words fail to convey the depth and intensity of the pitying love, which divine grace had kindled in that young heart for those at whose hands he had suffered such things. chapter xxiii betrothal "now with fainting frame, with soul just lingering on the flight begun, to bind for thee its last dim thoughts in one, i bless thee." miss celandine's thoughtful kindness had screened off a little corner in the crowded church hospital, where gabriel's bed was placed, and there was room for kevork and john grayson to sit beside him, when they could. elmas also came often to see him. when kevork first returned, he had brightened up so wonderfully, that the restored brother hoped they might be left together. but there was no real return of strength, and the temporary excitement ended in a reaction that meant increased weakness and suffering. yet neither jack nor kevork wished to face the truth; they both, especially kevork, clung to that frail young life--tenaciously, desperately. one day, not long after the arrival of dr. sandeman, jack drew aside the curtain, and came in. kevork was there already, and made room for him to sit down. a smile passed over the sick boy's wasted face, but it was soon succeeded by an anxious, troubled look. "yon effendi," he said, "you are grieved to-day. what is it?" jack smiled too. "oh, gabriel, those fingers of yours!" he said. "there is no escaping them." it was a saying amongst them that gabriel, whose hands were useless, had been given "fingers in his heart," instead; for if there was any special sorrow or need, he always knew it by some instinct, and, figuratively speaking, put his finger on the place. for now, on his own account, he had no more grief, no more fear; his heart was all "at leisure from itself" for the griefs of others. he smiled again in answer, and not sadly at all. "my fingers touch a trouble of yours, which yet is not all a trouble," he said. "you have been talking to the american badvellie." "yes, and to miss celandine. and they both advise me to go home." kevork turned a startled face to him. "but there is no use in thinking of it," he said quickly. "they would not give you a passport, after what you have done." "that is just what _i_ said. there is no blood upon my conscience, but upon my hand there is blood enough. were i to apply, as things are now, for a passport, my antecedents would be looked into, and i should never be allowed to leave this land alive." "they would never kill an englishman," said gabriel. "not openly in broad daylight, but in one way or another, i should disappear." "so i think," said kevork eagerly. "you must run no such risks as that, my brother." "dr. sandeman has a different plan," jack said. "that fine young fellow, vahanian, wants to stay here to be with baron vartonian, and to help among the wounded. what if i took his passport, and went to aleppo in his place?" "you would be found out." "the doctor thinks not. he almost undertakes to put me safely through. i can dye my hair and stain my face a little. not much will be needed, so well your suns have browned me." "then, yon effendi, your mind is to leave us," kevork said sorrowfully, almost bitterly. "my mind is _not_ to leave you," jack answered. "only i want to know which thing is right to do." he looked tenderly at gabriel as he added, "a while ago, i could not have gone. i could not have left you alone, gabriel--but now you have kevork. god has given him back to you from the dead." "god has given kevork to me," gabriel said; "but what is he going to give kevork? for, you know, i cannot stay with him!" "don't speak that way," jack said hastily. kevork was more visibly overcome. "i cannot go on alone," he said. "i _cannot_. gabriel,--you must not go." gabriel was much worse that night; and early in the morning jack went for kevork, whose sleeping place was in another part of the crowded mission premises. "come quickly," he said. "i think he is going from us." kevork sprang up from his mat, threw a jacket over his zeboun, and, choking down a sob, followed his friend in silence. the sweet morning air, which had the touch and thrill of the springtime in it, fanned their brows as they crossed over to the church, where gabriel lay. "who is with him?" kevork asked. "anna hanum." she was kneeling beside the dying boy, and as they entered looked up with her calm, sweet face. "he is easier now," she said. "you will try to be glad for me, will you not?" gabriel whispered; "you know it is best." "you will soon be with them all--your father and mother, and my shushan," jack answered. "i shall be--with christ," gabriel said. "for whom you have given your life." "who gave his life for me." but his dark, wistful eyes turned away, even from the beloved yon effendi, to rest upon his brother's face. "there is some one else i want to see," he murmured. "stoop down, anna hanum." he whispered a name into her ear. she said, "yes, dear," and glided softly away. "it is miss celandine he wants," both the young men thought. jack took the place beside him. he lay still, with closed eyes, resting. only once he opened them, when a moan from the crowded space outside was heard through the curtain. "some one is suffering, yon effendi," he said. "please go and help." kevork was left with him alone, his tears falling without restraint. "_don't_, kevork," he whispered; "there is comfort coming, for you." jack returned presently. miss celandine, who had _not_ been sent for, came in also, and with her--elmas stepanian. at the sight of the beloved teacher, gabriel tried to raise himself; but it was more than he could do. he looked at her appealingly. "the hand--that has saved us all--to my lips--once more," he prayed. instead of giving him her hand, she stooped down and kissed him, lip to lip, and motioned to elmas to do the same. in _her_ face he looked earnestly, while he gathered all his remaining strength to speak. "oriort elmas, kevork has loved you ever since he was at school in aintab. all the rest are gone from him; i am going now. it is too hard for him to stay here alone. will _you_ comfort him, oriort elmas?" "if i can," she answered soothingly, as one speaks to the dying. "but i want to hear the promise--on the book--before i go." she drew back, her face flushing crimson, and looked at miss celandine in perplexity. kevork drew a step nearer and spoke. "oriort elmas, it is quite true. though i would not have dared to say it _now_, had not he said it for me; for we stand together in the shadow of the grave. but if this dear lady, who is a mother to us all, will allow it, and you will give me your promise, there is nothing man may do"--(his voice quivered and thrilled with suppressed feeling)--"nothing man may do that i will not do for you, and find my joy in it, for i love you more than life." elmas stepanian's character, strong by nature, had been annealed in the furnace of affliction. that furnace had burned away the bonds of those timid conventions that usually held the daughters of her race. in a low but firm voice she answered, "if miss celandine approves, i will give it." jack was standing beside miss celandine. he took out his father's bible, which he always kept with him, and put it in her hand, with a significant look from her to kevork. she understood the mute appeal. if she gave the book to kevork for the purpose they all knew, it would be her act of sanction to this strange betrothal. she paused a moment: then she said, "the god of your fathers, and your god, bless you both," and laid the book in the outstretched hand of kevork. kevork gave it to elmas. "so i plight my troth to thee, for good days and evil, for health and sickness, for life and death, and for that which is beyond," he said. "and i also to thee," elmas answered. "now it is all right," gabriel said, with a look of infinite relief. "i will tell them." "but you are very tired," jack interposed, noting a rapid change in his face, and turning to get a cordial he was accustomed to give him. "kevork," he whispered, "take oriort elmas away. there are too many here." "_no_," said miss celandine; "i think you had better stay. mr. grayson, never mind that cup; he cannot take it." there followed a few minutes of struggle and suffering; a brief conflict of the spirit with the failing flesh. it was soon over. once more the look of peace settled down on the wasted face, and now it was for ever. gabriel looked around, and recognised them all. then, in that action so common to the dying, he slowly raised his right arm, and waved the bandaged, helpless hand. "with his own right hand, and with his holy arm, hath he gotten himself the victory," he said with his parting breath. his brother closed his eyes, and the others mingled their tears with his, until at last miss celandine said gently,-"my children, he needs our care no more; and there are many waiting without who still need it sorely." "i will go with you and help," jack answered. so they went, leaving kevork and elmas kneeling together beside their dead. chapter xxiv under the flag of england "whose flag has braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze." --_t. campbell._ "mr. grayson, you are young yet," said the venerable missionary, dr. sandeman to the grey-haired, toil-worn man before him. "do i _look_ young?" john grayson answered. "no, i am old--old. the last year has done for me the work of other men's three score and ten." "i know what you have seen and suffered." "it has not been _all_ suffering," jack said. "i have _lived_. i have tasted the wine of life as well as the poison. i have loved, and been beloved." "i know," the missionary said again; and he spoke the truth--_he knew_. "but there are many years before you yet. for them all, that love will be a memory." "it cannot be a memory," jack interrupted, "for it is myself." it was far from dr. sandeman's thought to blaspheme that creed of youth which stamps the signet of eternity upon its love, its joy, its suffering, its despair. old as he was, his own heart had kept too young for that. he said, "when you return to your own land, you will find waiting for you interests and pursuits, cares and duties also, which will engross your energies, and fill your life." "not my life," jack answered. "when i wedded shushan, i wedded her race." "if indeed god calls you to help in drying the tears of this 'niobe of nations,' i can think of no higher calling," dr. sandeman answered with emotion. "but for that hope," said jack, "do you think i could leave this place? do you think i could abandon all these helpless sufferers, and that heroic woman, whose name a thousand times over deserves the 'saint' before it, if only we protestants had a calendar of our own, as we ought?" "but we never could," said the missionary with a smile; "it would need a page for every day. however, miss celandine herself is urging your departure." "and things for the present seem quieter," jack added. "_safe_ can nothing be, in this miserable land. i am glad vahanian is staying; he will be a great help." "yes," said the missionary, "and he is glad to work here for the present, though he still keeps the dream and longing of his heart; and he thinks god will fulfil it one day, and allow him to make known the gospel of his grace to the turks. miss celandine is beginning to gather in the orphans, a few of them--poor, destitute, starving little ones! did you hear that baron vartonian has lent his house to give them shelter?" "no; i am glad to think of the home i knew being used for such a purpose. and it will comfort his own desolate heart." "but now for yourself, mr. grayson. are you ready for the journey?" "yes," returned jack, with a rather mournful smile. "you see, i have no packing to do." "right; the less you carry the better." "here is the one treasure i bring back from armenia; and i have learned here, as perhaps i should never have learned elsewhere, what a treasure it is," jack said, producing his father's bible. "by right," he added, "it should belong to oriort elmas, for it is the book of her betrothal; but she and kevork both say i must take it back, on account of its memories. i wish, doctor, those two could come to england with me." "with you they cannot come. but i wish they could follow you; for kevork seems to have taken an active share in resisting the turks at the time of the first massacre, and such things are not forgotten." "the turks forget nothing--except their promises," said jack. "but, dr. sandeman, there is another matter which causes me some embarrassment. i am absolutely without money. the fact is, i have been living upon these poor people, and latterly upon miss celandine." dr. sandeman smiled. "i think she would say your services have been worth more than your morsel of bread. and as for your journey, we can take you on without expense as far as aleppo. i am going there." "you are very good; and the cost at least i can repay you afterwards, but the kindness--never. but i shall have to get somehow from aleppo to alexandretta, and there to take a passage in the first steamer i can find. how can all that be managed?" "when you come to aleppo, you shall tell your story to the english consul. i have little doubt he will provide for your safe conveyance to alexandretta, and lend you the passage money." "how shall i get him to believe me? i should not mind so much if he were the same i knew when i passed through aleppo with my father, five years ago. but this is another man." "he will believe you," the missionary said quietly. he would not speak of his own influence for a double reason--it would be boastful, and it might be dangerous. "your story bears all the impress of truth, and you can prove it in a hundred ways." "then my course is plain," jack said. "and the first step," he added with a sigh, "is to say farewell to the dear friends here." he rose to go, but turned back to ask, with a little hesitation, "dr. sandeman, have you seen the cathedral?" "_yes_" said the missionary with a shudder. "after all this time, it is still the most sickening sight i have ever beheld. not sight alone; every sense is outraged. do not go near it, mr. grayson." "and yet," jack answered, "christ's martyrs went to him from thence." john grayson's journey, in the company of dr. sandeman, proved as little eventful as any journey at that time and in those regions could possibly be. one sad episode indeed there was. as usual, they halted at biridjik. they found the town a wreck and the houses in ruins, many of them burned, others plundered and defaced. the streets were almost impassable with rubbish, broken glass, fragments of furniture, and other far more ghastly memorials of the massacre. the remaining inhabitants had been forced to become moslems to save their lives. they kept themselves shut up in their houses, or moved about--pale, attenuated shadows, with fear and horror stamped upon their countenances. no intercourse was permitted between them and the missionary's party; only a few of them dared to look at the travellers with eyes of piteous appeal and recognition, and to make furtively, with rapid fingers, the sign of the cross. jack longed to give them gabriel's word of comfort, "christ will forgive you; only you have lost a grand opportunity." he said this to dr. sandeman, who answered, "_you_ have a right to say that; so had he; but it seems to me that no man who has not been tried thus can estimate the trial, the opportunity, or the loss." "but oh, the sadness of it all!" jack said. and then these two brave, strong men of anglo-saxon race did just what the exiles of israel did so many ages ago, "by the waters of babylon they sat down and wept." before they quitted biridjik john grayson went, in the early morning, to visit his father's grave. he was greatly relieved to find it had been left undisturbed, for he knew that horrible outrages had been committed elsewhere upon the graves of the christians. kneeling on the hallowed spot, he thanked god for his father's noble life and bright example, and for sustaining and preserving himself through so many perils. then the thought came to him, as it had done so many times before, though never perhaps with such poignancy, that other dust, most precious, had no resting-place in sacred ground. over the grave of shushan none might ever weep, nor could any find it, until that day when all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the son of man. bitter it seemed to john grayson that this solace, the right of the humblest mourner, was denied to him. but presently he rose from his knees with the thrill of another thought--a new one--in his heart. he looked around him. not far could his eye reach as he stood there; but the eyes of his mind were ranging over the whole beautiful, sorrow-stricken, desolated land, from trebizond by the northern sea to the rice plains of adana in the south. "my shushan has a royal resting-place," he said. "for me, all armenia is her grave. and, as holding that sacred dust, i will love, and live for, and cherish that land all my life long, god helping me." throughout their whole route the travellers found heart-rending tokens of the ruin of the country and the misery of the people. some sights they saw are absolutely beyond description, and would haunt them both until the end of their days. "how long, o lord, how long!" was the word oftenest on dr. sandeman's lips. still, no man molested _them_, or hindered them in any way. aintab was first reached, then in due time aleppo, and john grayson found himself once more amongst englishmen. he felt as if he had been dead and buried, and brought to life again in a new world, which he had forgotten, and which had forgotten him. he met however at the consulate, some who remembered his father, and once he came to know these, his past began to revive within him. at once upon his arrival he wrote to his friends in england; but he did not think there would be time for an answer to come before he left. the consul, although personally a stranger, was very kind, which did him the more credit since he thought at first there was something curious and unusual about this young englishman with the grey hair and the sad face. indeed, he asked dr. sandeman privately if mr. grayson was entirely in his right mind. once reassured on this point, he gave him most efficient help. he got him a passport, advanced him the necessary money, and sent a competent and faithful dragoman, and a couple of kavasses, with him to alexandretta, with orders not to leave him until they saw him safely on board a vessel going to england. with a sense of almost bewildering strangeness and wonder, jack stood at last on the deck of the great steamship _semaphore_, bound for southampton. he watched the crowds about him--sailors preparing for the start, passengers getting on board with much stir and bustle. they had to come in boats, and there was quite a little fleet of these about the companion ladder, the rowers shouting and screaming as each tried to get his own craft in first. the dragoman had told jack that all the franks stopped at this place and went on shore, to visit the spot where a battle was fought long ago by alexander the great--the battle of issus, that was what they called it. an official stood at the ship's side, examining the passport of every passenger who came on board. near him stood the captain, a rough, hearty-looking british seaman. there was great hurry, crowding, and confusion, and it was very evident the passport business was not done as thoroughly as it might have been. it was not difficult for a passportless person, or even two or three, to slip in "unbeknownst," as he heard the under-steward, an irishman, remarking casually to a friend. jack edged himself out of the crowd, and watched. presently he saw a boat filled with zaptiehs--well he knew their hateful uniform--put off from the shore, and make for the ships in the bay. it might be the _semaphore_ they meant, it might be one of the others. jack knew his passport was all in order, still he did not like that sight. he could not realize yet that he was out of turkey, that he stood on the deck of a british ship, and that the glorious flag of old england was waving above his head. so he went quietly downstairs to the cabin, resolved to stay there until the good ship _semaphore_ should be actually on her way. meanwhile, the turkish boat came on apace, and before it, faster still, flew another little boat. a young man, standing up in it, sprang on the companion ladder just about to be withdrawn, and ran up, leaving a girl and a boy in the boat. "too late, my man," said the captain, waving him back. "oh, sir, take us!" the young man cried. he was trembling, and his face white with terror. "take us!--we will pay!" "i can't. we have no more room." "we will pay you well--ten pounds a-piece." "no; our second cabin is full. and we are off now." "fifteen pounds a-piece." "no, not for twenty pounds." "for pity's sake! we are armenians, fleeing for our lives." "you armenians are all rogues," said the captain. "no is no," and he turned away. "for christ's sake, then!" cried the young man in an agony. the captain turned back again. "why did you not say that before?" he asked, in an altered voice. "i am a christian man, and i cannot refuse _that_ plea." "thank god!" the young man almost sobbed.--"_my sister._" in less than a minute more the boy and girl were helped up the ladder by willing hands, and all three stood together on the deck--_safe_. then the great heart of the ship began to throb, and she was soon steaming merrily out of the harbour. john grayson came on deck again, and seeing three armenians standing by the side of the vessel, drew near, laid his hand on the young man's shoulder, and looked him in the face. "kaspar hohanian!" he exclaimed in surprise. "is it possible this is you?" kaspar seemed scarcely able to speak even yet. but he drew a long breath, tried to compose himself, and returned jack's look of inquiry. "who are you?" he asked. "do you not know me? do you not remember our awful week together in the prison at urfa, expecting death. i am john grayson." "with that white hair! i thought you were dead." "so i thought of you, and with more reason. i thought all the band who watched and prayed together through those sad days were gone to god--save me." for a moment both were silent. jack did not care, until he knew more, to look again in the face of his friend. he could not but remember there was only _one_ way of escape for any of that devoted group. kaspar divined his thought, and said,-"no; i have not denied the faith. though, if the same trial came again, i dare not answer for myself. strangely enough, mr. grayson, it was through you my life was saved." "how could that be?" "i will tell you when i find my sister a place to rest in." "the young lady is your sister? may i----" but the captain came up just then, interrupting them. "come along," he said to kaspar, with rough kindliness, "i will find a place to stow you in. don't be afraid, young lady." then to the boy, "run along, my boy, to that ladder you see leading down below." but the lad stood motionless, his large brown eyes staring vaguely in the direction of the voice. "he is blind, sir," kaspar explained. "during the massacre he hid in a dry well. he was there several hours, and came out stone blind from the terror." "poor boy! well, come along with me, all of you. the ladies will make room for your sister among them." "and, captain," jack interposed, "the boy can have my berth. this young man and i, who are old friends, can sleep on the deck together." the captain agreed. he was heard to remark afterwards that he "thought armenians were all savages, but these people seemed just like ourselves." at night, under the stars, jack and kaspar resumed their conversation. they were very comfortable; the irish steward brought them rugs and cushions, and lingered to say he was glad the gentlemen and the young lady had got away from "thim murtherin' brutes of turks. i was in constantinople last september," said he, "and, by the powers, oliver cromwell himself was a thrifle to thim!" "and i wish we had oliver cromwell here to deal with them now!" jack said, with juster views of history. the great ship was ploughing easily and steadily through calm waters. all around and all about them reigned sleep and rest. it was a good time to talk of past perils and to enjoy present security. "how could you say your life was saved through me?" john grayson asked. "i must tell you first why i was not killed with the rest," answered kaspar. "that was horrible. all the rest were dead, even thomassian; but they took me back again to the prison. there they brought me a paper to sign, setting forth that the men who had been executed were convicted of a plot to attack the mosques and murder the moslems at their service on friday. if i signed, they promised me life, and without the condition of renouncing my faith." "and you?" "was i going to take the crown from the heads of the martyrs of god, and fling it down to the dust to be trampled on like that? they urged me, arguing that these men were all dead, so that nothing i could say or sign could do them any harm, whereas, if i refused, they--the turks--could do me a great deal of harm, which was certainly true." "and then?" "then i _went down into hell_. do not ask me more. i was praying every hour for death, when, to my amazement, they came to me, not with fresh tortures, but with meat and drink, good clothes _à la frank_, and the offer of a bath. i was wondering what strange form of mockery or torture their imaginations had got hold of to which this might be the prelude, when they explained to me that you--the englishman--had made your escape; and that, just after they discovered this, the pasha had sent orders for you to be brought to him, and would be very angry, and accuse them of great negligence, when he found you were not forthcoming. they knew i spoke english, and they offered me my pardon if i would personate you for the time; thinking, i suppose, that being rather tall and of fairer complexion than most of us, i would look the part tolerably well. so i was brought into a light, comfortable room, and for three or four days very well treated. it was during that time i heard of the massacre. at last i was set free. how it came about i do not quite understand, and i suppose i never shall. i suspect however that the pasha never sent for me, having so much else at that time to occupy him, but that, instead, he sent orders that the englishman was to be quietly set free without noise or stir. and he may have directed his messenger to see the orders carried out, else might they not have let me go so easily." "did you try to go back to your home?" he bowed his head. "my two elder brothers and my little sister--all dead. artin hid in the well in our yard, to come out blind, as you see, and to wander about in darkness and misery, escaping death by a miracle. i found him starving, and almost out of his mind." "and your sister?" "markeret? through the brave kindness of two aged women, friends of our family, she was saved. if any had a chance of escape, it was such old women, who were thought neither worth the killing nor the taking. they spread a rug over her, and actually _sat_ upon her all through the killing time. the turks came in often, searched the house, and stole or destroyed what they found. but happily they did no worse. you can imagine the distress of body and the agony of mind of those endless hours. when things seemed a little safer they took her out, half dead, and concealed her in their store-room. but i do not think the look of fear will ever leave her face. it is stamped there." jack thought it was on his own as well. "but to have made your way down here from urfa, with those two, was a perfect wonder," he said. "how did you do it?" "i had help. i told you of the turk, our acquaintance, who tried to save me before? i went to him with my tale of misery. he promised to help me, and he did. he took into counsel a friend of his, one osman effendi, whom you know. together they managed matters so well for us, that, after many difficulties too long to tell of, we came safely to alexandretta. there we mingled with the crowds who were making holiday in the plain of issus, and tried to slip with them on board the steamer. but the zaptiehs were after us." "can i help you when we come to england?" jack asked. "no doubt, by-and-by; and i shall be thankful. but at first we have friends to go to. a brother of my mother's went long ago to a place they call man-jester, to trade in turkish goods. he will receive us, i am sure. the gold coins markeret has about her will pay our passage, and _may_ leave something over, to bring us there." "come to me for whatever you want," john grayson said cordially. kaspar thanked him, and dropped into silence. his face showed excessive weariness, and all the more plainly because of the reaction from extreme terror. however, he roused himself to say: "i want to tell you something rather odd. one day osman shut me up for safety in his private room. i saw a book lying there, and noticing that the characters were arabic, i took it up to look. it was a bible in turkish. he came in and found me reading it. he said to me, with a kind of carelessness that i think hid some real feeling, 'yes, i got a loan of that. i wanted to find out the secret of your people's patience under all that has come upon them.' i asked if he had found it. he answered me, 'i think i have. it is the spirit of hesoos, your prophet. he was like that.'--oh, i am very tired!" "well, then, my friend, lie down here under the stars, and _sleep_. think that now no enemy's hand can touch you, or your brother, or your sister any more. sleep safe under the flag of england, the dear old 'union jack.'" chapter xxv at home "how soon a smile of god can change the world! how we are made for happiness--how work grows play, adversity a winning fight!" --_r. browning._ it was a bright july morning. after a prosperous voyage, the _semaphore_ was steaming in to southampton pier. john grayson stood on the deck, looking at the shores of the native land he had never hoped to see again. near him, though not speaking, stood kaspar hohanian; and a little behind them artin and markeret sat together, the sister telling her blind brother all she saw. the three had just been thanking the captain, with full hearts, for many kindnesses shown them during the voyage. presently the throbbing pulses of the ocean monster sank into stillness; the double gangway was laid across; and then ensued a frantic rush of eager passengers, laden with every description of the luggage called by courtesy "light." others stood on guard beside their boxes, or shouted to the porters, who were rushing still more frantically the other way. along with the porters came a tall athletic young parson, in a soft felt hat and clerical undress. with alert and cheerful aspect, he went about among the groups, looking earnestly at all the men, in evident search for some one. he bestowed a rapid glance upon kaspar hohanian, but turned away disappointed. then he almost flung himself upon john grayson--only to draw off again instantly, much disconcerted. "i beg your pardon," he said. jack looked him in the face. it was a good face, and a strong face too--frank, manly, trustful and trustworthy. the young man's complexion, naturally fair, was well bronzed by air and exercise, his eyes were english blue, his hair and beard light brown. "i beg your pardon," he said to jack, with the slight, respectful inflection of tone a well-bred young man uses to an elder. "i mistook you for a cousin, who is on board, and whom i have come to meet." "may i ask the name?" "mr. john grayson. we have not met since we were both schoolboys. so, you see, i am a little puzzled." "fred--fred pangbourne, don't you know me?" cried jack, springing forward and seizing both his hands. "i--i could not have believed it!" fred ejaculated, horror-stricken. "my poor jack, what have they done with you?" _that_ question could not be answered in a breath. "how is your father? how is every one?" jack queried, evading it. "ah! so you did not get our letters, and have heard nothing. my father went from us years ago. the rest of us are quite well. now you are coming with me, right away, to gladescourt." "to where?" "my curacy. at present indeed i may call it my rectory; since, in the rector's absence, i live in his house. where is your luggage?" "in this handbag." fred looked surprised, but only said, "let us come at once then." "stay, fred; i must look after my friends." he turned to them and spoke in armenian. "kaspar, take care of your sister; i will look after artin." fred wondered who these people could be, but was too courteous not to offer his services. he thought the dark-eyed girl remarkably pretty, but felt provoked at the boy's passivity and want of interest in everything, until jack whispered, "he is blind." a few words in the strange tongue were exchanged with them; then jack enquired, "do you know about the trains to manchester, fred? can my friends get there to-night?" "oh, i dare say. i will find out. but come on shore now. i have ordered breakfast at the hotel; and," he added, in the warmth of his heart, "will you ask your friends to come with us?" "you can ask them yourself," said jack, smiling. "they speak english,--kaspar very well, the others a little." then he duly introduced his friend baron kaspar hohanian to his cousin the rev. frederick pangbourne. a couple of hours later, the three armenians were safely deposited in the train for london, with full instructions how to change, when they got there, to the northern line, while jack and his cousin were rolling swiftly in a different direction. conversation, as usual in such cases, was intermittent, incoherent, dealing with trifles near at hand, rather than with the great things each had to tell the other. "those armenians astonish me," fred remarked. "their manners are perfect. they might take their places, with credit, in any london drawing-room. but then, i suppose, they are of the highest rank in their own country. you called the young man 'baron.'" "oh, that is nothing! baron only means 'mr.' but i really think, fred, from what i heard on board, that the english fancy the armenians are a kind of savages. they are a highly refined and intellectual race, with a civilization older than our own, and a very copious and interesting literature." "but what a wreck your friend looks! has he just come out of a great illness?" "he has come out of what is infinitely worse--a turkish prison. but, fred, there are a thousand things i want to know. my poor uncle?" frederick pangbourne told him in many words what may here be compressed into very few. when the tidings of the death of the two graysons came to their friends at home, ralph pangbourne was just dead, and his eldest son was lying dangerously ill in typhoid fever. young and experienced, and beset by many cares and troubles, the new squire, on his recovery, was quite unable to investigate the story sent to him by the consul from aleppo. indeed, no one thought of doubting it; though all sincerely regretted these near relatives, left to lie in unknown graves in that distant land- "with none to tell '_them_' where we sleep." had one of the young pangbournes been free to do it, he would gladly have made a pilgrimage (attractive, besides, for the adventure's sake) to the far east, to find the resting-place of his uncle and his cousin. but young ralph, the squire, was overwhelmed with business; tom, the second son, was in india, doing well in the civil service; and fred was at cambridge, preparing for the ministry. there was another question. what of "the grayson money," as it was called in the family? it was no secret that, before leaving england, john grayson had made his will, bequeathing the bulk of his fortune, in case of his son's death without issue, to his nephew and namesake, john frederick pangbourne. but though they assumed, as a certain fact, the death of both the father and the son, the pangbournes felt it would be a difficult matter to prove it in a court of law. fred, the person principally concerned, entreated his brothers to let the matter rest, at least until the termination of the seven years of absence and silence which the law accepts as equivalent to a proof of death. he had, inwardly, an intense repugnance--a repugnance he could not account for to himself--to the thought of touching the grayson money. in secret, and unknown to all the rest, he cherished a fancy that his cousin might still be found among the living. when jack's letter arrived from aleppo, he exulted openly and heartily. a post-card which followed it having informed him that jack was to sail in the _semaphore_, he watched daily for news of the vessel; and it was with joy and gladness that he hastened down to southampton, to be the first to welcome him on english ground. he had set his heart upon carrying him off at once to the sweet surrey rectory, where his favourite sister, lucy, kept house for him, and shared the pleasant labours of the rural parish. but he was not prepared to find, instead of a lad five years his junior, a worn, broken, grey-haired man. he did not tell all, or nearly all, this to jack, though he told a great many other things. the only reference indeed that he made to money matters was to say, "you must run up to town on monday, and see penn & stamper. they will tell you all about my uncle's affairs. you know, jack, you are a rich man. won't they just have a balance worth looking at to hand over to you, after all these years?" they got out at a little road-side station, and walked over sunny fields to a private door opening into a well-kept pleasure ground. another minute brought them to the rectory porch, over which climbed a beautiful wisteria. the whole scene looked the very picture of peace, of "quietness and assurance for ever." fred stopped a moment, to point out the spire of "our church," which was seen above the trees at the far side of the house. as they looked at it, a fair girl came running down to the door to welcome her brother. blue eyes, golden hair, cheeks like a tinted sea-shell, coral lips and the sweetest of smiles, made up for jack a vision of beauty bewilderingly new and strange. yet he only felt it touch the surface of his soul. after dinner, which was early, the two young men walked about together; fred joyously and proudly showing his cousin the beauties of his home, which, he said, might be his for long enough, as his rector, for special reasons, was residing abroad. "it is a home of peace," jack said. old, old memories were coming to life every moment. the sound of rooks cawing in the elms, the velvet lawn, the flowers in the trim parterre, the very feel of the air and hue of the sunshine, brought back those old days when his little feet had trotted over just such velvet turf, his little hand clinging to his mother's gown. ah, if _she_ were here! and his father--the father who had been also his hero, brother, comrade, friend. then a sweet thought brought sudden tears to his eyes. surely the angels would see to it that shushan found them out! his heart, bruised and sore with longings for what might have been, grew still. his lily had a fairer home than this- "over the river, where the fields are green." the cousins went back to the house. lucy poured out tea for them, and asked jack, lightly and prettily, many questions about the strange places he had been in, and the strange things he must have seen. he answered evasively, with a reserve of manner which she thought very odd, until she hit upon the explanation that this new cousin--who was so young and looked so old--had been so long amongst wild, barbarous people, that on his return to civilization he was actually feeling--_shy_. she was not sorry when fred took him off to his "den," as he called his very comfortable and commodious study. but she said, with a pretty monitorial air, and a careful eye to the sermon for to-morrow--"remember, fred, this is saturday night." then the real talk began. jack, in writing from aleppo, had simply told of his father's death, and added that he himself had endured _and seen_ much suffering, and that he was coming home to tell the rest. now he poured forth the whole story into willing and sympathizing ears. lucy went up to bed that night wondering if fred and the new cousin would ever stop talking, and full of anxious thoughts about the neglected sermon. as long as she stayed awake she heard their voices in the room underneath her own; and at last she dropped asleep, with the sermon still upon her mind. waking in the early summer morning, she heard steps in the passage outside her door, and words spoken that seemed to echo her thoughts. "but your sermon?" "i have got it. good night--or rather, good morning." chapter xxvi a sermon "thy father hears the mighty cry of anguish, and gives his answering messages to thee." --_c. pennefather._ brief sleep, if any, had john grayson that sunday morning. as so often heretofore he could not sleep for pain or sorrow, now he could not sleep _for rest_. the sense of the peace that was all around him was too new, too wonderful. he soon arose from that fair, snow-white english bed, with its pure linen smelling of lavender, to wander out over the dewy lawn, where the morning sun touched everything with glory. the birds sang aloud to welcome the new day--the long, long day--every hour of it to be filled with their innocent joy. one sweet-voiced blackbird lighted on a rose-bush close to him, and sang. they seemed to have no fear. in this happy land fear did not reign. no doubt it was there--often--for england, after all, was earth and not heaven; but it was a shadow lurking in dark places, not an eclipse blotting out the sun, a presence darkening all the joy of life. but this blessed peace only stamped deeper upon jack's heart the memory of that far land of agony and blood. "if i forget thee, o armenia," he said aloud, "let my right hand forget her cunning. if i do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if i prefer not thee above my chief joy. my chief joy," he thought again, "lies buried there, and can never live for me upon this earth. but, by that grave, by that dead love, or rather by that love that can never die, i am pledged not to rest in happy england, but to work for sad armenia, and to wait for my sabbath keeping until we keep it all together in the home above." he did not know how long it was before his cousin came out to summon him to their early sunday breakfast. fred's voice had lost the joyful ring it had at their first meeting. he looked like a strong man who had just heard of a great bereavement. lucy, waiting to receive him in her fresh sunday dress, with her look of peace and purity, felt vaguely that there was sadness in the air, but her mind was too full of her sunday-school class to dwell upon that subject. "will you come with us to church?" fred asked his cousin. jack looked surprised at the question. "certainly," he said. "why not?" "because i have to say that which will give you pain--yet i cannot forbear. you have given me my sermon for to-day." nevertheless john grayson joined the stream of church-goers: fathers, and mothers, and little children, old men and old women coming in together, while the rosy-cheeked sunday scholars took their appointed places. he looked round with strangely mingled feelings on the old country church, which was without elaborate ornament, although seemly and reverent in all its appointments, as befitted a house of god. but what most arrested him was the "fair white cloth" on the holy table, showing that the feast of the lord was spread that day. he had never yet partaken of it in the church of his fathers; but he no more doubted his right to come than the child doubts his right to sit down at his father's table, because it is spread in a strange room. it was a joy to look forward to that; it was a joy meanwhile to join once more, though with trembling lips, in the dear, familiar prayers-those prayers "that sound like church bells in the ears of the english child." and now his cousin stood in the pulpit. in his aspect and bearing there was a deep solemnity, which, young though he was, made him look in truth "as one that pleaded with men." he read his text, "_a name which is above every name_," and began with an exposition of the context, lucid, thoughtful, and evincing careful study. jack's thoughts wandered from the words to the speaker, and from the speaker to the surroundings, once so familiar, now so unwonted and strange to him. presently however a word arrested him. "my brethren," said the preacher, leaning over the pulpit in his earnestness, "have you ever thought what a wonderful thing is the love of christ?" "surely," jack said to himself, "if we have ever thought of him at all, we have thought of that." "i do not mean now," the preacher went on, "the love of christ for us. i use 'love of christ' as i use 'love of country,' 'love of friends,' to mean--not theirs for us, but ours for them. and i say, that the love of humanity for christ is a mystery only less than the grand, supreme mystery of all--the love of christ for man. and the greater mystery is proved and illustrated by the less. as we may look, in its reflection, on some object too bright to gaze upon directly,--as we may measure a mountain by its shadow, so may we gain some faint conception of _how_ 'he first loved us,' by the wondering contemplation of how men in all ages have loved him. "consider. the man called christ jesus lived, for three and thirty years, or less, in a little corner of the world, which he never left. of those years thirty were spent in silence and obscurity; only for two or three did he flash into sudden fame, soon cut short by a violent death. he did not write, he did not organize, he did not rule; he only taught, and lived, and loved. yet what has his name been in the world ever since? what is it in the world to-day? "you will say, 'it is the name of the founder of our religion, through whom we approach the divine majesty, and as such we hold it in reverence.' it is that; but to thousands upon thousands it is something infinitely more. it is the name of their dearest, most beloved, and most trusted personal friend--the name of him whom it is their deepest joy in life to serve, their sweetest hope in death to see. it was the poet gift of voicing the deepest longings of humanity that inspired the dying song we know so well,- "'i hope to see my pilot face to face, when i have crossed the bar.' "there is one test of love, usually accounted supreme. 'greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' freely and joyfully has humanity poured forth her best blood for the name of christ. those who have given him this supreme proof of love we call his martyrs, or his witnesses. other names, other religions, other causes, have had their martyrs too. indeed, i think the word is true that all great causes have their martyrs. and i dare to think too that the wine of self-sacrificing love, though we may count it vainly spilled, cannot sink into the earth beyond his power to gather up who takes care of lost things. but i think also--nay, i know--that the martyrs of christ stand apart from all the rest, in their immense multitude, in the joy and peace they had in suffering and in death, and in the sustaining, animating power of their love to him for whom they died. "i have spoken to you, sometimes, of the martyrs of past days. i could not help it; their memory is very dear to me, and the records of their faith and their patience have touched and thrilled my own heart since childhood. but i never dreamed or guessed that even while i spoke,--now, in the end of this nineteenth century, this age of science and enlightenment, this age of pity and compassion, a new legion was marching on, through blood and fire, to join the noble army of martyrs before the throne of god." here the grey head, which had rested bowed and motionless in that seat below the pulpit, was raised up suddenly, and the eyes that had witnessed so much agony sent a look into the preacher's face that almost stopped his words. but, after a scarcely perceptible pause, he went on,-"it has been, to some of us, a pain all the greater because of our utter helplessness to read even the meagre accounts that have come to us of the massacres in armenia. now that i have heard from the lips of an eye-witness, who is here present amongst you this day, the details of _one_ such massacre, i am bound to tell you solemnly that the pain should have been greater still. the most awful, the most lurid accounts we have had, fall short of the terrible reality. the half has not been told us." then he gave briefly, and as calmly as he could, the story of the massacre of urfa, and of the burning of the cathedral, as john grayson had told it to him. "i refrain," he continued, "from recounting horrors which would needlessly wring your hearts. i speak of death; i do not speak of torture. i tell you a little of what men, our brothers, have suffered. but oh, my brothers,--oh, my sisters, and theirs!--i have no words to tell the worse agonies of your helpless sisters. i dare not tell--i dare not even hint at the things i know--and which they have had to suffer! only, thank god on your knees to-night that he has made you englishwomen! "and, remember, i have told of urfa, but urfa is only one town of many in armenia. like things have been done in sassoun, in marash, in diarbekir, in melatia, in kharpoot, in van, in erzeroum,--in hundreds of towns and villages with strange names we have never heard. the land, which for fertility and for beauty might be a very garden of eden, is fast becoming a desolate wilderness. "but, you will say, all this agony does not make martyrs. for that is needed, not suffering only, but witness-bearing. true; though in a loose, general fashion all those who lose their lives in any way on account of their religion are often called martyrs. but even the most stringent application of this name of honour must include all those who have, _voluntarily_, so laid down their lives. he who has been offered life on the condition of apostasy, and has refused it, has won his crown, and no man may take it from him. armenians without number have stood the test, and made the grand refusal. in some places the utterance of the moslem symbol of faith, in others the lifting up of one finger, was all that was required, yet men and women, and children even, have endured death and torture rather than say those words or make that sign. shall i give you instances? shall i tell you of the venerable archbishop of the ancient armenian church, who had first his hands, and then his arms hewn off, but no agony could separate him from his saviour, and at last he died repeating the creed? shall i tell you of the student of theology, who answered his tempters with a steadfast 'no, for i have come to this hour in god's will and appointment, and i will not change,' and was slowly cut in pieces? shall i tell you of the little girl, the child of twelve, who said to the moslem, 'i believe in jesus christ. he is my saviour. i love him. i cannot do as you wish even if you kill me'? shall i tell you of another girl and her young brother who, when the murderers came, embraced one another, their faces radiant with joy? 'we are going to christ!' they said. 'we shall see him just now.' time would fail me indeed to tell of these, and of the many like them in faith and patience. but one thing is as true of those who suffer for the name of christ to-day as of those who suffered for that name in the first century, or the sixteenth, or any century between--there walks with them in the furnace one like unto the son of god." there was a pause, and then the preacher resumed. "but there are two questions our hearts are asking, in the face of all this suffering: 'what is christ doing?' and 'what shall we do?' there is no use in saying that the first of these questions is one which we ought not to ask at all. there are times when there is little use even in telling our passionate, aching human hearts that we ought to be satisfied with what we know and believe of his spiritual presence with his faithful people. thank god, he did not forbid the questionings of his tried servant the prophet, who flung himself at his feet with the half-despairing cry, 'righteous art thou, o lord, when i plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments.' nor of that other who pleaded, 'thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?' indeed, i dare to think that, if we _do_ throw ourselves at his feet--the feet pierced for us--there is no question we may not ask him there. "what then _is_ christ doing? he sits in his glory at the right hand of the father; he sees all this agony, and he _lets it still go on_. he sustains the sufferers; he strengthens and comforts them often; but--he _lets it still go on_. 'how can he bear it?' our hearts cry out sometimes. i think the answer is, that he _is_ bearing it. he suffered for the sufferers; that is not all--he suffers _with_ them. that is yet not all; he suffers _in_ them. they are not his people only, but his members; of his flesh and of his bones. for reasons inscrutable to us, his agony must go on still in them--still he cries to the oppressor, 'why persecutest thou me?' but one day he and they, and we also, shall see the end. then shall we know the secret of the lord; then shall the mystery of god be finished. "meanwhile, with the martyrs it is well. 'therefore are they before the throne of god, and serve him day and night in his temple, and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.' but _all_ are not yet there, beyond the agony. for the thousands upon thousands of sufferers, bereaved, tortured, famine-stricken, dying slowly in turkish prisons, or, deepest horror of all, in turkish harems, what shall we say? is the burden laid on our hearts for them too heavy to be borne? remember, christ bears it _with us_, as, in a deeper sense than we can fathom, christ bears it _in them_. "i think this answers our second question, what shall we do? 'it is my saviour struggling there in those poor limbs i see.' friends, if he is there indeed, in his members, what sacrifice would we not make, what treasure would we not pour out with joy, to come to his help? "but perhaps you say, 'what _can_ we do?' i am not speaking to those who can influence the councils of our rulers, except by prayer, and by the formation and expression of that intelligent opinion which does, in the end, make its power felt. therefore it is beside the question to ask what they should have done, or what they should do now. we have to find out what _we_ should do, each one of _us_. "there are thousands of little children, fatherless and motherless because their fathers and mothers have gone to god, often through the gate of martyrdom. they are wandering in the streets, homeless and destitute. they die, or haply they are taken by moslems, and taught to hate the faith their parents died for. _we can rescue these._ "there are thousands of widows, desolate in heart and home, each with her tale of anguish, longing, it may be, to lay down her weary head and join her loved ones in the grave, yet forced to struggle on for the daily bread of those still dependent on her. _we can succour these._ "there are thousands of ruined men, who have lost home, occupation, health, and whose hearts are well-nigh desperate with the things they have seen and suffered. _we can give back hope to these._ "one word more, brethren. we have spoken of the power of the name of christ. that name, which we teach our little ones to lisp,--that name, which sanctifies our daily prayers,--that name, which our beloved ones whispered to us with failing breath as their feet drew near the dark valley, that name, which yet--oh, strange mystery!--is dearer to our hearts than even theirs--that name was on the lips of each one of the slaughtered multitude whose blood is crying to heaven--that name is still on the lips of the suffering remnant that are left. it is in that name that they ask our sympathy, our help. "i have spoken of our dead, our dear dead who lie out yonder, where god's blessed sun is shining on the graves in which we laid them to their rest. we turned sadly away; we thought our hearts were breaking because we _had_ to lay them there. what of our brothers and our sisters, to whom it is joy past telling, the only joy they can look for now, to know their beloved ones are dead--and safe? in that land of sorrow they weep not for the dead, neither bemoan them; it is for the living that they weep. nor are there graves to weep over, even if they fain would do it. the dead--and, remember, they are the christian dead,--lie unburied in the open fields, or are heaped together in trenches which the earth can scarcely cover. "known unto god the father, known unto christ the redeemer, is each atom of this undistinguished dust. into his keeping he has taken the dead, but to us he leaves the remnants that survive, and that it is possible still to save. will you take them to your hearts, for his name's sake?" the preacher gave the usual benediction, descended from the pulpit, and began in due course to read the beautiful prayer "for the whole state of christ's church militant here in earth." very solemnly, in a voice of suppressed emotion, he read on, till he came to the words, "and we most humbly beseech thee of thy goodness, o lord, to comfort and succour all them who in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity." here his voice faltered, but he went resolutely on, "and we also bless thy holy name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear." then the rush of feeling overwhelmed him, and he did that fatal thing to do in an assembly charged with emotion--he stopped. a sob broke from one, then from another, and yet another still, until a wave of weeping passed over the whole, like the wind over a field of corn. it was but a few moments; the reader recovered himself, and continued the service. nearly all the congregation remained, and gathered round the table of their lord that day; and it may be they felt, as they had never done before, the bond of communion with the scattered and suffering members of the lord christ. that evening john grayson said to his cousin, "of course you know that i am going back again,--with only a change of name." "i am going with you," frederick pangbourne answered quietly. "you!" jack's heart gave a sudden leap. "why not? there are plenty to work here, and i have often thought of the mission field. is there any field more urgent than this?" jack was silent, grave with a solemn joy. what might not they two accomplish, shoulder to shoulder, the fortune he had already resolved to share with fred all consecrated to the work! fred continued, "do you remember that cry that rose from ten thousand hearts, when peter the hermit called upon all christendom to rescue the sepulchre of christ from the hands of the moslem--'dieu le veut?'--'god wills it'? is it not as much a war of the cross to rescue from them, not his empty sepulchre, but even a few of his living, suffering members? we can say--you and i to-day--'god wills it.'" appendix the greatest care has been taken to make the foregoing pages absolutely true to fact. all that has been told of the massacres and their attendant circumstances has been taken either from thoroughly reliable published sources, or from the narratives of trustworthy eye-witnesses. in the story of the massacre of urfa and the burning of the cathedral the official report of vice-consul fitzmaurice has been largely used, and only supplemented by the additional details furnished by those on the spot. in one respect particularly the truth has been strictly adhered to. every instance given of _martyrdom_, properly so-called, or of courage, faith, patience, or devotion, is entirely authentic. the stories of stepanian, of thomassian and his wife, of the selferians, of anna hanum, of gabriel, of vahanian, etc., are all perfectly true, the names only have been altered. this alteration of names was rendered necessary by the circumstances of the case. but every one at all acquainted with the subject will recognise the heroic lady i have ventured to call miss celandine. to the very remarkable character of the martyred pastor stepanian i have, i fear, done imperfect justice. the particulars of his death and of the fate of his children are given quite accurately, and the ideas attributed to him, and even the illustrations used, are really his own. the only slight departure from known fact has been the assumption that the quick and painless death--for which those who loved him thanked god--(to one such it brought the _first tears_ she was able to shed) came from the hand of a friendly turk. for one other departure from fact i have to apologise. i have ignored the existence in biridjik, during the time embraced by the story, of a protestant church and pastor; and this although the sufferings of the pastor and his family in the massacre there would form, in themselves, a thrilling narrative. but i desired to show something of the gregorian church and the armenian people, as they existed apart from any contact with foreigners. throughout i have tried to give the impression, which is the true one, that gregorians and protestants have suffered and died, with equal heroism and equal willingness, for the name of christ. there is, nevertheless, one important sense in which facts have _not_ been truly represented. it has been absolutely impossible to depict the worst features of these horrible crimes. to tell _all_ we know would be simply to defeat the end for which we write--no one would read the pages. it has been necessary to cover tortures--the most ingenious, the most hideous, and the most excruciating--with a veil of general expressions, and outrages yet more terrible than any torture with a still denser veil of reticence. of what has been endured by unnumbered multitudes of our helpless sisters, it is agony to speak; but is it not also sin and cowardice to keep silence? an attempt has been made in the foregoing pages so to speak and so to keep silence, and especially so to subordinate the horror of cruelty to the glory of martyrdom, that the most sensitive and tender heart may not be too painfully wrung. there is indeed much excuse for the tenderhearted when they say, as they often do, "we will not read about this subject; we will not think of it. it is too horrible. our lives are full already of cares and duties, perhaps even of christian work. we cannot take up this burden in addition to the rest. it would sink us." that is intelligible and natural, sometimes even right. but it is _not_ right that those who thus decline to examine the case should at the same time prejudge it, should dismiss with scorn, or incredulity, or carelessness, the testimony of those who, having gone down into that depth of horror, have come back burdened with an anguish which can only find relief in the effort to help the surviving sufferers. one of two things people surely ought to do--they ought to examine the evidence for themselves; or, declining this, and possibly with good reason, they ought to accept the conclusions of those who have. in the earlier stages of the tragedy many were misled, and not inexcusably, by reports that came from official sources in turkey. here is a specimen--a message sent by the sultan to the ambassador of england, in february, 1896, when the unprovoked slaughter of the unarmed and defenceless thousands of urfa was still reeking to heaven:--"that the armenians have everywhere and always been the aggressors, that the mussulmans have been attacked in their mosques during their prayers, that they have suffered nameless atrocities from the armenians, for the latter had martini guns, dynamite, and bombs, while, to defend themselves, the mussulmans had only old, superseded fire-arms." were pascal amongst us now, he would scarcely devote to the confusion of the jesuits his celebrated "_mentiris impudentissime!_" happily, the truth is known now. it may be briefly summed up in the words of victor bérard, an eminent frenchman well acquainted with the east, who has devoted himself to the careful investigation of the whole question, and published the results in "_la politique du sultan_." "in the opinion and the language of all, christians and mussulmans, 'young' and 'old turks,' greeks and bulgarians, natives and strangers, he (the sultan) remains the promoter and arranger of all that has been done within the last two years. every one knows and every one says, 'he has wished it, he has ordained it. the master has permitted us to kill the armenians.' this permission has cost the lives of more than _three hundred thousand_ human beings. for, besides the public butcheries, the 'fusillades en masse,' and the massacres with spear and sword, how many stabbings with knives, assassinations, and private murders! besides those who were murdered, how many women, children, and old people perishing in the fields left uncultivated, in the villages infested with the odour of corpses, in that epidemic of plague and cholera which, since 1895, has desolated turkish armenia! putting all exaggeration aside, we may make the following calculation. since the 1st of july, 1894, more than 500 armenian communities have been stricken or suppressed. some, like those of constantinople or sassoun, have had more than 5,000 dead. the figure of 3,000, as at malatia, diarbekr, arabkir, has often been reached. that of 1,000 is common, and the minimum of 300 has been everywhere exceeded. van, with 10,000, seems to hold the first rank. taking then an average of 500 dead, we remain much under the truth, and this average, for the 500 communities stricken, gives 250,000 corpses. how, in a time of unbroken peace, could a man conceive such an enterprise, and how, under the eyes of europe, could he bring it to pass?" it need only be added, that those on the spot consider the above figures indeed _much under the truth_. a common way of dismissing the subject with a phrase is to say "the armenians are as bad as the turks." this may be understood in either of two senses: the first originators probably meaning it in one, while those who repeat it commonly take it in the other. it may mean, "the turk at bottom is as good as the armenian,--the armenian at bottom is as bad as the turk." whether this be true or no, it does not affect the present question. if we see a man being murdered, we do not stay to enquire into his character and antecedents before coming to his aid. were the armenians the most degraded race in the world, and the turks (originally) the noblest, that is no reason why humanity should allow the turks to torture and outrage and slay the armenians. but, if the meaning is that the armenians are as much to blame for these troubles, as much in fault with respect to them, as the turks, it might be relevant, if it were true. true, however, it emphatically is not. hear the testimony of dr. lepsius, who has made an exhaustive study of the whole question. "the armenians are not to blame. it would certainly have been no wonder if the armenian people, who for years, by a systematic policy of annihilation on the part of the porte, had been given over defenceless to every kind of injustice at the hands of turkish officials, to every sort of violence on the part of their kourdish lords, to extortion by the commissioners of taxes, and to the utter illegality of the law courts, had risen up in a last desperate struggle against the iron yoke of tyranny. but as a matter of fact it was impossible to think of a national rising. to begin with, the armenians, though large districts are thickly populated with them, are by no means everywhere in a majority in the provinces in question, and by the law which forbids christians to carry arms, while allowing them to mahometans, they are absolutely defenceless. in fact, no one in armenia has ever thought of demanding anything like autonomy. all that was hoped for was that the reforms should be carried out which eighteen years before had been guaranteed by the christian powers, and which seemed to promise to the armenians an existence at least bearable. through the entire district of the massacre we have not been able to discover, notwithstanding the fulness of our information, any movement (except that in zeitoun) which could be considered to be of the nature of a revolt. the commissioners in their report were not even able to establish any act of provocation on the part of the armenians; and when such were alleged by the turkish authorities, the official report has proved it to be untrue. this is what occurred in zeitoun. the armenian mountaineers of the anti-taurus, being terrified by the news of the massacres in the neighbouring provinces, fled in thousands for protection to zeitoun, a natural fortress among the mountains. in the neighbourhood of this town there are more than a hundred villages inhabited exclusively by armenians, who also pressed into zeitoun. near the town there was a turkish citadel, with a garrison of about 600 men. the armenians received news that this garrison was about to be considerably reinforced, and that an attack was designed on the defenceless people in zeitoun. the armenians decided to forestall it; they armed themselves as well as they could,[5] stormed the citadel, and forced the garrison to surrender before reinforcements arrived. they then fortified themselves in zeitoun, and held it the whole winter against an army of 80,000 men, who, from time to time, were sent against them. the result of the struggle has justified the armenians of zeitoun, if indeed we are prepared to recognise the right of self-defence." for the european consuls intervened, and obtained for the brave zeitounlis honourable terms of peace, and an amnesty. it ought to be added, however, that the promises made by the turks were shamelessly violated, and 3,720 of the zeitounlis put to the sword. but are there not armenian revolutionary committees, and armenian revolutionaries, who elaborate dark designs in secret, and throw bombs, and do other desperate things? "certainly there were some revolutionaries," dr. lepsius says again, "and in some foreign towns there are still revolutionary committees. human nature must have changed if there are not, and one can only wonder that their number is so small and their action so unimportant. at any rate the turkish government is under obligation to them for existing, and is satisfied that they should not die out; for who would then supply the sparrows to be shot at with the cannon prepared? the editor of the _christliche welt_, dr. rade, has already shown up the nonsense that is put into european newspapers about armenian "revolutionary committees," etc., and has passed a just judgment on the boundless credulity of our newspapers and their readers." (it must be remembered that dr. lepsius writes in german and for germans.) in fact, the armenians and their friends would be glad to know what course of action they could possibly pursue which would commend them to the sympathies of europe? if people are attacked, they must either submit, or resist, or run away. run away the armenians cannot, they are strictly forbidden to leave the country; and those who have succeeded in doing so have done it in spite of the government. if they resist, they are rebels, revolutionaries, and the sultan in killing them is only "exercising his undoubted right of punishing his revolted subjects." if they submit, which is what, except in the case of the zeitounlis, they have almost always done, they are cowards, unworthy on that account of our sympathies. _cowards!_ the sands of the colisseum and the gardens of nero in old rome were strewn with the bones or the ashes of just such cowards, but that is not the name by which we call them now. "still," it is sometimes said, "the armenians did not suffer as christians, but as armenians. other christians, subjects of the porte, have not been molested." that, even if true, is but half the truth. christians who were not armenians were not killed; armenians who were not christians (that is to say, who renounced christianity) were not killed. therefore the armenians suffered, not as armenians alone, and not as christians alone, but as _armenian christians_. and those armenians who need not have suffered if they would have ceased to be christians, suffered definitely _as christians_. but how did the armenians concentrate upon themselves all this furious hatred? why should they be massacred rather than greeks or syrians? there are several reasons. the greeks enjoy the protection of a foreign government, somewhat in the same way as do the americans and the english. the syrians, besides being less numerous, are much more under the observation and the patronage of foreigners. "the armenians happen to be the most numerous of the christian races in turkey; therefore they bear the brunt of the crusade. the jacobites, the chaldeans and the nestorians have their proportionate share." but some say the armenians have made themselves particularly obnoxious to the mussulmans as money lenders and usurers; that they have shown themselves rapacious and exacting, and greedy of dishonest gain. the same accusations were brought against the jews in the middle ages, and against the russian jews in our own day. there is, perhaps, the same amount of truth in them. put a clever, industrious, ambitious race under the heel of an indolent, unprogressive one, and the former is sure to seize eagerly, and not to use too scrupulously, the only power within its reach, the power of the purse. as for usury, was not 33 per cent. considered a fair demand in the dark ages, in view of the lender's standing an even chance of getting nothing at all, or of getting something very undesirable in the shape of the rack or the dungeon? insecurity is the parent of usury. but, granted that the armenians in other parts of the turkish empire, and even occasionally in armenia itself, may have earned some popular hatred in this or in other ways, the vast majority of the victims have been,--not usurers, not wealthy merchants,--but industrious artisans, small shopkeepers, cultivators of the soil, with an admixture of the more educated classes, the most envenomed hatred being directed against those in any way connected with religion, whether as gregorian priests or as protestant pastors. skilled craftsmen, who abounded amongst the armenians, have been so nearly exterminated that some towns are left without a mason, a carpenter, or a shoemaker; in others the turks have saved a few of these artificers alive, to supply them with the conveniences which they are unable or unwilling to make for themselves. the armenian character cannot be dismissed with a few hasty generalities. it is doubtful that _any_ national character can be so dismissed; and the higher we rise in the scale of organic development, the more variety we find. "_ab uno disce omnes_" is an indifferent rule even for the fijian or the samoan, but who would apply it to the englishman or the frenchman? the armenian, heir of an old civilization, stands on a plane with the latter, not with the former. the worst armenians--and naturally they are those oftenest found in foreign countries--show just the faults sure to be engendered in any race, and especially in an astute, intelligent, enterprising race, by centuries of oppression. these are, want of truthfulness and honesty, and greediness of gain. against these, which may be called the national faults, there are great national virtues to set off--moral purity, sobriety, strong domestic affections, gratitude, fidelity to conviction, industry, and a very remarkable love of learning. the best armenians--men like pastor stepanian--who have cast off the national faults and retain the national virtues, develop a very noble and singularly attractive character; and are besides, in the fullest sense of the word, _gentlemen_. "the wood is fine in grain, and takes the polish easily." this deeply suffering race is not faultless--what race ever was, or is, or will be?--but it is emphatically _worth saving_. and it is still in our power to save very many,--starving men,--desolate and hopeless women,--and helpless little children. should any reader of the foregoing pages desire to bear a hand in this good work--and even those who have little to give may save, or help to save, _one_ woman or _one_ child--they may learn how to do it by communicating with the association of "friends of armenia," 47, victoria street, westminster. footnote: [5] the turks had never succeeded in depriving the mountaineers of this district of all their firearms. besides, they contrived in some fashion to make arms for themselves. butler & tanner, the selwood printing works, frome, and london. gutenberg (this file was produced from images generously made available by the library of congress) armenia and her people or the story of armenia by an armenian a description of the land of armenia: its ancient and modern history; its physical features; its people, their religious beliefs, customs, etc., from the oldest dates, as recorded in armenian histories and church records. a presentation of the true causes of the recent atrocities and a detailed account of the massacres. by rev. george h. filian a native pastor, banished by the turkish government from the city of marsovan, armenia hartford, conn. american publishing company 1896 dedication in remembrance of the martyrs of armenia who sacrificed their lives for christ this volume is affectionately inscribed contents. i. page. the land of armenia, 21 ii. the people of armenia, 39 iii. the armenian dynasties, 45 iv. rulers of the ottoman empire, 132 v. the great powers and the armenian question, 175 vi. the causes of the atrocities, 217 vii. the turkish atrocities in armenia, 239 viii. the armenians of to-day, 334 ix. the future of armenia and the battle of armageddon, 350 x. poems on the armenian question, 362 illustrations. face page portrait of armenian catholicos, 1 portrait of author, 12 city of antioch, 17 map of armenia, 21 mount ararat, 23 kurdish bandits, 35 oriental threshing floor, 35 armenian flags--coats of arms, 45 lake and city of van, 49 oldest church edifice in the world, 101 portrait of armenian patriarch, 108 recent portrait of sultan of turkey, 139 early portrait of sultan of turkey, 143 a bread seller, 166 a zeibeck, 166 a softa, 166 group of circassians, 217 group of georgians, 217 kurdish home, 239 kurd chiefs, 239 kurd woman, 239 massacre at sassoun, 247 massacre at erzeroum, 247 massacre at stamboul, 257 city of harpoot, 264 armenian peasant girl, 272 mousa beg, kurd chief, 272 rev. prof. thourmain, 272 city of marsovan, 280 a water peddler, 280 city of trebizond, 300 group of armenian children, 319 group of young armenian women, 319 anatolia college, 335 armenian family, 335 preface. the problem of armenia and the turkish atrocities there, is in the very forefront of the world's burning questions at the present time. in every civilized land it is ranked alongside their own pressing local issues; everywhere there is not only sympathy and indignation, but a feeling of real responsibility. we are a group of christian nations, and the first christian nation is being exterminated. within a few months the unspeakable turks and barbarous kurds destroyed more than a thousand villages and towns, murdered a hundred thousand armenian christians,--men, women, and innocent children,--and left 500,000 others without homes, clothing, or food, thousands of women shamefully defiled, and thousands of men put to horrible tortures. dying in the streets, in the fields, on the mountains; dying of hunger, of cold, of storm, and of diseases bred of all these; dying of broken hearts and despair, even more, of shame and mental torture. yet all these armenians who thus suffered and were driven forth to starve and die like deserted animals, were absolutely peaceable,--indeed, they were totally unarmed and could not have been otherwise if they wished,--perfectly respectable, most of them comfortably off, and some of them rich. one who was last week a banker is to-day a beggar; yesterday a merchant, to-day a tramp. why? for the main reason that he is a christian, and the sultan has resolved to have no more christians in his dominion; the doom of islamism is hanging over their heads. "if you accept islam," they are told, "well and good; if you do not, you shall be killed--or worse--as your fellows have been." these are all facts, proved to superfluity, though the sultan denies them and instructs his ministers everywhere to deny them. how often has the turkish minister in washington, mavroyeni beg, officially (?) declared the armenian atrocities to be fiction, giving the papers lying statements (which come from the sublime porte), and asserted that the armenians were the aggressors! it is precisely as though one should account for a devastated sheepfold, with the wolves raging about in it, by alleging that the lambs had wantonly assailed and slain the wolves first. some pretended to believe this rubbish; but most people, to their credit, are only the more angered and disgusted by it. the turkish proverbs, occasionally good, are generally evil,--a significant index to the race; one of the commonest is this: "yalan yigitin kullesi dir" (a lie is the fortress of the brave). kill, plunder, ravish, and then deny it; not simply deny it, but charge those very things to your enemy, and make them an excuse for all you do to him or his. such are the principles of the sultan, the false successor of the false prophet of arabia. at the very time when noble american and european christians are sending help to the survivors of his massacres, to the half-million homeless, naked, starving, heart-broken beggars he has made from prosperous citizens, he coolly denies that anything has happened but the putting down of a few local riots. he writes to queen victoria sympathizing with her expressions of humane sentiment, but declaring that the reports were invented by evil-disposed persons; that on the exact contrary, it was the turks who were first attacked while praying in the mosques. he assures the queen that his measures have succeeded in restoring order. and this same sultan a few months ago, before the greatest of the recent massacres, wrote to lord salisbury as follows:--"take the words of my honor, i will make reforms in armenia. i will keep before me every article of the desired reforms, and will order the governors of the provinces to carry them into effect." he at once began to put this pledge of his "honor" into effect, by sending orders from yildiz kiosk to the provincial governors in armenia to root out or convert the accursed infidels. since that promise of his "honor" months have passed away; and during the time at least eighty thousand more armenian christians have been killed, and even death has been the most merciful "reform" he has bestowed on the land. the word in his mouth means beggaring, burning, ravaging, violating, mutilating, torturing, and assassinating. when all the leading armenians are slain and their helpless families forced to become mohammedans, after the women have been dishonored,--in a word, when all the armenian christians are exterminated, then armenia will have been reformed. a special chapter is devoted to the person and doings of this eminent reformer. the author. a sketch of his life and birthplace. i was born january 20, 1853, in a suburb of antioch; twelfth child and youngest son of a family of nine boys and four girls, and therefore considered the joseph of the family, and as a small boy went to a missionary school with my elder brothers. my father was a banker and merchant. his partner in the former business was mr. edward barker, english consul at aleppo; in the latter a greek, jabra antaki, their traffic being in raw silk, for which and for silk-worms antioch is a great center. millions of dollars passed through his hands, and he was considered one of the wealthiest men in the city. a common saying was, "if you can drain the mediterranean dry, you can drain filian's money dry." this saying roused the cupidity of the local governor; he imprisoned my father, and proposed to torture and kill him, and confiscate his property. americans would relish living under this sort of government. his partner, the consul, saved him, however, and won his undying gratitude; and when mr. barker died, my father gave his son a part of his own orchard for a burial ground. the son erected a beautiful $25,000 monument there, which still stands, the ground being owned by my brother, moses filian. when i was fourteen or fifteen, my father lost all his money through the failure of others, became hopelessly bankrupt, and was too old to regain his position, and sank into a poor and broken-hearted old man: his mediterranean was not inexhaustible. he often patted me and said, "my dear boy, i am sorry--i helped your brothers and gave them good educations, and i meant to do the same by you; but i cannot, for i am too poor. you will have to make your own way." he was a devoted friend of education, himself highly educated, master of three languages,--armenian, arabic, and turkish,--and of strong reasoning powers, logical, imaginative, profound, and far-sighted. moreover, he was a zealous christian, greatly respected and liked. in person he was tall, and very stout, with large, bright eyes, and full, rosy cheeks; built like my great-grandfather, from whose elephantine figure the family took its surname. filian means "son of an elephant," and his descendants--about 150 in all, one of the largest single families in the orient--have been mostly large-framed men and women. at about fifteen i had to go to work. one of my brothers being a weaver, i learned that trade from him, and kept at it for three years, weaving both cotton and silk, and not only supporting myself, but helping support my father. then i took up shoemaking, which paid better, but neither my father nor myself was satisfied to have me remain a common workman. he wanted me to become a banker and merchant, as he had been, and his old friends, who respected him, would have given me a chance to start; but i had always been devout from a little boy, and felt that i had a call to be a minister. while making shoes, i prayed the lord to open the way. i often thought, "suppose i become the richest shoemaker or even the richest banker in antioch, what then? shall i ever be happy? no. then lord, what is my call?" i believed i heard the answering voice of god in my soul saying, "i have created thee to become a minister of the gospel." so i went to a missionary of the american board in antioch, and consulted him; by his encouragement i went to the theological seminary at marash, in armenia minor, and studied there three years in the preparatory course. before taking my theological lessons i was sent by the missionaries to caesarea (kayserieh) to teach in a town near by. on reaching the city the pastor of the protestant church invited me to preach to his congregation the following sunday morning. i did so; the missionaries heard me, changed their minds, said i was better fitted for a preacher than a teacher, and sent me to preach at a village named chomakli, near mt. argaeus. the lord seemed to fill me with eloquence, and crowds flocked to hear me. then the missionaries called me to a larger field, talas, their central town; the same fortune attended me there, and steadily followed me in the other places to which i went. i will not make a long story of it. enough to say that i always felt utterly helpless before preaching, empty of matter and words; i went to my room and cried to my heavenly father, and always overflowed with things to say when the time came. there was no limit to my imagination; illustrations thronged upon me by hundreds; i felt inspired from heaven. i never wrote a sermon before preaching it, but wrote it down literally as soon as i had finished.--i wrote every monday.--and they are all ready to be published in both armenian and turkish. i was a successful preacher, but i had no theological education (though i studied my bible hard), and felt that i needed one. i decided to go to america for it, but the missionaries opposed the plan bitterly. one of the ladies told me plainly it was a sin; that i had no right to give up a successful and useful ministry to go there. i replied that giving up the ministry would be a sin, but not going away to prepare for higher usefulness, and coming back to carry it out. then she said i had no money to go, and did not understand english. i answered that i had faith that god would create the means. she laughingly bade me give her best regards to her friends when i came. she meant it for a joke, but i carried it out in earnest. how i finally came to this country would take too long to tell. i will only say that i crossed the ocean by faith. when i reached new york in july, 1879, i had only 15 cents in my pocket. i worked hard day and night in a rag felt factory in the bowery, and slept on the rags on the floor, covering myself with a piece of flannel. but the lord opened the way. i went to oberlin, ohio, and studied there, supporting myself by sawing wood for the professors of the theological seminary. in six months i could talk english well enough to lecture, and after that time i supported myself by lecturing. finally i was sent to nebraska as a home missionary during the summer vacation. on my return i entered the chicago theological seminary, and graduated there in 1882, after which i lectured rather widely through the country. then i went home, and for a time was pastor of the constantinople evangelical armenian church. later i had a call from marsovan, accepted it, and had so large a congregation there that a church with a capacity of 2,000 was needed. i returned to this country, raised the money, left it in a chicago bank (where it still lies in trust), and went back to build the church. that very success aroused the jealousy of some wicked men, and they falsely charged me with being the leader of the revolutionary societies in turkey. on this charge i was banished, and now i am here again,--free and happy with my family, but full of sorrow for my dear people daily martyred by the turks. antioch. the city of antioch, where the disciples were first called christians, (acts xi. 26.) was built by seleucus nicator, 300 b.c., and enlarged by antiochus epiphanes. all the civilized world was then under roman rule; rome, antioch, and jerusalem were the leading cities. jerusalem being a jewish city, and rome being a roman heathen city, there was no room in either to preach the gospel freely; nor indeed in any other--the disciples were persecuted and martyred everywhere. there was just one exception--the city of antioch; that was as free as any american city is to-day. this arose from the fact that when in the asiatic campaign of pompey the great, he came about 65 b.c. to antioch, he was received by the people with great honors; and was so charmed with the city, and his treatment, that he made it an absolutely free city for all, for every nation and for every religion, and the roman emperors continued its privileges. when stephen was martyred in jerusalem the disciples were scattered; some of them reached antioch, 300 miles north, and began to preach freely, making many converts. barnabas was in jerusalem, but hearing of his brethren's success, he also went to antioch and began to preach; as he was a great orator, full of enthusiasm and faith, thousands were converted. but he was not satisfied. crossing the bay of iskenderoon, about eighty miles off, he went to tarsus, where paul, now a convert, was living, and induced paul to return with him to antioch that they might preach the gospel together. only scholars have any idea of the greatness and beauty of antioch at this time; it was second only to rome, and was the second largest city in the world, with nearly a million people; so rich and luxurious as to be called the golden city; so lovely and architecturally imposing as to be called the queen city. the finest street ran east and west for several miles; it was of great width, paved from end to end with vari-colored marble blocks, and with marble pillars on both sides along its whole extent, on which were magnificent marble palaces of the roman officers. in that same grand avenue were theaters, singers of both sexes, fortune-tellers, great heathen orators and philosophers, and throngs of people passing along. paul and barnabas stood on the marble pavement month after month for a year, full of the holy ghost, and proclaimed the everlasting gospel. crowds gathered to hear them; even the officers and their wives, stretching their heads from the windows of their palaces, listened to them; they gained disciples from every rank for christ and his religion, and the converts there first received the name of christians. this was my birthplace and my relatives still live there. since the time of christ and his disciples, antioch has been ten times destroyed by earthquakes. in the fourth century the whole city was destroyed, and 250,000 people were buried under the ruins. that beautiful street and its magnificent palaces are now buried two or three yards below the surface of the ground. in 1872, when i was there, an earthquake destroyed the whole city, and almost in a moment several thousand people perished. several of my own relatives and many of my friends were killed. the city has now only 25,000 people, most of them mohammedan turks. there are many fellahin, and perhaps 2,000 greeks, and 500 armenians, but in the suburbs the armenians are more numerous, and are the intellectual heads of the whole. antioch is still a beautiful and stately city, and a great center for licorice, raw silk, wheat, and soap. the finest soap is manufactured there. about thirty factories make it, from pure olive oil and daphne oil, the latter giving it a sweet fragrance. the daphne groves are very numerous. the city has excellent orchards and vineyards, orange trees, olive trees, fig trees, yeniduinya trees, palm trees, pomegranate trees. all sorts of fruits, in every season of the year, are fresh on the branches. but for occasional earthquakes, it would be a queen city yet; none could surpass its beauty or fruitfulness. george h. filian. translation of a letter (see opposite page) written in 1842 by the district catholicos at city of sis to kevork filian (father of the author) in antioch: +------------+ | red seal | | of | | catholicos.| +------------| +--------------+ | symbol in | +--------------+ | colors | | symbol in | | representing | | colors | | an altar. | | representing | +--------------+ | the name | michael catholicos, the servant of jesus christ | jesus christ.| by the grace of our lord, the supreme father of +--------------+ all armenians who live in great seleucia. i the servant of st. gregory's right hand and most holy throne of the holy mother church. greetings of love and blessings upon my spiritual son kevork filian esteemed and honored and to all who belong to his family, perpetual happiness through jesus christ. honorable gentleman. you will be informed through my letter of spiritual greetings and blessings that truly and earnestly, more than a father, i am willing to bestow upon you my blessings and praises, and in order to show my respect practically, i feel it my duty to thank you for your hospitality, when i came to your blessed home, as a spiritual father, where i was entertained and received proper honors. the lord bless your valuable soul and keep you prosperous and happy through the mediation of jesus and st. gregory. the lord give you and to all those who belong to you, power and ability in doing good. for a long time i have desired to send to you this letter of blessing; but i have not been able. now i am glad to send to you one of my spiritual sons rev. sarkis vartabed (a preacher). when he comes he will see your good deeds and enjoy your hospitality. may 4. 1842. author's explanation. the author feels that it is due to both his armenian readers and himself to explain why, in some points, he has deviated alike from the armenian historians and his own conviction. it is because on these points, the armenian records are in irreconcilable conflict with those of rome or persia, or both, and in a book mainly for anglo-saxon readers it is not possible to defy the general consensus of western scholarship, which, in my judgment, has not given proper weight to armenian sources. i will specify only two or three items; if my armenian friends notice other contradictions of their accepted history they will be safe in setting them down to the same cause. it is a commonplace of armenian history that st. gregory, the illuminator, the christianizer of armenia, was the son of anag, the murderer of king chosroes (see page 72) born about the time of the murder, and made himself the companion of chosroes' son, tiridates, partly in order to atone for his father's crime. i am very reluctant to omit this fact; but the birth of gregory and the death of ardashir will not fit according to western dates, though they are coherent from armenian. i have also given twenty years' rule and a good character to king artavasdes, who reigned three and was a coward. most unwillingly of all, i have changed a very full and eulogistic account of moses khorenatzi, the great national historian of armenia, for a meager and depreciating one. that he lived in the fifth century and wrote as an eye and ear witness, instead of being a not wholly veracious compiler of two centuries later, and that his history is sound and consistent, is my firm belief. that his work is better known than all other armenian works together, and is the one native book that has become a standard western classic, shows the powerful genius of the man. george h. filian. i. the land of armenia. physical features. where is armenia? it seems a simple question, yet during my lecturing in the united states i have met far more people who did not know than who did. that is natural enough, for until the late horrors, it seemed little more than a name of old history, of no present importance; but there is a further reason. the present sultan forbids the use of the name altogether, and insists on the district being termed kurdistan, or called by the names of its vilayets, diarbekr, van, erzroom, etc. many maps do not have the name armenia at all. a few years ago, when the missionaries of the american board were organizing the college at harpoot, now so bloodily famous, they named it armenia college; but the sultan forbade it on the ground that there was no longer an armenia, and the use of the name would encourage the armenians [1] to revolt. the missionaries were forced to change the name to euphrates college. if any turkish subject uses the word, he is fined and imprisoned; if it is used in any book, the book is confiscated, and the author banished or killed. the study of armenian history is forbidden to the armenians; they must be kept in ignorance about their own land, so that many of them do not know where armenia was or what armenia is. a letter directed to any person or place in armenia will never reach its destination; for the turkish postal authorities recognize no such address. there is still another cause for the widespread ignorance concerning armenia. it has been partitioned between three different powers, turkey, russia, and persia. the northern part, from batoum on the black sea to baku on the caspian,--the river araxes being the boundary to near mt. ararat,--belongs to russia; the southeastern course of the araxes from near mt. ararat, to persia; the largest and most fertile part, the western, from mt. ararat to the black sea and the kizil-irmak to turkey. but at the time of its greatest extent and power, when its people were great and its kings were great, long before alexander's conquest,--armenia covered about 500,000 square miles, and stretched from the black sea and the caucasus on the north to persia, and syria on the south, from the caspian and a much smaller persia on the east, to cilicia and far beyond the halys (kizil-irmak) on the west, but including also old media and a part of mesopotamia. it is one of the most picturesque of countries; travelers call it the switzerland of asia. its general character is that of a plateau some 4,000 feet above the sea, a natural garden watered by noble streams and studded with beautiful lakes; but the mountain ranges are 7,000 to 8,000 on the average, while that historic land-mark, the superb snow-capped mt. ararat, is about 18,000,--towering toward heaven nearly in the center of armenia, piercing and ruling over the clouds and the storms. armenia is the mother land, the cradle of humanity, and all other lands are her daughters; but she is fairer than any other. even her mountain tops of perpetual snow are a crown of glory; the sun kisses her brow with the smile of morning; and she supplies the beautiful rivers, euphrates, tigris, pison, araxes, and many others from the jewels of her crown. these rivers penetrate to every corner of the land; traverse many hundreds of miles to give life to the fields, the vineyards, and the orchards, to turn the mills, and finally close their course in the caspian sea, the black sea, and the gulf of persia, carrying the bounty and good-will messages of the mother land to her children in remote parts, to persia, india, and russia. from the same inexhaustible reservoir she feeds her noble lakes; sevan (gokche), urumiah, van and the rest. lake sevan is the only sweet-water lake; the others are salt. the most important is lake van, probably the most elevated of any large-sized lake in the world; it is 5,400 feet above sea level, and its area is 1,400 square miles. a few words from the author's respected teacher, professor philip schaff, will not be amiss. schaff's bible dictionary, page 68, "physical features of armenia," says: "it is chiefly an elevated plateau about 7,000 feet above the level of the sea, the highest peak being mt. ararat. the lower portions of the plateau are broken by valleys and glens, including the fertile valleys of the euphrates and tigris. it is watered by four large streams, the araxes, the kur, the euphrates, and the tigris; also by numerous lakes, one of the largest, the salt lake van, being over 5,400 feet above the sea." natural resources. the mineral wealth of armenia is very great; but like the other potential riches of the turkish empire, it profits nobody, not even the greedy despot whose word is death. gold, silver, copper, iron, and minor metals, besides marble and other beautiful stones, are present in abundance. about three miles from marsovan, where i preached, is a mountain called tarshan dagh (rabbit mountain), rich in gold; another called goomish dagh, about eight miles west, is laden with silver; and they are likely to remain so, for no one will rifle them of their treasures while turkey endures. the sultan, it is true, sends an officer from constantinople under large salary, to take out the precious metals, but that person does very little work. he lives like a lord, lets things go as they will, bribes the palace officials, and all the gold and silver extracted does not pay his wages. the sultan will not permit christians to work mines, and if they did, he would rob them of the proceeds. everywhere the condition is the same. though armenia is the oldest inhabited country, she is, in utilization, the newest; much newer than the united states, for indeed she does not exist yet. she is a virgin land, her mines not open, her soil not half tilled. the turks and the kurds are lazy and stagnant; they will do nothing, and they will not permit the industrious armenian christians to do anything of importance. the country has all the old fertility which made asia minor under the byzantine empire the garden of the world, till the turks half turned it into a desert, as they do every spot accursed by their presence. the grain, the fruit, the vegetables are hardly, if at all, to be equaled. the watermelons raised on the banks of the euphrates and the tigris are the largest and sweetest of their kind; two melons are sometimes a camel's load. it is impossible for a family to use the whole of such a melon, which has to be cut up and sold in pieces. the grapes, either fresh or in the shape of wine or raisins, are of the first rank. many varieties when cured and dried as raisins exceed in size the plumpest grapes of other lands. nearly everything is raised or grows wild in armenia which is to be had in the northern or southern states of america, though of course each country has some things peculiar to itself. the products of the north are paralleled by those of the rugged picturesque highlands of north turkish and russian armenia, with their cold, snowy winters, short, hot summers, and mild intervening seasons; those of the south find their counterparts from the rich upland valleys, or the lowland plains needing irrigation, of kurdistan and persian armenia (azerbijan), with its semi-tropical climate, and alternations of wet and dry seasons. the grain crops are wheat, indian corn, barley, and oats. cotton is one of the main products; a great deal of tobacco and rice are raised; and sugar is made in the persian part. in the fields and gardens you can find not only the wonderful melons i have just spoken of, but pumpkins and squashes, lettuce and egg-plant, and indeed most of the vegetables that come to an american table. as to fruits, all that you know we know also, only of finer flavors. asia minor is the original home of the quince, the apricot, and the nectarine, and i believe of the peach too; while our apples, pears, and plums are incomparable. the muscat apples of amassia are exceptional even there. after eating them, one hardly wonders that adam and eve could not resist the temptation of doing the same, at the cost of innocence and eden. the pears of malatia keep them company; and the quince grows sometimes as large as a man's head. another fruit equally important is the mulberry for silk-worms. the olive and fig are cultivated and also grow wild, and filberts and walnuts can be gathered anywhere in the woods, as well as orchards; of course not the american "hickory nuts," but the "english walnuts" of the groceries. in spite of the dreadful roads, and the lack of protection for travelers, the armenians manage to send a good deal of grown or manufactured stuff to the ports on the black and caspian seas,--trebizond, batoum, poti, baku,--silk and cotton, and fabrics made from them; hides and leather, including lambskins; wine, dried fruits, raisins, tobacco, drugs, and dyestuffs, wax, and other things. methods of cultivation are probably much like what they were in abraham's time; there are no very modern machines or even tools. the plough is not quite the mere scratching-stick of the savages, to be sure; but it is only a crooked piece of wood with a bit of iron fastened to the end that touches the ground, drawn by oxen and held by the farmer. the fields of grain are reaped by the sickle as of old; it takes as long to cut down one acre so as fifty by a common mowing machine. the sheaves are carried to a gal or threshing floor near the house, an open platform, not sheltered from the weather; and there the grain is separated from the straw by a process so curious that i doubt if any american, save a missionary to armenia, has ever heard of it. it is not treading it out under the feet of the cattle, as pictured in the bible, nor beating it out with a flail; both these methods kept the straw whole. a threshing board is made by fastening hundreds of sharp flints into a wooden frame; the grain is placed between this and the threshing floor, the oxen attached to the board, and the farmer sitting on it drives them round and round in a circle until the straw is cut fine, and the grain well rubbed and shaken loose. then, on the first windy day, he takes the old hand fan or winnow, and separates the grain from the straw, keeping the latter to feed the animals in winter; for the long grass of american plateaus, and the barns of hay from them, are seldom seen in armenia. the wheat crops are extraordinary; not only great in yield, but the grains often double the size of ordinary american wheat, as compared with specimens from the large and representative fields of minnesota and nebraska. taxation. but when this wheat is threshed out, the farmer cannot shovel it up and grind, or sell, or put it into bins; no indeed! he cannot take up a quart of it without permission from the government; for the government claims one-eighth of it as a tax,--it was always a "tithe" or tenth from the oldest historic times down to the present sultan, but he raised the percentage to an eighth,--and it must stay on that exposed threshing floor, in rain or winds, or any sort of weather, till the tax-gatherer comes and measures it, which may be a week, or two weeks, or a month, and will be forever unless he is bribed to come. nor is even this double tax all; the tax-gatherer is a tax farmer,--that is, he pays a lump sum to the government for the taxes of a district, and all he can get above that is so much profit to him; so if the grain on a threshing floor actually measures ten bushels, say, he will write it fifteen. after the farmer has paid first the tax on the land to the government direct, then the double, or rather treble, tax to the gatherer on the crops, more than half the income he can get from the land has gone to the government. i do not know an armenian farmer who is not in debt; they work hard, but the products of their labor go to the government and the kurds, and any one who complains is considered a revolutionist, and imprisoned or killed. the simple unvarnished truth is that an armenian christian has no rights of life or property whatever; and all he keeps of either (not very much) is what the regularly appointed officials or the self-appointed kurdish fleecers choose to leave him. this, however, is anticipating. i have only begun on the catalogue of taxes which strip most armenians, and are intended to strip them, of everything but the means of sustaining life and perpetuating their race. when a boy is born, a poll-tax is laid on him,--two dollars on the average,--which must be paid every year as long as he lives, whether he remains in armenia or leaves it. of course, during boyhood the parents have to pay this tax on every male child; if a woman is widowed, she has to go on paying these capitation taxes just the same. they are assumed to be taxes in lieu of military service; the sultan takes no soldiers from the armenians,--does not dare,--and this poll-tax is used to raise and pay that very turkish army which in return butchers the armenians, just as the old tribute of christian children was used to butcher their parents. (that the armenians are unwarlike and would not make good soldiers is ridiculously untrue; many of the best soldiers and best officers, even commanders-in-chief, in the russian service are armenians.) when the boy has attained manhood he pays his own tax,--he must have a paper of citizenship, which must be renewed every year, and for which he must pay; but he is not allowed to leave the country without providing absolute security, either in property or bondsmen, for paying that tax through life, wherever he may be. of course this is utterly impossible in most cases,--men of property do not often migrate, and men without property do not easily get people to be responsible for lifelong obligation to let them emigrate; which is one chief reason why so few armenians, except banished ones, or runaways, are seen in foreign countries. furthermore, as i have said, he must pay for a passport every time he stirs from home. land, houses, cattle, crops, are all separately taxed. suppose an armenian owns a vineyard. first, the land is taxed; there is a separate tax for irrigation, a third for the grapes, a fourth if you make wine from them. in all, a vineyard pays five taxes, and the government gets more than the owner. why don't they emigrate? ask my american friends. i have given one explanation. pharaoh would not permit the hebrews to go away, nor will the sultan permit the armenians. another reason is that even if one has property, it is very hard to sell it. turks have no money and armenians no confidence. and to run away to a foreign country, whose language you do not know, wholly without money, is so desperate a remedy that most of them shrink from it. the climate. armenia, in my belief, is the healthiest country in the world; i do not say one of the healthiest, but the very healthiest. the climate is excellent all the year round, and, though the winters are severe, and much of the country is covered with snow, yet on account of the elevation--being several thousand feet above sea level, and in latitude 36â° to 42â°, or say from north carolina to massachusetts--the air is dry, pure, and agreeable, a preventative of disease, and conducive to longevity. the dread disease, consumption, does not exist there, while dyspeptics, if any are to be found, must have been imported. the perfect type of physical vigor is to be seen there. generally the armenians are tall, powerful, and ruddy cheeked, full of endurance and energy. shrewd and enterprising they are, as reputed; but pure and honest too. they are longer lived than any other people. i have known armenians of 115 and even 125 years of age; one old lady of my acquaintance at 115 was full of life and fun; i have seen her dance at wedding festivities like a girl of 15. an old gentleman of 125 was my neighbor; he worked on his farm as if he were not over 25. he could run and jump and was as gay as a boy, and greatly enjoyed children's society. if the people of armenia could have the same government, the same encouragements, the same freedom from horrible fears, as the people of the united states, they would live many, many years longer than they do, till it might be necessary to kill the old folks in order to get rid of them. the most of the american missionaries in armenia would be sure to echo these words. a returned missionary gave a striking testimony to this effect. he was addressing the students of the chicago theological seminary, and spoke as follows:--"before i became a missionary i had very poor health; most of my family died of hereditary consumption, and i was attacked by it. my physicians strongly protested against my becoming a missionary, saying that if i went to a foreign land i would grow worse, and probably die there. i paid no attention to this; i presumed they were right, but i was determined to go anyway, and if i must die, to die in my chosen work. when i offered myself to the american board, i was allotted to armenia, and thither i went; my disease disappeared and now i am as healthy as any missionary in the world. you see how stout and vigorous i look, and i do not expect to die soon. but i feel sure that if i had stayed in america to save my life, i should have lost it before this time." he is still living in armenia, and i hope will live to be over a hundred, as many of the natives do. the reader will smile at all this as the patriotic boastfulness of an armenian, and say perhaps that he can make as fabulous declarations for his own land, wherever he may be; but such claims cannot be substantiated by records and personal observations as these for armenia can. take the bible; some of the patriarchs lived to be 700, 800, one even to 969, if indeed he ever died a natural death; some were taken up to heaven without knowing death; and all these long lives, as will be shown, were lived in armenia. god's judgment was good. he did not create man in america, europe, or india, or anywhere but in armenia. he came down there from heaven, planted the garden of eden there, and from the dust of that land created the first man. when the race had become sinful and only noah's family were preserved, the ark was not brought to rest on the rockies, the alps, or the himalayas, but on ararat in armenia. where was the garden of eden? in my belief, around lake van, the highest lake, the largest lake, and the most picturesque lake in the bible lands; its surrounding country, mountains, plains, flower gardens, and orchards, make it a most charming spot, and quite worthy to have been the seat of paradise on earth. as the wickedest cities, sodom and gomorrah, were on the lowest, ugliest, and nastiest lake, the dead sea, it is natural that paradise should be on the highest and loveliest one. a certain very learned gospel minister, who desired to change my views respecting the garden of eden, declared that when the north pole was discovered the garden of eden would be. some think it was in india, and there are about as many opinions as there are countries on the earth. the bible, however, seems to be pretty clear about it and settles the question to the armenian mind; we feel, therefore, that we cannot be far from the scriptural descriptions. travel and transportation. both are as hard in armenia as they can be, short of impossibility. in the russian section the roads are as good as in any part of russia, and there are railroads; but in persian and turkish armenia there are none of the latter, and the roads are very poor bridle-paths. a few years ago the government levied an extra tax to build "shosse yolou" or macadamized roads for carriages; but most of the money was spent as usual, in a good time for the turkish officials; the roads built were wretched, and riding over them in the springless carriages of the country is weariness and torture. most of the traveling is done on horseback or muleback, while the transportation of goods is almost entirely by camels and donkeys. an hour's journey in america in distance is a two days' journey in armenia, and it must be accomplished on horseback, muleback, or foot; or perhaps in a wagon without springs. almost all the horse and mule keepers are turks, kurds or circassians, all mohammedans and of the lowest types,--which does not increase either the comfort or the security of a journey. the tenders and drivers of animals are never of a very high order of men in any country; in armenia they are specially vulgar, dirty, and sometimes dangerous brutes. if you wish to travel with your family, you must arrange with the horse-keeper several days or even weeks beforehand; if he is ready when the time comes, he calls at your house and tells you. if animals are used and the family large, baskets will be needed to put the children in; they are put on the animals like panniers, one on each side with the mother between. this is attended with more or less danger from accidents of various kinds, liable to occur on the unkept paths, which, rough in some places and horribly muddy in others, are used for roads. as in the case of the writer, who, when an infant, nearly lost his life before he could be pulled out of the mud into which he had fallen from his mother's arms, she being thrown from the stumbling horse she was riding. a more modern way of travel is in springless carriages; which on the rough roads means racking your body horribly, bones, nerves, and all, into outright and often severe suffering, a pain and fatigue which the traveler feels for a long time. at evening all travelers must go to a caravanserai or khan; often they are all huddled into a single room, men, women, and children, and the room is invariably filthy, and full of every kind of vermin. such getting about is constant torment. there is no safety in traveling; kurdish, circassian, or georgian brigands may meet you on the roads anywhere, and plunder, torture, or perhaps kill you. a few years ago, when traveling in armenia with a company of about forty persons of both sexes, we came to a forested pass between two mountains. suddenly three men leaped out in front of us; they were georgian brigands (mohammedans), armed from top to toe. they stopped the caravan, picked out the rich persons and the christians, and robbed them of all their valuables. they did not search the writer, probably supposing that as a minister he was too poor to be worth troubling. the women were dreadfully frightened, for the robbers declared that if they did not give up their earrings their ears would be cut off, and if they did not give up their bracelets their hands would be cut off. it can easily be imagined that they made haste to relinquish all their valuables. such robberies take place every day in armenia, for there is no protection or redress whatever; it is a matter of indifference at best, and probably of satisfaction, to the sultan and his governors. the brigands are not the only robbers. bear in mind that before any one in armenia can travel at all, the government officials plunder him. he must get a passport first; i do not mean when he goes to foreign countries, for an armenian is forbidden to go there at all,--all who are in other lands reached there by bribing the police and running away,--but when he goes to another place or town in armenia itself, even if it is not over fifteen or twenty miles off. this passport will cost him from two to five dollars in bribes to the officials to let him have it. when he reaches his destination, the officials of the latter place must examine his passport, and they force him to pay for the examination, else they will not let him enter the town. so the armenians are robbed at every step whether they travel or stay at home. transportation of goods is even harder. nearly all goods are carried on camels or donkeys which never go more than ten miles a day, and of course much less in bad spots; it takes months and even a year to get goods if they have to come very far, or may never be received. if an armenian merchant orders goods from constantinople, say 500 miles away, it takes five or six months at best from the time of sending the order to the time of receiving the goods, even if he ever gets them, no matter what condition they are in. the difficulties of transportation prevent the export, to any extent, of armenian products to foreign countries, and even between neighboring cities exchange of supplies is well-nigh impossible. as all through the east, there is often famine in one part of armenia, while there is plenty in other parts; one city may be hungry while another is feasting; one willing to pay any price but unable to buy, another eager to sell but with no one to sell to; because there is no way to transport the grain or produce. yet good highways are not built because the officials embezzle the funds, railroads are not built because it would hinder the sultan from crushing the people. it may be asked, are there no railroads in turkey? and will not the sultan permit them, and are there not armenians in the places along their route? yes, there are a few short lines; one from constantinople to adrianople, one from constantinople to angora, one from smyrna to aiden, one from mersina to adana, one from joppa to jerusalem. i think there is also one lately built from beirout to damascus. the length of the whole system is not over 1,000 miles, one of them is in europe, part of them are tourist lines, along routes that streams of europeans would traverse anyway. some of them were built before the time of the present sultan; some of them are near the seashore, where there are some armenian emigrants; but none of these roads are in armenia. plenty of money has always been available from european and even armenian sources to build railroads; syndicates and private capitalists have tried again and again to get permission to build them; but the sultan will not grant it, for it runs counter to his fixed policy of isolating the armenians, to make their oppression or destruction easier. railroads would mean not only prosperity and strength for the people, but easy gathering and sending out of news to the world, easy bringing of help from the world, lighting up the dark places, and exposing the horrors of the hell now existing. when they are built, commerce will follow; europeans will flock in, and a new era dawn. who are the commercial class? the armenian christians or europeans; not a turk or a kurd among them. commerce means, then, the increase of the christian population; wealth, greatness, security for the armenians; finally freedom from the ottoman power. therefore that power forbids any improvement of the backward conditions. ii. the people of armenia. their lineage. who are the armenians? the average american knows very little about them, while few even of the educated classes have much knowledge of the race or its history. many people regard them as barbarians, partially christianized. some think them of chinese type; most often they are considered as turks because the chief portion of armenia is part of the turkish empire; every armenian feels justly indignant at the latter classification. the old story applies of the irishman who refused to consider himself an american though born in america, on the ground that "being born in a stable did not make one a horse"; we know that the scotch and english in ireland do not consider themselves irish; we know it would be worse than absurd to call the english children born in india hindoos. when the missionaries of the american board first went to turkey, the people there supposed from the name american, that they must be indians, and crowded to see them out of curiosity, but they were much surprised and probably somewhat disappointed when they found them very like themselves. in the same way, being born in turkish armenia does not make one a turk. the turks are one race, the armenians a totally different one, and different in the very foundation type. the turks are turanian, the armenians aryan. the turks belong to the turko-tataric stock; they are kinsmen of the tartars. the primal origin of the armenians will be found in genesis, chapter 10,--from togarmah, the son of gomer, the son of japheth; the armenians are sometimes called the sons of togarmah. togarmah had a son named haig (the armenian records tell us), and armenians call themselves haigian or haigazian from him; and the land of armenia is called hayasdan or the land of haig. he was a powerful warrior and the founder of the armenian kingdom, which began 2350 b.c., and ended with levon vi., 1375 a.d.; thus lasting 3725 years, though with intervals of extinction. their own kings did not always reign in armenia; sometimes other nations ruled over it; by way of compensation, sometimes the armenians ruled over other nations. the people never call themselves armenians, or their country armenia; they use the name simply for the sake of foreigners. but where did the name come from? of course as with many very old ones, the origin is somewhat a matter of guesswork. some derive it from the great king, aram, the seventh from haig; some from armerag or armen, the eldest son of haig,--the more probable supposition of the two; still others connect it with the hebrew aram (aramea), the district of mesopotamia and north syria, and derive both from a word meaning "man," most old names of nations having meant that originally. whatever its origin, it is certain that the armenians are a very ancient nation,--as ancient as the assyrians or persians. the people belong to the stock formerly known as japhetic, later as caucasian (from the caucasus mountains on the north of armenia), then as indo-european, now as aryan; the most advanced type of mankind, and the most physically beautiful. and what are the people of the united states? hamitic or negroid? of course not. semitic (arab, jew)? certainly not. they are japhetic or aryan too--exactly the same as the armenians. indeed, the type of face is the same, and the type of character. the armenians are often called the anglo-saxons of the east; they are the same blood, features, religion, and civilization as those of the west, and are true brothers and sisters, though the opportunities of the latter have been greater; however, the ancestors of the former were christians in asia before those of the latter were in europe, and they kept the mother land faithfully while the others ran away. their language. the tongue spoken by the armenians is one of the great family now known as the aryan languages; certainly one of the oldest of them if there is any difference in the ages of the different branches, though that really means nothing. it has no relation whatever to the semitic tongues like chaldee or phoenician, nor the tataric tongues of scythia, though those were in the earlier ages its nearest neighbors, while it is blood brother to languages so widely separated as irish on the west and hindoo on the east, to gothic and greek, lithuanian and latin. linguists think the whole aryan family much younger than the semitic or the turko-tataric or the mongoloid, but this would not be granted by the armenians without much more solid proof than has yet been brought forward. they claim first that noah and his sons lived in armenia, which has been shown must be true; second, that they spoke the armenian language, which therefore was the very oldest. some of the arguments in favor of this are as follows:--in armenia, near mt. ararat, are places with armenian names, which have preserved the same names from the time of noah till now. north of ararat is a city named erivan, which in armenian means "appearance"; after noah's ark rested on the mountain, the first place he saw was erivan. another city southeast of ararat is called nakhichevan, which in armenian means "the first station"; it was the first stopping-place of noah when he came out of the ark. the first chief or king of the armenians, haig, built a village and called it hark, which means "fathers," as he was the father of the armenians; and when haig fought with belus and killed him, the place was called kereznank, meaning "grave" or "graves." there are many such places in armenia, where the names have always been the same and are certainly armenian now, indicating that the language has always been the same; here are a few: arakaz, armavir, shirag, ararat. the latter took its name from ara, the armenian king who was the son of aram, that great king who ruled in armenia for fifty years; the name means "lofty" or "holy." these instances show the antiquity of the language; but even if they were not sufficient, it would not affect the antiquity of the race. many very old races speak languages much less old. the mass of people in tuscany are etruscans, a race which some people hold to be much older than the whole aryan family; but they speak italian, a very modern tongue. a large part of the basques, believed by many scientists to be the oldest race in europe, older even than the tuscans, speak spanish, much more modern even than italian. so that it does not follow that the armenian race, aside from the language, may not be the oldest in the world. the old armenian classic language is very difficult, from the number of particles and participles in it; but modern armenian is one of the easiest of languages to learn, very regular in inflection and the spelling entirely phonetic. there are no exceptions or anomalies; for instance, to pluralize a noun, you invariably add the particle ner or er. thus, doon means "house;" the plural is dooner. manch is "boy"; plural mancher; mannugh is "child," mannughner "children." the irregularities of english in these forms are too well-known to need illustration. the armenian tongue is not only very regular, but very sweet, as well to the ears of foreigners as of natives. the testimony of "sunset" cox of ohio is worth citing on this point. he was united states minister to turkey some years ago, and as such presided at the commencement exercises of robert college in constantinople, that being the rule of the college. in his address on this occasion, he said he did not like bulgarian (which is a turkish tongue), because it had no sweetness;--indeed, there is none in any of the turkish languages, which are strong and emphatic, but harsh. but he said he liked armenian; it was the "sweetest language he ever heard." he went on to say that adam talked armenian in the garden of eden, proposed to eve in that language, and succeeded in winning her heart; in any other language he might not have done it. "it is the loveliest of tongues to make love to a woman in, and sure of success if the lady knows armenian." i think he was right; but i think too, that next to armenian, if not equal to it, is english. it sounds as sweetly to my ears as armenian. i am an armenian and my wife is an armenian; but i proposed to her in english and was successful; not a sure test, perhaps, for any language is beautiful when words of love are uttered in it to ears that are willing to hear; and true love may be successful without any words at all. iii. the armenian dynasties. according to the histories written by native historians from the old armenian records. 1. the haigazian dynasty. this dynasty began 2350 years before christ, and ended in the time of alexander the great, 328 b.c. no other recorded dynasty has so long an unbroken succession. 2. the arshagoonian dynasty. this dynasty began 150 years b.c. and ended 428 a.d. 3. the pakradoonian dynasty. this dynasty began 885 a.d. and ended 1045 a.d. 4. the rupenian dynasty. this dynasty began 1080 a.d. and ended 1375 a.d. i shall try to show the condition of the armenians under the rule of these different dynasties. 1. the haigazian dynasty. as already mentioned, haig was the founder of the armenian kingdom. he can scarcely be called a king, because in his time there was not a great armenian nation; it was rather a tribe, and haig was chief or governor. his position was like that of abraham; what would now be called a sheikh; and like abraham, he was a worshiper of the true god. haig went from the highlands of armenia to the plains of shinar to help build the tower of babel. during the progress of the work, belus, a warlike giant, descended from ham, assumed to direct the enterprise; haig would not submit to this, and so returned to his own country. when the undertaking failed, all the tribes became scattered. to wreak vengeance on haig, belus resolved to go to armenia, kill him in fight, and reign over his land. when he reached armenia with his men on his errand, haig went with a force to meet him; a great battle took place and haig was victorious, killing belus and saving his country from being overwhelmed by the hamites. his spirit was inherited by his posterity, though recent irresistible force and refusal of permission to bear arms may seem to make them submissive. they have battled stoutly against awful odds and with insufficient means for liberty and for freedom of thought and conscience; and millions have lost their lives for those principles; if they could now have arms and help, they would fight and die again for them. after the repulse of this hamitic invasion, the armenians increased so rapidly that haig became a real king and took that title, thus actually founding the armenian kingship. they were free, lived long lives, and married only one wife each,--all favorable conditions for growth of population,--it need not be pointed out how slavery and polygamy check national growth. and they kept their faith in the one true god, as their ancestor noah did. haig's son armen succeeded his father, and greatly enlarged the kingdom. he subdued a large district northeast of mt. ararat and built cities and towns there. it is most likely the name armenia comes from him. some recent foreign writers have the impudence to say that there was no such king, but that his name was made up to account for that of armenia; but the same records which tell us of haig, tell us of his son. after armen we find his son armaiss, who built the city of armavir. i will not enumerate all the names of the dynasty; it would only be a tedious catalogue without profit. i will only mention the most noted ones, and those most interesting from their relations with the jews or the heathen nations. one of the notable kings is aram, the seventh in succession, and the greatest of armenian conquerors. he raised and drilled an army of 50,000 men, whose efficiency and his own military skill and energy are proved by his invading and conquering media. he then invaded assyria and conquered a part of that country. next he marched westward and subjugated some of the eastern portion of asia minor inhabited by the greeks,--the later cappadocia, along the halys or kizil-irmak. aram named this district the hayasdan, translated by the romans as "armenia minor"; which, oddly enough, in later times became greater armenia or armenia proper. aram set over this province a governor named mishag, with instructions to compel the greeks to speak armenian. mishag built a city which exists in cappadocia (karamania) to-day, frightfully familiar from recent events. he called it by his own name; the greeks mispronounced it as mazag; the roman emperors afterwards named it caesarea, which the turks corrupted into kayseri, and several thousand armenians were massacred there some months ago, which will be described further on. the richest and most enterprising armenians in the turkish empire are from kayseri, and it is a leading missionary station of the american board. the writer preached there and in that vicinity for four years. the enormous growth of the armenian kingdom under aram, and its conquest of part of assyria, excited the alarm of the assyrian king, ninos. not feeling strong enough to engage in open warfare with him, he thought to compass his destruction by winning his friendship and then putting him out of the way, and, as a first step, sent him a costly jeweled crown. the intrigue failed, however, and aram lived to a great age, reigning fifty years. aram was succeeded by his son ara, called "ara the beautiful." the fame of his beauty went abroad through the world; the assyrian queen semiramis was so enchanted by the sight of his person that she fell madly in love and proposed marriage to him, but he refused her. this military amazon was not to be balked so. she resolved to marry him by force, and came with a great army to armenia to capture the prize; but he was killed in the war, and she took possession of the country, with which she was so charmed that she decided to remain; she removed the capital of the enlarged assyrian kingdom to the lovely shores of lake van, erecting a palace there for herself, and building on the eastern side a city named "shamiramaguerd" (built by semiramis). many years later, a king of the haigazian dynasty whose name was van rebuilt it and called it after himself. this was the present city of van, another great center of the american board and of turkish horrors. the next great interesting event was in 710 b.c. when sennacherib of assyria was assassinated by his two sons, adramelich and sharezer, who escaped into armenia. the king of armenia at this time was sgayorti, which means "son of a giant." he received the sons of sennacherib with great kindness; they married armenian women, and remained in the country till their death. their descendants were great armenian princes, bearing the titles prince arziroonian and prince kinoonian. armenia comes to view again in connection with biblical history in the capture of jerusalem by nebuchadnezzar, 600 b.c., and the deportation of the judean people; the armenian king, hurachia, was one of his allies in the siege, and on returning to armenia carried with him a hebrew prince named shampad. this was a very intelligent man, and made himself greatly loved and esteemed by the armenians; a sort of daniel or joseph. he, too, married an armenian noblewoman, and his descendants became the very foremost of the noble families and ecclesiastical functionaries of the country, crowning the kings on occasion. they were called pakradoonian princes, and at last one of them founded the third dynasty of armenian kings, the pakradoonian. though the nation is aryan, there is noble hebrew (semitic) blood mixed with it. perhaps the most interesting part of the haigazian dynasty comes just before the end; the time of dikran or tigranes i. in him both wisdom and valor were combined to an eminent degree. as soon as he succeeded his father, yerevant, he instituted great reforms to improve the state of the country. he not only enlarged it by conquest, but he greatly improved public education and morals, removed obstructions to international commerce, introduced navigation on the lakes and rivers, encouraged cultivation; trade flourished, every acre of ground was tilled, the country was alive with energy and hope. this vigor and prosperity aroused the envy of ashdahag, king of media; he resolved to kill dikran, and to throw him off his guard married his sister, princess dikranoohi. a plot to murder dikran was then set on foot; the princess learned of it, warned her brother, whom she loved, and ran away. dikran collected an army, made a rapid march to media, surprised and slew ashdahag, and brought back a vast amount of spoils in captives and goods. he built a fine city on the banks of the tigris, and called it dikranagerd, the city of dikran; it was afterwards the residence of the sister who had saved his life. it is now called by the turks diarbekr, and was the scene of a frightful massacre a few months since. the most important political achievement of his life was assisting cyrus in the capture of babylon 538 b.c.; the two monarchs were very friendly, and dikran's armenian army was a chief factor in the conquest. in jeremiah's prophecy of the capture, about a century before it occurred, he mentions the armenian kingdom as one of the actors: "the kingdoms of ararat, minni, and ashchenaz." (jer. li. 27.) after dikran's death his son vahakn succeeded him; he was considered a god by the people, and worshiped as such through a monument after his death. thus far the people had mostly worshiped the one true god, but from this time they relapsed into heathenism for a while on account of the influences pressing on them from outside. the last king of the haigazian dynasty was vahe. when alexander the great invaded persia, vahe went to darius' help with 40,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry; but alexander conquered first darius and then vahe (328 b.c.), and annexed both persia and armenia. thus came to an end the first armenian dynasty, after an existence of 1922 years. arshagoonian or arsacid dynasty. this dynasty began not far from 150 b.c.,--close to the time when carthage was utterly destroyed, and greece was finally subjugated; it ended 428 a.d., about half a century before the extinction of the western roman empire, and about the time genseric and his vandals conquered africa. it is by far the most famous of the armenian royal houses; for it embraces the very heart of the classic times with which all educated people are familiar, it brings us perpetually in contact with the most brilliant and best-known of classic names, it is sprinkled itself with names towering up familiar and powerful, even among the greek and roman magnates; and, in spite of political ups and downs, it covers a time of immense expansion for the armenian people, of a firmly rooted growth in numbers, wealth, and consciousness of national unity, which has enabled the nation to survive and keep its united being through many centuries of dismemberment, impoverishment, massacre, and attempts at outright extermination again and again. more than all, it covers the time of jesus christ, and the conversion of armenia to his religion, first of all the nations of the earth, as by its history and traditions it ought to have been. during the time between the disappearance of the line of haig and the rise of the line of arshag, armenia was not by any means wholly without kings of its own; but it was mostly a dependency. alexander the great, after his conquest, put a native governor named mihran over it; but on alexander's death, five years later (323 b.c.), his generals partitioned the macedonian empire among themselves, and armenia fell to neoptolemus. his government was at once so oppressive, and so contemptuous of native feeling (he and his court were greeks, and despised all asiatics), that the people rose and drove him out in 317, under the lead of one arduat (ardvates), who remained their king for thirty-three years; but he left no successor, and armenia was conquered by and became part of the great syrian empire founded by seleucus. it remained so in the main for about three quarters of a century, though the eastern part (kurdistan), fell under the parthian kings. armenia was never a very quiet province, however, and its revolts against the syrian satraps kept it much of the time in a half-anarchic state. about 210 b.c. antiochus the great quelled one of these uprisings, and divided the country into greater and lesser armenia (whose boundaries i have described), putting a separate deputy over each. but after his crushing defeat by the romans at magnesia in 189 b.c., and having to buy peace by giving up everything beyond the halys, each governor proclaimed his province an independent kingdom. zadriades (zadreh), in lesser armenia founded a family which kept their hold for almost exactly a century, when tigranes ii once more united the two armenias. artaxias (ardashes), in greater armenia was powerful as long as he lived, and sheltered hannibal at his court when the romans had set a price on the head of their great foe; but about the middle of the century his family was dispossessed by mithridates of parthia, who conquered the country. the family name of this parthian house was arshag, rendered by the greeks arsakes, spelled by the romans arsaces. mithridates made greater armenia a kingdom for his brother wagh-arshag (val-arsaces), whose family remained in succession to the throne, though sometimes eclipsed for long periods from actual occupation of it, for six hundred years. the new king had the great hereditary ability both in war and statesmanship which characterized the whole arsacid line, and the mithridates in particular, and its great knowledge of men. he knew an able man when he saw him, and liked to raise him up; he promoted industry and built cities; he reformed the system of laws and their administration as well. the new line did not escape the usual fate of eastern dynasties, of having disputes over the succession, in which their neighbors interfered. in 94 b.c., dikran or tigranes ii (great-grandson of wagh-arshag), owed his possession of the throne of greater armenia to his third cousin, mithridates ii (the great), of parthia, who exacted seventy armenian valleys as the price; probably part of kurdistan. tigranes, however, paid no more blood-money to anybody when once on the throne. on the contrary, he began at once to overrun and annex the neighboring states. he first conquered lesser armenia, and made it one with its sister again; then part of syria, so long the mistress of his own state; then, in a series of wars with the weak successors of mithridates, he half destroyed the parthian empire itself, not only recovering the seventy valleys he had paid for his throne, but conquering media, and annexing mesopotamia and adiabene. after these conquests he called himself "king of kings" (that is, emperor, king with other kings under him), which title the parthian kings had claimed theretofore. he would probably have ended by mastering and restoring the unity of the old seleucid kingdom in its widest extent, the whole heart of western asia, had he not in an evil hour been induced by that reckless old fighter, his father-in-law, mithridates of pontus, to join him in war against the romans. tigranes' own son had quarreled with him, and taken refuge with the king of parthia, whose daughter he married; and now offered to guide his father-in-law into armenia if he would invade it as the ally of the romans. this was done, and tigranes the elder had to fly to the mountains; but the parthian king grew tired of the siege of rock castles, and went home, leaving his son-in-law to carry on operations with part of the army. the great armenian king at once broke loose and annihilated the forces of his son, who fled to pompey, just invading armenia with the roman army. even the great tigranes was no match for rome, and had to surrender. pompey was not harsh with him, but left him armenia (except sophene and gordyene, which were made into a kingdom for his son), and his parthian conquests; even going so far as to send a roman division to wrest these from the parthian king, who had re-conquered them on tigranes' defeat, and restore them to the latter. on the departure of pompey the parthian once more reclaimed them, but a compromise was finally made. phraates of parthia, however, resumed once more the title of "king of kings." tigranes remained the ally of the romans till his death in 55 b.c.; a reign of thirty-nine years, on the whole of great glory and usefulness. he was succeeded by his son, artavasdes (ardvash) ii, who inherited that most dreadful of legacies, a place between the hammer and the anvil. for the next quarter of a century the romans, and the steadily growing and consolidating power of the parthian empire were alternately irresistible in eastern anatolia; it was impossible to avoid taking sides, for neutrality meant invasion by one party or the other; and whichever side he took he was sure to be punished for as soon as the other came uppermost. if artavasdes had been as dexterous as alexius comnenus himself, he could hardly have escaped ruin; that he kept his throne for over twenty years is proof that he was not unworthy of his father. first came the invasion of parthia by crassus; artavasdes, faithful to his father's roman allegiance; asked him to make the invasion by way of armenia, and offered to help him. crassus refused, but the parthian king, orodes, invaded armenia; however, he made peace, and betrothed his eldest son, pacorus, to artavasdes' daughter, just before news was brought him of the annihilation of crassus' army, guaranteed by crassus' severed head and hand. the civil wars at rome for years to come broke the roman power, and the parthians (with the good-will of the inhabitants, who detested the roman proconsuls), swept westward, compelled submission or alliance from all the countries to the taurus, and even annexed all syria for a time, just as seven centuries later the syrians, from hate of the byzantine governors, gave up their cities to the saracens. but the roman power once more rallied; the parthians were driven out of syria, and pacorus was killed; the aged orodes, under whom the parthian empire proper reached its pinnacle, died, leaving the throne to one of those jealous murderous despots so familiar in eastern history, who made a general slaughter of his brothers, and even murdered his son, to remove any possible leader of a revolt, and artavasdes once more returned to the roman alliance. in the year 36 a.d., mark antony undertook the task crassus had so terribly failed in seventeen years before, of striking at the heart of parthia; but this time the invasion was by way of armenia. it was almost as frightful a disaster as the former; a third of the army of 100,000 men was destroyed by the enemy, 8,000 died of cold and storm in the armenian mountains, the wounded died in enormous numbers; but that artavasdes let the army winter in his country it would have perished as completely as crassus' did. in spite of this, the romans, wanting a scapegoat, laid the whole blame on artavasdes, without a shadow of reason that can be shown. it was the last time for a century and a half that the romans attacked parthia. in default of that plunder, they resolved to have armenia, and a couple of years later, in the year 33 a.d., they seized artavasdes by treachery, and occupied the country. the parthians at once took up the cause of his son, artaxes, and made war on the romans to seat him on the throne; and when the roman troops were withdrawn to help antony's cause, which was lost in the battle of actium, the parthians overran armenia, and killed all the romans in the country, and made their candidate king as artaxes ii. this was in 30 b.c., and in the same year his father, artavasdes, who had been carried to alexandria by antony, was beheaded by cleopatra. but the very next year the worthless tyrant phraates of parthia was driven from the throne by a rebellion, and artaxes made peace with rome. the history of artavasdes' reign is in essence the history of the next four centuries, save that the results were incomparably worse. we have been dealing with a time at least of steady, single-handed government, of able rulers either inside or outside, of some sort of ability to keep the civil structure of the country from breaking to pieces; but even that disappears over long periods in the early centuries of the roman empire. one great secret of armenia's misery during these ages of woe--indeed, to a large extent during all the ages since--lies in the fact that she is a borderland; a buffer between great states, and indeed between great natural divisions of climate and society. she is the boundary between semi-tropic central asia and temperate eastern europe, touching the land of the fig and the silk-worm on the one side, and that of the apple and the mountain goat on the other; between scythian steppes and syrian deserts. in these earlier ages she was fought for between east, west, and south,--parthia, rome, and a syro-egyptian power of some sort; in these days divided between east, west, and north,--persia the successor of parthia, turkey the successor of rome, while the southern power is ages dead, and a great northern power, russia, has grown up in the steppes. had armenia been smaller, or more level, she would have perished without a struggle, perhaps rather would never have existed; but her territory is so large and so defensible that her history could have been predicted,--final dismemberment between great states surrounding her, yet not without ages of desperate struggle. she was not large enough to be permanently the seat of empire; she was far too large for either rival to let pass wholly into the hands of the other--so she was pulled to pieces. but she wanted to control her own destiny, and made a long and heroic fight before being dismembered. to write the history of the next few centuries would tire out all my readers, and would not do any good; it was a long duel between rome and persia for the ownership of armenia, in which the prosperity and happiness of their unhappy foot-ball nearly perished. almost the whole foreign policy of parthia was to control, or to have a paramount influence in armenia; almost the whole foreign policy of rome in the east was to do the same thing. for nearly a century following artavasdes' deposition, though the romans professed to govern the country and the parthians sometimes held it, and both sides repeatedly put kings on its throne, it was actually in a state of pure anarchy. every great family, seeing it must depend on its own strength for preservation, extended its rule over as wide a district as would submit; nearly two hundred houses acted with perfect independence of each other, and of the nominal government, and some of them established principalities of considerable size. after this, though the country was for century after century just the same shuttlecock between the rival states, the feudal anarchy was somewhat reduced, the turbulent nobility better held in check, but it was impossible that there should be really firm and orderly government when a king could not be secure of his throne for a year on one side or the other, and dared not render his powerful subjects disaffected by making them obey the laws. we may be sure that the government was really an oligarchy under the forms of a monarchy, and even the title "king of armenia" during this period must not be taken to mean too much. there were sometimes separate kings of upper and lower armenia, one under roman, and one under parthian influence; the independent princes often made head against both, and outlying principalities, like those of osrhoene and gordyene probably got hold of more or less armenian territory in the melee. no king of armenia after tigranes ever held sway over all of old armenia for any length of time, if at all. but any king who got an acknowledged position at all was invariably an arshagoonian; the people considered that line the only rightful kings. artavasdes iii, whom the romans seated in power just before the birth of christ; tigranes iv, who expelled him by parthian aid the year of christ's birth; vonones, a deposed parthian king, who got himself chosen king as the roman favorite in 16 a.d., but was persuaded by tiberius to retire; arsaces, son of the king of parthia, assassinated by the king of iberia whose brother was the roman candidate, about the time of the crucifixion; ervand, who made himself master of the land after a fashion, in 58; dertad (tiridates), set up by the parthians in 52, and acknowledged by the romans in 66; exedarus (eshdir?) son of the parthian king, given the throne with roman consent about 100, pulled down by his uncle in 114, resulting in the conquest of the country by trajan; sohaemus, set up by the romans about 150, dethroned by the parthians in 162 in favor of another arsacid, restored by the romans in 164; and the other fleeting monarchs of this long nightmare were all of the same line of arshag, which in armenia survived for over two centuries its brother line in parthia, the last of whom, ardvan (artabanus), was slain in battle in 224 by ardashir (artaxerxes), first of the sassanian house, and founder of the persian empire. but i must go back a little. the most important event in the history of any nation is its conversion to christianity, and therefore we wish to know when the armenians first came to believe in christ, and how it came about. of course it did not come all at once; but it came very early, and the story of the first converts is very curious. according to the armenian church history, and also the great christian father eusebius, it came through king abgar or apkar (abgarus), the fifteenth king of the little kingdom of osrhoene, in northern mesopotamia, whose capital was the flourishing city of edessa, now oorfa; it lay next the southern border of armenia. the church history gives the following account: "the origin of christianity in armenia dates from the time of its king abgar, who reigned at the beginning of the christian era; he had his seat of government in the city of edessa, and was tributary to the romans. "herod antipas, the tetrarch of judea, was hostile to king abgar, but was unable to injure him except by exciting the romans against him. he therefore accused him falsely, to the emperor tiberius, of rebellious projects. king abgar, on being made acquainted with this accusation, hastened to send messengers to the roman general marinus, then governor of syria, phoenicia, and palestine, for the purpose of vindicating himself. during their stay in palestine these messengers--among whom was anane, abgar's confidant--hearing of the wonders that were wrought by our saviour, determined to visit jerusalem, in order to gratify their curiosity. "when, therefore, their mission was concluded, they proceeded thither and were filled with wonder at witnessing the miracles performed by jesus our lord. "on returning to armenia they related all the particulars to their master. abgar, after having listened to their narrative, became satisfied that jesus was the son of god, and immediately wrote to him as follows: "'abgar, son of arsham, to jesus, the great healer, who has appeared in the country of judea at the city of jerusalem--greeting lord,--i have heard that thou dost not heal by medicines but only through the word; that thou makest the blind to see, the lame to walk; that thou cleansest the lepers and makest the deaf to hear; that thou castest out devils, raiseth the dead, and healest through the word only. no sooner had the great miracles that thou performest been related to me, than i reflected, and now believe that thou art god and the son of god, descended from heaven to perform these acts of beneficence. for this reason i have written thee this letter, to pray thee to come to me, that i may adore thee and be healed of my sickness by thee, according to my faith in thy power. moreover, i have heard that the jews murmur against thee, and seek to slay thee. i pray thee, therefore, come to me; i have a good little city, which is enough for both of us, and there we can peaceably live together.'" the messengers sent with the letter were instructed to offer sacrifices for the king at the temple in jerusalem; and one of them was a painter, who was to make a portrait of the saviour, that if he would not come, the king might at least have his features. jesus received the letter joyfully,--as it was the day of his triumphal entry into jerusalem, the messengers did not venture to approach him, and it was taken to him by the apostles philip and andrew,--and dictated the following answer to the apostle thomas: "blessed be he who believes in me without having seen me; for thus it is written of me: those who see me shall not believe in me; and those who do not see me, they shall believe and be saved. inasmuch as you have written to me to go to you, know that it is necessary i should fulfill here all for which i have been sent. and when i shall have done so, i shall ascend to him who sent me; and then i will send you one of my disciples, who shall remove your pain, and shall give life to you and those around you." the painter could not execute his order on account of the multitude; the saviour at last noticed him, and causing him to approach, passed a handkerchief over his face and miraculously imprinted on it a perfect likeness of his countenance, and then gave it to him, and bade him take it to his master as a reward for his faith. the king received the letter and portrait with great joy, and put them in safe custody, and awaited the fulfillment of our lord's promise. after the ascension, thomas, the disciple, sent thaddeus, one of the seventy, to abgar, as our lord had directed. thaddeus went to tobias, a prince of the pakradoonian tribe, and consequently a jew by blood, who received the apostle into his house, and became a believer. thaddeus then began to perform many miracles upon sick people, and his fame being spread throughout the city, reached king abgar, who sent for prince tobias and desired him to bring the apostle to him. this was done, and thaddeus healed the king in his sickness, and instructed him in the faith. he did likewise to all the people of the city, and baptized them, together with the king and his court. all the temples dedicated to idols were shut up, and a large church was built. thaddeus then created a bishop to rule the new congregation, selecting a silk-mercer, the king's cap-maker, for that office, and giving him the name of adde. it is related that upon the principal gate of edessa was the statue of a greek idol, which all who entered the city were obliged to reverence. king abgar ordered this to be taken away, and placed in its stead the sacred portrait of our lord, with this inscription: "christ god, he who hopes in thee is not deceived in his hope;" at the same time ordering all those who entered the city to give it divine honor. this conversion of king abgar and of the edessians took place in the thirtieth year of the vulgar era, or in the thirty-third year after the birth of christ. shortly after, thaddeus, desiring to spread the light of the gospel in other parts of the country, went to inner armenia to visit sanadrug, who then resided in the province of shavarshan or ardaz. sanadrug soon became a christian and was baptized, together with his daughter santukht, and a great number of the chiefs and common people. here thaddeus also consecrated a bishop, named zachariah, and then proceeded to upper armenia; but finding the people there unwilling to listen to his preaching, he left them and went to the country of the aghuans. abgar, in his zeal for the faith he had just embraced, wrote to the emperor tiberius in favor of christ, informing him how the jews unjustly crucified him, exhorting him at the same time to believe and command others to adore the saviour. many letters passed between the two monarchs on the subject of his divine mission. he also wrote to ardashes, king of persia, and to his son nerseh, the young king of assyria, exhorting them to become believers in christ. however, before he received replies to these, he died, in the third year of his conversion to christianity. his death seemed at first to have undone all his work. his son anane apostatized and tried to make his people do the same; he reopened the heathen temples, resumed the public worship of the idols, and ordered the sacred handkerchief removed from the city gate. adde the bishop walled up the latter. the king ordered the bishop to make a diadem for him as he had for his father; the bishop refused to make one for a head that would not bow to christ, and the king had the bishop's feet cut off while he was preaching, causing his death,--the first christian martyr on record. by a just retribution, the savage king met his own death by a marble pillar in his palace falling on him and breaking his legs. meantime abgar's nephew, sanadrug, had set up his standard in shavarshan or ardaz, proclaiming himself king of armenia,--one of the countless chieftains who took advantage of armenian anarchy to carve out principalities for themselves. on the death of anane he marched to edessa, claiming it as his own inheritance. the people admitted him on his oath not to harm them; but once inside he massacred all the males of the house of abgar. he spared his aunt, queen helena, abgar's widow, who became widely famed as a christian philanthropist, and was buried with great pomp before one of the gates of jerusalem, where a splendid mausoleum was erected over her remains. he himself had apostatized, and ordered all his people to do likewise; but most of them refused to obey, and thaddeus, hearing of it at caesarea, in cappadocia, started for edessa to reconvert him. on his way he fell in with a roman embassy to sanadrug, composed of five patricians headed by one chrysos; he converted and baptized them all, conferred priest's orders on chrysos, and they gave up all their property and became preachers of christ. they were known as followers of chrysos, and all eventually obtained the crown of martyrdom. on the news of these conversions, sanadrug invited thaddeus to shavarshan; on his arrival he put him to death, and with him his own daughter, santukht, who would not give up her faith in christ. at her death various miracles were wrought, which caused many conversions to christianity; among them a notable chief, who was baptized with all his family, was renamed samuel, and was put to death by the king's order. a princess named zarmantukht also became a convert, with all her household, two hundred people in all; the whole of them suffered martyrdom in consequence. dr. philip schaff says: "it is now impossible to decide how much truth there may be in the somewhat mythical stories of correspondence between christ and abgarus, and the missionary activity and martyrdom of thaddeus, bartholomew, simon of cana, and judas lebbeus. but it is certain that christianity was introduced very early in armenia." i, however, consider what i have told to be true. after this time, christianity spread in armenia as it did in other parts of the greek empire; rapidly in the cities, where intelligence was quick, and new ideas were welcomed; slowly in the country districts, where people did not readily change. its first result everywhere was not so much to make people believe in it as to make them disbelieve in paganism; for every person who actually came to believe in christ, there were fifty who ceased to believe in jupiter, or bel, or thoth, venus or astarte. there would be a flourishing christian church in a great city when most of the people did not have any faith in any religion. but everybody who had a family came gradually to think very well of a religion that gave them the power to teach children righteousness, and enforce it by the command of god; and the respectable classes became more and more christian. but the fact that till two or three centuries after christ there was no general attempt on the part of the pagan governments to put down the christians by persecution, shows that not till then did they become so numerous as to frighten the governments for fear they would before long have a majority; persecution means fear. the governments let the christians pretty much alone, except for little fits of anger now and then, till they were afraid the growth of the sect would overthrow themselves or bring on civil war. the christians had become well established in armenia within a century or so after the death of christ; but it was over a century and a half before they seemed an imminent menace to the ruling class. then a furious persecution began, about the same time as that of diocletian in the roman empire, and indeed, part of the same movement. diocletian had set the persecuting king tiridates on his throne, and tiridates had passed his life from boyhood almost to old age in the roman service, and had the same ideas as the pagan roman upper classes. yet in the providence of god this same tiridates made christianity supreme in armenia, fifteen years before constantine made it supreme in the roman empire, thus making armenia the first christian nation. gregory the illuminator and king dertad. in the continual struggle between rome and parthia for the control of armenia, the parthian kings had one great advantage; they were arsacids, and could put their sons or brothers on the armenian throne with the good-will of the people, thus strengthening their dynastic position without much cost in military force. often, too, the armenian kingship was obtained by parthian princes, who fled after a family quarrel, or after deposition or other misfortune. one of these armenian kings was chosroes, who reigned in the time of ardashir, the first king of persia, before spoken of. it is not certain just who he was; some say a brother of ardvan, the last king of parthia; some say the son of ardvan, who fled after his father's death. anyway, he was a mortal enemy of ardashir, and was at first supported by the romans. ardashir invaded armenia, but was beaten later. chosroes quarreled with the romans, who withdrew their support, and assailed him, but he defeated them; and when ardashir again invaded the country, chosroes again drove him back. the old days of tigranes seemed to have returned, and armenia to be on the road again to unity and independence; and chosroes was called the great. ardashir was furious at being baffled, and is said to have offered his daughter's hand and a share in the kingdom to any one of his leading nobles who would assassinate chosroes. an arsacid named anag accepted the offer, though he had a wife already, and went with his family to armenia, pretending to be in flight from persian troops. chosroes gave him a military escort into the province of ardaz, where he lived for a time in the very place st. thaddeus' bones were deposited. later on, anag removed to vagharshabad (the present city of etchmiazin, where the armenian catholicos resides), chosroes' royal city. here anag seizing his opportunity, stabbed chosroes to the heart. in his flight he was drowned in trying to cross the aras, and his family were massacred by the soldiery. ardashir had gotten rid of his unconquerable enemy, and without having to pay the stipulated price. he at once entered armenia and put to death every member of chosroes' family save a boy and a girl, tiridates and chosrovitukht, who were somehow smuggled away, and the old game of perso-roman foot-ball over armenia went on as before. tiridates entered the roman army, when grown up, and became distinguished there, evidently inheriting his father's military ability; and remained in the roman service certainly to the age of over 45, and perhaps till over 50. that the romans waited all this time before using him as a candidate for the armenian throne seems strange; but the reason probably is that the early years of his manhood fell in a time when rome was weak and persia strong. the great shahpur, ardashir's son, reigned in persia till about 272; the imbecile gallienus of rome reigned from 260 till 268, and was succeeded by a crowd of emperors able indeed, but too short-lived to carry out any steady policy, or drive the persians out of their strong places. the first emperor who found himself in a position to restore the roman power in the east was diocletian, who came to the roman throne in 284, and it is significant that he made tiridates king of armenia only two years later. as diocletian was a soldier of fortune, probably he had known and respected tiridates long before. anyway, in 286 rome once more had her turn in armenian affairs, and with one short interval, kept absolute control of the country for over half a century. now there had been born in armenia about 257 a child who had early been taken to caesarea by christian relatives, baptized, named gregory, and reared in the christian faith. on reaching maturity he married a christian girl by whom he had two sons; but after three years they separated by mutual consent. the wife entered a convent. gregory, hearing of tiridates' renown in the roman army, went and obtained service near the prince's person, to be able to have influence with him if he ever regained his kingdom. they became fast friends. when tiridates was proclaimed king, he went first to erija, in the province of egueghatz, where was a temple of anahid (diana), whom the armenians worshiped as guardian goddess of the country; and making offerings to her of garlands and crowns, asked gregory to join him in his idolatry. gregory refused to worship anything but the one god. tiridates ordered him imprisoned for a while, thinking the loathsome dungeon of that time would change his resolution; finding him still firm, he had him tortured in a dozen frightful ways, and at last taken to the fortress of ardashad and thrown into a deep pit, where criminals were left to starve. there gregory remained fourteen years, supported all that time by the charity of a pious christian woman. after about ten years of reign, tiridates was driven from his throne by persians, and once more became a wanderer; but two years later he was reinstated by the romans, and finished his life on the throne. in gratitude for this second restoration, he had daily offerings made to the heathen gods all over his kingdom; and on being told that the christians refused to comply, ordered all recusants to be tortured, and their property confiscated. about this time diocletian determined to find and marry the handsomest woman in his empire, and sent officers all over in search of noted beauties. one party, hearing that a nun named ripsime was very beautiful, entered her convent by force, had a portrait made of her, and carried it to the emperor. diocletian was enchanted with it, and ordered preparations made for the nuptials; but the abbess, kayane, to save the nun from sin, and the community from danger, broke up the convent, and the inmates with several priests--seventy in all--went to the east, and scattered themselves in different localities. ripsime and kayane, with thirty-five companions, reached ardashad in armenia, and took refuge in a building among the vineyards, where wine vats were stored. diocletian had search made for his flown bird, and, hearing that her company had gone to armenia, commanded tiridates to send her back to him unless he wished to keep her for his own wife. tiridates had her hunted out, and the officers bringing a report of her extraordinary beauty, so great that people flocked to admire her, he ordered her brought to him, intending to marry her. kayane exhorted her not to deny christ for the sake of earthly honors, and she refused to go. she was carried by force, however, and the king undertook to gain a husband's rights at once; but the virgin, strengthened by divine power, resisted him successfully. tiridates then had the abbess kayane brought to him to overcome the girl's scruples; but instead, she once more exhorted ripsime to keep herself pure in spite of all offered grandeur. the king once more endeavored to deflower the maiden, and was once more beaten; and ripsime, opening the doors and passing out through the astonished guards, walked out of the city, to her companions in the vineyard, went to a high place, and knelt down in prayer. the incensed tiridates sent a body of guards to put her to death by the most dreadful tortures, which was done, and her body cut into small pieces. her companions gathered to bury her remains, and were at once butchered by the soldiery, as well as a sick one, who had stayed behind in the wine press. the bodies of the thirty-four martyrs were thrown into the fields as food for the beasts of prey. the next day tiridates had kayane and two other companions put to death. these events occurred on the 5th and 6th of october, 301. shortly after, god visited the king and many of his household with a dreadful disease for his persecution of the saints. they ran around like mad people or demoniacs. while they were in this state, the king's virgin sister chosrovitukht had a divine revelation that she should go to ardashad and release gregory from the pit, and he would heal them all. as he had been thrown there fourteen years ago, and was believed to be long dead, no attention was paid to it; but the next day it was repeated five times with threats, and a chief named oda was sent, who brought him back alive, to their great amazement and joy. they prostrated themselves before him and asked forgiveness, but he told them to worship only their creator. then he demanded to be shown the bodies of the holy martyrs lately just slain for belief in christ; they were found after nine days and nights untouched, and he gathered them up and put them into the wine press, where he also established himself. first he ordered the king and all the people to fast five days, and commended them to the mercy of god; and after that for sixty consecutive days he preached the word of god, instructing them in all the mysteries of the christian religion. on the sixty-sixth day they again besought him to heal them, but first he made them build three chapels for the relics of the martyrs, each in a separate coffin, wall in the place where he had seen a vision of the son of god coming down from heaven, and erect a crucifix before which the people should prostrate themselves. finally, seeing that they all believed in the true god, st. gregory bade them kneel down and pray to him for healing; he himself prayed for them at the same time, and a miraculous cure was at once effected on all the sufferers. this done, gregory and tiridates set about exterminating idolatry; they smashed the idols and demolished the temples, the new converts joyfully assisting them. the work of conversion went on rapidly, under the wonderful preaching of the saint, and the zeal of the king; all the people converted were baptized by immersion. in eight years the majority of the armenian nation, many millions in number, had become christians. that religion was made the state creed of armenia in 310, while the council of nice, which did the same work for rome, was not held till 325. gregory deserves every credit for this magnificent work; but i cannot help wishing he had been less zealous in destroying the pagan literature, which is a very great loss to the world. however, christianity is worth it, if we could not have it at a less price. schools, as well as churches and benevolent institutions, were organized in great numbers under christian auspices during the next two or three centuries, and a brilliant band of scholars and preachers went out from them, the equals of any in their age, and perhaps in any age. i will give sketches of some of the principal figures, but first let me briefly tell the history of armenia during that period. the rivalry between rome and persia grew fiercer than ever with the introduction of christianity, for now religious hate was added to political ambition; and on the side of persia the armenian difficulties were doubled, for a considerable part of the armenians were still zoroastrians, and sympathized with the persians against their own government, while many of the persians had become christian, and opposed their pagan rulers. thus the persians felt that they had a civil war on their hands as well as foreign wars, and persecuted their christians horribly. on the other hand, they had the help of the pagan part of the armenians in invading or controlling that state; still again, the armenian christians now favored the romans much more strongly than they had before, because rome was now christian; while on top of all were the great barons, almost independent of the nominal kings, and who favored neither party but wanted their feudal independence. yet the roman control of the kingship, for what it was worth, lasted without a break for over half a century after the victory of christianity, and over three-quarters of a century from the accession of tiridates; which was due largely to the great ability of the roman emperors diocletian and constantine, and the excellent administration and military organization they left, which saved the eastern provinces from persia for over a quarter of a century after constantine's death. shahpur ii, of persia, won many victories, but he could not hold even the places he captured, and he gained no territory till the death of "julian the apostate" in his persian campaign of 363. his weak and frightened successor jovian surrendered a great section of the eastern roman territory, and still more disgracefully agreed that the romans should not help their ally arshag (arsaces), king of armenia, against shahpur. armenia was at once invaded, but she felt her national existence at stake, and fought with desperation. though shahpur had the help of two apostate armenian princes, merujan and vahan, and other native traitors, who ravaged the country and fought their king because he was a christian, arshag held out four years, aided by his heroic though unprincipled wife parantzem, and his able chief commander vashag. vagharshabad, ardashad, ervandshad, and many other cities were taken and destroyed; finally arshag and vashag were captured. arshag's eyes were put out, and he was thrown into a persian dungeon in ecbatana; vashag was flayed alive, and his skin stuffed and set near the king. queen parantzem still refused to surrender, and with 11,000 soldiers and 6,000 fugitive women held the fortress of ardis fourteen months, till nearly all of them were dead from hunger or disease; then she opened the gates herself. instead of honoring her, shahpur, who was a worthy predecessor of the turks, had her violated on a public platform by his soldiers, and then impaled (368). meantime, her and ashag's son, bab (papa), had escaped to constantinople and asked the help of the co-emperor valens. that emperor hated to break the treaty, and involve rome in a new eastern war; but he could not suffer persia to be strengthened by the possession of all armenia, and the roman statesmen had determined to end the long struggle over armenia by dividing it between persia and themselves. bab was secretly helped by the romans; he kept up a guerrilla warfare in the mountains, and a large part of the armenian people were prepared to welcome him back to his rightful throne. the romans tried to keep within the letter of their treaty by not letting him assume the title of king. the persians considered his support by greek troops a breach of the treaty, none the less, and valens alternately aided and disavowed him. the matter was not mended by the worthless character of bab himself, who murdered his best friends on the least suspicion, and had the incredible baseness to hold a secret correspondence with shahpur, the worse than murderer of his parents. finally the romans, convinced that he must be under their watch if they were to have any security of him, tolled him down to cilicia, and prevented him from returning by guards of soldiers. he made his escape, and professed his allegiance to the romans as before; but valens resolved to be rid of him, and had him murdered by count trajan, the roman commander in the east. meantime a powerful roman army under count trajan, and the chief persian host, had actually camped opposite each other on the borders of armenia (371); but neither side wanted a general war just then,--rome must have her hands free for the goths, and persia hers for the mongols. finally, in 379, shahpur died, and there was an instant and entire change in persian policy toward rome, and even toward christianity for a while. his brother and successor, ardashir, was an old man, and reigned but four years; his successor, shahpur iii, at once sent embassies to rome, and made a treaty of peace (384). finally, on the succession of bahram iv (kirman shah), in 390, that monarch arranged a treaty of partition with theodosius, the roman emperor, by which armenia ceased to exist. the western portion became a roman province; the then reigning sovereign, arshag iv, was made governor to keep the people contented. the eastern, and much the larger section, was annexed to persia, under the name of persarmenia; and to please the people, an arsacid, chosroes iv, was made governor, and the dynasty was continued in its rule over the armenians till after the great perso-roman war of 421-2, and the persecution of christians by persia, which was the pretext of it. the persecution and the war led to a movement for armenian independence; after it was over, bahram v of persia (gor, the wild ass, "the mighty hunter") put a new vassal, ardashes iv, into the governorship; but the great armenian barons would not give up the struggle, and this last of the arshagoonian dynasty was removed in 428 and persian governors substituted. thus ended the rule of the line of arshag. it was a mighty race, and swarms with brilliant names; but in persia it was justly displaced by one of better public policy, and in armenia the position of the country was fatal to it. the interregnum. prominent men; literature; the church and the clergy. from the time of the partition to the succession of the pakradoonian dynasty there was not in name an armenian kingdom; but it must not be supposed that there was not an armenian nation. no matter how its neighbor nations changed, that country was always called armenia, and the people held to their armenian ways and feelings. the national feeling was as strong as before, and above all the feeling of church unity was very intense. no one will ever understand armenian history, or indeed any oriental history at all, who does not realize that religious questions come first, and political questions second. the armenian church was, it is true, a christian church; but it was the armenian christian church, not the greek church, and the syrian and african churches had their separate creeds and preferences, and the greek church, which was the official church of the greek empire, was always trying to root out their "heresies" and make them greek. that was one reason why the mohammedans conquered those countries so easily. the africans would rather be ruled by the mohammedans than by the greek church, the syrians were angry because the greek church wanted to take away their own church and give them the greek. but the armenians would not take either the greek or the mohammedan or the zoroastrian; they wanted their own. so they were persecuted terribly by the greek christians and the persian fire-worshipers alike. just as before the partition, each country invaded the other's part of armenia whenever they got into war; and whichever won, the armenians were the losers. when the greeks won, they tortured the armenians; when the persians won, they tortured the armenians; later, when the mohammedans won, they also tortured the armenians. the mediaeval history of armenia is that of a battle-ground between contending races--greeks, persians, scythians, arabs, seljuk turks, ottoman turks, mongols, and so on. millions of its people were slain; millions died of famine and disease; millions of its women were forced to embrace mohammedanism and become the wives and mothers of mohammedans,--half the blood of those who are called turks at this day is armenian; millions of its boys were forced into the turkish service, so that many of the best-known names in turkish history, and in the turkey of to-day, are armenian names. yet through all these calamities and decimations armenia has kept its national life and national religion. from 390 to 640 the history of both sections of armenia is little more than an account of religious persecutions and their results; the persecutors on the one side were christians, and on the other side zoroastrians, but the results to the armenians were much the same. the persian atrocities, however, were on the larger scale, and the outcome was a chronic state of revolt, which will be alluded to in the sketch of vartan the defender. but the rise of the saracen power changed armenia's greatest foe from the persian to the arab, from the fire-worshipers to the mohammedans. persia was invaded by the forces of the caliph omar in 634, and about 640-2 the decisive battle of nehavend annihilated the last great persian army, though scattered places held out much longer. the armenian highlands at once resumed their independence, and their chiefs, with those of the western section belonging to the byzantine empire, fought for their own hand in lack of a true national chief whom all could look up to, but allied themselves mainly with the greek power against the barbarians; and for two entire centuries, and more, armenia was a furious and bloody battle-ground between greeks and saracens, while internally in a state of feudal anarchy. then a prince of the family of pakrad or bagrat (well-known to students of the last century's history in the form of bagration), of jewish descent, as has already been mentioned, which had obtained power over the central and northern parts of armenia, was recognized by the caliph as an independent monarch; and thus founded the pakradoonian dynasty, which lasted till armenia's independence was once more extinguished by the byzantine empire,--a crime almost immediately punished by the overwhelming of asia minor by the seljuk turks. prominent men of the period. nierses the great. this was the great creator of armenian scholarship. he was a descendant of st. gregory; studied in the greek schools of caesarea during boyhood; later in those of constantinople, where he became famous for learning, married a greek princess of a distinguished house, and on his return to armenia was made pontiff. (all the clergy were married then, as the greek priests are now.) he founded over 2,000 schools, and benevolent institutions, as well as great numbers of churches, was a powerful and persuasive preacher, and a considerable writer, part of the church history being his. from these schools went forth a very brilliant band of scholars, preachers and orators, the equals of any in the world. it was during his pontificate that the affairs of arshag and bab took place, and he was intimately connected with them till his death at the hands of the latter. previous to the desertion of armenia by the romans in 363, they had quarreled with arshag, and sent an army to punish him; but on nierses' intercession with valens it was recalled, and the saint obtained high favor with the emperor. arshag's conduct, however, grew too bad for endurance; he had his father and a relative named kuenel (or gnel) killed, and married kuenel's wife, parantzem (who afterwards met such a horrible fate), though his own wife, olympias, was still alive. nierses, finding admonition of no avail, quitted vagharshabad and went into a convent. but arshag, getting into fresh difficulties with the emperor and his own rebellious vassals, besought the saint to assist him once more, and once more nierses complied. he first pacified the turbulent nobility; then interceded with the roman commander to such effect that the general withdrew his army and went to constantinople to justify himself to the emperor, taking a letter to him from arshag, and hostages for the latter's loyalty, and also inducing nierses to accompany him. but valens was enraged at the withdrawal, would neither read the letter nor see the saint, and ordered the hostages killed and nierses banished. the former sentence was revoked on the general's intercession, but nierses was shipped for his place of exile; on the way a storm wrecked the vessel on a desert island, but he and the crew were saved. it was winter, and they could find no food but the roots of trees, but in a short time the sea miraculously cast abundance of fish on shore, and for eight months they never suffered for sustenance. at the end of that time the saint was set free. after the restoration of bab to the land, though not the acknowledged throne of his fathers, nierses convened an assembly of armenian princes and ecclesiastical heads, with the king, and swore them all to mutual concord and good behavior, to unite the land against the persians; but bab, like so many eastern potentates and indeed his father, cared for nothing but to indulge his own passions, and would have sold his country to shahpur if he could have got his price. nierses in vain tried to turn him from his evil ways; bab merely hated him for it, and finally had him poisoned, in the village of khakh in the province of eghueghiatz. nierses had been pontiff eight years, but they were crowded with labors of immense variety and usefulness. he left one son (isaac), who eventually became pontiff also. sahag and mesrob. isaac was educated at constantinople like his father, and had at first no thought of being a great churchman, but only of leading the life of a noble. he was always, however, of a very pure and lofty character, a marked contrast to the proud and dissolute nobility around him; and after the early death of his wife, devoted himself to religious seclusion, into which he was followed by sixty disciples. in 389, a few years after his father's death, he was called out to fill the pontificate, once more vacant. this was the year before the partition of armenia; but even after that, though the country was divided, the church was not. the armenian church was still one, with a single head; but the appointment of that head was of such immense political importance that, as the king had before claimed the deciding voice in it, so now each power insisted on being satisfied,--no easy matter. some of the nobles who opposed chosroes of persarmenia now complained to the king of persia that the appointment of the new pontiff had been made without his consent, in order to foment a rebellion, and make armenia independent again; and the king deposed isaac. shortly after, however, a new king reinstated him; and a new vassal king being put in chosroes' place, and the country more quiet, st. isaac began to repair the churches, which had fallen into decay,--rebuilding that of st. ripsime, destroyed by shahpur, in the course of which he discovered st. gregory's urn sealed with his cross-engraven signet. about this time st. mesrob began to be famous for sanctity. he was a scholar well versed in greek, syrian, and persian, as well as his native tongue; had been secretary to st. nierses, and after his death remained at court under the patronage of a prince named aravan, where he became chancellor. finally he became wearied of earthly glory and court corruptions, and entered a convent, whither many disciples were attracted by his learning and sanctity. hearing of st. isaac's beneficent deeds, however, he left the convent and attached himself to him; and under his authority preached and taught in all parts of the province. we are told that by the aid of the chief of koghten he extirpated a diabolic heathen sect in that province. but his fame is chiefly as having begun with isaac the golden age of armenian literature; i shall speak of this a little later. barouyr or broyerios. we must not judge the ability and reputation of men in their own ages solely by the familiarity of their names to us; those that have come down to us are a mere handful, and not by any means always the greatest of their time. much depends on chance--the preservation of certain works, and the loss of others, or certain men happening to do something dramatic. great orators are especially likely to be forgotten; they leave no written works of their own, and not being in political life, the common histories do not mention them. the name of barouyr is wholly unknown to this age; but we have the testimony of a contemporary writer, eunapius of sardis,--not a countryman of his, and therefore free from all suspicion of patriotic brag, and most unlikely to make out an armenian greater than he was,--that he was the most wonderful orator of his time, famous all over the roman world, and greatly admired even by the emperors. he was one of those men to whom all languages seem alike to come by nature, and his oratory was as easy and as perfect in one as in the other; in latin or greek as in his national armenian. the only comparison i can give in modern times is louis kossuth. that barouyr has not the fame of cicero or demosthenes, kossuth or gladstone, is probably because under the circumstances of the time he could not engage in political life; military service or high birth were about the only avenues to that. i will quote in substance what eunapius says of this brilliant orator, whom he probably knew all about, as our boys know gladstone,--for he was born in 347, and barouyr was certainly alive in the time of the emperor julian, who came to the throne in 361:-barouyr lived to be ninety, and was beautiful even in old age, having the vigor of youth in his looks. he was eight feet high. when a boy he left armenia and went to antioch, the first seat of the christians, and entered the school of oratory under the celebrated albianos, where he shortly became the foremost pupil. thence he went to athens and studied under julian, the greatest of the teachers of oratory there,--supporting himself by working meantime, as he was very poor; in no long time he was recognized as the leading orator of athens, and taught the art to the athenians. the other teachers were so angry that they bribed the governor to banish him; but on the governor's removal some time after, he was permitted to return. the new governor instituted an oratorical competition; whoever could deliver the best extempore oration on a subject to be given out on the spot, should receive great honors. barouyr took part on condition that the auditors should take careful notes, and should not cheer; but they were so fascinated that they broke both conditions, listening in rapture and applauding repeatedly. the governor offered him his chair, and honored him as the greatest orator in athens. later, the emperor constans was so struck with his wisdom and oratorical power that he called him first to gaul and then to rome, where he delivered his greatest orations, and the romans erected a bronze monument in his honor, inscribed "regina rerum romae, regi eloquentiae" (rome queen of affairs, to the king of eloquence). from rome he returned to athens, and taught there many years with great repute, up to the time of the emperor julian, who honored him, and spoke as follows of him: "barouyr was a flowing river of oratory, and in power and persuasiveness of speech was like pericles." and i must add that with all this he was a thorough christian man,--not a priest, but a great christian layman and teacher. vartan, defender of the faith. vartan mamigonian is the most esteemed and beloved name in armenian history. tiridates founded the christian kingdom; but when the religion was in danger of extermination throughout persian armenia at the hands of the fire-worshipers, vartan saved it, and died for it, a faithful servant of god and his saviour. it was said of him that he was an honest, modest, wise, brave, true, pure, childlike, and christ-like christian commander, a great soldier of the cross. he was a lamb in nature, but when he came to defend his religion he was a lion. as a little boy he was so full of grace that the pontiff sahag adopted him as his son; and through this companionship of the aged ecclesiastic and the religious boy, the latter developed into a great spiritual light. in 421 he went to constantinople with st. mesrob, and was much loved and esteemed by the emperor (theodosius ii) and the court; then to persia, where the king honored him and gave him the title of prince. in 439 yazdegerd ii of persia succeeded his father, bahram v, the destroyer of the arsacid dynasty, and began a furious persecution of both jews and christians, which lasted a dozen years, and ended in a complete victory for religious freedom. the king, like james i of england, fancied himself a great theologian, and could always be victorious in a debate by killing his opponent. one specimen will suffice. he called a convocation of armenian priests and noblemen, and commanded them to embrace fire-worship on pain of death. "your christ cannot save you," said he, "for he is crucified and dead." "oh my gracious king," replied a young nobleman, "why did you not read further about christ? he was indeed crucified, but rose again, ascended to heaven, and is living now and our saviour." the king in a rage had his head struck off. finally in 450 the people of persian armenia rose in revolt, and determined to fight for their religion. vartan took command of them, and showed himself the ablest commander of his time. for a year he held at bay the overwhelming forces of the persian empire, and was victorious in every battle, even to the last,--a striking parallel to judas maccabaeus in historical position, as well as military ability. finally the forces were arrayed for battle on the banks of the dughmood river, in the plains of avarayr, near the present city of van. vartan had 66,000 men, the persians several times as many. vartan prayed to god for help, and to christ for his own salvation; then he made a speech to his soldiers, in substance as follows:--"soldiers, as christians we are averse from fighting; but to defend the christian religion and our own freedom we have to fight. surely our lives are not as valuable as christ's, and if he was willing to die on the cross for us, we ought to be willing to die in battle for him." then, with his troops, he crossed the river, fell on the enemy's center, and scattered the huge army in rout, killing 3,544 men besides nine great princes, and losing 1,036 of his own; but alas! one of these was himself, dying from a mortal wound not long after. nevertheless, he had won the victory he was striving for. yazdegerd saw it was impossible to conquer the armenians in a war for religion, and granted entire liberty to the christians to believe and preach as they pleased. armenian literature. fifth century. the armenian schools and universities and their outpour of great scholars and writers have already been spoken of, but of course armenian youths, eager for the best of the world's learning, did not confine themselves to their own country; they studied in constantinople, athens, antioch, alexandria, and wherever great teachers were located. all were zealous christians, and the books they have left behind were christian literature, not works of mere enjoyment. a very rich and valuable literature it is, too, in my judgment the most so of any single body that exists; though much of it has perished in the recent destruction of everything christian the turks can reach. my readers will not credit my opinion of it, because most of it has never been translated, but that makes it all the more valuable now, it has so much that is new to add to the stores of the world. it is not necessary to give them all, but to point out the chief writers. the fifth century is called the golden age of armenian literature. first in point of time as well as importance comes the armenian bible. the furious opposition of the church in the middle ages to letting the people have the bible to read in their own tongues seems perfectly ridiculous, when we remember that in the early christian church every people had it in their own language, and it was thought to be the greatest work for a heathen people that could be done, to translate the bible for them. it was not thought needful then to keep the word of god in a strange tongue, so that the people could neither read it for themselves nor understand it when it was read to them. there were probably some books of popular tales and songs in armenia before the fifth century, for we are told that there was an armenian alphabet to write them in as early as the second, but if so they have all perished, and the alphabet was doubtless a poor and meager one. armenian scholars and writers read greek or latin books, and occasionally hebrew or syriac ones, and wrote in greek or latin themselves; if it was necessary to write armenian, as in letters, they made the greek, syriac, or persian characters, which of course were insufficient to give the armenian sounds. they would have got along with this, however, if it had not been for the eagerness of christian enthusiasm which made them wish to give the bible to armenia; it was to spread the word of god, not to write books, that they were anxious. st. mesrob set to work and invented a very perfect alphabet of thirty-six letters, to which two have been added since. according to one of his disciples, having vainly sought help from the learned, he prayed to god, and received the new alphabet in a vision. this was about 405. he and sahag the pontiff at once began to translate the new testament and the book of proverbs from a poor greek version, the best they had, with the assistance of two pupils, john of eghueghiatz and joseph of baghin. this was finished in 406. many years later (seemingly about the time persian armenia was made a satrapy), they undertook the translation of the old testament; but as the persians had destroyed all the greek mss., it was necessary to use a syriac version. the same two assistants aided them; but being sent to the council of ephesus in 431, they brought back copies of the greek septuagint, and the old translation was at once dropped, and a new one put under way. but all found their knowledge of greek too imperfect to rely on, and the pupils were sent to alexandria and athens to complete their education; on their return they seem to have brought a new alexandrian version, and corrections were made from that, and the work completed, most likely about 435. the bible completed, they turned to other labors. the saints sahag and mesrob are said to have written six hundred books themselves, all in christian theology and instruction; and the pupils from the schools st. nierses and themselves had founded--the chief of their own were at noravank, ayri, and vochkhoroz--wrote great numbers besides. the first original work of sahag was one on pastoral theology, setting forth that the church of christ is the bride of christ, and the ministers must therefore be holy, pure, and obedient. he wrote many epistles to kings and emperors, all of whom reverenced and were greatly influenced by him. he wrote a large part of the armenian church history, composed many hymns, and translated many commentaries and theological works from the greek. fortunately during this period the government of armenia was very good, with the exception of one period of two years or so; even after its partition, for close on forty years it had practically self-government in internal affairs, and for another decade the christians enjoyed full rights of worship. bahram iv of persia (389-399), who helped divide it, was a monarch who loved peace above all things, both with foreign countries and his own people; his successor, yazdegerd i (399-420), went even further, employed the catholicos or pontiff on embassies to constantinople, and as mediator with his own brother, and made his son, shahpur, governor of persian armenia, continuing the arsacid dynasty. he was murdered by his nobles, instigated by the zoroastrian priests, for being too tolerant to the christians, and his successor bahram v, who got the throne by favor of the rebellious elements, tried to please them by persecuting the christians; this involved him in a war with rome, as i have said, and after a couple of years he made peace and gave toleration again. the turning of persian armenia into a satrapy in 428 i have already told; but no fresh persecution was undertaken till that of yazdegerd ii, in 439, ending in vartan's revolt just detailed. shahpur of armenia was a prince of great wisdom, generosity, and public spirit; he patronized men of learning, founded schools, made large grants from the treasury for scholarship, and sent scholars to all the great seats of learning to teach and acquire the languages, literature, and history of other nations, after which they wrote and translated hundreds of volumes. among them were tavit, khosrov, mampre, and zazar; a great historian, eghishe (elisaeus), author of the life of vartan; and a great philosopher, yeznic. these are only a few out of scores worthy of mention. dr. philip schaff says:--"in spite of the unfavorable state of political and social affairs in armenia during this epoch, more than six hundred greek and syrian works were translated within the first forty years after the translation of the bible; and as in many cases the original works have perished, while the translations have been preserved, the great importance of this whole literary activity is apparent. among works which in this way have come down to us are several books by philo-alexandrinus, on providence, on reason, commentaries, etc.; the chronicle of eusebius, nearly complete; the epistles of ignatius, translated from a syrian version; fifteen homilies by severianus; the exegetical writings of ephraim syrus, previously completely unknown, on the historical books of the old testament, the synoptical gospels, the parables of jesus, and the fourteen pauline epistles; the hexahemeron of basil the great; the catechesis of cyril of jerusalem; several homilies by chrysostom, etc. the period, however, was not characterized by translations only. several of the disciples of mesrob and sahak left original works. esnik wrote four books against heretics, printed at venice in 1826, and translated into french by le vailliant de florival, paris, 1853. a biography of mesrob by koriun, homilies by mambres, and various writings by the philosopher david, have been published; and the works of moses chorenensis, published in venice in 1842, and again in 1864, have acquired a wide celebrity; his history of armenia has been translated into latin, french, italian, and russian." sixth century. the leading authors in this century are abraham mamigonian, who wrote on the council of ephesus; and bedross sounian, who wrote on the life of christ. there are, however, many others of merit. seventh century. by far the greatest name in this century, and indeed the best-known and most important name in armenian literature altogether, is the writer who calls himself movses khorentzi, well known to all historical scholars as moses of chorene, author of the history of armenia. for more than a thousand years, up to this century, indeed, this was practically the only source of armenian history to the world; the other writers were inaccessible. and it is still very valuable, though not in just the way it was once thought to be. it preserves a vast amount of armenian tradition, stories and ballads, and real history, which have perished except for this work; but he seems not to have had the greek and latin histories to draw from, and makes a great many mistakes. he gives a life of himself, and says he is writing in the fifth century, and knew sahag and mesrob when he was young; but he really lived in the seventh, and wrote history about the year 640. but still he is a great writer, and one of armenia's literary lights; and we do not need to claim for him anything more than he deserves. besides movses, the chief authors were gomidas, yezr, matossagha, krikoradour, hovhannes, vertanes, and anania. they wrote chiefly religious books; but anania shiragatzi is the author of a valuable work on astronomy. eighth century. the leading authors were: hovhan imassdasser, sdepannoss sounetzi, and levont yeretz. they wrote hymns, books on oratory, etc. ninth century. zakaria shabooh, tooma, kourken, etc. tenth century. the chief authors were anania, khasrov, and krikor naregatzi. the latter wrote a prayer book in ninety-five chapters, which one of the missionaries of the american board thinks the best in the world. he says that only beecher was able to offer such prayers as krikor naregatzi. eleventh century. the leading writers were hovhannes, krikor, and aristagues. in this century some of the best commentaries were written on the bible. twelfth century. leading authors: nerses shinorhali is the foremost of armenian poets, and a thoroughly converted and consecrated man of god. his hymns were intensely spiritual, and the armenians still chant them in their churches. they are worthy to be translated into english. nerses lampronatzi, the greatest scholar ever born in armenia, was a distinguished commentator on the old testament, and wrote many other books. another is yeremia. again i quote from the schaff-herzog encyclopaedia:--"another nourishing period falls in the twelfth century, during the rubenian dynasty. nerses klagensis and nerses lambronensis belong to this period; also ignatius, whose commentary to the gospel of st. luke appeared in constantinople in 1735 and 1824; sargis shnorhali, whose commentary on the catholic epistles was published in constantinople in 1743, and again in 1826; matthew of edessa, whose history, comprising the period from 952 to 1132, and continued by gregory the priest to 1163, contains many interesting notices concerning the crusaders; samuel aniensis, the chronologist; michael syrus, whose history has been edited with a french translation by v. langlois, paris, 1864; mekhitar kosh, of whom a hundred and ninety fables appeared at venice, 1780 and 1812. a most powerful impulse the armenian literature received in the eighteenth century by the foundation of the mekhitarist monastery in venice, from whose press the treasures of the armenian literature were spread over europe, and new works, explaining and completing the old, were added. the armenian liturgy was published in 1826, the breviary in 1845, the ritual in 1831." thirteenth century. leading authors:-krikor sguevratzi, kevork sguevratzi, mukhitar anetzi, vanagan vartabed, vartan vartabed, etc. they wrote histories, commentaries, etc. as the armenian dynasties ended in the fourteenth century, i will reserve my notes on the later literature till towards the end of the book. the peculiar value of the armenian literature is not realized as it should be, by european and american scholars; the language is well worth learning for what it can give the student. not alone is the original work that comes from the first christian nation specially valuable for its bearing on primitive christianity, but the armenian scholars translated great numbers of works from other languages, and these translations are preserved in armenian monasteries when the originals have been irretrievably lost in the wars, and burnings, and devastations of other countries. six hundred volumes of this old literature are known to exist now, two hundred in europe, and four hundred in different places in armenia. the armenian church. the first thing to remember about this is, that it is an independent and separate body as much as the greek or the roman catholic church, and older than either of them. i often hear such expressions as "the armenian catholic church," and many people think it simply a "branch" of the great eastern or greek church. it would be just as sensible to consider the greek a branch of the armenian church. each of them represents a form of church organization and body of doctrine which best satisfied the representatives of certain races or nations; the advantage of the greek was that that race--or at least its speech and thought--happened to be dominant in the roman empire at the time when christianity won the battle, and so had the official backing of the empire, and was able to outgrow and crush down the others. it was not any truer, any more the real church of christ, than the syrian or african or armenian; it was not the earliest, for the very first christian churches sprang from the jews; it was not even the earliest great national church body, for the armenian church has that distinction. it had the most soldiers back of it to put down its opponents, that is all. i have already told the story of the foundation of the armenian church by st. gregory and tiridates. that church has its own head--the catholicos or pontiff, who is no more a subordinate of either the pope or the greek patriarch than the grand llama is, or dr. parkhurst--and its own self-subsistent being. as to the differences between them, in the first place the armenian is a purely trinitarian. there is no room for unitarianism within its lines. when gregory the illuminator was preaching his sermons on the hills and plains of armenia, he laid the foundation of the national church in the trinity. his first sermon was on the trinity; his last sermon was on the trinity. in all his sermons he asserted the trinity,--the father, the son, and the holy ghost. jesus christ being a perfect man and a perfect god; in his person we see god in man and man in god; a perfect emmanuel, god with us. we see in him that man can be united with god. the only possible way of salvation is through jesus christ. he is the saviour of the world and none else, and whosoever believeth in him shall be saved. this is the belief and the only belief of the armenian church. its members repeat the apostolic creed and the lord's prayer every day in their churches. i say every day because armenians go to church every day,--twice, morning and evening, and three times on sunday. secondly, the armenian has never been a persecuting church, and every other one of the great christian churches has been. the armenian church, as befits the first and most christ-like of all the bodies that professed christ before luther's time, has always been the broadest, the most inclusive, the most untechnical of churches. it fellowships with all other churches. it demands only that men shall profess and believe in christ, and live christian lives; not that one shall belong to its own church body. its canons are conversion and regeneration, purity, holiness, being born again from the holy spirit and becoming christ-like. it holds that christianity is brotherhood through jesus christ, and gives no warrant for oppression or persecution, curses or anathemas. i need hardly say that it is alone in this of the older churches. the others hold that no one can be saved outside of their own bodies; hence they fulminate anathemas against all others, and have the anathemas read in their churches, and they persecute others to compel them to join themselves, or rid the world of a possible danger that their own members may be tolled outside. the greek church, where it has full power, will not even allow people of other creeds to come into its country; for example, in croatia a protestant is not allowed to live there at all, and the people said in the hungarian diet that "intolerance was the most precious of their rights." the russian greek church will not permit a protestant missionary in russia. where the roman catholic power is complete, it is just as intolerant. the armenian church has been repeatedly persecuted by both, and has always protested against the principle of it, as well as against the pretensions of the popes to universal sway. it is fairly entitled to be called the first protestant church. that the armenian contention is for freedom of will, freedom of conscience, freedom of worship, and political freedom, is the cause of their being hated both by the mohammedans and by their so-called christian neighbors; but it ought to be also a reason why americans, who believe in these things themselves, should sympathize with us. if the armenians would accept mohammedanism, would the turks persecute them? no. if they would accept roman catholicism would the turks persecute them? no, for the catholic states would not permit it. if they would accept the greek church, would the turks persecute them? no, for russia would not permit it. but as they are an independent church the others are interested in persecuting them, and nobody is interested in defending them. if there is any help to come to them it will not be from the old churches of europe, but from protestant anglo-saxons helping their spiritual brethren, the anglo-saxons of the east; and it will be found, when the great battle comes, that the slavonic, greek, and catholic churches will be on the side of the mohammedans against the armenian christians. but that battle will come, and the victory will be on the side of freedom and righteousness. as to theological questions, the armenian church fathers did not pay much attention to them. not because they were not able, but because they were too able, and very far-sighted. they knew well that such questions can never be solved, no matter how many centuries pass away, no matter how great scholars the world produces; therefore they would not enter into the debate. and so every armenian scholar has his own theology. i confess that the armenian church has not a theology, or an especial official doctrine; and this is a very fortunate thing for the armenians. they care more for righteousness of life than for particular beliefs about the way of getting it. when there was a great controversy in the council of chalcedon, 451 a.d., about the nature of christ, armenians did not care about it. some of the great theologians said christ had two natures; some said he had only one nature; the armenian bishops would not give any opinion. they believe in christ as their saviour, that is the essential thing; but whether he has two natures or one nature is not essential. then came the controversy about the holy spirit. whence does the holy spirit proceed? some say from the father and the son, some simply from the father. when the question came before the armenian bishops they replied that they did not care whence he proceeds. they know that they need the holy spirit for guidance in spiritual life, for regeneration; they know that the holy spirit is one of the persons in the trinity; and that is enough for them. now i would ask, do the theologians of the nineteenth century agree on such questions, or any other theological question? are the theologians of the coming centuries going to agree on them? i leave this to the scholars of europe and america. i simply state that i studied in three different theological seminaries in america; first in oberlin, in 1880; second in union theological seminary, new york, in 1881; and finally i was graduated from the chicago theological seminary. but i never saw a theologian who could agree with any other, and have no hope ever to see any such. president fairchild of oberlin differed from professor shedd of new york, and professor boardman of chicago did not agree with either of them; and i never agreed with any of them, and as an armenian i have my own theology. so every reader of this book will see that the armenian scholars had the best judgment, far-sightedness, and common sense of those in any or all the communions. instead of theological controversies, they preached the gospel and reached the masses, for the kingdom of christ. the armenian clergy. the armenian clergy are divided into three classes: the pastor, the preacher, and the presiding bishop. the pastor is called yeretz, the preacher is called vartabed, and the presiding bishop is called yebisgobos (episcopus). the presiding bishop ordains the preacher and the teacher. the armenians believe in apostolic succession, and they believe in immersion. baptism can be administered both to grown people and to children, if they are the children of members of the church; but always by immersion, and in the name of the father, the son, and of the holy ghost. if you unite the present episcopal church with the baptist, you will make an armenian church. all the clergy of the armenian church, bishops, preachers, and teachers, were married in the early centuries. gregory the illuminator, the first bishop of armenia, was married. his sons were bishops, and were married. there was no church law whatever against marriage of the clergy. at present the bishop and the preacher, or the yebisgobos and the vartabed, cannot marry, but the pastor or yeretz must be married. no armenian pastor can be ordained if he is not married. of course i am not writing here an armenian church history; the main object in writing this book is to inform the american public about the causes of the atrocities, and the atrocities themselves. therefore i consider the above information about the armenian church enough; but i will add that the armenian church until the twelfth century was as simple in ceremonial as any american protestant church is to-day. but when their kingdom was coming to an end, and they were in a life-and-death struggle with the mohammedan powers, popes innocent, benedict, and others promised to help them if they would accept some of the roman doctrines and ritual; and since that time--the twelfth century--there has been more or less similarity in the ceremonial of the two churches. but armenians have never believed in the pope, and now they are getting rid of the roman ritual also, as it is foreign to them. before i finish this subject, i must give a little information about the armenian patriarch in constantinople, and the armenian catholicos of etchmiazin. there are many people in this country who do not know the difference between the patriarch and the catholicos. the difference between them is as follows: the patriarch at constantinople has nothing to do with religion, though he is a bishop. as a personal bishop, he goes to the church, and occasionally preaches and leads the pastors, but his duty is political. he is the political head of the armenians in constantinople, and responsible to the sultan for the armenian nation who live in turkey. the armenians are not anxious to have such a political head; it is simply the wish of the sultan, or it has been the wishes of the sultans in centuries gone by. the present patriarch, right rev. bishop izmirlian, is a very learned, experienced, and eloquent bishop. he is very popular; the whole armenian nation love and esteem him; but the sultan hates him, because he is brave, honest, and true. the sultan ordered him to send out false reports, alleging that the armenians were not being massacred, but were safe and prospering under abdul hamid's reign; but the patriarch refused to issue any such documents while in fact the armenians were being plundered, tortured, outraged, and killed. the patriarch's life is consequently in great danger, but the patriarch says that if it is necessary to sacrifice his life for his beloved nation, he is ready to die. the armenian catholicos is the spiritual head of the armenian church; he has nothing to do with politics. he is considered to be fallible, and he is elected both by bishops and laymen; and if the nation is not satisfied with him, they may remove him and elect another. he is a presiding bishop. he lives at etchmiazin (the former vagharshabad) north of mt. ararat in russia; it has been the seat of the pontiff since the time of st. gregory. the present catholicos is rt. rev. bishop mugurditch kirimian. he is very much esteemed and loved by the armenians throughout the world. before he became catholicos, he was patriarch in constantinople, and was the most popular and the ablest of patriarchs, but the present sultan of course hated him, and according to stories i heard from good authority, when i was in constantinople, tried repeatedly to kill him. one day he was summoned to the palace to see the sultan; but on arriving there, was instead locked into a room with a brazier of burning charcoal, and left to die. before it was too late, however, the russian ambassador, being informed of the attempt, saved his life. failing to get rid of him that way, the sultan banished him to jerusalem, but sent false reports to the newspapers, that he thought highly of the patriarch, and had given him money to go to jerusalem that he might improve his health and enjoy himself. the sultan lives and breathes falsehood. while in jerusalem, kirimian was shadowed by the sultan's detectives; but about three years ago he was elected catholicos by the armenians, and the russian czar (not the present one, but his father, alexander), sanctioned his election. the armenians are proud of him, for he is worthy of his office. he is a great scholar, and the author of several books which are worthy of translation into english. his book traghti endanik (the family of paradise), is the best book i ever saw or read in any language on family life. in it he describes the first holy family, which was created in the garden of eden, in armenia, and then goes on to describe a holy family, the ideal family, a true home. it is full of the holy spirit. catholicos kirimian was married and had a family, and really his family was a holy family and he had an ideal home,--therefore armenians call him kirimian hayrig or "father," and he is worthy of the title; but his wife died. he is also a great orator, preaching fiery gospel sermons as our greatest revivalists preach them. he loved the american missionaries in constantinople, and they returned the feeling. kirimian was born in van april 16, 1820; therefore he is now 76 years old, but full of life and vigor. i hope he will live longer, to see his beloved nation and country saved from the oppressions of the cruel turkish sultan. i could write a book on the life of kirimian and his great deeds in armenia, for the armenians; how he opened schools and established printing presses; how he went to the congress in berlin and championed the armenian cause; and all his noble works. but this is not the place. the pakradoonian dynasty. for a century after the mohammedan conquest of persia, the fortunes of armenia were apparently at their lowest ebb, and as a country it almost disappears from history; but by one of the compensations of nature, which provides that human force, like other force, cannot be extinguished, but if suppressed will find an outlet elsewhere, its people began a career of brilliancy and power unequaled in its history, and broadened from the rule of a tormented buffer-state to that of the great byzantine empire itself. the saracen torrent flowed over armenia's lowlands and up to the base of its mountain fortresses, but never overcame them; generation after generation the contending forces battled together, surging back and forth, and filling the beautiful valleys with fire and blood, but armenia proper was never added to the list of saracen conquests, never made a part of the mohammedan empire or strengthened mohammedanism till four centuries later through byzantine greed and folly. internally it was all in feudal anarchy again so far as concerned any one central focus of government. even the persian satraps had gone from the persian side, and with them the half-control they had kept over the turbulent baronage; on the roman side from early in the seventh century to early in the eighth, the throne of constantinople was filled with weak and unstable monarchs, fighting for anatolia against the saracens, and unable to exercise any effective control over armenia, to which indeed they looked as a frontier defense against those very foes. but let us not attach too harsh a meaning to "anarchy." there were a hundred rulers, it is true, great dukes and barons, each supreme in his own district; but because they held power by the sword against a savage enemy, their subjects had to be a strong, independent race, with arms in their hands, which they would use against their chiefs as well as the foreigners if there was great oppression. in this fiery school, armenia learned the sternest lessons of self-help and discipline. with no interference from outsiders to fear, and no help from them to be got, it became even more confirmed in its own independent isolated ways, a world to itself as it has been ever since. its cultivators tilled their fields as they had done for so many centuries, and its scholars read such books as they had, and wrote such as their own minds furnished. but vast numbers of its hardy sons took service in the greek armies, and became the bone and sinew of the defense of asia minor against the caliphs; not only so, but they rose by hundreds to the highest commands in the empire, both civil and military. they formed the best "society" in constantinople itself; and to crown all, a score of emperors and empresses in four different lines, including the most illustrious ones that ever sat on the throne from constantine down, and who ruled the empire for two hundred and seventy-seven years, were armenians. it is within the truth, and can be justified from the greatest of english historians, to say that for four centuries the byzantine empire was not a greek but an armenian empire. armenians by blood filled all the great offices of state, commanded the armies, occupied the throne for nearly three hundred years, preserved the empire from external invasion and internal disintegration. it was the accession of an armenian dynasty that turned it from a decaying power to one that expanded steadily for two centuries, from one falling into anarchy to one the glory of the world for scientific organizations; and it was the final overthrow of armenian influence that ruined the empire, being followed almost at once by the loss of half its territory and the richest part, and the break-up of its system of civil administration. everywhere in the time of byzantine glory you find the list full of armenian names. the appearance of "bardas" as the name of generals or civil magnates is always proof of armenian blood, and that name is monotonously common; it is the greek form of "vartan," though now and then they make it "bardanes." one of the greatest conquerors in byzantine history, john kurkuas, was an armenian, from a family which supplied three generations of statesmen and generals, and two great emperors. and this is part of what the immortal historian of "greece under foreign domination," george finlay, has to say:-"at the accession of leo iii (717), the hellenic race occupied a very subordinate position in the empire. the predominant influence in the political administration was in the hands of asiatics, and particularly of armenians, who filled the highest military commands. of the numerous rebels who assumed the title of emperor, the greater part were armenians. artabasdos, who rebelled against his brother, constantine v, was an armenian. alexios mousel, strangled by order of constantine vi, in the year 790; bardan called the turk, who rebelled against nicephorus i; arsaber [arshavir] the father-in-law of leo v, convicted of treason in 808; and thomas, who revolted against michael ii, were all asiatics, and most of them armenians. many of the armenians in the byzantine empire belonged to the oldest and most illustrious families in the christian world; and their connection with the remains of roman society at constantinople, in which the pride of birth was cherished, was a proof that asiatic influence had eclipsed roman and greek in the government of the empire. an amazing instance of the influence of asiatic prejudices at constantinople will appear in the eagerness displayed by basil i, a sclavonian groom from macedonia, to claim descent from the armenian royal family." (but i shall show that he was an armenian.) let us note the armenian sovereigns of the byzantine empire. first the great iconoclast house, of leo the so-called isaurian, the saviour and restorer of the empire, which reigned from 716 to 797. leo considered himself an armenian, and he ought to have known best, and he married his daughter to an armenian. he saved constantinople from capture by the saracens, causing the destruction of the finest mohammedan army ever got together; of its 180,000 men only 30,000 got back home, according to the mohammedan historians. twenty-two years later another great moslem army was annihilated by leo, and for two centuries the saracens scarcely troubled the empire again. but not only so, he remodeled the whole administration so effectively that no serious break-down occurred for three centuries, and he put new life into the whole society, so that it began to outgrow its enemies, as well as outfight them. after his able dynasty ended, another armenian, leo v, reigned seven and a half years, from 813 to 820. about half a century later began the basilian dynasty, under which the laws were codified, and bulgaria destroyed. basil was born in macedonia, but the name of his brother, symbatios, armenian simpad, shows that he was of an armenian family, the colonies of armenians having spread all over the civilized world. his line reigned without a break from 867 to 963, when the beautiful widow theophano was pushed aside for sixteen years by another armenian house, nikephoros phokas and his nephew john zimiskes, two of the ablest generals and statesmen ever on the throne, descendants of a brother of the great commander, john kurkuas, before spoken of; then theophano's son, basil ii--boulgaroktonos, the bulgarian slayer, and the ultimate destroyer of armenia as well--took the throne, 979, and the dynasty continued till 1057, when it had run to dregs, and had just before finally ruined armenia, and by so doing ruined the empire. to go back to armenia itself. the reason a feudal anarchy always ends in a military monarchy, no matter how able or self-willed every one of the separate chiefs may be, is that this very class most interested in perpetuating it grow weary of it. the stronger barons oppress and plunder the weaker, who are always superior in numbers, and in united strength if they will act together. a small lord may like to be free from control by the king's officers as well as a great one; but if he can only have that privilege by letting his overbearing neighbor be free from it too, and rob him, he finds it does not pay, and sighs for a law that will control everyone alike, and a strong ruler to enforce it. so if a chief in such a community comes to be known as having a hard hand and letting no one be above the law but himself, the small landholders flock under his banner; he grows into a prince, and eventually some prince of such a family will make himself king, with the goodwill and help of all but a few great houses, who feel able to take care of themselves and desirous of taking care of others. this happened in armenia. in 743, a century after the battle of nehavend and four years after leo's crushing defeat of the second great saracen army, we find that a chief named ashod, of the family of pakrad or bagrat, claiming descent from the ancient jews (see the haigian dynasty in this book), had managed to win control over central and northern armenia; how long it had been exercised, or what it grew from, no one knows. ashod i is the first known founder of the pakradoonian dynasty, though it is counted as beginning from the recognition of its independence by the caliphs over a century later. he recovered some parts of armenia proper, and fought hard for lesser armenia. the family had vigorous blood in it, and somewhere in the ninth century--885 is the date fixed--it was recognized by the caliphs as an independent house of kings, and armenia as a kingdom. but it had really been so for over a hundred years before. ashod ii, "the iron," gained his title from his stern military power; he beat back the arabs and gave the land peace for a considerable time. he left no son, and his brother appas succeeded him; another brave and wise ruler, who brought back the armenian captives held in bondage by the saracens. he made the city of kars his capital. it is now owned by russia, having been captured by her forces in the russo-turkish war of 1878. he greatly improved the city, and built a beautiful cathedral there. after a reign of twenty-four years he died in peace, and his son succeeded him as ashod iii. this was the glory of the line in prowess and generosity; he reminds one of alfred the great, in england. he was the terror of his country's enemies; not one of them--arab, greek, or persian--dared to invade armenia, and they sent presents to conciliate his friendship. it was under him that the country became formally independent again. he filled it with fortified places. he gave all his personal income in charity, and established almshouses and state charities. he was so benevolent and so interested in the destitute that he was called the merciful. he ruled over armenia twenty-six years, and was succeeded by his son simpad. this was neither a good man nor good ruler; corrupt, cruel, and ambitious only for selfish purposes. he made the city of ani, on the north side of mt. ararat, the royal capital, built strong walls and lofty towers around it, and is said to have erected 1001 churches in it--which he might do, and still be a bad man. the extent of its still existing ruins of palaces, churches, towers, and castles testifies that it was one of the great cities of the world, like babylon and antioch. for more than a century armenia flourished and grew rich; then it disappeared once more under the hammer and anvil of byzantine and saracen, aided by internal disruption--the traitorousness of its great nobles, who hated the kings for controlling their lawlessness. let us take in just its situation. it included the heart of the armenian highlands; but it had not the extent of old armenia, several armenian districts being independent of it, and either free or tributary to the byzantine empire. ani was its seat; but the district around kars, fifty miles northwest, had split off into a separate principality, the boundary between the two being the aras; on the east was vaspourakan, another princedom; on the west sebaste, another; on the north iberia, and abkhasia or abasgia or albania, the realms of the georgians; and one or two others not quite certain,--but all these ruled by armenian princes, mostly of the pakradoonian house. though armenia was in fragments, therefore, the pieces formed a sort of family confederacy, and often acted together, as they did to their eventual ruin. their folly paved the way for the destruction of armenian national existence, and the worse folly of a byzantine emperor accomplished it. about 1020 the seljuk turks were pressing so hard on vaspourakan that the prince, sennacherib, was unable to hold out, and ceded his dominion to basil ii of constantinople in return for the sovereignty of sebaste, which he agreed to hold as a byzantine governor; great numbers of his subjects went with him. something about this transaction roused the armenian national feeling to resentment; for john simpad, king of armenia (known at this time as the kingdom of ani, from its capital), joined with george the pakradoonian king; of iberia, to promise help to a couple of discontented generals, one at least an armenian, who were to raise the standard of revolt in cappadocia and call on all armenians to rise. it was to have been a general revolt of all eastern asia minor. but the mighty basil, conqueror of bulgaria, and nearing the end of his half-century's reign, first crushed the rebellion by buying up one of the generals and getting him to assassinate the other (the armenian), and then crushed the league of bagratian kings. the king of armenia, as the price of retaining his throne, was compelled to sign a treaty ceding the kingdom to the byzantine empire after his death. john simpad was succeeded by his nephew kakig, an able ruler and good general. but in 1042 there was placed on the byzantine throne the fourth husband of the despicable old female (zoe), whose male creatures, married or not married to her, misgoverned the empire for nearly thirty years. the reign of constantine monomachos stands out black in the history of the world; it not only destroyed armenia, but it fatally wounded the greek empire; it gave asia minor to the turks; it was the first great step towards subjecting eastern christianity to the mohammedans; it began the eastern question. the sack of constantinople by the turks, four centuries later, was directly due to it. almost never has sheer contemptible negative good-for-nothingness produced such awful results. he was a worthless man and an utterly incapable statesman; a libertine without decency, a spend-thrift without generosity or taste, a ruler without sense of responsibility. having spent on debauchery or his favorites, or diversions, or palaces in constantinople, or other selfish, short-sighted gratifications, or on the church to win its indulgence for them, all the money he could wring from his subjects without risking his throne, he bethought himself of another resource. the provinces on the frontiers of iberia, armenia, and syria, were exempted from taxation, and the small dependent states in that region from tribute, in consideration of maintaining bodies of militia to defend their territories, and save the central government from keeping regular troops there. the emperor ordered the militia disbanded, and the taxes and tribute collected and remitted to constantinople as from other places. this monstrous piece of imbecility laid the southeastern frontier open to the turks at once; and the money was quickly wasted in the emperor's pleasures. but even this was not enough, and he cast his eyes on armenia as a rich country to squeeze taxes out of, and sent word to kakig to fulfill his uncle's will, and yield up his kingdom. kakig refused. constantine formed an alliance with the saracen emir of tovin (on the east flank of armenia), and sent an army to attack ani; and a number of the great armenian nobles turned traitors and joined the byzantine forces. kakig could not make head against the three allies with the slender forces left him; and choosing to yield to christians rather than saracens, though constantine evidently had no such scruples, surrendered ani to the imperial forces (1045), and went to constantinople to plead his cause with the emperor. constantine would not yield, and kakig resigned his kingship for a magistracy, and large estates in cappadocia. the emperor forced the catholicos to leave ani and live at arzen, then at constantinople; finally the comnenian house allowed him to settle in sebaste among his people. the princedom of kars alone preserved its independence against both christians and saracens, and thus the armenian life still beat; but as a kingdom, armenia perished and the pakradoonian dynasty with it when ani surrendered. this piece of wanton foolishness and criminality had its immediate reward; it laid all asia minor open to the turks--for the armenians after they had lost their independence would not fight for their oppressors as they had fought for themselves; and the turks were ready. three years before the capture of ani, a turkish chief, cousin of togrul beg, flying after a defeat, had asked the byzantine governor of vaspourakan to let him pass through that district; on being refused, he attacked the imperial troops, routed them, captured the governor, and on reaching turkish ground sold him as a slave, and urged togrul to invade the byzantine territories, as they were of matchless fertility and wealth, and the troops not formidable. togrul sent his nephew ibrahim to do so in 1048; the timid byzantine commanders, after defeating a detachment of his troops, waited for reinforcements before encountering the main body, and ibrahim, finding the movable wealth mostly stored up in fortresses, assailed the rich, unfortified city of arzen, with 300,000 people, who had neglected to transfer their possessions to theodosiopolis, the nearest fortress. it was one of the chief seats of asiatic commerce, full of the warehouses of armenian and syrian merchants. they defended themselves for six days with such desperation that ibrahim, giving up the hope of plunder, and wishing at once to secure his rear from attack while retreating, and to injure byzantine resources, set fire to the city, and reduced it to ashes. few such conflagrations have ever been witnessed on earth; perhaps moscow and chicago are the only things comparable. it is said that 140,000 persons perished in the fire and in the massacre by the turks that followed, and the prisoners taken were such a multitude that the slave markets of asia were filled with ladies and children from arzen. this was the first of the many such calamities that have dispersed the armenians all over the world, like the jews, have reduced one of the richest and most populous countries on the earth to a poor and thinly populated one, and turned asia minor practically into a desert. the next year kars was overrun; but in 1050 an attack on manzikert failed, and after an unsuccessful invasion again in 1052, the turks retired for a while, but only for a more terrible onslaught. before going on to the next dynasty, i will finish the story of kakig. in his cappadocian magistracy he was still called king kakig and honored as a king. one day he heard that a greek bishop had called his dog "armen" to insult the armenians, and went to his house to make sure, and to exact vengeance if it were true. they drank heavily together, and kakig ordered the bishop to call his dog; the bishop, too drunk to know what he was about, called him "here, armen." kakig, in a rage, ordered his retainers to put the bishop and his dog into a bag together, and then beat the dog till he bit his master to death. the church was too powerful for even a king to murder a bishop with impunity, and kakig was hanged on a castle wall. this gave rise to the turkish proverb, "kart giavour musliman almaz, room ermenie dost almaz" (an infidel never becomes a moslem, a greek never loves an armenian). the turks have always acted on this, and used the greeks against the armenians; but the old hate has died out now under common oppression. the rupenian dynasty. the imbecile policy of the byzantine court continued after the suppression of the line of pakrad, and with even worse results. having destroyed the interest and even the right of armenia to keep up an army of her own, and confiscated her revenues applied to that purpose, the loss of defenders should have been made good as far as possible, by keeping a large regular army there in their place; but the same corrupt and profligate court avarice which had caused the one, prevented the other. not only did constantine x (1059-67) actually reduce the number of his army, leave it unprovided with arms and ammunition and other supplies, let the frontier fortifications fall out of repair, and leave the garrison unpaid, to save money for his overgrown court of costly favorites (the byzantine court a little later cost $20,000,000 a year by itself), and let the officers put civilians on the rolls, and made artisans and shop-keepers of their real soldiers to pocket fraudulent pay for themselves, as the persians do now, but he used to disband most of his army after every campaign to save paying them, letting them have free quarters on the citizens. the seljuks were prompt to take advantage of this. in 1060 togrul sacked sebaste. in 1063 his greater nephew alp arslan began a series of raids that soon reduced iberia and northern armenia almost to a waste. the systematic policy of the turks was to make any country they invaded impossible of civilized habitation again, by obliterating all the results and "plant" of civilization which many ages of labor and money had enriched it with. they deliberately cut down all the vineyards, orchards, and olive groves, wrecked the aqueducts, filled up the wells and cisterns, broke up the bridges, and in short made the land (except for a few fortresses) a mere desert pasture ground to feed their cattle on. they were only nomad shepherds and cattle-men, despised cities as at best necessary evils, and did not care for tilling the soil. whatever spot the turk has set his foot on, he has blasted like a breath from hell, turning to naught the labors of thousands of years at a blow; and he has never put anything of his own in place of what he has destroyed. where are the turkish great cities developed by them, the turkish flourishing agricultural regions, the turkish manufactures, the turkish literature or art? at most they have not quite been able to exterminate others' progress, because they must perish themselves in doing it. the armenian king of iberia had to submit; the armenian prince of lorhi close by had to give his daughter's hand to alp arslan; and at last the royal city of ani, though strongly situated on a rocky peninsula and protected on two sides by a rapid river and a deep ravine, was left without help by the byzantines, and in spite of a heroic defense, was taken by storm, june 6, 1064. this convinced the armenian prince of kars (another kakig), that he could not hold out; he surrendered his province to the byzantine empire for the appanage of the district of amassia. this removed the last armenian prince from the old seats of the race, which were now all occupied by the turks; and the armenians emigrated in vast numbers to the districts west and south (old cappadocia and cilicia), where their native princes were living as great byzantine dukes and governors. a number of semi-independent vassal principalities were soon formed, making as before an armenian wall between the turks and the empire; but only part way, and far weaker, having left its impregnable mountains, and being much poorer, and having lost heart. the upper part, through old armenia, was left wholly open; and the seljuks poured into asia minor like a flood, ruining the country beyond reparation as they went. within a dozen years from the capture of ani, the seljuk dominion reached to nicaea, fifty miles from constantinople, and the seat of the first christian church council. its lands could be seen from st. sophia; the byzantine empire retained only a strip of asia minor along the sea-coast. but the armenian courage and national spirit, and the political and military ability which had governed the eastern empire so many centuries, were not extinct. the heart of the nation, forced out of its immemorial lands, still beat strongly, and animated their mass of dukedoms, now forming a compact body in the center of asia minor, with a common life and national instinct, which was soon to weld them into a new armenian kingdom, as true and real a one as the old, armenians under an armenian prince, but in a wholly different territory, south and southwest of the former. among the great barons of this district was one rupen (reuben), a relative of the slain kakig; it is said that he saw him hanged. at any rate, no sooner was the deed accomplished than he retired to the mountains of northeastern cilicia, and raised the standard of armenian independence, with himself as king. there was absolutely no reason why it should not be gained; the seljuk conquests had cut the armenian districts wholly off from the greek empire, so that a greek army could not come upon them to punish them for revolt without traversing at least a hundred miles of turkish or other mohammedan territory. the armenian settlements were an island in a sea of mohammedanism. the new kingdom of cilicia or lesser armenia grew with a rapidity that would seem miraculous, only it was a mere coalescing of the fragments of armenia into their old unity; in no long time it had spread east to the euphrates, taking in melitene (malatia), and samosata, north fully half way to the black sea, and south to the mediterranean, occupying the coast from tarsus almost to antioch. this kingdom played a part of the first importance in the history of asia minor for close on three centuries; its territories were gradually whittled away by turks and mongols, but it kept the eastern mediterranean open for christian action against the mohammedans to the last. to their shame, the byzantine emperors were much more hostile to it than to the turks, with whom they often allied themselves against it; for some years it was vassal to the byzantine empire; later it was overwhelmed by the mameluke deluge from egypt, and allied itself with jenghiz khan's mongol hordes against them; but the mongols passed and the mamelukes remained, and exacted a terrible vengeance, putting an end to the kingdom with the usual horrors of oriental conquest in 1375. rupen's son constantine succeeded him. it was by his help that the leaders of the first crusade captured antioch. constantine was succeeded by his two sons, leo and theodore jointly, but finally leo reigned alone; he was an able prince, fought the saracens with success, and much enlarged his kingdom, and at last made a naval attack on isaurian seleucia, the frontier fortress of the byzantine empire in this part, and an important seaport. this brought "handsome john," the ablest of the comnenian line of byzantine emperors, into the field; he stormed the cilician seaports, and then reduced the chief interior fortresses; leo fled to the taurus mountains, but was captured, and died in captivity at constantinople. his son rupen had his eyes put out on a charge of treason, and died of it; but his other son, toros, escaped, and after john's death restored the cilician kingdom, which had temporarily been made vassal by john. toros is the glory of the whole rupenian line; he was of the first rank, both as a general and a statesman. he scarcely ever suffered a military reverse. he beat the byzantine armies in campaign after campaign, and the seljuks as well; under him the new armenia was almost a match for all its enemies combined, and no one of them dreamed of attacking it single-handed. levon was another able ruler, who maintained the power and prosperity of the kingdom; he was an ally of the great emperor frederick barbarossa in the third crusade, assisted him in capturing iconium (1190), and both frederick and the greek emperor alexius iii sent him crowns,--the second no great honor, as alexius was one of the most contemptible of human beings. in levon's time the capital of the kingdom was cis, where there is now a great armenian monastery with rare manuscripts, the residence of a catholicos. the changes in the extent of the kingdom are very curious; perhaps most curious of all (since the armenians were always a race of inland and highland farmers, not seamen), the new kingdom was gradually crowded down on the north and lost two-thirds of its territory in that direction, but steadily extended along the coast until it came to include not only all cilicia but all of old isauria clear to its western mountain barrier; hundreds of miles of seaboard, from close to antioch on the one side, to far west of cyprus on the other, being indeed a strong maritime power. at the end it had lost these western coast extensions, but still had an area larger than that of the crimea now, a very considerable power to hold the northeast corner of the mediterranean. it was during these times that the hard-pressed armenians received promises from the popes to help them against their enemies if they would use the roman ritual and ceremonial, and submit themselves to the papacy. the country never did accept romanism, though some churches introduced the ritual and images, and conformed to the roman fashion; and of course it never did get any help from the popes, who had nothing to give but recommendations, which the temporal powers paid no attention to. levon vi was the last of the line. he was a weak, easy-going man, handsome and popular, but not of much ability; perhaps he could not have saved his country if he had been. i have told of the mamelukes and their invasion; they overran the country, and treated the people as the turks have done lately, striking terror to them by terrific massacres, satiating their lust on the women, and carrying off many thousands of captives for wives or slaves. levon was taken captive also; after some years in egypt, he was permitted to go free, wandered through europe for a dozen years, and finally settled in paris, where he died in 1393. he was buried by the high altar of the church of the celestine; the following epitaph is on his monument, which still exists to-day: here lies levon vi, the noble lousinian prince, the king of armenia, who died 1393, a.d., nov. 23d, in paris. i have been dealing here with the special kingdom of armenia, under a regular king; but it must not be forgotten that the older sections, ruled by greek or turk, were armenia still, inhabited largely by armenians, in spite of emigration and turkish settlement, and their fortunes really part of this history. under both jenghiz khan and his successors, and timour, every horror was let loose on the unhappy lands. for nearly a century the first tatar invasion cursed and devastated it; hundreds of villages were destroyed, the inhabitants slain or at the mercy of the savages, and vast numbers emigrated in despair. among others, the cities of ani and erzeroum were captured, and every inhabitant put to the sword, each soldier being given his portion to kill, so that none should escape. timour compelled all whom he spared to become mohammedans. when he took the city of van, he threw the inhabitants from the castle walls until the dead bodies reached to the height of the walls. a great famine followed, and many thousands died of it; the starving wretches sometimes ate their children or parents to sustain life a little longer. the reader will see later whether the modern turks have any superiority over the hordes of the thirteenth or fifteenth century. iv. rulers of the ottoman empire. sultans of the past. the ottoman empire begins with othman, born 1258 a.d.; the dynasty is usually counted from the time of his being given a local governorship by the last of the seljuk sultans, in 1289. the tribe was simply one small group of families when we first hear of it; othman's father ertogrul entered the seljuk dominion not many years before that date with only four hundred tents, say two thousand people in all, counting women and children. they had been driven from their homes in central asia by the mongols. the seljuk sultan ala-ed-din iii made othman governor of karadja-hissar (melangeia). now othman, though a plundering marauder like other tribal chiefs, turbulent and cruel, knew some things that better men never find out. he knew that impartial justice is a greater strength to a state and a greater lure to draw others to it than anything else; he made the fair at karadja-hissar a model of business equity for all races and religions, it was thronged with traders, and other turkish tribes soon flocked to the banner of the man who never broke his promises and dealt out even-handed justice. the lying greeks never learned the lesson in all their history. in a dozen years he was able to collect an army of 5,000 soldiers, beat a byzantine force sent against him, overrun a large province of asia minor, and with the plunder greatly increased his following. he realized too that education and thorough practical training and moral discipline were the foundations of success; most of us know that now, but few understood it then. but the wild and barbarous turks could not be educated and disciplined as he wished,--would not stand it and were incapable of profiting by it,--and so he or his son orkhan developed the terrible system which for centuries made the "turks" irresistible, which made the "turks" seem to increase rapidly, and makes the "turks" to-day appear numerous while in fact not one drop in ten of the blood in their veins is turkish at all. this was to exact from the christian population--greek or armenian chiefly--a regular tribute of boys as well as money. these were taken from their parents at about eight years old, educated and trained in the household of the ottoman sultan himself, of course drilled in the mohammedan religion, and gradually inducted into the highest posts, civil or military, if fit for them, or made into a special body guard for the sultan. these were called "yeni cheri" (new soldiers), which is familiar to everybody in the form "janissaries." from that day to this, the turkish system has been built up by foreign blood, and outside of the sultanate pretty much entirely by foreign brains; it was the constant infusion of fresh civilized christian ability and moral character into it that kept its inherent defects and vices from bringing it to an end long ago. finally the system partly rotted out and partly became impossible to enforce for fear of revolution (sultan mahmoud ended it in 1826); but never outside of this has a tribe of barbarians ever succeeded so completely in impressing into its own service the powers of a higher race. it is as though horses should have regularly broken and driven teams of men for centuries; even more usefully to the turks, because intermarriage (largely by force on their part) has filled their own veins with civilized armenian and other blood. as soon as this reinforcement stopped, the turks began to decay. i cannot enter even in outline into the political history of the armenians during the next few centuries. the country has been torn into fragments, and each fragment has a history so separate that there would be no unity between them. one section of what was once armenia would be governed by persian officials; another occupied by the savage kurds; another mis-governed and oppressed by the turks; another under the rule of russia; and so on. persia, when she recovered her national being, held and still holds a small part of the eastern section, as i stated earlier in the book, russia the north; but the heart of old armenia is in turkish hands. the sultans have succeeded in mixing themselves with the natives and occupying their confiscated lands till the armenians are put in a minority in their own country. i must correct here a notion fostered by historical writers, that the turks are very brave. they may have been once, though i doubt it and there is no proof of it; but they certainly have gotten over it now. in the last turko-russian war (1878), they ran by thousands to christian houses for protection. they are just like wild dogs: savage and ferocious, but not brave. nor are they wise: they have some low cunning, but no practical sagacity--that too is a thing of the past. as to industrial talents they have simply none whatever; they depend on foreigners for everything: they will not learn and indeed cannot learn, and never try to learn. they have never made a cannon or even a gun, they never built a war vessel and very few if any other kinds, they make neither powder nor shot; all come from europe or america. nor have they even decent military talent, the very thing they pretend is their special business: their best generals are germans, their admiral for a long time was the englishman hobart, i think the englishman woods is so now. as to civil ability, their best administrators have always been armenians. bezjian amira was sultan mahmoud's adviser; haroun dadian, another armenian, is the chief adviser in foreign affairs of the present sultan. his personal treasurer is an armenian, portucalian pasha. is this inconsistent with what i have said of his hating the armenians for their intelligence? not in the least: he employs them in spite of his hatred, because he can trust no others: the turks are too stupid and all others too unsafe. list of ottoman sultans and date of accession. a.d. | a.d. 1. othman i, gazi, 1299 | 18. ibrahim i, 1640 2. orkhan i, gazi, 1327 | 19. mohammed iv, 1648 3. murad i, gazi, 1360 | 20. suleyman ii, 1687 4. bayazid i, yelderim, 1389 | 21. ahmed ii, 1691 5. mohammed i, chelebi, 1413 | 22. mustafa ii, 1695 6. murad ii, gazi, 1421 | 23. ahmed iii, gazi, 1702 7. mohammed ii, fatih, 1451 | 24. mahmud i, gazi, 1730 8. bayazid ii, gazi, 1481 | 25. othman iii, 1754 9. selim i, yavouz, 1512 | 26. mustafa iii, gazi, 1757 10. suleyman i, kanooni, 1520 | 27. abdul hamid i, gazi, 1773 11. selim ii, gazi, 1566 | 28. selim iii, 1789 12. murad iii, gazi, 1574 | 29. mustafa iv, 1807 13. mohammed iii, gazi, 1595 | 30. mahmud ii, adil, 1808 14. ahmed i, gazi, 1603 | 31. abdul mejid i, gazi, 1839 15. mustafa i, 1617 | 32. abdul aziz i, 1861 16. othman ii, guendj, 1618 | 33. murad v, 1876 17. murad iv, gazi, 1622 | 34. abdul hamid ii, gazi, 1876 some of the above sultans have special titles, like our "william the conqueror," "charles the bold," "henry beauclerk," etc. thus, gazi and fatih mean conqueror; adil, righteous; guendj, young; yavouz, brave; kanooni, law-giver; yelderim, lightning; chelebi, gentleman. most of them have the title gazi, or conqueror; the present sultan bears it because he fought with russia. he was beaten, to be sure, but he took the title all the same. sultan mohammed ii, who captured the city of constantinople, established an armenian patriarchate there in 1461 a.d. the first patriarch was hovaguem, the bishop of broosa, a friend of the sultan. mohammed ii had two motives in this: first, to have an armenian ecclesiastical center in constantinople for the nucleus of a strong armenian settlement there, to play off against the greeks from whom the city was taken and who might be dangerous, whereas the feud between armenians and greeks would make each weaken the other; second, to have a hostage for the armenians, responsible for their not breaking into revolt; not at all for the benefit of the armenians, but for that of the sultan. the same reason obtains to this day. if there was no patriarch, their cause would be much better off. after the establishment of this patriarchate the armenians had no more kings or princes; their political head was the patriarch. even after the patriarchate was established they were not safe. they yielded to the sultans, they became slaves to the sultans, but the persian mohammedans were foes of the turkish mohammedans, and armenia, as of old in roman times, was the battle-ground. in the time of sultan ahmed and shah appas, the latter overran armenia and carried away the people to captivity, besides killing hundreds of thousands. then it was retaken by the turks. then a part of it was captured by the russians. historians write of the huguenots and their sufferings; of the conflicts in europe between the catholics and the protestants. how many centuries were the protestants persecuted and martyred? how many millions were killed by the roman catholics? do all the protestant martyrs in europe number as many as the armenian martyrs? i doubt it. and let it not be said that these were not religious martyrs, but merely victims of the fortunes of war or political conflicts. the wars were three times out of four based on real if not nominal grounds of religious antagonism,--mohammedan or zoroastrian against christian,--or claims of religious protectorate, as russia over the armenian christians; the political exigencies which called or formed a pretext for the massacre of myriads of men and old women, the outrage of the young brides and maidens, the enslavement of the children, were without a single exception created by the resistance of christians to forced conversion, or the fear of mohammedan rulers that as christians they meant to revolt, or sheer blind hatred to men of another creed. the victims were truly martyrs to christianity. the present sultan, hamid ii. this is the thirty-fourth sultan in the ottoman line, and probably the worst, the least, and the last. it is not likely the turks will ever have another sultan, for this one is pretty sure to bring the sultanate to an end. his days are numbered, he knows it well, and the turks know it well too. before his life and his kingdom are finished, he has resolved to end the armenian nation; that, however, will not be ended, the people will not be exterminated; when the turkish empire is abolished the remaining armenians will have freedom. hamid ii was born september 22, 1842, second son of abdul mejid, and wrested the throne from his brother mourad august 31, 1876. he is not a legitimate sultan, but a usurper. when but a little boy he manifested a savage and cruel spirit. while the dalma bagsh palace, the largest in constantinople, perhaps in the world--was going up, he went to visit it; seeing it unfinished, he called the armenian architect and told him it must be finished by the next day. "my dear prince and lord," said the architect, "i wish i could finish it, but it is impossible; and especially not to-morrow, since it is sunday, and we christians do not work on sundays." "you heathen dog, you armenian," said the boy hamid, "if i grow up, and some day become a sultan, i will force all the armenians to break the sabbath, and if they do not, i will order the soldiers to kill them all." he is carrying out his threat. he grew to manhood without becoming any milder, and is morally corrupt besides. he has drunken bouts with worthless associates, and spent his time in all sorts of monstrous debauchery and brutality. he was such a miserable wretch that it is impossible to describe his beastly life on paper. there is no humanity in him, no grace, no sympathy, no brains, no strength; he is pale and sick, well worthy to be called the "sick man of turkey." this is a very different description of him from that given by general lew wallace and mr. terrell. i can only say that i know what i am talking about, and they do not. i lived in constantinople, as a native of turkey, and with means of knowing, seeing him often, and hear authentic stories of his doings day by day. general wallace was invited to the palace, feasted and flattered, and his wife decorated with jewels; naturally, he thinks no ill of a man who treated him so well, and with whom he hopes for more good times when he goes back. he has done infinite harm to the cause of armenia by his popular lectures, declaring the atrocities "exaggerated" (he evidently thinks that if a newspaper report gives ten thousand men murdered when there were only five, and all the women of a city violated when a dozen of them got away, you are entitled to dismiss the whole thing from your mind as of little account), and the sultan a good man, incapable of such things. people are bewildered, and ask, "how can we doubt a good american who was minister there?" why, good people, what has his ministry got to do with it? he was hundreds of miles from armenia, and did not know any of the chief languages of constantinople,--either armenian, turkish, or romanic; and what could he tell of his host, except of the quality of his hospitality? a man usually shows his best side to those he entertains; did he suppose the sultan was going to amuse his guests by having one armenian disemboweled, and another emasculated or impaled on red-hot iron rods, and a couple of women ravished, as a light and playful interlude between the main dishes and the dessert? his praise of the sultan is as valuable as his praise of the grand llama would be,--he knows nothing of either; and his inference from the sultan's pleasant talk that he could not order a nation extirpated with hideous cruelties, is simply imbecile. and since he has given all this loose talk, the consular reports, from english residents among the very scenes, have been published, showing that the atrocities have not only not been exaggerated, but are even worse than reported. in this case, even the newspapers were unable to come up to the truth; their rhetoric fell short of the full measure of the awful truth. to go back a little: twenty years ago abdul aziz, uncle of the present sultan, was the ruler of the ottoman empire. he cared little for the country or the people; he wanted only to eat and drink, and have good times. he was a very strong and hearty man, and i was told he could eat a whole roast lamb for dinner, and think it probable. he had the innate cruelty of his family, their love of blood for its own sake. he had tigers and lions fight together; he would order a live lamb flung to a lion, and laugh to see the lion tear and devour it. he married all the handsome girls he could find, but for pure animality; he cared nothing for their education or virtue, and his several hundred wives were what you might expect. one of them fell in love with the commander-in-chief, or minister of war, heussein avni pasha, a very ambitious and daring adventurer, who had gained the confidence of the sultan, and went often to the palace. the sultan heard of the intrigue, went to the woman's room, kicked her fatally, and threw her out of the window. but before her death, she sent word to heussein to avenge her on the sultan. heussein's position was very critical; evidently it was a race between him and the sultan which should kill the other first. he went to midhad, the grand vezir, and to kaysereli ahmed, the admiral, both liberal-minded pashas, in favor of establishing a constitutional (or even if they could, a republican) government, and without telling them his relations to and fears from the sultan, persuaded them that now was the time to depose the sultan, and establish liberal institutions, and told them it must be done that night, or the sultan would get wind of it, and then good-by to all of them. and he clinched the argument by telling them he would order his soldiers to kill both of them if they refused to join him, and then depose the sultan just the same; "as commander-in-chief," he said, "i can compel obedience, and i am in earnest." they consented, and while the sultan was asleep that night the commander's soldiers and the admiral's sailors surrounded the palace by the land and sea. this was the dalma bagsh, the largest and handsomest palace in constantinople. heussein entered, saying he had important news for the sultan. going to the chamber where aziz was sleeping, he awakened him, and said, "in the name of your nephew, sultan murad, i depose you." then he compelled him to go down-stairs to a boat in waiting, filled with soldiers, carried him to cheragan palace, and imprisoned him there; after which he informed the sultan's nephew, then prince murad, that his uncle had been deposed because the people would not endure him, and added, "as the oldest in the royal family you succeed him, and i, as commander-in-chief, have the honor and privilege of humbly serving my master, and leading your majesty to the throne of the ottoman empire." murad was too astonished to know what to do or say; but heussein was resolute, and murad reluctantly followed him to the dalma bagsh; there the commander ordered the soldiers to cry out three times "padishahum chock yasa" (long live the sultan). all this was about midnight; and meantime printed notices were prepared and scattered throughout constantinople that sultan aziz was deposed and sultan murad was on the throne. after a few days the commander-in-chief sent a eunuch and a physician to cheragan palace, with orders to put aziz to death. they did so by chloroforming him and cutting his blood-vessels with scissors. heussein prepared a false report stating that he had committed suicide, and brought it to sultan murad. the latter did not believe it, and said, "you killed my uncle." heussein left the sultan's presence in great anger, and went to midhad's palace to confer with him, calling in also kaysereli ahmed and other officers. while they were together, another officer, cherkez hassan by name, brother-in-law of the dead sultan, came to the palace, informing the guard that he had a message from the sultan to the pashas, who were in conference. the guard admitted him, and he went to the parlor. after the usual salutations the commander asked him, "hassan, why did you come here?" hassan replied, "i came to kill you, dog," and fired three shots at him from his revolver, stretching him dead on the floor. then, before the others could assail him, he killed every one present, except midhad, who escaped. hassan was finally captured and hanged, but murad was established on the throne. he was a good-natured and liberal-minded man; he believed in constitutional government, and organized a working system. there was to be a parliament, one-third christians and two-thirds mohammedans, elected by the people of the provinces or vilayets. each vilayet furnished three members, two mohammedans and one christian, all indorsed by the clergymen. during the elections i was pastor of adana in armenia minor, and had to endorse our members. the adana member was an armenian named krikor bizdigian, the richest man of that city, perhaps in turkey; if still living, he must be ninety. when the parliament was opened in constantinople, sultan murad presided, and told the members to discuss any questions freely. he said, "we are here for the good of the country, and the empire needs to be reformed; how can we reform it?" this was an entire novelty; "government by discussion" is not the oriental way, and not the oriental liking either. the mohammedan members were astonished, and they were wrathful at the christian members when the latter began to make free and able speeches. they said, "are we going to be governed by these heathen dogs, the christian hogs? we will have no parliament where every dog is free to open his mouth. we want the good old ways of mohammed." they were like mad dogs, ready to bite. they hated the christians, and they hated the sultan. they went to his younger brother, the present sultan, and told him his brother murad was insane. "he makes christian dogs equal to mussulmen; he will ruin the country; you must become sultan to save the turkish empire." this suited abdul aziz exactly; he headed a revolt, deposed his good brother, dissolved the parliament, imprisoned murad in the palace where his uncle was assassinated, and since then has been carrying the country to destruction. he is a perfect devil in all respects. a devil can take the guise of an angel, and the sultan has the cunning to make himself appear a perfect gentleman, a benevolent and humane person. the devil can cheat most people, and so can the sultan, all but the native christians in turkey, to whom he shows his horns, and hoofs, and tail. the nauseous praise of the sultan from travelers and ministers reminds me of a turkish brigand named guro, who infested asia minor a quarter of a century ago. he robbed year after year all travelers who had anything worth taking; but when he met tramps he gave them money, and even a roasted lamb to eat now and then. the tramps all praised him; he was a benevolent, humane, kind-hearted man; they had never seen anything cruel or dishonest about him. so the sultan robs the armenians, and uses their money to feast the american ministers and decorate their wives. oh, but the sultan sent money to the sufferers from famine in the western states of america; so generous of him! i am glad to say the money was refused. all americans who praise the sultan are like the tramps and the brigand. they are either ignorant or in effect bribed. and then there is the affectation of impartiality, so easy a cover for ignorance, coldness, and laziness. you must say some good things about a scoundrel, and some ill ones about a saint, or you will be considered a partisan. you must not tell even the truth, if the truth is all on one side. if the sultan massacres all the christians in turkey, why, there are two sides to the question; perhaps the christians were not agreeable people, and if so, you cannot wonder he has them exterminated by sword, and fire, and torture, and rape; it is really the only way he could get rid of them. and then, he is king, and has a right to do what he pleases with his own; nobody has any business to interfere. of course a president could not order three millions of people put to death by letting loose all the savage indians of the west on them to do as they pleased with them, for the sake of making them worship the big manitou; but a sultan--that is different, even though a kurd is exactly as bad as an indian, and an indian's knife does not cut throats any more effectively, nor an indian's tortures inflict more unnamable horrors of suffering, nor an indian's torch burn houses any better, nor an indian's beastly lust defile women any worse. are all the writers, then, who have praised him ignorant or silly? yes; the sultan's deeds, proved by countless thousands of witnesses, set forth in the consular reports, show that they are. as soon as abdul hamid had seized the throne, he girded on the sword of osman, which i will explain later is equivalent to coronation. the keys of the palace where murad was imprisoned he keeps in his pocket. the nominal ground of his imprisonment is insanity, but he was not insane; it was his liberality of mind, his greatness of heart, and his mild and kind spirit. he was an exceptional turk. then hamid called midhad pasha to him, gave him $25,000, and told him to leave the country and never come back. the country was thus left without a single man of any force of character and a large position combined. after the death of aziz the two greatest turks were sultan murad and midhad pasha, and had murad not been imprisoned, and midhad banished, the turkish empire would be an entirely different country, and have a different future. midhad was finally recalled, but only to be murdered. as the sultan felt his position secure, he began to get rid of all men of superior character and education. some he banished, some he imprisoned, some he killed. but midhad, as the greatest, was the most obnoxious. he was of course not dispatched at once. he was invited back, made governor of smyrna, given the highest emoluments, paid the greatest honors; then one night he was suddenly summoned to constantinople by the sultan. he knew it was the death-call, and fled to the french consulate for shelter, but the consul was afraid to protect him. finally he was taken by force to constantinople, tried before a tribunal of course packed by the sultan, and condemned to death. but the kind-hearted sultan commuted the death sentence to banishment and hard labor for life, and quietly ordered the officers who were going to take him to banishment to kill him instead, which they did. after he had got rid of all the great turks, he appointed a host of ignorant and cruel ruffians as governors, sub-governors, and generals; like hadjii hassan pasha, governor of beshick-tash near the sultan's palace, and whose business is to watch over the sultan, and who cannot read or write. he prefers ignorance, because it means fanaticism, and he thinks cannot plot against him. he dreads and hates education and the educated, though he makes a show of encouraging them. he taxed the people for public schools and put up magnificent buildings, but there are few if any scholars in them; they were not built for educational purposes, but for a show, and if necessary, for barracks in the future. all the same, he has his agents in europe and america chant his praises as a lover of learning. parents will not send their children to them anyway, for there are not competent teachers in them; there are a very few ignorant mohammedan teachers, but even they are so corrupt morally that no one dares trust his boy or girl with them. the sultan professed that people of all nationalities and religions would have equal privileges in his public schools, therefore he ordered all to contribute money for them. he raised the farmers' tax from one-tenth to one-eighth of the crops on pretense of supporting the public schools. of course he got most of it from the armenians, but there is not an armenian teacher or child in them. abdul hamid is a stupendous hypocrite and charlatan; he makes a great pretense of wisdom, religion, and morality, and he has not a spark of either one. his wisdom is only the animal cunning of a jealous, cruel, suspicious brute, his morals simply do not exist, and his religion is pure sham. it is often reported that he is very religious. all that it amounts to is that every friday (the mohammedan sunday) he goes to the mosque to worship (a ceremony called selamlik), with several thousand soldiers lining the roads from the palace to the mosque to prevent his assassination, of which he is in hourly fear; that once a year he goes to the old seraglio and pays tribute to the mantle of mohammed and other relics, kissing the slipper, coat, and beard of the prophet; and he worships in the mosque of st. sophia as a conqueror. all this is merely for show, to please the fanatic mohammedans. he advertises himself as a temperance man, too, but he drinks to excess privately. in a word, he is thoroughly false from top to bottom, pretending all good, and doing all evil. his officers of course imitate him; most of them are absolute infidels, believing in nothing, but professing great devotion. i knew a governor of this stamp. he used to worship at the mosque, and even ordered a hair of mohammed's whiskers to be brought from constantinople to please the mohammedan population. he never drank a drop of liquor in public, but privately drank all he could hold. he had plenty of fellows. for instance, khalil rifat pasha, the present grand vezir, appointed a few months ago, has been governor of several different provinces, and notorious in all as a great hypocrite and a thoroughly corrupt man, full of lust and profligacy. when a european or a native christian of high position called on him, he would treat the visitor with great politeness, promise anything he asked, say, "take my word of honor," and assure him of his entire sincerity; as soon as he was gone, khalil would curse him, and call him a heathen dog, say to another mohammedan, "see how that christian hog believed what i said!" and keep not a word of his promises. the sultan is just the same. he is outwardly very pleasant, very gentlemanly, very humane. he will promise almost anything, but he will do nothing, and he calls his enraptured guests dogs and hogs behind their backs. who knows how many times he has called lord salisbury, the german emperor, or the russian czar, who are helping him to kill the armenians, heathen dogs? see the promises of the sultan in 1878, in the berlin treaty, article 61:--"the sublime porte undertakes to carry out without further delay the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the armenians, and to guarantee their security against circassians and kurds. it will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the powers, who will superintend their application." these promises were made eighteen years ago, and the reforms were to be made "without further delay." his reforms have consisted in ordering circassians and kurds to murder and plunder them. since the berlin treaty, the sultan, calling the european kings, emperors, and princes heathen hogs and christian dogs, directly and indirectly has killed 200,000 armenians. that was his reform. when he seized the throne, turkey had 40,000,000 people, and the sultan thought his power was irresistible. he let loose a horde of circassians to massacre the bulgarians, just as he has let loose the kurds to massacre the armenians. but the bulgarians are slavs, and belong to the greek church, and the russian czar, alexander, grandfather of the present czar, interfered in their favor. this excited the fears of the other powers, and a congress was held in constantinople to settle the question. lord salisbury came from england, count ignatieff from russia, and others from other parts of europe, gathered in a beautiful palace (now the admiralty) on the shores of the golden horn of sweet waters, discussed the question, and decided that the bulgarian atrocities must stop, bulgaria be reformed and allowed to govern itself internally, and that turkey must not fight russia because it was too weak. this decision was communicated to the sultan, and he was furious: he would not grant freedom or a government to bulgaria, and he was quite able to fight russia. finally he refused flatly to accept the decision, and called a turkish congress to give their "opinion." of course they gave what was wanted, and pronounced in favor of a war with russia. a few were bold enough to disfavor it, and the sultan punished them. one of these was hagop efendi madteosian, the representative of the protestant armenian community. another was a thoughtful, experienced turk, and when the sultan asked him his reason for opposing the war, he related the following parable: "there was once a miser whom the king gave his choice of three things: to eat five pounds of raw onions without bread at one meal, to receive five hundred lashes on the bare back, or to pay $5,000. the miser could not bear to lose so much money; he could not endure such a flogging; and he chose to eat the onions. after eating a pound or so their bitterness and rankness nauseated him, and he concluded to take the whipping. he stood about a hundred lashes, and saw that he should die under it; and decided to pay the $5,000 after all." "now," said the wise turk, "this illustrates what i mean. if you go to war with russia, you will sacrifice many thousands of soldiers, which is a very bitter thing to digest; then you will lose european turkey, and finally you will have to pay millions of dollars indemnity and ruin the country. i cannot approve the war." the sultan cried out in rage, "begone, you old crank! i will not listen to any more foolish words from you. i shall conquer the czar, enlarge the country, and strengthen my kingdom." he did go to war in 1876, was whipped by the czar, and lost almost the whole of european turkey and other parts of the empire, with 22,000,000 people: roumania, bulgaria, servia, bosnia, herzegovina, part of macedonia, part of armenia, cyprus, and afterwards egypt. he lost many thousands of soldiers and millions of dollars, and besides has had to pay millions of dollars indemnity to russia. and the sultan is called an "able man" and "wise ruler"! these things look like it. after the war and the loss of the provinces, he encouraged the mohammedan population of european turkey to emigrate to asiatic turkey, that they might not live under christians, and that they might increase the number of mohammedans in the asiatic part. the slaughter of the armenians and the confiscation of their property forms part of the scheme to make room for them. before his time the armenians in armenia outnumbered the turks; but the massacres, the occupation of the farms and houses by the savages let loose on them, and the emigration of many more armenians to persia and russia, have greatly diminished their numbers. of course they are not permitted to emigrate, they simply fly. about 200,000 have actually perished. as to the forced conversions, the sultan does not care a particle for islamism, but wants to please the moslem and finds this an agreeable way to do it. as to the converts from islamism to christianity, they are ordered to go to constantinople and are killed there. hundreds and thousands of the mohammedan turks are christians in secret, but do not dare to confess it. these are the ones who helped and protected the armenians during the recent atrocities. some six years ago a number of such professed the christian religion publicly; they were at once ordered to go to constantinople and every one of them was murdered by order of the sultan. when the representatives of the christian powers asked about them the sultan denied that they had come there at all. this was the method of their assassination: the sultan has several pleasure boats, and in one of these boats he fitted up an air-tight room with an air-pump; each night one of the converts was taken from prison and put into this room, the air was pumped out, and he was suffocated; then an iron chain was hooked round him, and he was thrown into the bosphorus. one by one all of them were so murdered. how did the author of this book discover the secret? well, when in constantinople, i had an intimate friend among the engineers; the engineer of this death boat told my friend about it, and he told me. and the sultan is not simply a murderer by proxy and official order; he is a murderer himself personally. when in constantinople, i learned from several authoritative sources that he killed with his own revolver several of his servants, for no cause whatever, but merely from suspicion or rage. he always keeps a revolver in his pocket, and whomever in the palace he suspects, he shoots. he is a great coward. i heard there that he has more than 10,000 detectives, at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars a year. he lives in yildiz palace, about two miles from the bosphorus, on a hill on the european shore; he has built new barracks, and keeps a large army around the palace to protect him from assassination. his "wisdom" is merely care for his skin. he cares nothing for the prosperity of the country; it is steadily growing poorer, while he is personally growing very rich. that is one reason why he keeps an armenian treasurer, that the turks may not know his secrets. even the turks are disgusted with him. i often used to hear the turks say, "god deliver us from the sultan and send another master, even if he is the czar of russia." his immense family costs him from $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 a year; it is the largest in the world. i was told that it consists of 5,000 persons, counting the eunuchs, the servants, and all. he has about 500 wives; he did not marry them all; he inherited most of them. when a sultan dies, his successor has everything that belonged to him, including his wives. and besides, he has to marry a new wife every year, by the mohammedan and governmental law; he has no choice in the matter. that makes twenty wives in the twenty years of abdul hamid's reign. this is the system: he has at present nearly one hundred young girls in the harem, supposed to be the most beautiful in the world; they are presented to him by the governor-generals, who get them from the local governors, who get their offices by sending their superiors the finest looking girls, or the best arabian horses, and the governor-generals get theirs by passing the gifts on to the sultan. that is the way to get office in turkey. you may be a murderer, a thief, or an ignoramus, but you can be sure of an office if you can furnish a handsome girl, or a fine stallion, or a few thousand dollars. when i was pastor in marsovan, the local governor, sudduc bey, bought a very pretty girl, and sent her to the governor-general of beshick-tash in constantinople, hadji hassan pash, the sultan's special guard; he had got his office from that functionary. as to how the girls are got, it depends; if they are mohammedan, they are bought; if they are christian they are seized by force, for the christians will not sell their daughters. several months ago bahri pasha, the governor-general of van, carried off several armenian girls and presented them to the sultan, who decorated him for the service, and appointed him vali or governor-general of adana, in armenia minor. these girls are kept in the harem of the sultan. when the time comes to marry another wife, he has the girls stand in a row, and chooses one of them by covering her face with a silk handkerchief; then she is taken by the eunuchs to the quarters allotted to the sultanas, and can have separate servants, carriages, and eunuchs. the life of the sultan and his big family is the most miserable in the world. the palace is a focus of discontent, quarrels, jealousy, lust, and cruelty; in a word, it is a perfect hell. the women have nothing to do, and nothing to think of; they do not read, they have no work, and no share even in household management; they are idle, and unspeakably bored, and they do what most idle people of both sexes do all over the world--excite their nerves with sensual cravings, and then try to satisfy them. they often manage to bring boys to their quarters by stealth, and keep them there for weeks for purposes of lust, and the sultan knows nothing about it; often they bribe their eunuchs, and go to other places to satisfy their desires, and the sultan never hears of it. aziz lost his life through an intrigue of one of his wives. with so large and exacting a family, it is no wonder the sultan has no time or energy left for improving his administration. he only finds a little time to send telegrams to the governors to exterminate the armenians. the sultanate and its powers. there is no coronation in turkey; instead the sultans gird on the sword of osman, the founder of the ottoman dynasty, which is kept in the mosque of ayoob, in constantinople. when a sultan is proclaimed, he goes to that mosque with great pomp, and all the members of the sublime porte, the civil officers, the generals, commanders, soldiers, patriarchs of different religions, and the sheik-ul-islam, the mohammedan religious head, follow him. but no christians enter that holy place, as it is forbidden them. after impressive service, the chief of the dervishes of the order of mevlair girds the sultan with the sword; then he is officially recognized as emperor. then, as god's will be done, sultan's will be done, because the sultan represents god in heaven, mohammed in paradise, osman on the earth. he has three offices, god's office, mohammed's office, osman's office. he is as infallible as the pope of rome, and temporally everything belongs to him without exception, men, women, children, money, property, just as everything belongs to god. a turkish proverb says, "mal, jan, erz, padishahin dir" (property, soul, and virtue belong to the sultan). he can claim any man's wife for his enjoyment at any time; his son, or his daughter, or his money, or his property of any sort; there is no use refusing--a man does not own himself, or his wife, or his children; the sultan owns them all, and it is only by his grace that he permits his subjects to have anything, and he can resume it at any time, for half an hour, or forever. besides, anybody's head would come off that refused. if the sultan asks a millionaire in constantinople to send him half his wealth, the millionaire must not refuse; he himself is simply a steward; if the sultan wants it all it must go to him, and the millionaire must beg bread for a living. at the same time he must praise the sultan, because the sultan is god on earth. if he refuses to send his wife or daughter to the sultan's bed, or his son or money for whatever uses they are wanted to supply, the sultan has a right to kill him, and take all his possessions by force, because the man was not a faithful slave. "but i cannot believe this," says the american in his free, peaceful country. "it is not natural. how can a man be considered as god, owning everything, not in a spiritual sense, but in a very material, pecuniary, and male sense?" go to turkey, get naturalized there, become a turkish subject, and you will understand it fully, and perhaps shockingly. of course, if you go as an american citizen, with plenty of money, travel under the escort of soldiers, or zapties, get presented by the american minister to the sultan, are entertained in the palace, and receive handsome presents, you will not understand it at all; very likely not believe it; you may come home and praise the sultan like the rest. the natural question is, i know, "do the sultans, any of them, carry this theory into practice? has the present sultan?" yes; and not once or twice, but thousands of times. to be sure, they do not go in person on such errands; they depute their officers and soldiers to do what they wish. i have shown how the history of the armenians illustrates it, in the seizure of their property, the forced conversion of their boys into troops to fight against their parents, the appropriation of their wives and daughters, to be given to the sultan. as to the present sultan, i have already spoken of bahri pasha's exploit in carrying off by force several armenian young brides, and girls, and presenting them to the sultan, and his being decorated and promoted for it. while on his way, he had to pass through trebizond, and the armenians fired on him to rescue the women, but failed. they forgot that all women belong to the sultan, and they made a mistake in firing on one of his officers. he at once ordered all the armenians in trebizond to be slaughtered. some of the richest of the nation lived there; every penny was taken from them, most of them were killed, and their wives and children, and those of them who survived are begging bread. and all through armenia the girls and young brides are being looked over to pick out the best looking ones for the sultan's harem. once for all, armenia is not america. the turks, the kurds, the circassians, the georgians, though they may be like americans, are like american indians only. the sultan is not a president, and his divine right to kill any man, appropriate any property, or enjoy any woman, is not like the constitution of the united states. people who think that the sultan would not do or be allowed to do such things because no ruler they are familiar with does them, that it is impossible they can happen in armenia because they could not happen in america, that the armenians must have provoked them in some way, because it is hard to believe any ruler could do so in pure wantonness or from deliberate policy, are reasoning from wrong premises. they did happen, and are happening,--see the consular reports; were perfectly unprovoked,--see the plentiful proofs that the armenians carry no arms, and cannot even defend themselves from murder, or their wives from dishonor before their eyes. why it is done, and how much more is to be done, i have explained repeatedly. the sublime porte and the mohammedan religion. the sublime porte, or in turkish babi-ali, is the cabinet of the turkish government, as follows:- 1. the grand vezir, or prime minister. 2. the minister of the interior. 3. the minister of foreign affairs. 4. the superintendent of the cabinet council. 5. the commander-in-chief, or minister of war. 6. the minister of the navy. 7. the minister of finance. 8. the minister of commerce and public buildings. 9. the minister of sacred properties. 10. the minister of education. 11. the sheik-ul-islam, or religious head. there is no election in turkey; all officers are appointed by the sultan, who can dismiss any of them at any time, and appoint some one else, and i have already explained why he almost always appoints bad ones. the sublime porte has no power to decide anything; it is simply a farce council to cheat the european powers; a dumb tool in the hands of the sultan. for instance, the sultan calls the grand vezir, the president of the sublime porte, into his presence, and tells him such a question is to be discussed in such a way, and this or that conclusion reached. "very well, my lord and master," says the grand vezir; he goes to the sublime porte palace, and says to the council: "to-day i was permitted to come into the presence of his majesty the sultan, and he instructed me that i must bring such a question before you, and after we discuss it in such a manner, we must come to such a decision." then all of them stand up and say, "sultan's will be done," and that is all; their "decision" is announced to the sultan, and he "sanctions" it. there is no discussion for days or weeks, as in england or here; it is all cut short. the sublime porte can decide any question in a few minutes. this is the sort of thing mr. carlyle wanted. you have seen the beautiful effects of it. the question naturally arises, why does the sultan keep a sublime porte, since he decides everything himself? there are three reasons. first, it is the old custom. all the other sultans have had one, and he might offend the turks if he abolished it. second, as the sultan can do no wrong, there must be somebody else to lay blame on. he is the representative of god and prophet mohammed. if there is any mistake in any decision, he is not responsible for it; the sublime porte is responsible. third, because he has relations with the european powers, and if any decision needs to be reversed, it can be if it is that of the sublime porte; but if it were the personal decision of the sultan it could not be changed, because he is considered immutable, just as god is. when people read about the sublime porte after this, i hope they will understand that there is not really any sublime porte; that it is a mere name, an echo, a farce, a show to bunco the world with. some newspaper and other writers think it is "impartial" to say that the sultan means well, but he has a "corrupt ministry"; that it is the sublime porte that ruins the turkish empire; if it were left to the sultan, he would reform the country; he would not let the armenians be massacred. put no faith in such ignorant rubbish. the sultan dictates everything; and if any minister has the sense and courage to suggest any improvement, the sultan dismisses him, saying that it is his own business to consider the improvements of the country and not that of any one else. the governors would not dare to order the kurds and the turks to wreak their worst and vilest will on the armenians without direct orders from the sultan. the sultan originates all these cruelties. the recent grand vezir, said pasha, at one time was a very decent turk. when he differed with the sultan about massacreing the armenians, the sultan threatened to kill him, and he had to fly to the english embassy for protection. murad bey was another good turk who remonstrated against the cruelties; his life was threatened, and he fled to europe; now he is in egypt, denouncing the sultan in the press and in letters. the sultan sentenced him to death, and asked the british government to hand him over to the turkish officers; but the representative of the british government in cairo refused. just before the armenian atrocities in constantinople, the members of the sublime porte tried to have the armenian grievances redressed, and the people pacified; the sultan would have no such pottering, and ordered the soldiers to kill the armenians in the streets. but this was a rare piece of virtue in the porte. mostly they are as bad as the sultan himself, for he appoints men of his own stripe. good men would not be useful tools. the sultan has another trick of management; before making any one a member of the porte, he tries to find out whether he is a friend to any of the ministers already in; if so, he will not appoint him. on the other hand, if the man happens to be an enemy to one of the members, he is almost sure of appointment. the sublime porte, therefore, is a group of mutual enemies, hating one another, and ready to betray one another at any time. he thinks if they are friendly, they may unite and depose him some day. besides this, there are more detectives in the sublime porte, watching the ministers on behalf of the sultan, than there are members. they keep the sultan informed about the situation. if any minister or officer acts contrary to the wishes of the sultan, he is marked for death. the sheik-ul-islam. sheik-ul-islam means chief of islam--the mohammedan religion. his office is solely religious; he has nothing to do with politics. he sees that the mosques and priests are kept in order, and the religious services properly conducted; and there are many questions among the mohammedans which are settled without going to a magistrate, by the sheik-ul-islam, or by his deputies, called muftees. these muftees can be found in every city in turkey. the sheik-ul-islam and his representatives issue fetvas (religious decrees) according to the koran. there is no inconsistency between this and what i have said before about the sultan being the representative of mohammed, and therefore the chief of his religion. both the sultan and the sheik-ul-islam are the heads of it, just as the greek emperor and the patriarch were of the greek church, and the relative position is about the same. the sheik-ul-islam is the special head of the ecclesiastical organization. the sultan appoints him, but once appointed, if he is insubordinate and opposes the sultan, the latter cannot suppress or replace him without grave scandal to the mohammedan world. it is like henry ii and becket; it is easier to make a head of a church than to rule him afterwards. it is like the emperors and the popes in the middle ages; and as with them, sometimes the sheik-ul-islam joins with political officers to depose the sultan, and his fetva, or decree, makes it legal. when abdul aziz was deposed, the then sheik-ul-islam, khairollah effendi, issued the fetva for it, reluctantly, for heussein avni pasha forced him to do it under threat of death. as heussein's own head was in immediate peril, he had no scruples about the sheik-ul-islam's. every fetva has two questions and one answer. a case is set forth; after a brief discussion the question olourni (to be?) and olmazmi (not to be?) are asked, and the answer is given as either olour or olmaz (to be, or not to be). the fetva which heussein forced the sheik-ul-islam to sign was something like this:--"if a sultan should prove to be unworthy to govern his people, is it necessary to uphold him or not?" the answer was olmaz, and abdul aziz was deposed. mohammedanism and the internal state of turkey. nobody who has not lived in turkey can realize how hopeless, almost self-contradictory, it is to talk of "reforming" turkey. it could not be reformed and be mohammedan turkey; the lack of reform or power of reform is just what makes it what it is. the root of the evil is mohammedanism itself; it is embodied social stagnation, corruption, ultimate ruin. neither the sultan nor the turks can improve the state of the empire, even if they wished. the usual "broad-minded" statements about mohammed and his religion are simply elaborations of ignorance, made up out of men's own minds, and what they think must be true. it is customary for writers to talk in this fashion:--"mohammedanism is a half-way house to christianity; mohammed converted the heathen arabs to a belief in the true god. mohammed established a great religion and a great empire," etc., etc. there is no truth in this, for all its plausible sound. mohammedanism is not even on the road to christianity; and arabia, asia minor, and palestine were all much better off before the mohammedan conquest than after it. buddhism and brahmanism are better religions than mohammedanism. the chinese, the japanese, the people of india are much better than the turks. the chinese emperor and the japanese mikado are far better men than the mohammedan sultan. the heathen religions rear better men than mohammedanism. the mongols are more humane and sympathetic than the turks. heathenism at its worst, though a low form of religion, is really a form of religion; but mohammedanism is not a religion at all. then what is it? it is a system of imposture and false pretense, and of lives of human lust and cruelty. mohammed practiced all these, and his successors have done the same, and taught the same ever since; and the system means just that now, and nothing else. there is neither love nor sympathy, manliness nor humanity in mohammedanism. can a system lacking all these be considered a religion? this is the substance of mohammed's teachings:--"love your fellow believers, hate and slay all who refuse to accept your religion. marry as many wives as you can afford; if you can afford but one do not repine, for you shall have seven thousand to enjoy in paradise. if you conquer a country, show no mercy to the people unless they embrace islam; if they refuse, either kill them or make slaves of them." what sort of reforms can you expect in armenia, or in turkey, when the very religion that is to make people better, inculcates such principles? if one does not know a language he cannot speak it; if he has not a principle he will not practice it; how can the sultan, a vicious man to begin with, trained in a religion calculated to make a cruel and licentious animal even out of a decent man, reform anything? his very religion forbids it; he cares nothing for the religion when it stands in his way, but he will follow its injunctions to please the mohammedans, especially when they gratify and justify his worst passions. i shall be asked if the mohammedans do not believe in one god, and the same god as the christian; and if that does not make it a religion, and very near that of christians. yes, they do; and so do the devils. that is what mohammedanism is, the religion of devils. most of the turkish conversation consists of oaths and smut. i do not mean among the common people--theirs is nothing else--but of the educated upper classes, their scholars, teachers, governors, and priests. i came in contact with them for years, and i hated to listen to them, their talk was so full of cursing and filth. you never see the fruits of the spirit in them; only the fruits of the flesh. they do not understand what spiritual life is; with them all is sense,--eating and drinking, finery and lust,--lust above all, everywhere and always, like cattle. they seem never able to forget sex and its uses. some people think the climate makes the turks lazy; it is enough on that point to say that constantinople is almost exactly in the same latitude as new york, and smyrna as st. louis. the turkish climate is a temperate and salubrious one, with no greater extremes of temperature than the united states; not tropical or enervating. nor is it their race that makes the turks lazy; they were not so at the outset. it is their religion and the habits it breeds. their minds and bodies are enervated by the unwholesome nervous excitation of lust, their energies further sapped by a falsehood that leaves no room for aspiration, their vanity as a military caste in not working takes all the spirit of manly enterprise out of them. if the climate enervates the turks, why does it not the christians? in the very same cities you find the christians rich, enterprising, full of energy; the turks poor, ignorant, unambitious, and lazy. the religion makes all the difference. christianity teaches purity, sympathy, and industry; mohammedanism teaches impurity, hate, and sloth. the pure life of the christian conserves all the energies; the hopes of christianity give vigor and endurance. the promise of each for the future gives the clue to the history of each; the christian heaven of unity with god, the mohammedan heaven of a lot of street dogs and sluts. here i must comment on the extraordinary statement of alexander webb, at the parliament of religions in chicago. mr. webb was an american consul in the east, and became a convert to mohammedanism, or professes to have done so; it is not very hard to guess what part of that so-called religion attracted him. he said the religion of mohammed teaches the fatherhood of god, and the brotherhood of humanity. now, as a fact, mohammedans believe in neither one. as to god, they believe he is a monarch, and that no one can approach him; they have the same idea the jews had. "our father who art in heaven" is a purely christian aspiration, not that of any other religion on earth; it is christianity alone that teaches the fatherhood of god. and mohammedans directly ridicule the idea of god the father, or of a son of god. they say god is not married, and cannot be a father; and that when they go to heaven they will not be in his presence, nor wish to be, but will have a separate heaven, to enjoy their wives in. they look at everything from a sexual or sensual standpoint. as to brotherhood, there is no such thing in mohammedanism; even sons of the same mother are not brothers in feeling. a mohammedan has not confidence enough, even in his brother, to show his wives to him, and even in heaven they will have to live in different places on account of their wives. how can there be brotherhood without love or purity? and we have seen and know what the "brotherhood" of mohammedans to other nations and religions is; there can be no relations whatever but of master and slave, or murderer and corpse, or violator and victim. the impudence of this talk of brotherhood is fathomless. and then he said he was proud to be a convert to islam, because that meant believing in purity! this is more outrageously impudent still. his ideal of purity must be a curious one if he finds more in mohammedanism than in christianity; in a religion with a heaven stuffed with concubines than in one where even earth is sprinkled with nuns; in one that makes titanic lust its crowning reward, as if men were so feeble in sexual desires that they needed to be stimulated, than in one which makes chastity its key-note, and pronounces the very coveting of more than one wife a spiritual adultery; in one that prescribes polygamy (that is, keeping erotic turbulence stirred up much oftener and longer than it naturally would be), than in one that allows but one wife, and smiles on getting along without that; in one whose devotees are ashamed of foul language, and even of foul thoughts, than in one whose devotees are rank and rotten with lustful ideas and talk to correspond. the whole mohammedan system is designed to make the gratification of lust as easy and plentiful as possible short of a promiscuity that would lead to civil anarchy. a mohammedan can divorce his wife any time he pleases by paying back her dower, and marry another and do likewise; every week, or day if he sees fit, and he can remarry and redivorce the first one as often as he pleases. it is like trading horses; as little sentiment or morality in one as the other; the slightest possible regulation of sheer animal desire. there is, however, one form or divorce which is complete, and does not allow of remarriage until another marriage has intervened; that is called the achden docuza (three to nine) divorce, from the terms the husband uses in doing it, "i divorce you three to nine." nobody knows what it means or meant. after this, if he wants his wife back, he must get somebody else to marry and divorce her regularly; and as this is perilous, because the second husband after marrying her may take a notion to keep her, or anyway keep her much longer than the first one relishes, or demand a large sum of money, the usual plan is to fix on a very poor man, or a blind beggar (preferably blind, so that he cannot see the wife, and be so charmed by her beauties that he will wish to keep her), get him to become the woman's husband for a few days, and then pay him something to divorce her. then the first can marry her again if he chooses. there are many more specimens of mohammedan "purity" too shameful to write, and too shameful to read; i cannot soil the paper with them. doubtless they are part of mr. webb's pride in being a mohammedan. but i must mention one more engine of corruption which lies at the very root of mohammedanism itself: the pilgrimage to mecca, to the birthplace of mohammed in arabia. once a year mohammedan pilgrims from every quarter of the world go to mecca to pay homage to their beloved prophet; averaging a million a year. it is their duty to sacrifice animals there, and about a million are so sacrificed. this is done on the hills which surround the great temple, the greatest mosque in the world. it is a square building, which covers several acres of land. just in the cluster is the holy well, called zemzem. mohammedans believe that if they drink of that water, hell-fire cannot burn them, and every pilgrim does so; then they begin to die from cholera to the tune of fifty thousand a year or so, for the well is a mere cesspool. you see, after cutting the throats of the animals, they leave the filth and blood just as they are, for the mohammedan religion does not allow the sacrifice to be touched. the sandy soil absorbs this putrid filth, which leaches into the well. but it is a great merit to die on the spot where mohammed was born; one goes straight to heaven if he does. that is not the worst, however; they fill bottles with that water, and carry it to their families, and friends throughout the turkish empire, persia, and india, from which cholera is spread abroad over the world. the pilgrims do not take their wives as far as the birthplace of mohammed, but leave them half-way, and on reaching mecca they marry temporarily. about 20,000 prostitutes there make a business of being short-term wives of the pilgrims, getting $5 to $25 from each, and being his wife for anywhere from a day to a fortnight, so that each woman marries from fifty to a hundred pilgrims a year. this is not prostitution; it is religion--and mohammedan "purity." mecca is considered the most holy spot on earth by mohammedans; but it is the most corrupt spot. it is a hell. and the mohammedan paradise is worse than mecca. in one word, mohammedans have no right to exist, politically, socially, or religiously. in the first they have wrought nothing but ruin; in the second nothing but corruption; in the third nothing but devilishness. they are working nothing else now in either of the three. they have never built up anything; they are pure destroyers. anything which is built in any mohammedan country is built both by christian money and by christian architects; mohammedans have neither the money, the architects, nor the sense. the day one becomes a mohammedan he loses his intellect, his skill, and his common sense. mohammedanism is a poison fatal to any good gifts or graces; it cultivates in him falsehood, cruelty, and lust. it was sent by god for a curse to the christians; as a punishment, just as the philistines were sent to the people of israel. v. the great powers and the armenian question. there was no armenian question till the time of the present sultan; under abdul aziz, whatever his faults as a ruler or a man, the armenians prospered well, and though the whole system of administration is bad, corrupt, and uncertain, they had no special grievance as a race to complain of. i have already referred to abdul hamid's usurpation, his bulgarian atrocities, his famous war against russia, and the congress in berlin in which the powers ordered him to execute reforms in armenia, and report to them, and the sultan signed the treaty promising to do it. this was in 1878. the sultan lost no time in violating the treaty, and not only so, but in acting grossly contrary to it. he called in circassians and kurds to settle in the midst of armenians, and confiscated armenian lands for them to settle on. the armenians were far worse off than before the treaty; but foolishly depending on the powers, they did not try to arm themselves for the future. they have had plenty of chance to repent in blood and tears, agony and shame, their faith that christian nations would not ignore a solemn obligation, voluntarily entered into, to save a whole people from being exterminated by fire and sword. england was the worst of these sinners, for she had taken on special obligations by a separate treaty, and forced those who would have taken the sultan by the throat to let go. the anglo-turkish convention. this took place at the same time as the berlin congress; it was simply between turkey and england. article i. "if batoum, ardahan, kars, or any of them shall be retained by russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by russia to take possession of any further territory of his imperial majesty, the sultan, in asia, as fixed by the definitive treaty of peace, england engages to join his imperial majesty, the sultan, in defending them by force of arms. "in return, his imperial majesty, the sultan, promises england to introduce necessary reforms, to be agreed upon later between the two powers, into the government and for the protection of the christian and other subjects of the porte in these territories; and in order to enable england to make necessary provisions for executing her engagement, his imperial majesty, the sultan, further consents to assign the island of cyprus to be occupied and administered by england. article vii. "if russia restores to turkey kars and the other conquests made by her in armenia during the last war, the island of cyprus will be evacuated by england, and the convention of the 4th of june, 1878, will be at an end." when england was preparing this private treaty, the english fleet was on the sea of marmora, at the gate of the bosphorus, threatening russia, to make her withdraw her soldiers from the gates of constantinople, for the conquering russian army had reached the suburbs, and encamped at san stefano, only eight or ten miles away. but for england, russia would have captured constantinople, and kept it. but england backed turkey, and the other powers backed england, and russia reluctantly withdrew her troops. but russia has never forgiven england for it; and if england wishes to help the armenians, no matter how many are massacred, russia will help turkey, while the others side with neither. as to there ever being a european concert to reform armenia, a pleasant dream which has deluded many thousands, i have always laughed at it, and i laugh at it still. the powers will never act together for any such purpose. it is not "practical politics" to think of it. the real center of action is not germany or russia, but england, for several reasons. one is that london is the money capital of the world. money rules; money buys force. the richest nation is the strongest. what does lombard street say? is the vital question. the second is her navy, the strongest in the world; stronger that that of any other two nations combined; perhaps in actual fight a match for all combined. the third is that her possessions are everywhere; she is a local power in every quarter of the globe; she has to pass by everybody's doors in managing her colonies. so i will begin with england. england and the armenian question. if england had wished to solve this question, she could have done it long ago; but she never cared to. when mr. gladstone was in power, he tried to do it, but his cabinet overbore him. he did, however, show by isolated cases what power england had if she chose to exercise it. after i was banished by the turkish government, two native christian ministers supplied my pulpit. they were sentenced to death on a false charge, but gladstone threatened the sultan, and the latter commuted the sentence to banishment. these ministers were professors thoumaian and kayayian, who are now in england with their families. what could be done on a small scale could be done on a large one. i will give here some of the speeches of gladstone on the armenian question; then compare lord salisbury with him and his policy. w. e. gladstone. he assails turkey's intolerable misgovernment and emphasizes the value of impartial american testimony. [by cable to the new york herald.] london, aug. 6, 1895.--a pro-american meeting, presided over by the duke of westminster, was held at chester this afternoon. mr. gladstone was among those present, and upon entering the hall was received with great enthusiasm. in addressing the meeting, mr. gladstone said he had attended rather to meet the expectation that he would be present than because he had any important contribution to make to the discussion of the subject under consideration. the question before the meeting, he said, was not a party question, neither was it strictly a religious question, although the sufferers, on whose behalf the meeting was called, were christians. the evil arose from the fact that the sufferers were under an intolerably bad government--one of the worst, in fact, that ever existed. a resolution would be proposed presenting, with justice and firmness, the true view of the matter. mr. gladstone added that as america had no political interest in the levant her witnesses were doubly entitled to credit. important treaty provisions. the treaty of 1856, mr. gladstone continued, gave the powers the right to march into armenia and take the government of the country out of the hands of turkey, and under the treaty of 1878 the sultan was bound to carry out reforms. the ex-premier made three proposals:--first, that the demands of the powers should be moderate; second, that no promises of the turkish authorities should be accepted; and third, that the powers should not fear the word "coercion." "we have reached a critical position," said mr. gladstone, in conclusion, "and the honor of the powers is pledged to the institution of reforms in armenia." a resolution was then proposed expressing the conviction that the government would have the support of the entire nation in any measures it might adopt to secure in armenia reforms guaranteeing to the inhabitants safety of life, honor, religion, and property, and that no reforms can be effected which are not placed under the continuous control of the great powers of europe. the resolution was seconded by the rev. canon malcolm maccoll, and was adopted. says baseness and villany have reached a climax in turkey's treatment of armenia. [from the new york herald.] london, dec. 27, 1895.--murad bey, formerly ottoman commissioner of the turkish debt, who recently fled from constantinople to paris, sent to mr. gladstone a few days ago a pamphlet which he had published in paris, entitled "the yildiz palace and the sublime porte," with a view to enlightening public opinion on turkish affairs. in the course of his reply acknowledging the receipt of the pamphlet, mr. gladstone disavowed any feeling of enmity toward the turks and mussulmans generally. he said:--"i have felt it my duty to make it known that the mohammedans, including the turks, suffer from the bad government of the sultan. i have heartily wished success to every effort made toward ending the great evil. still, turks and other mohammedans are not, so far as i know, plundered, raped, murdered, starved, and burned; but this is the treatment that the sultan knowingly deals out to his armenian subjects daily. there are degrees of suffering, degrees of baseness and villany among men, and both seem to have reached their climax in the case of armenia." his masterly speech in chester re-enforced with a letter to a turk. [from the new york sun.] london, aug. 10.--once more have the wonderful power and the true greatness of england's grand old man been demonstrated in the remarkable revival of popular interest in the fate of armenia. the whole nation is marveling over his great speech at chester, and there are no words, even among those who have always been his political opponents, save those of sympathy and admiration. nobody is any longer foolish enough to deny the main features of the fearful atrocities in armenia, and there is no possible doubt of the accuracy of the latest reports that thousands near the scene of the massacres are perishing of starvation. the only protest against mr. gladstone's speech has been a long letter from khalef khalid, a conspicuous turk, who asks the grand old man why he hates and denounces the turks so indiscriminately, when as many and as great outrages against the mohammedans have been perpetrated by christians as were ever committed by the subjects of islam. mr. gladstone's reply was made public to-day. it is one of the most pointed epistles the old man ever wrote. he says:--"i entirely disclaim the hatred and hostility to the turks, or any race of men, which you ascribe to me. i do not doubt that you write in entire good faith, but your statements of facts are unauthenticated. i proceed only upon authenticated statements. i make no charge against the turks at large, but against a turkish government. i make the charges which they have been proved guilty of by public authority. in my opinion, i have been a far better friend to the ottoman empire than have the sultan and his advisers. i have always recommended the granting of reasonable powers of local self-government, which would have saved turkey from terrible losses. this good advice has been spurned, and in consequence turkey has lost 18,000,000 of people, and may lose more. pray weigh these words."-the birthday of the ex-premier was made the occasion for an anti-turkish demonstration. outrages and abominations of 1876 in bulgaria repeated in armenia in 1894. [from the new york herald.] london, dec. 29, 1894.--mr. gladstone celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday to-day, and was the recipient of hundreds of letters and telegrams of congratulation and parcels containing birthday gifts. mr. gladstone was in remarkably good health and spirits, and, despite the stormy weather, drove through the village of hawarden to the church, where he met a deputation of armenian christians from paris and london. the deputation presented a silver chalice to the church. the chalice was presented to the rev. stephen gladstone, son of the ex-premier, and rector of the hawarden church, in recognition of the interest his father has taken in the armenian outrages. mr. gladstone, in his reply to the deputation's address, said that it was not their duty to assume that all the allegations of outrages were true, but rather to await the result of the inquiry which had been instituted. however, he said, the published accounts pointed strongly to the conclusion that the outrages, sins, and abominations committed in 1876 in bulgaria had been repeated in 1894 in armenia. continuing, mr. gladstone said: "don't let me be told that one nation has no authority over another. every nation, aye, every human being, has authority in behalf of humanity and justice." he had been silent, he said, because he had full confidence that the government knew its duty. if the allegations made should prove to be true, it was time that the execration of humanity should force itself upon the ears of the sultan of turkey, and make him sensible of the madness of such a course as was being pursued. mr. gladstone, in conclusion, said:--"the history of turkey is a sad and painful one. the turkish race has not been without remarkable, even fine qualities, but from too many points of view it has been a scourge which has been made use of by a wise providence for the sins of the world. if these tales of murder, violation, and outrage be true, well, then, they cannot be overlooked, nor can they be made light of. i have lived to see the empire of turkey in europe reduced to less than one-half of what it was when i was born. and why? simply because of its misdeeds, and the great record written by the hand of almighty god against its injustice, lust, and most abominable cruelty. i hope and feel sure that the government of great britain will do everything that can be done to pierce to the bottom of this mystery, and make the facts known to the world. "if happily (i speak hoping against hope) the reports be disproved or mitigated, let us thank god. if, on the other hand, they be established, it will more than ever stand before the world that there is a lesson, however severe it may be, that can teach certain people the duty of prudence, and the necessity of observing the laws of decency, humanity, and justice. if the allegations are true, it is time that there should be one general shout of execration against these deeds of wickedness from outraged humanity. if the facts are well established, it should be written in letters of iron upon the records of the world that a government which could be guilty of countenancing and covering up such atrocities is a disgrace to mohammed the prophet, a disgrace to civilization at large, and a disgrace to mankind. now that is strong language, but strong language ought to be used when the facts are strong. but strong language ought not to be used without the strength of facts. "i have counseled you to be still and keep your judgment in suspense; but as the evidence grows, the case darkens, and my hopes dwindle and decline, and as long as i have voice it will be uttered in behalf of humanity and truth. i wish you heartily every blessing, and also wish with every heartiness prosperity to your nation, however dark the present may seem." lord salisbury. now we come to the present prime minister, lord salisbury. he is reputed a great statesman. that should mean that he has accomplished something great. well, what? i know of nothing, have heard of nothing. has he saved any country? has he elevated any? has he done any public action that can be set down to his credit? he has hindered some good ones, that is all. on the armenian question he has done enormous harm. if he is not a great hypocrite, there is no use comparing a man's words with his actions. i have always told my friends that nothing good could be hoped for from him, for morally he is worse than the sultan. an eminent english clergyman told me that lord salisbury is another sultan, and i believe him. here are a few of lord salisbury's deliverances; see how they agree:-[from the new york world, august 16, 1895.] lord salisbury to sir philip currie, the british ambassador to constantinople:--"the porte must accept the proposals of the powers unconditionally, or england would use sharper means than those adopted by lord rosebery to settle affairs in armenia."--[july 30, 1895. lord salisbury, in a speech in london about the time of the above, said, "the concert of europe on the armenian question is complete, and england has the loyal support of other powers to reform armenia." at another time we note:--"there is every reason to believe that the chinese government is sincerely desirous of punishing the perpetrators of the outrages and those who connived at them. should any lukewarmness become discernible, it will become our duty to supply its defect. "with respect to armenia, we have accepted the policy which our predecessors initiated, and our efforts will be directed to obtaining an adequate guarantee for the carrying out of reform. we have received the most loyal support from both france and russia. the permanence of the sultan's rule is involved in the conduct he pursues. if the cries of misery continue, the sultan must realize that europe will become weary of appeals, and the fictitious strength which the powers have given the empire will fail it. the sultan will make a calamitous mistake if he refuses to accept the advice of the european powers relative to the reforms." the house of lords adopted the address in reply to the queen's speech. after the above strong words, lord salisbury backed down and sneaked out of his bold attitude in this way. (jan. 31, 1896.) see how he asserts, first that england cannot do anything for the armenians, and second that it is not her duty to do anything:-[from the new york tribune.] "the prime minister expressed sympathy with the armenians, but denied that great britain was under obligation to declare war against the sultan of turkey in order to compel him to govern justly, and cited the treaties in proof of his contention. he ascribed the atrocities to the passions of race and creed. he believed that the sultan's government was wretched and impotent, but there was no ground for imagining that the sultan had instigated the massacres. it might be asked why europe did not interfere. he could only answer for england. she had lacked the power to do the only thing necessary to end the troubles, namely, to militarily occupy turkish provinces. none of the powers wished so to occupy them. "lord salisbury said he concurred in the belief that the only authority, albeit it was an evil one, in that country was the prestige of the sultan's name. patience must be exercised, and time must be given to his majesty to enforce the reforms he had promised. he remarked upon the gradual return of order in anatolia during the last few weeks, although he admitted that these signs should not be trusted too much. he concluded by declaring that if great britain did not co-operate with the other powers, she must act against them, which would lead to calamities far more awful than the armenian massacres." ambassador currie instructed not to exert undue pressure on the sultan. [from the new york world, 1895.] london, nov. 23, 1895.--it can be authoritatively stated that lord salisbury's instructions to sir philip currie, the british ambassador to turkey, who left england a few days ago on his return to his post of duty, are to refrain from exerting undue pressure on the sultan for the execution of the reforms in armenia, and to give the porte time to recover from the existing administrative anarchy, and appoint authorities through whom the reforms must be effected. sir philip has taken with him an autograph letter from the queen to the sultan. this is supposed to be a reply to a letter the sultan sent to her with the communication he sent to lord salisbury, which the latter read at the meeting of the national union of conservatives at brighton, on tuesday night last. it is reported that the queen will invite the sultan to visit england, when the time shall be auspicious. the anxiety at the foreign office in regard to the east has greatly lessened during the week. england possessed the island of cyprus, and it became her duty to look after the reforms in turkey. but now salisbury denies it, saying that it is not her duty, and meantime says that time must be given to the sultan of turkey, as if all the time had not been given him since the berlin treaty of 1878. salisbury used another silly trick, persuading the queen of england to write a letter to the sultan and appeal to his good nature; as if the sultan had a good nature; but the queen wrote the letter. a strong criticism by the editor of the new york "press" on lord salisbury's speech. february 3, 1896. "we confess that we are at a loss to comprehend the meaning of lord salisbury's armenian speech. we do not know what to make of it when he says that the berlin treaty "bound the signatory powers, that, if the sultan promulgated certain reforms, they would watch over the progress of these reforms. nothing more." we cannot understand him when he declares that the cyprus convention 'contains no trace of an understanding to interfere in behalf of the sultan's subjects.' when russia made, in march, 1878, a treaty with turkey, called the treaty of san stefano, great britain became alarmed lest russia should secure too much influence in constantinople. russia then held some armenian provinces bordering on her territory, and it seemed clear that it was her purpose to seize others. england protested to the sultan against the treaty of san stefano, but the government of the ottoman porte was helpless against the czar, and the sultan declared that he must adhere to the treaty. great britain then secretly bound herself to aid turkey by force of arms in preventing russia from appropriating further armenian provinces, turkey agreeing, on her part, to reform her local administration in her remaining armenian provinces and assigning the island of cyprus to be occupied and administered by great britain. "great britain, meanwhile, had incited the other powers of europe to take action against the treaty of san stefano. austria was induced to suggest a european congress. russia at first refused to go into this congress; but, seeing that all the great powers were uniting against her, she consented to attend. the result of this congress was the treaty of berlin, signed by the six powers,--england, russia, germany, france, austria, and italy. by this treaty turkey was stripped of bulgaria, servia, and roumania, and russia was deprived of all she had won during the turko-russian war, except the armenian provinces which she still controls. by this treaty, also, the signatory powers became guardians and trustees of the ottoman porte, pledging themselves that religious freedom should be secured in the turkish empire, and that armenian christians should be protected against the circassians and kurds. "we are puzzled, therefore, to understand lord salisbury when he says that all these promises did not mean anything. certainly he ought to know, for, as the agent of the disraeli government, it was lord salisbury who drafted the agreements and drew up the promises. for eighteen years christian civilization has supposed that they did mean something. but lord salisbury says not. he says that all the powers agreed to do was to 'watch over the execution of those reforms' if they were promulgated. "what does that mean, anyway? does it mean, as the christian world has all along supposed, that the six powers would engage themselves to see that these reforms were carried out by turkey, or does it mean that if the reforms were carried out they would simply look on; and if the reforms were not carried out, if ten thousand armenian homes were destroyed, and four times ten thousand armenian citizens were butchered, they would still simply look on? "nor do we understand lord salisbury when he pleads that it requires time for the turkish government to carry out the reforms 'which the sultan recently has accepted.' why the turkish government? there is no turkish government. there is a mohammedan administration, but the government of the ottoman porte expired with the treaty of berlin. the turkish government is vested de facto in the six signatory powers of the berlin congress. even the local government of constantinople itself lies in the hands of these powers. the capital is divided into six sections, each controlled by a treaty power. each has its own courts, its own military, even its own police. when englishmen wish a wrong to be righted in the turkish empire, or a reform to be executed, they do not request the 'turkish government' to listen to their appeal. the british minister summons the grand vezir and orders him to do what is wished. and he does it forthwith, so far as he is permitted by the orders of the representatives of the other treaty powers. it is in london, in berlin, in st. petersburg, in paris, in vienna, and in rome that the turkish government rests. "it is for these reasons that we are unable to understand what lord salisbury means when he says that the berlin treaty and the cyprus convention impose no responsibility for armenian reforms upon any one save the sultan. the cyprus convention specifies:- "treaty of defensive alliance between the british government and the sublime porte, signed on june 4, 1878:- article i. if batoum, ardahan, kars, or any of them shall be retained by russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by russia to take possession of any further territories of his imperial majesty, the sultan, in asia, as fixed by the definitive treaty of peace, england engages to join his imperial majesty, the sultan, in defending them by force of arms. in return, his imperial majesty, the sultan, promises to england to introduce necessary reforms, to be agreed upon later between the two powers, into the government, and for the protection of christian and other subjects of the porte in these territories; and in order to enable england to make necessary provision for executing her engagement, his imperial majesty, the sultan, further consents to assign the island of cyprus, to be occupied and administered by england. "why, then, does not lord salisbury carry out england's pledges, for which he is directly responsible, since he made them in her name? "england must be held to an accounting for the disorders in armenia. there are no such disorders in the provinces administered by the czar, provinces adjoining those where for the last six years pillage, destruction, and murder have swept away every sign of government. in the provinces controlled by the czar the armenians have been so well treated, enjoying unquestioned religious freedom and rights, that there have been not the slightest disorders. but in the provinces where england pledged reform, the armenian is butchered daily. "does lord salisbury mean that so long as great britain occupies cyprus, pending the execution of reforms, it is better for england that the reforms should not be executed and that england should 'watch over them; nothing more'?" note carefully what salisbury says first; then what he says afterward. first he says there is complete concert among the powers, then he says there is not; first he threatens the sultan, then he is friendly. first he seems to be a brave and noble statesman, then a cowardly politician. sir philip currie, the british ambassador at constantinople, is a brave and noble gentleman. he was sent there by the liberal government, before salisbury's accession. he has done a great deal for the armenian cause. but after lord salisbury became prime minister, he called him to london and instructed him to have cordial relations with the sultan, and now he can do nothing. finally there appear to be two englands, conservative england and liberal england, slave england and free england, selfish england and noble and sympathetic england, false england and true england. the head of conservative, selfish, false, oppressive england is lord salisbury. the head of liberal, free, noble, and true england is mr. gladstone. therefore nothing for armenia can be expected from the conservatives, while much may be hoped from the liberals. gladstone is an old man, but god will raise a joshua to succeed moses; gladstone will see the armenian nation free, and then he will die. germany and the armenian question. listen to what the haughty young ruler of germany says:--"it is better that the armenians be killed than the peace of europe be disturbed." the explanation is easy enough. when he visited constantinople half a dozen years ago, the sultan presented him with arabian horses, jewelry of massive gold, and many other valuable articles, worth in all several hundred thousand dollars; and last summer sent him a beautiful and valuable sword made in constantinople by armenians, which was carried to him by shakir pasha, the butcher who was afterwards appointed by the sultan to reform armenia,--the commander of the "hamidieh cavalry," whose work i tell of later on. this embassy was to secure the alliance of germany against molestation by russia. the german emperor has three motives in his present action. one is to show gratitude for the sultan's generosity--as though it were not the easiest thing in the world to be munificent when it all comes out of other people. the second is to punish lord salisbury for not getting england to join the triple alliance, when the emperor asked him in person on his journey to england. when salisbury threatened the sultan in the interest of armenia, the german emperor said, "the english government has no right to interfere with the turkish empire. every sovereign must have the right to govern as he thinks necessary, or he is no sovereign." he afterwards sent his chancellor, prince hohenlohe, to the czar to arrange united resistance to england, and afterwards sent count von moltke on the same errand. and the czar instructed his ambassador at constantinople, m. nelidoff, to inform the sultan that he would not support the english government in coercing turkey. the sultan therefore refused salisbury's demands, and he dared not go on alone. the emperor's third motive was to gain the friendship of the czar against france, which had lately been taking up the russian alliance with great fervor. another reason is that he hates the armenians for having bought the german factories and property in amassia. he is very anxious to plant german colonies in turkey, of all places in the world, for profit. there are about fifty families in amassia, near marsovan, and they had started various kinds of factories there; but the shrewd and wealthy armenians bought them out. the emperor is angry because his colony was not successful. for all these reasons the german emperor refused to send gunboats to the bosphorus when the other powers did; he said he saw no need of it. he was right so far as germans were concerned; the sultan was not going to allow his ally's subjects to be slaughtered and the ally turned into an enemy. and if he could stop the massacre of one sort of people, he could of another; nothing shows the sultan's deliberate purpose in the massacres better than the fact that when he chose not to let any particular sort of people be harmed, that sort were not harmed. but as to germany, what hope for armenia is there from it? the emperor has his own interests, and the armenians might be tortured or outraged to death, and he would not stir a finger. russia and the armenians. the present czar, nicholas ii, is a corrupt weakling, who is on the throne by the law of heredity, against the will of his father. morally he is as bad as the sultan; not so cruel yet, though he may develop that in time, but fully as sensual and devoid of principle. i have had it from good russian authority that his life before his marriage was so bad that it has rendered him entirely impotent. "birds of a feather flock together." no wonder he helps the sultan. his political aims and character are wholly selfish. he, too, like the german emperor, is continually exchanging presents with the sultan. here is a press notice of feb. 26, 1896:--"m. nelidoff, the russian ambassador, has presented to the sultan a pair of jasper vases from the czar, together with an autograph letter from his majesty thanking the sultan for the gifts sent to him." not only so, but they have concluded an alliance. read the following dispatch of jan. 23, 1896:- "london, jan. 23, 1896.--a dispatch to the pall mall gazette from constantinople, dated yesterday, says that an offensive and defensive alliance has been concluded between russia and turkey. the pall mall gazette correspondent adds that the treaty was signed at constantinople, and that the ratifications were exchanged at st. petersburg between arifi pasha and the czar. "the basis of the treaty is declared to be on the lines of the unkiarskelessi agreement of 1833, by which turkey agreed, in the event of russia going to war, to close the dardanelles to war-ships of all nations. the pall mall gazette's correspondent then says the treaty will soon be abandoned, owing to the refusal of the powers to recognize it. he also says that the french ambassador, m. cambon, conferred with the sultan yesterday, and that it is probable france will be included in the new alliance. "the pall mall gazette says: 'we regard the news as true, and the result of the treaty is that the dardanelles is now the southern outpost of russia, and turkey is russia's vassal. we presume the british government will protest against the treaty for all it is worth. "'the information is plainly of the very gravest importance. the first intimation reached us four days ago; but we withheld it until the arrival of strong confirmation, which we received this morning. this brings russia into the mediterranean with a vengeance, and may necessitate the strengthening of our fleet in those waters. politically, the effect will be far greater. the treaty means that turkey has realized her own impotence against disorders both from within and without, and has decided to throw herself for safety into the arms of russia. she is now russia's vassal, and russia is entitled to dispatch troops to any part of the sultan's dominions whenever there is the least breach of order--and when is there not? "'we presume the arrangement will give the keenest satisfaction to the anglo-american section of our people. with them lies the chief blame for the complete alienation of turkey, though it must be owned that it has been sedulously fostered by a long term of weak policy at constantinople.'" for the present the czar will do no more mischief, because he is to have his coronation in may, and prefers to put on the smoothest outside to every nation; but after that is over he will show his hand. his father and his grandfather favored the armenians in russia, and they prospered wonderfully, but this one proposes to persecute them to please the sultan. the two will join in a common policy toward the unhappy race, till not less than a million are slain. the czar's motive is not love of the sultan, whom he hates in spite of their community of character; it is simply that he wishes to get constantinople peaceably if he can. the sultan knows this quite well, but he is too weak in military power, and too poor, and owes too large an indemnity to the czar to be able to help himself. he is compelled to throw himself on the czar for protection. will the czar succeed in getting constantinople? no; the attempt will ruin and break up the russian empire. all the european powers would resist it; some of them may seem friendly to the czar now, but when he comes to seize constantinople every one of them will be against him. he will try it, none the less. the famous "will" of peter the great, though a patent and notorious forgery of napoleon's,--never seen till 1812, just before the russian campaign, and circulated then to influence europe against russia,--was the most magnificent piece of forgery ever committed, for it has actually become a guiding policy to the country it was aimed against, just as if it had been real. nothing in history equals this for impudence and success combined; it is a true napoleonism. this bogus "will" has become the "monroe doctrine" of russia; i am not entitled to say whether the latter is as mischievous as the former. that most russian of all russian journals, the "ruskija vjadomosti," has lately been having one of its periodical spasms of hysterical hatred toward all policy not "good russian," and boldly proclaims that russia must follow the precepts laid down in this will! since, therefore, it is just as important as if it were not the greatest of all "fakes," i give it here that the reader may know what russian policy is to be:- will of peter the great. in the name of the most holy and indivisible trinity, we, peter the great, unto all our descendants and successors to the throne and government of the russian nation: the all-powerful, from whom we hold our life and our throne, after having revealed unto us his wishes and intentions, and after being our support, permits us to look upon russia as called upon to establish her rule over all europe. this idea is based upon the fact that all nations of this portion of the globe are fast approaching a state of utter decrepitude. from this it results that they can be easily conquered by a new race of people when it has attained full power and strength. we look upon our invasion of the west and east as a decree of divine providence, which has already once regenerated the roman empire by an invasion of "barbarians." the emigration of men from the north is like the inundation of the nile, which, at certain seasons, enriches with its waters the arid plains of egypt. we found russia a small rivulet; we leave it an immense river. our successors will make it an ocean, destined to fertilize the whole of europe if they know how to guide its waves. we leave them, then, the following instructions, which we earnestly recommend to their constant meditation. i. to keep the prussian nation in constant warfare, in order always to have good soldiers. peace must only be permitted to recuperate finance, to recruit the army, to choose the moment favorable for attack. thus peace will advance your projects of war, and war those of peace, for obtaining the enlargement and prosperity of russia. ii. draw unto you by all possible means, from the civilized nations of europe, captains during war and learned men during peace, so that russia may benefit by the advantages of other nations. iii. take care to mix in the affairs of all europe, and in particular of germany, which, being the nearest nation to you, deserves your chief attention. iv. divide poland by raising up continual disorders and jealousies within its bosom. gain over its rulers with gold influence and corrupt the diet, in order to have a voice in the election of the kings. make partisans and protect them; if neighboring powers raise objections and opposition, surmount the obstacles by stirring up discord within their countries. v. take all you can from sweden, and to this effect isolate her from denmark, and vice versa. be careful to rouse their mutual jealousy. vi. marry russian princes to german princesses; multiply these alliances, unite these interests, and by the increase of our influence attach germany to our cause. vii. seek the alliance with england on account of our commerce, as being the country most useful for the development of our navy, merchants, etc., and for the exchange of our produce against her gold. keep up continual communication with her merchants and sailors, so that ours may acquire experience in commerce and navigation. viii. constantly extend yourselves along the shores of the baltic and the borders of the euxine. ix. do all in your power to approach closely constantinople and india. remember that he who rules over these countries is the real sovereign of the world. keep up continued wars with turkey and with persia. establish dockyards in the black sea. gradually obtain the command of this sea as well as of the baltic. this is necessary for the entire success of our projects. hasten the fall of persia. open for yourself a route toward the persian gulf. re-establish as much as possible, by means of syria, the ancient commerce of the levant, and thus advance toward india. once there you will not require english gold. x. carefully seek the alliance of austria. make her believe that you will second her in her projects for dominion over germany, but secretly stir up other princes against her, and manage so that each be disposed to claim the assistance of russia; and exercise over each a sort of protection, which will lead the way to a future dominion over them. xi. make austria drive the turks out of europe, and neutralize her jealousy by offering to her a portion of your conquests, which you will further on take back. xii. above all, recall around you the schismatic greeks who are spread over hungary and poland. become their center, and support a universal dominion over them by a kind of sacerdotal autocracy; by this you will have many friends among your enemies. xiii. sweden dismembered, persia conquered, poland subjugated, turkey beaten, our armies united, the black and baltic seas guarded by our vessels, prepare, separately and secretly, first the court of versailles, then that of vienna, to share the empire of the universe with russia. if one accept, flatter her ambition and vanity, and make use of one to crush the other by engaging them in war. the result cannot be doubted; russia will be possessed of the whole of the east and a great portion of europe. xiv. if, which is not probable, both should refuse the offer of russia, raise a quarrel between them, and one which will ruin them both; then russia, profiting by this decisive movement, will inundate germany with the troops which she will have assembled beforehand. at the same time two fleets full of soldiers will leave the baltic and the black sea, will advance along the mediterranean and the ocean, keeping france in check with the one and germany with the other. and these two countries conquered, the remainder of europe will fall under our yoke. thus can europe be subjugated. but aside from this, no help could be expected from russia in any event, because she needs all her strength to save herself from destruction by her own internal decay. she is a great tree, hollow in the inside. the nihilists and the constitutional reformers are both against her, and, in my belief, she will go to pieces in the present czar's lifetime. the sultan's days are numbered, but the czar's and the emperor's are too; their own people will rise and depose them. it is against socialists and nihilists that they are massing such great armies. how can they spare any service for a people being murdered off the earth? france and armenia. of the other powers, little need be said. france has lost all her great men, and become a tail to russia, and is ready to be moved blindly, as russia may direct. and as part of the people are infidels, and the rest fanatical catholics, there is no religious motive to prompt them to come to the rescue. france, in a word, can or will do nothing directly; all it can do is to threaten the haughty emperor of germany. italy is bankrupt, and even the throne of king humbert is in danger, and that country will follow in the wake of austria. the pope of rome and the armenians. pope leo xiii sent 70,000 lire to the armenian sufferers; probably to the catholics alone, for there are about 100,000 catholic armenians in turkey. but the armenians can expect no help from the pope; he has no troops; he has no great fund of spare money, and he would be very unlikely to use either if he had them. the motive of all the popes has been to convert the protestant armenian church to become a part of the roman catholic church,--to acknowledge the papacy. i say protestant, for before martin luther was born, the armenian church protested against the popes of rome age after age, and was persecuted by them. the armenians offer their thanks to the pope for his gifts, but they cannot accept his dominion. [press dispatch, n.y. herald.] "rome, dec. 16, 1895.--the pope has sent 20,000 lire for the relief of the sufferers from turkish misrule in anatolia, in addition to the 50,000 lire previously given by him for the same purpose." the european edition published recently in a dispatch from rome the following passage dealing with the eastern question in the allocution delivered by leo xiii at the consistory on november 29:- "the whole of europe in anxious expectation looks toward its eastern neighbor, troubled by grievous events and internal conflicts. the sight of towns and villages defiled by scenes of blood and of vast extents of territory ravaged by fire and sword is a cruel and lamentable spectacle. "while the powers are taking counsel together in the laudable effort to find means of putting an end to the carnage and restore quiet, we have not omitted to defend this noble and just cause to the extent of our power. long before these recent events, we voluntarily intervened in favor of the armenian nation. we advised concord, quiet, and equity. "our counsels did not appear to give offense. we mean to pursue the work we have begun, for we desire nothing so much as to see the security of persons and all rights safeguarded throughout the immense empire. "in the meantime we have decided to send help to the most tried and the most needy of the armenians." america and armenia. now we cross the ocean and come to the united states. everywhere here the people have shown the greatest sympathy for us; and the armenians are deeply moved and exceedingly grateful for it. the newspapers have almost uniformly been on our side also; the only exception of any moment has been the new york "herald," which has steadily favored the sultan. the reason is the same as for general wallace's like opinion of that worthless animal,--mistaking his entertainments and gifts for proofs of good character, humanity, and statesmanship. mr. bennett, too, knows the taste of the dinners at the palace, and perhaps the weight of the golden ornaments he gives out. fortunately his paper has very little influence on public opinion; and the real leaders of it have remained true. i believe it will be the americans who will finally put an end to the armenian atrocities; but the time has not come yet. it will take two years more, then this 70,000,000 of people will be aroused as one man and stop them. i should like here to give an account of the many mass meetings held here for our cause; but i can only take space for two, one which i organized in baltimore, and one held in new york, at which i was present. mass-meeting at levering hall, baltimore [report from baltimore sun.] december 11, 1894.--an enthusiastic meeting of baltimoreans was held last night at levering hall, johns hopkins university, to make an emphatic protest against the turkish outrages upon christian armenians, and to urge the united states government to do all in its power to remedy the existing evils. the meeting was called by a committee of baltimore ministers. it was presided over by attorney-general john p. poe, and the rev. t. m. beadenkoff was the secretary. addresses were made by mr. poe, rev. george h. filian, an exiled armenian christian minister, rabbi wm. rosenan, and rev. dr. f. m. ellis. cardinal gibbons and judge harlan sent letters regretting their inability to be present, and expressing sympathy with the object of the gathering. mr. poe, in taking the chair, said:--"the accounts which have reached us of the indescribable atrocities recently committed upon the christians in armenia have stirred the indignation and aroused the sympathy of the whole country. "at first the nameless outrages inflicted upon them were received with incredulity, for it seemed almost impossible that they could be true. but there is now no reason to discredit the harrowing details. indeed, denial is hardly any longer attempted, nor is it claimed that the reports of the cruelties of which these helpless people are the victims have been exaggerated. "conscious that the facts cannot be suppressed or belittled, the representatives and apologists of the ruthless perpetrators of these atrocities are endeavoring to palliate and excuse the enormities which they cannot truthfully deny. in order to shield themselves and their governments from universal execration, the world is asked to believe that the christians of armenia were themselves the aggressors, and that the horrors of massacre and rapine which have been visited upon them with such relentless fury were but necessary and pardonable measures of punishment and repression. the long record of the patient and submissive sufferers is a silent yet unanswerable refutation of this falsehood. "in their misery and woe these sufferers lift their eyes to us, and ask us to extend to them such sympathy and assistance as will rescue them from total ruin. "we are met here to-night to express these feelings--to declare that we cannot look unmoved upon the calamities of our christian brethren, though separated from us by thousands of miles, and to recommend to congress the adoption of such measures as, without departure from the well-settled policy of our government, will bring to them speedy and effectual deliverance, safety, and peace." cardinal gibbons' letter sent to the meeting was as follows: "i regret my inability to attend the meeting to protest against the alleged outrages recently committed in armenia. "the reports of these outrages have been published with harrowing details throughout the civilized world, and i am not aware that these circumstantial details have been successfully denied. "the christians of armenia have been conspicuous among their oriental co-religionists for their enlightened and progressive spirit. "it is earnestly to be hoped that these alleged deeds of lawless violence will be thoroughly investigated in a calm and dispassionate spirit, so that the whole truth may be brought to light, and that outraged law may be vindicated. the recital of these inhuman cruelties is calculated to fill every generous heart with righteous indignation. "the commercial and social ties that now bind together the human family quicken our sympathy for our suffering brethren, though separated from us by ocean and mountains, and this sympathy is deepened by the consideration that many of their countrymen have cast their lot among us, and that they and their persecuted brethren are united to us in the sacred bonds of a common christian faith. "it is gratifying to note, from recent publications, that a mixed commission, to make thorough investigation, has been appointed by the sublime porte." dr. cyrus hamlin of lexington, mass., whose article on the outrages in armenia, published in the "congregationalist," has been used by the turkish government as a defense of the recent actions of the soldiers of the porte, was asked to be present at the meeting, and was also asked to define his position as to the probable accuracy of the reports from armenia, and as to the responsibility of the sultan for the occurrence of the massacre. his letter of reply was read at the meeting. he stated emphatically that he believed the accounts of the horrible atrocities to be in the main true, and added that he believed the sultan of turkey was perfectly cognizant of them, and should be held responsible for them. extracts were also read from a letter from some congregational missionaries now near the seat of the massacres. the stories which they told, having been written nearly a month after the occurrences, showed that the earlier dispatches did not enlarge upon or exaggerate the horror of the scenes. much interest was manifested in the address of mr. filian, who feelingly described the pitiable condition of his country and his countrymen, and graphically portrayed the extent of the recent massacres, illustrating his talk with references to a large map of turkey and armenia. "armenia," he said, "was mentioned in the bible 700 years before christ. it then had an area of 1,000,000 square miles, and it was in that land that the garden of eden was situated. adam was created there, and within its confines, upon mt. ararat, the ark of noah found a resting place after the flood. armenia was named after armen, the great-grandson of japhet, one of the three sons of noah. in the time of christ the population of the country was 40,000,000. it was fully christianized in 310 a.d., and was not only the first christian nation of the earth, but the first civilized nation. and now, from all these glories, the people of armenia have dwindled to 4,000,000." he concluded by citing the cause of the massacre as the desire of the turks to check the rapid growth and improvement of the armenians. the following resolutions, which had been prepared by a committee composed of rev. dr. conrad clever, rev. w. t. mckenney, rev. y. t. tagg, and rev. c. a. fulton, were, after some discussion, passed: "it has come to our knowledge through sources that cannot be disputed that an outrageous massacre of armenians has been executed within the boundaries of the turkish empire. "these outrages have been committed by soldiers who are in the employ and under the direction of the sultan at constantinople. "the thousands who have been murdered were christians and peaceably disposed citizens. "we, representatives of the citizens of baltimore, prompted by motives of christianity and common brotherhood, do call upon our government to use every power in its control, in harmony with that international law which governs nations in their relationship with each other, to aid these sufferers, and if possible to bring such influence to bear upon the turkish government as will render justice to those who have been deprived of their rightful liberties as honest and industrious citizens of one of the recognized empires of the earth." it was also resolved that a committee of five, with mr. john p. poe chairman, should be appointed to present the resolutions to the president at the earliest opportunity, and "to gratefully acknowledge the steps already taken in the appointment of an american member of the committee of investigation." mass meeting in dr. greer's church. [report from n.y. tribune.] the interest which the american christian feels in the armenian question was shown by the large attendance at st. bartholomew's church, last night, when a special service was held under the direction of rev. dr. david h. greer. the object was to express indignation at turkey's acts of violence toward armenians, and to enter a protest against a course of conduct which is not in keeping with the spirit of the nineteenth century. the main body of the church was reserved for armenians, of whom there were about 500 present. after the processional hymn, "the son of god goes forth," had been given, the full choir sang the anthem, "i will mention the loving kindnesses of the lord." dr. greer then spoke of the outrages committed last september in armenia, the particulars of which had only recently become known. he said in part: "the purpose of this meeting is not only to express sympathy with those who have suffered, and are suffering now from the atrocities and barbarous cruelties inflicted by turkish soldiers, but for protesting against the further infliction of such atrocities. what has been done is done, and cannot be undone; but if it is possible to prevent in any measure a repetition of it in the future, it should become everyone who is not a christian merely, but a man, to exert himself to the utmost in that direction." the speaker told of the untrustworthiness of reports from turkey, and said that letters recently received from good sources give the following details: early in september some kurds--the brigands of that region--robbed some armenian villages of their flocks. the armenians tried to recover their property, and about a dozen kurds were killed. the authorities then telegraphed to the sultan that the armenians had killed some of the sultan's troops. the sultan on hearing this ordered the army, infantry, and cavalry, to put down the rebellion; and not finding any rebellion to put down, they cleared the country so that none should occur in the future. a number of towns and villages--the estimate varying from twenty-four to forty-eight--were destroyed. men, women, and children were put to the sword, and from six to ten thousand persons massacred in the district of sassoun. as the result of this wholesale butchery and slaughter, an epidemic of cholera has broken out, which is still ravaging the country. the turk has always been a cruel force, and has practiced his cruelties hitherto with impunity. but he cannot do so now. an enlightened public opinion is to-day the governing power of the world. it is to that we have to trust to accomplish moral reforms, not only here, but everywhere. it is stronger than states; it is mightier than empires, and the most arbitrary and autocratic of despots feel its controlling force. it is the force that moves the world. if meetings similar to this are held in different parts of the country and public sentiment aroused, even the turkish authorities will not be impervious to it. dr. greer read a letter from bishop potter, in which he expressed his regret at being unable to be present at the meeting. "i am," he wrote, "a monroe-doctrine disciple, first, last, and all time, but i am a human being also, and while i think our competency as a nation to send a commissioner to turkish-armenia is open to question, i am quite clear that our duty as something else than savages is to protest against barbarism wherever it is to be found." the rev. abraham johannan then spoke in armenian, and was followed by the rev. dr. george h. mcgrew, who, during years of missionary work in armenia, had become familiar with the people and their customs, and gave vivid pictures of the hatred of the turks toward any who acknowledges christ as the son of god. mr. depew's speech. chauncey m. depew was then introduced, and made an eloquent appeal for the armenians. he said in part: "the closing days of 1894 could not be passed more appropriately than in a protest by the christian peoples of the world against the outrages upon humanity which will be the ever-living disgrace of the dying year. the industrial and financial disturbances which have convulsed the world, and caused such widespread distress during the last twelve months, are of temporary and passing importance compared with the merciless persecutions of a people because of their religious faith. "it is a criticism upon the boastfulness of the nineteenth century that there should be any occasion for this meeting, but it is also a tribute to the spirit of the century that this meeting is held. there have been religious wars and persecutions, and bloody reprisals, in all ages of modern times. they arouse our indignation and our horror, but they excited little attention beyond the countries where they occurred from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries. the distinguishing feature of our period is an international public opinion. it came with steam and electricity; it is the child of liberty of conscience. the turkish government, founded by the sword of islam, is a hierarchy and a creed, and not a government of liberty and law." mr. depew then described the disadvantages under which christians dwell in turkey, and how their standing before the law amounts to nothing. "it was the atrocities incident to such institutions," he said, "which aroused europe and liberated greece, which caused the other nations to stand still and risk the balance of power, while russia freed bulgaria, roumania, and servia, and made them practically independent states. it was to assure religious liberty that the treaty of berlin recognized the autonomy of the states, and bound the christian nations of europe to protect the christian people still within the turkish dominion." after holding up to ridicule the european "peace" which is being maintained with continually growing armies, mr. depew said: "the armenians are the new englanders of the east. their intellect, industry, and thrift make them prosperous." he spoke of their being the oldest christian people, and of the sacrifices which they have made and which they daily make in the cause of their faith. the horrible outrages committed against the peasants in armenia were graphically described, and in this connection mr. depew said: "the story of the attacks of these savage hordes and no less savage troops reads as if fourteenth-century conditions, repeated with all their horrors in 1894, were the means adopted by providence to shame the civilized world into the performance of its duty, and to stir the christian conscience to a sense of its neglect of it." mr. depew's description of the heroism of the armenian women who, rather than be captured by the turks and suffer defilement, threw themselves into the ravine which surrounded their village, moved the audience deeply. he went on: "the world has taken little note of this supreme tragedy. fifty years from now, and some painter will become immortal by putting it upon canvas. a few years, and some novelist will mount to enduring fame by a romance, of which it will be the center. a few years, and some poet will embalm it in verse which will stand in literature alongside of the battle lyrics of campbell, macaulay, and tennyson. some orator will give to the narrative and its lesson a setting and an inspiration, so that from the stage of the school and the academy, from the lips of the boys and the girls, it will teach down the centuries the triumphs of patriotism and faith. "yesterday an old man of world-wide fame celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday. he had been the ruler of the british empire--he is a private citizen. among the utterances which he deemed appropriate, in reply to the congratulations which came to him from every land, was an indignant protest against the outrages against the armenian christians, and a demand upon the christian people of the earth to compel their governments to call upon turkey for a halt. "this warning and appeal from the lips of mr. gladstone was flashed across continents and under oceans; it penetrated cabinets, it thundered in the ears of sovereigns, and through the great journals it thrilled every household and every church of every race and of every tongue. "to-morrow--aye, to-day--rosebery is consulting with the french premier, and france and england are speaking to the emperor of germany, and the young czar and the king of italy, and the emperor of austria for united action, which will bring the turk to mercy, peace, and liberty for the armenian christian without destroying the equilibrium of europe. "we seek no foreign alliances, we court no international complications, but we claim the right under the fatherhood of god to demand for our brother and our sister in the distant east, law, justice, and the exercise of conscience." dr. greer then read resolutions expressing sympathy for the armenians, and protesting against further outrages. the document closes as follows: "resolved, that we hereby extend our deepest sympathy to the armenian people who, for their christian faith, have repeatedly suffered unspeakable cruelties from their turkish rulers and kurdish neighbors; "resolved, that we hereby express to our christian brethren in england and on the continent, who are endeavoring to investigate these outrages and to bring the perpetrators of them to justice, our hearty good-will and godspeed. we hope and believe that they will not pause until the extent of these atrocities is clearly ascertained and the responsibility for them finally fixed; "resolved, that in their efforts to provide against the recurrence of similar acts of oppression in the future, they shall receive our hearty and unwavering moral support; "resolved, that we earnestly call upon our christian fellow-citizens everywhere throughout the country to organize and express an indignant and universal protest against the continuance of a state of affairs under which it is possible for women and children to be murdered simply because they are christians." the resolutions were adopted by a rising vote, and the rev. dr. tiffany, archdeacon of new york, pronounced the benediction. very many such mass meetings were held in different cities of the united states. the u. s. senate discussed the question and made similar resolutions. mr. call submitted the following as a substitute for the committee resolutions: "'that humanity and religion, and the principles on which all civilization rests, demand that the civilized governments shall, by peaceful negotiations, or, if necessary, by force of arms, prevent and suppress the cruelties and massacres inflicted on the armenian subjects of turkey, by the establishment of a government of their own people, with such guarantees by the civilized powers of its authority and permanence as shall be adequate to that end.'" all these resolutions, both of the people and the senate, went to president cleveland, but he has not seen fit to act on them. it would be absurd to impute this to weakness or unwillingness to decide a new question: mr. cleveland, whatever his limitations, has never lacked firmness or decision. doubtless it is because he thinks this country ought not to break away from its old traditions and involve itself with european concerns. but this is not a european concern; it is european, asiatic, american, the world's; the concern of all humanity, not to say christianity. it concerns the lives and result of sixty years' work of american missionaries; the government cannot wash its hands of all concern or responsibility for them, and alone of all great powers declare that its christian citizens may not spread christianity. and a great and rich nation has no more right to go off with its hands in its pockets, and declare that it has no obligation to the well-being of the world, than a great, rich man has a right to declare that he has no obligation to society. the rich man only keeps his money because there is a civilized society with laws and policemen to protect him in it; this nation only keeps at peace because other nations' civilization and international law prevent a great combination to plunder it. it ought to accept its share of the general social duty--man the fire pumps, and do police work if needed; and not let a thug murder one of its companions--nay, relatives--before its eyes. it is bound as a christian state not to let a bloody and sensual mohammedan barbarism extinguish the light of a sister christian community; it is bound as a nation of civilized beings not to let a horde of savages like its own indians stamp out a civilized nation millions in number by horrors unspeakable, every atrocity of butchery, and rape, and torture that ever sprung from the cruelty or the lust of man. these things are as awful, as hideous to the armenians as they would be to you if fifty thousand indians overflowed colorado and inflicted them on your american families. what would you feel and do if most of that state were turned into a burnt desolation, with here and there a cabin standing, denver half obliterated and ten thousand of its inhabitants slaughtered in cold blood, hundreds impaled, or burnt, or flayed alive, the sisters and daughters of your own households by thousands violated over and over, thousands made slaves and concubines in the wigwams of dirty indian brutes, and others wandering as naked beggars in the wintry snows about the ruins of their once happy homes? yet this is a picture of what happened over part of armenia; can you think it is of no concern to you? ought congress and the president to think it of no concern to them? surely there are some things where national lines ought not to count. mr. cleveland has been unfortunate in his advisers, partly chosen by himself, and partly inherited. minister terrill has taken the word of the sultan and the palace clique, and made no attempt to investigate for himself; consequently he is full of respect for the mohammedans, and scorn for the armenians. admiral kirtland visited a few seaports, found the armenians there working as usual (of course--the massacres were carried on where news could be intercepted and suppressed by the turks), and reports that he didn't find any evidence of outrages or disorders, and considers the stories false, or much exaggerated. and such lazy or prejudiced negatives as these are to be counted as outweighing the sworn official reports of consuls on the spot, and of pitiful letters from the survivors among the very victims themselves! i have said that mr. cleveland does not lack firmness. he does not in internal policy, but he certainly did not show enough in the matter of these atrocities. the sultan asked him to nominate a commissioner to join those of other powers in investigating the sassoun massacres. he appointed milo a. jewett, consul at sivas; but mr. jewett was much too keen and forcible a man for the sultan, who refused to let him take his place on the commission. mr. cleveland did not insist, as he ought. the very fact that the sultan did not want it, was the best of reasons for persisting. again, last year, the senate voted to send two more consuls to armenia; mr. cleveland appointed messrs. chilton and hunter to go to erzeroum and harpoot respectively, but the sultan refused to accept them, and they had to come back. to consent to this was wrong and weak; the american government should firmly declare its right to protect its own interests in its own way. but the president will act if the american people will stand at his back. when will they send forth a mandate that these horrors must stop? vi. the causes of the atrocities. the great question. the armenian atrocities can never be fully understood by those who may be born in a free land, where there are no turks, no kurds, no circassians, no georgians, no zeibecks, and no mohammedan religion, with its oppressions and persecutions. why the sultan orders the turks, kurds, or other followers to destroy the armenians, whereby more than 100,000 of them have recently been killed, and 500,000 been rendered homeless and left to die of starvation in the streets and fields, or why the sultan ordered all who are spared to accept the mohammedan religion, is never referred to with any sort of correctness by the newspapers or periodicals in their accounts of the dreadful atrocities taking place in armenia, and therefore the people are left in ignorance and doubt respecting the true situation both as to the causes and the atrocities themselves. first cause. the first cause is a very simple one. that the armenians are christians, and the turks, kurds, circassians, and georgians in turkey are mohammedans, and the mohammedan religion urges brutality. it has already been shown to be not a religion, but a system of falsehood, hatred, cruelty, lust, and sensuality; of course, these things combined can only result in corruption. it would seem that mohammed must have taken his inspiration from both the domestic fowl and a bull. a rooster is a polygamist; he has his hens without limit. so mohammed, the professed prophet, had wives without limit. he claimed to have received a revelation from heaven directing him to take to himself any woman he pleased, no matter whether she was married and had a husband or not; that made no difference with mohammed. he took any woman he wanted, and if her husband objected he was sure to be put to death. mohammedans cannot differ from their prophet, they follow him, they strive to imitate him just as much as true christians strive to follow and imitate christ. further, cocks, as a rule, have crowing spells five times in twenty-four hours, and generally mount a high place and do their screaming there. so the mohammedan priests, who are called moezzins, ascend a minaret, or a tower, and five times in twenty four hours they call the people to worship. there is so little confidence placed in the priests or criers that the people prefer to have a blind one go on the minaret to give the calls, so that he may not see their women unveiled in their houses. from a bull, because he is not only immoderately lustful, but fierce and destructive; and the farmers say that the older he grows, the worse he is in both respects. it is certainly so with mohammedans,--naturally enough, for nothing is so lickerish as an old man who has been sensual all his life, and cruelty is a trait which grows with indulgence. the sultan grows more of a beast, and more of a fiend as he grows older, and all the mohammedans are of the same stripe. armenian men and armenian women alike dread the approach of an old turk far more than of a young one. unless one has witnessed a fight between bulls, he can have little idea of turkish warfare. no animal fight can approach it in ferocity or insatiability; when a bull conquers another, he never leaves him until he gores him to death. so when mohammedans conquer a nation, be sure they will exterminate it. to them mercy means apostasy; to leave a man alive or a woman unravished is to be false to the precepts of mohammed. they cannot help it, it is their religion; a religion for wild animals. their priests go to the mosques and preach to them thus: "believers in mohammed, love your fellow believers, but hate and kill all others; they are giaours, heathen dogs, filthy hogs." to kill a christian and to kill a hog is all the same to a mohammedan; there is as little sin in one as the other. the priests say, "ask them to accept our religion; if they do, you must not harm them; but if they will not, kill them, for they have no right to live in a mohammedan country. it is not only no sin, but a great virtue; the more christians you kill, the greater reward you will have from allah and his prophet mohammed." the turks are slaughtering the armenians to earn this reward. of course if the men apostatize they are spared; but the turk has no notion of losing the gratification of his lust on the women in that way. a woman who falls into their hands need not hope to keep her virtue on any terms, even by abjuring her religion; they violate her first, and force her to become a mohammedan afterwards. let it be fully understood throughout the christian world that the massacre is a religious demand; the turks have to comply. as a christian tries to be faithful to christ and his teachings, so the turks are trying to be faithful to their prophet and his. they go to the mosques and pray, "allah, help us; strengthen our hands and sharpen our swords to kill the infidel armenians." then they come from the mosques and begin to kill, and plunder, and outrage, and commit every sort of indescribable atrocities on the peaceable and defenseless armenians. and it will grow worse instead of better, since so-called christian nations have given the sultan public notice that they will not interfere with him. do not be deceived by his lying reports; there was no armenian rebellion; they could not rebel; they did not kill the turks, they never dreamed of such madness. this awful fate has fallen on them purely and simply for being christians. second cause. this seems frivolous and incredible, but it is true; namely, a dream of the sultan. some six years ago, a report was circulated in constantinople about this dream. it was, that in his sleep the sultan saw a little tree planted in the center of his kingdom. it began to grow larger and larger, till it covered the whole turkish empire, and overshadowed even the mountains. all the nations of turkey dwelt under its glorious and majestic shade. still it grew, till the branches crossed the oceans and covered all the other kingdoms, finally the whole world. he woke, but the dream troubled him deeply, and he called some of the ulemas or wise men, of whom he always has a number in his palace, to interpret it for him. they explained it by saying that the tree was christianity; christian missionary work in the heart of his empire. it was a menace to his throne and country, and would grow till it covered the world. the sultan, alarmed and angry, asked what he should do. the ulemas advised him to cut it down while it was small, and he has been doing his best to follow their advice. he did not dare to kill the missionaries, but he is accomplishing the same result by destroying their churches and schools and forbidding any more to be built, confiscating all religious books, and killing the native christian ministers. he has employed every device to force the missionaries to depart by paralyzing their work; if they chose to stay, he would accuse them of inciting the natives to revolt. he has succeeded so far; plunder, burning, torture, murder, violation and forced conversion of christian women, have practically put an end to missionary work. now the time has come to kill the missionaries; and he will very likely find some excuse for doing it--he has an arsenal of falsehoods always at his command. quite likely he will say the armenians killed them, and then murder more armenians in reprisal. his cunning is as infinite as his cruelty. he gives a charter to a missionary institution and destroys ten others. he invites minister terrell to the palace, gives him grand receptions, and loads him with promises and flatteries, and all the time goes on obliterating the schools and churches and killing the native pastors. he creates a ruin; when the european powers protest, he says he will make amends, and he does it by perpetrating a greater one, in which the first is forgotten. he massacres hundreds in a city; when the powers protest, he says he will restore order, and does it by ordering thousands killed in another city, and the first is again forgotten. his atrocities increase as he finds that he is to be unmolested; he is resolute to cut down that spreading tree, and has already cut thousands of branches from it. and the christian nations look on and say they cannot help it. they know perfectly well what is going on, but their "interests" of one sort or another will not permit them to remove that awful blot on civilization. third cause. the mohammedan population in turkey is decreasing, and the christians are increasing. when the present sultan captured the throne from his brother murad, turkey had 40,000,000 people; as soon as he girded the sword of osman, he began the great battle with russia, and after the turko-russian war he found himself with 18,000,000. who are the lost? roumania, bulgaria, servia, montenegro, bosnia, herzegovina, a part of macedonia, cyprus, and a part of armenia. practically the whole of europe was lost for turkey except constantinople and the district edirne or adrianople. turkey is not an empire any more, but it is a little kingdom; rather a little feudal system, or more accurately still, a little anarchy. if it were not for mutual european jealousy, the sultan could not keep his anarchism. yet many still think that the ottoman empire is a great one, a powerful government. they look at the sultan and his dominion through a magnifying glass. this shows ignorance. the turks are decayed and are decaying. the sick man of turkey is the dead man of turkey, and ought to be buried, but the european powers do not bury him because there are precious stones and jewelry in the coffin; no matter how bad the corpse smells, they will endure it. and the bad smell of the sultan is killing hundreds of thousands of christians; but the dead stays where it is, and may stay for some years, but the end will come before many have gone by. when i say that the days of the sultan are numbered, and the brutal turkish mis-rule will cease, many americans will rejoin "that the same has often been said long years since, though the empire remains to-day, and seems likely to remain." the fact is, however, that during my own life more than half of it has gone to pieces, and the fragment which remains will go to pieces soon. permit me to say that all former prophecies have been mistaken because those who made them have judged and misjudged the situation from an occidental standpoint; i judge it from that of a native, who knows the realities as only a native can. what can an english ambassador or an american minister in constantinople, staying perhaps two or three years, and entertained and decorated by the crafty sultan, know about the internal state of turkey? having traveled through the country, lived and preached for years at a time; preached in different cities, including constantinople, i can see signs of a break-up that a foreigner would not notice. the reason the turkish population does not increase is this: the army has to be made up of mohammedans, partly because the sultan does not put arms into the hands of the christians, for obvious reasons, since they have no motive to uphold and every motive to fight him, and partly because to be a soldier in turkey is a holy service, the privilege of mohammedans alone. as there is a large standing army, nearly all the mohammedan youths have to become soldiers. their service begins when they are about twenty years old. the shortest term is five years; for many it is ten; and even after that, there are many who cannot escape. if a young mohammedan is not married at twenty, obviously he cannot marry until twenty-five anyway, and perhaps thirty,--very late for a country population; if he is married his wife is virtually a widow for five to ten years. now the reader can see my drift. with marriages so late, and husbands so long absent, turkish families are small; they do not make good the deaths. and there is a still plainer cause: the soldiers being very poorly fed, and constant fighting going on, ninety per cent. die in the army, and so never have any families; the flower of the nation perishes barren. those who survive and return are pale and sick, good for nothing, a burden to their families and to the nation. the armenians have to support the sultan's army, since they do not furnish it, but they rear families, and are drowning out the turks. another cause of decrease is the pilgrimage to mecca, where mohammed was born. on an average, a million pilgrims go there every year,--of course not all from turkey, but most of them, and every year about 50,000 of them die of cholera before reaching home, from the holy well (zemzem sooyi), which is full of unholy foulness; even those who live and return home take that water to their families, and many of the latter die too. cholera is perpetual in turkey, and it originates at mecca. when i was in marsovan twelve at one time went on the pilgrimage and only four returned. it is a great virtue to die where mohammed was born, or to drink that water and die, and they are going to him at a rapid rate. last year, when the english, russian, and french consuls at jiddeh, the seaport of mecca, established a quarantine to detain those coming from mecca and bringing cholera, they were murdered by the mohammedan arabs, who said they were interfering with the sacred religion, and the sultan had to pay the indemnity. still another reason is the shocking increase of abortions among the wealthy town dwellers. the mohammedan women are growing to love selfish indulgences better than the duties and delights of motherhood. they do not wish to be "bothered" by children, and they take medicine to prevent having them. where the women come to this, it is better for a race to die out; they have outlived their purpose. a fourth cause is polygamy. people naturally think that marrying more than one wife should increase the number of children; but the facts emphatically prove the reverse. the polygamous turks do not increase as fast as the christians who have but one wife. for the fifth, the turks are an exceedingly sensual race, by nature and education, as i have shown. the very religion that should help to make them pure, helps to make them vile. lust leads them, and they follow; nature prompts, and their religion requires it. i am truly ashamed to tell it, but even when they go to their mosques to worship, they manifest their sensuality. not only the relations of male and female are very rank, but between male and male they are worse; between the old turks and young turks, the very boys, the relations are too disgusting to describe. all such moral corruptions not only weaken a people's forces morally, but physically as well; they substitute barren lusts for legitimate gratifications, selfish passions for mutual ones. hence the mohammedans are fast decreasing in turkey, and the sultan is terrified, and hopes by killing a large part of the christians, and forcing the survivors to accept mohammedanism, that their power of multiplication may be the boon of a mohammedan people. out of the 18,000,000 inhabitants of turkey, 6,000,000 are native christians, about half of them armenians. this leaves only 12,000,000 for the whole mohammedan population in the present turkish dominion; and it grows less, while the christian part grows greater. to check this increase, the sultan a few years ago made the obtaining of a marriage certificate compulsory, and the turkish authorities have understood that they are to make it as hard as possible to get; it has cost great sums of money to obtain it. but for many months now, there have been no marriages at all in armenia; the authorities will not grant certificates on any terms, and to prevent any more christians being born, the daughters and young brides of the murdered thousands are made mothers through violation by the turks and kurds. the christians have been increasing not only from within, but from without. europeans have begun to go wherever railroads go. hence another reason for massacre and forced conversion. that the sultan has been planning this massacre ever since the turko-russian war is evidenced by the fact that after the war he encouraged or ordered a number of mohammedan tribes--circassians, georgians, kurds, and lazes--to emigrate from russia to armenia, confiscated masses of christians' property, and gave it to them, and directed them to reduce the number of armenian christians by any way they saw fit, giving them full license to do what they would with armenians, without penalty. you know what that means with fierce tribes of human wild animals, cruel and foul, and he knew what it meant too, and intended it to mean that. before his time the christians far outnumbered the mohammedans in armenia proper; but under his "government"--his deliberate policy of extermination--great numbers fled the country, numbers were killed and their women made concubines to mohammedans, and now the mohammedans are more numerous in armenia than the armenian christians. and if the sultan is permitted to go on, he will kill a million more, the rest will be "converted," and then he will call the attention of the european powers to this fact, and say, "see here, you ask me to reform armenia; armenia is reformed. there is no armenia; there are no armenians; the people in that part of my empire are mohammedans, and they are satisfied with my government. what do you want from me? what right have you to interfere with my country and religion?" that is his plan. when the berlin congress was held, the armenians were the majority in their own country, and the congress decided on reforms for it; the sultan promised them, with the full intention of depopulating and converting it, and then telling the powers there was no need of reform there. he is doing this now incessantly, and as remorselessly as a fiend. fourth cause. the armenians are rich and educated, and the mohammedans are poor and ignorant. the turks have never cared for money or education. they have always said, "let the christians make the money, and we will take it from them whenever we choose. we will be the rulers, the soldiers, the police; we will have the sword in our hands. then their property, and their women too, will be ours at will, and we can force them to become mohammedans." such being their reasoning, they took good care of their swords and their guns, which were furnished to them from europe and the united states. the christian armenians believing that the great christian powers would never permit the turks to wreak their murderous and shameful will on them, did not risk the vengeance of the turks by secretly buying weapons, nor train themselves in the use of arms. they trained their minds, got education, traveled in europe and this united states, enlightened themselves in every way they could; they sharpened their intellects rather than their swords. they learned to make money also; they established all the business houses in turkey; all the turks that get employment in the cities get it from the armenian merchants. as far as turkey has any finances, they are in the hands of armenians. go where you will in turkey, seaboard or interior, all the money and education belong to the armenians, poverty and ignorance are the portion of the turks. ninety per cent. of the armenians know how to read and write, while ninety per cent. of the turks do not. sixty per cent. of the mohammedan property has been sold to the christian armenians within twenty years. when i was in armenia, the mohammedans were always selling and the christians always buying. one day a turk was going to sell his field to an armenian, and they went to the government office to make the transfer. the officer in charge said he could not transfer the property of a mohammedan to a christian. this was something new. "why is that?" they asked. "the governor forbids it," said the officer, "he told me that hereafter it should not be done." finally both went to the governor and asked him why he forbade it. the governor replied, "of late the armenians have bought up the fields of the mohammedans, till they own the greater part of them; if we let them go on they will own everything, and the mohammedans will be left without property. therefore i forbid it; no mohammedan shall hereafter sell any property to a christian." he told the turk he might sell his field to another mohammedan, but not to a christian. "all right," said the turk, "i will sell it to you, then, at the same price, or maybe a little less; will you buy it? i need the money to support my family." "i cannot buy it," said the governor; "i have no money." "i know that," replied the turk; "and not only you, but all the other mohammedans have no money either. they are all poor. i cannot find any turk who has the money to buy my field, and i need money, and i have to sell it to that christian." finally the governor was forced to give the permission, and the armenian bought the field. this is only one case, but it is typical. there are thousands of just such. and this is another cause which aroused the jealousy of the sultan and his subordinates to order the massacre of the armenians, and the seizure of their property. i often hear it said in this country, "let us help the poor armenians"; and i feel very indignant. poor armenians! there are poor among the armenians, as among all nations; but the armenians as a body are not poor. they are the richest people in turkey. that is one reason why they are plundered and killed. i do not want the american people to help the armenians as a poor, ignorant, miserable people, but because they deserve help as a rich, noble, christian nation being rooted out by plunder and murder, for the benefit of, and by means of a horde of savages. i will illustrate by a very little story. when alexander the great reached the mountains of afghanistan on his way to india, the afghan king refused to let him pass through his country. after a great battle, and the slaughter of thousands on both sides, alexander was victorious. the king himself was captured, and brought before alexander, who said to him, "you are my captive; how shall i treat you?" "as a king," said the prisoner. alexander was charmed with the dignity of the answer, and replied, "you shall be treated as one, and a brave one. i leave you on your throne; but permit me to pass on to india." so the king kept his royalty as before, and alexander continued his conquests. such is the armenian question. they are a noble people, an enterprising people, but captives in the hands of the turks. but the turks have not the magnanimity of alexander. we need a nation which does have it, to say to the armenians, "remain where you are, in your ancient home, and rule there; govern yourselves freely as a christian nation. you have fought centuries after centuries for home and honor, and now we come to your help, to establish you on the old armenian throne." do not help the armenians merely as a poor people, but help them because they were rich, and now they are stripped and poor, without fault of their own, from hate of their (and your) religion, and envy of their superiority. fifth cause. this is perhaps the greatest of all. it is the american missionary work in armenia. it was in 1831 that the american board of foreign missions established the first protestant mission there. their purpose was to send missionaries, not simply to the armenians, but to all classes and sects in turkey. those pioneer american missionaries were among the noblest of men, and greatest of teachers, preachers, and organizers. i will name a few: dr. goodell, dr. dwight, dr. schaffler, dr. cyrus hamlin, founder of robert college, living now at lexington, mass., 86 years old, one of the greatest missionaries ever born, dr. h. van lennep, another great missionary, greatly beloved by the armenians. books could be written about these christian chiefs, to whom, and to the american people who sent them, we armenians are grateful. when dr. van lennep died at great barrington, mass., about six years ago, the author was raising money here to build a church in armenia, as already told. he went to condole with mrs. van lennep, and told her not to put any monument over the doctor's grave. he would see the other armenians, and as a grateful people they would erect him a beautiful one. he kept his word, and his faith was justified; they raised the funds and put up the monument. it stands in the cemetery at great barrington, with the following inscription:- henry john van lennep, d.d. 1815-1889. for thirty years missionary in turkey. this monument is erected by his armenian friends in grateful appreciation of his heroic virtues, and endearing services rendered to their people. the beloved missionary van lennep. when the noble missionaries went to turkey, the turks hated them, the jews hated them, the greeks hated them, and these three peoples hate them still. but the armenians welcomed them; they loved and esteemed them, and they love and esteem them more than ever now. the question is often asked "are not the armenians a christian people? then why did the missionaries go there?" yes, they are; but still they needed the missionaries, and need them now more than ever. why? well, for two reasons. their churches and schools having been destroyed by the long oppression by the turks, they needed help from a sister christian church to help them educate themselves, and build up churches, schools, and colleges, benevolent institutions, printing offices. the missionaries have done that great work in armenia, but i am sorry to say that some of their creations have been destroyed by the turks during the recent atrocities. the second reason is that the armenian church stood in great need of reformation. i have already explained in this book (see "the armenian church") how in the last desperate struggle for national existence, a part of the people reluctantly accepted help from the pope of rome, at the price of uniting with the roman church, and using its rituals, images, etc. hence, in many of the armenian churches there was no pure gospel preaching; rituals were the leading element of the services. there was therefore great need that such preaching should be introduced; the missionaries did so, and the armenian church has been greatly reformed. my purpose here is not to write a church history, nor to give an account of missionary work in turkey. i mention it incidentally as a chief cause of the atrocities. the missionaries have trained both boys and girls in their schools for sixty-five years now; many thousands of them. the turks have not been permitted to go to them, the greeks are too proud to send their children, but the armenians were hungry for education, especially for an american education. the new-born baby of the time when the missionaries arrived is now sixty-five years old, with his american education, which has wonderfully elevated the armenians, and turned armenia almost into a second america, educationally. the american colleges in different parts of turkey are great centers of light; about ninety per cent. of the students and the leading native professors and teachers are armenians. i will mention a few: robert college and the woman's college in constantinople; the ladies' seminary in smyrna; anatolia college, the ladies' seminary, and the theological seminary in marsovan; the writer's pastorate, central turkey college and the ladies' college at aintab, euphrates college (first called armenia college, but the name is forbidden by the turks, as encouraging armenian independence) and the ladies' department at harpoot; the academy and the theological seminary at marash, where i studied three years; the colleges both for girls and boys at beirut; and many high schools and primary schools throughout armenia. the american bible house is a great depot of christian literature. these are all american christian institutions, and nine-tenths of their inmates are armenians. the reader can clearly see how the armenians have become a wholly new race; they have had the advantage of american education, and it has revolutionized the nation. it has elevated, refined, and prospered them. this great improvement among the armenians aroused the jealousy of the sultan and his underlings. he first began to close the schools; then to imprison the native armenian teachers and preachers; then to kill the armenians and destroy the missionary institutions, that no armenian may be left to go to any american school, and that if any escapes, there may be no american school to receive him. i consider this missionary education the very greatest cause for the atrocities, and the armenian bishops agree with me. here is what the armenian bishop of oorfa (edessa), where about 8,000 armenians were massacred, has to say: to the americans. march 12, 1896. "we have been strenuously opposed to your mission work among us, but these bloody days have proven that some of our protestant brothers have been staunch defenders of our honor and faith. you at least know that our crime, in the eyes of the turk, has been that we have adopted the civilization you commended. behold the missions and schools which you planted among us, and which cost millions of dollars, and hundreds of precious lives, now in ruins. the turk is planning to rid himself of missionaries and teachers by leaving them nobody to labor among." it is very significant that wherever there was a missionary institution, and especially a missionary theological seminary to train armenian ministers, there has been the greatest atrocity. this shows how the sultan hates americans, and american education. there are nearly two hundred american male and female missionaries in turkey. they are in great danger. the turks have determined to kill them, and the sultan can no longer control them, for he gave the order and put the sword into their hands. the kurds and the turks say, "the missionaries have better things than the armenians had. we killed the armenians and got their valuables, and we enjoy them. we are richer now, and we did not work for it; we did not waste time in hard labor; the only thing we had to do was to obey the sultan and kill the armenians and get their property. why not kill the americans and get richer?" reader, keep in your mind that the turks will kill the missionaries also. the horrible time is coming, in spite of what your minister to turkey says, and partly because he believes turkish lies, and says there was no need of sending missionaries there. another point worthy of consideration is this: russia and turkey made an alliance. russia is as much opposed to the missionaries as turkey is, and perhaps the czar is secretly encouraging the sultan to get rid of them. undoubtedly russia is trying to get rid of protestant influence in turkey, and therefore sacrifices the old protestant armenian nation to turkey. in my belief, the time is coming when the protestant nations will unite and protest practically against the outrages of turkey and russia. they have no right to persecute turks or russians, but they have a perfect right to protect an old protestant church and the american missionaries. no matter how much it costs, it pays to protect them, and, pay or no pay, it is the duty of america and england to unite and protect them. and if england and america should really unite, turkey and russia will yield. i do not at all concur with americans who favor russia and hate england. lord salisbury is too timid to do it, but lord salisbury is not england. the english people are a noble people, and if the american noble people unite with them, they can accomplish a great work for god and humanity, for peace and liberty, for freedom and happiness in armenia. as far as i can judge, the foregoing are the causes of the atrocities in armenia. perhaps there may be other minor ones, but they are not worthy of discussion. vii. the turkish atrocities in armenia. the beginning. turkish atrocities in armenia are no new thing; they have gone on for centuries, and left but a fraction of the population it once had. but let us disregard old history, and come to the subject of to-day. practically that begins with hamid ii, the present sultan. he began his persecutions nearly twenty years ago, but on a small scale. he has continually devised new methods of getting rid of the armenians without responsibility; finally he hit on the plan of arming the kurds and letting them loose with full power to do their worst. when i was in constantinople he summoned the kurdish chiefs, hundreds of them--i have seen them with my own eyes--entertained them in the palace, armed them with modern rifles, and sent them to armenia on their mission. the pretense under which he did it was worthy of him: he called them the "hamidieh cavalry," and pretended that they were a sort of mounted police, who were to keep order and protect the armenians. this was exactly as though a regiment of red indians should be armed and sent to oregon to protect the inhabitants, and called, say, the presidential guard, and the armenians knew well what they were for. but the european travelers and newspaper correspondents took it all seriously, and talked of his "civilizing the kurds," etc. now these were only the chiefs; each chief had a large following of tribesmen, so that about 30,000 kurds in all were given arms and ordered to go to work exterminating the armenians. this work began in 1891, but on a small scale, and in a very crafty way, so that it should not have the appearance of a premeditated massacre; then it was stopped till about sixteen months ago, when they were encouraged to begin again, publicly, and with full swing. it was decided to begin in sassoun, a district far from the sea, with no roads and a sparse population; if successful in escaping report there, he could carry out the massacre through all armenia, for which "reforms" were asked and promised. he ordered zekii pasha to have his soldiers ready, and meantime to have the "hamidieh cavalry" the kurdish chiefs and tribesmen, ready to attack and kill all the armenians in sassoun. this city lies between moosh and bitlis, in a mountainous country, and the sassounites are a brave people, as much so as the zeitoonlis are. the district had about sixty villages and towns, and about 20,000 people sixteen months ago, but it has none now. the regular soldiers and the armed kurds surrounded the district from all sides, and in about a month had slaughtered the entire population. it was reported that zekii pasha carried on his breast an order from the sultan as follows: "whoever spares man, woman, or child is disloyal." after he had finished his task, he received great rewards from the sultan, and is now one of his most esteemed commanders. zekii pasha is said to have had 40,000 kurds and regular soldiers under his command when he began the massacre. the people of sassoun, knowing that they were doomed, fought desperately. they repulsed the kurds several times, and killed many of them; but finally the regular soldiers took part, pretending to come in aid of the armenians, and overbore them, killing all without quarter. the sultan's order was to spare neither man, woman, nor child; but as the men met the enemy first, they were killed first. when the women's turn came, the turks and kurds abused all they could get hold of, and then told them that if they would deny christ and accept mohammed and become their wives, they should live; but if they refused, every one of them, according to the sultan's order, should be killed. "now," said they, "choose between islam and death." these noble armenian christian women said:--"we are christians, we can never deny christ. jesus christ is our saviour. he came down from heaven and died on the cross for us. for that dying and loving christ we are christians; we are ready to die for him who died for us." and they added further, "we are no better than our husbands were; you killed them, kill us too." then the horrible butchery began on those defenseless women. thousands of them were slaughtered, and thousands ran to different churches, hoping that perhaps they might find protection in some way in those holy walls, or hoping that god in his great mercy might shelter them. but the ferocious kurds and turkish soldiers pursued them, sword in hand, violated them, even in the churches, and cut their throats there until the floors were streaming with blood. then they poured kerosene on the buildings and burned them. they went to one village and killed every man; the women of course, knowing their fate was soon to be worse than their husbands'. one of the leading women, named shaheg, perceiving that the turks and kurds were getting ready to seize and ravish them, called the other women and said, "sisters, our husbands are killed, and you know what is in store for us and our children. don't let us fall into the hands of these savage beasts; we have to die anyway, and can die easier, and without being defiled first, and perhaps tortured. let us go to the precipice and jump off." so saying, she took her baby on her arm, ran to the rock, and threw herself over; the others followed her, and thus all were killed. the turks captured many boys and girls, six, or eight, or ten years of age, held them by an arm or foot, and hacked them to pieces with their swords. sometimes they stood the boys in a row and shot them, to see how many could be killed by a single bullet. they wrenched babies from their mothers' arms, cut their throats while the mothers shrieked and pleaded, and boiling them in kettles, forced the mothers to eat the flesh. they cut open women about to become mothers, tore out the unborn babes, and marched triumphantly with the ghastly trophies on their spears--something almost surpassing the savagery of the apache indian. even their worst horrors they made worse yet by the way they did them; they took a gloating delight in doubling the cruelty or the shame by making it torture others too. the husband was forced to look on while his wife was violated, and she in turn while he was mutilated, tortured, and murdered; the father while his daughters, even little girls of ten or twelve, were deflowered and their throats cut, the son while his parents had every form of shame and torture inflicted on them, and were killed before him, or saw him killed first. they tortured their victims like indians or inquisitors, in every fashion of lingering death and torment that makes the heart sicken and the blood run cold to read of. crucifying head downward, and pouring boiling water or ice-cold water on them, leaving them so till death came; flaying alive; cutting off arms, feet, nose, ears, and other members, and leaving them to die; thrusting red-hot wires into and through their bodies. they pulled out the eyes of several christian pastors, said, "now dance for us," poured kerosene on them and burned them to death. they put a bible and a cross before others, and ordered them to first spit and then trample on both, and deny christ; on their refusal they were butchered. the handsomest girls and young matrons were not murdered, but worse; each one was kept as a spoil of some turk or kurd, who carried her to his house, and made a slave and concubine of her. many hundreds of them are there to this day, enduring the awful fate of having been dragged from happy and virtuous homes, seen their husbands, or parents, or brothers, or all of them horribly murdered, and passing their lives each in doing menial labor and serving the lust of a brutal master, and all the other men he lets have their will of her, without hope, or comfort, or decency, and a long life of shame and misery yet to look forward to. this is another specimen of mohammedan purity, and it all happens because the armenians are christians. if my readers think i am exaggerating, i refer them to the consular reports. all this was done by the barbarians con amore, with relish and delight. they boasted of it, they plumed themselves on it, they praised the sultan for ordering them to do it, and he praised them for doing it, and decorated all the officers. the condition of those who were murdered out-right was much better than that of those who were imprisoned and tortured. the following was written by an armenian from one of the prisons:- "our condition in prison passes description. only he who sees can understand it. most of the occupants of every room are christians, but many are moslems. life would be a shade more tolerable if the subject race were not compelled thus to associate with the dominant race, whose temper, tastes, and habits are so different. into one small room twenty persons are crowded. except for a few moslems, not a single person has room enough on the bare floor to stretch out and lie down. for fully sixteen hours in the night, the doors of the rooms are all locked. in one of these small rooms, sometimes twenty cigarettes are smoking at once. out of the small amount of food which reaches us, instead of eating themselves, the christians are obliged to feed the moslems confined there. moslem oppression continues, even here; it is a tyranny within a tyranny. in every room there are a few aghas or principal moslems, and every christian must contribute money to their lordships. those who withhold such contributions are not allowed to sit down. "among the inmates of the prison are twenty or thirty rowdies and bullies, under whom the christians must serve as menial slaves. there is no respect, no pity. the horrible blasphemies cannot be described. there is no book, no bible, no work, no sleep. every man is covered with the swarming vermin with which the unwashed rooms of the prison teem. to clean ourselves is impossible. now and then the rumor sweeps through the prison that we are all to be put to death, and all our hearts melt like water. "the terrible darkness of the night, the curses and stripes inflicted from time to time, cause us to live in the valley of the shadow of death. it is a living grave, a visible hell, a world without god. out of this throng of prisoners more than a hundred are in daily suffering from the gnawing of hunger, and from nakedness, but there is no one to pity. many praying men are tempted to cease praying, many are tempted to change over to the moslem faith. in truth, all of us are dumb; what to say we know not. we are wearied of the long silence; our eyes are strained with watching, our bones ache, our prayers are despised by the revilers. night is not night, and day is not day. our grief is our food, our sleep is weeping, for how long a time must we cry? o lord, wilt thou hide thyself forever? how long will thy anger burn like fire? and yet some of us are saying: 'though he slay me, yet will i trust in him.' "when will the christian statesmen and philanthropists of the world find a way to cleanse these augean stables all over turkey? long centuries cry out for redress. within a month the following incidents have occurred: a christian confined in this prison was ordered to receive 400 stripes. after 300 had been inflicted he cried out that he could endure no more or he must die. an officer then presented to him a paper with the names of fifty christians in the city who were accused therein of sedition. in his great agony he signed it, and this is to be used to incriminate others, wholly regardless of their guilt or innocence. the other victim of unendurable stripes was an old man. when he could endure no more of this inhuman treatment, he also was asked to sign a paper implicating others indiscriminately. "can any one living in a free country for a moment understand what it is to live under such a government? there is a great flourish just at present over the reforms that are being instituted in certain parts of this land. no resident of this country can have confidence in the superficial operations. what will you do with a land where lying is the simplest of mental exercises, and where no one was ever known to blush over it if exposed?" i give here the testimony of a gentleman from sassoun who escaped the atrocities. he is an armenian from sassoun, and my personal friend. i quote this from a little pamphlet, entitled "facts about armenia." the massacre of 1894. "the armenians of sassoun were fully aware of the hostile intention of the government, but they could not imagine it to be one of utter extermination. "the porte had prepared its plans, sassoun was doomed. the kurds were to come in much greater number, the government was to furnish them provision and ammunition, and the regular army was to second them in case of need. "the various tribes received invitations to take part in the great expedition, and the chiefs, with their men, arrived one after the other. the total number of the kurds who took part in the campaign may be estimated at 30,000. the armenians believed in the beginning that they had to do only with the kurds. they found out later that an ottoman regular army, with provisions, rifles, cannons, and kerosene oil, was standing at the back of the kurds. "the plan was to destroy first shenig, semal, guelliegoozan, aliantz, etc., and then to proceed toward dalvorig. the kurds, notwithstanding their immense number, proved to be unequal to the task. the armenians held their own, and the kurds got worsted. after a two weeks' fight between kurd and armenian, the regular army entered into an active campaign. mountain pieces began to thunder. the armenians, having nearly exhausted their ammunition, took to flight. kurd and turk pursued them, and massacred men, women, and children. the houses were searched and then set on fire. from certain villages groups of men, tax receipts in their hands, went to the camp and asked to be protected, but were slaughtered. "a great number of villages outside of the dalvorig district, which had in no wise been concerned in the conflicts of the previous years, were also attacked, to the unspeakable horror of the populations. the troops climbed up even the mount antok, where a multitude of fugitives had taken refuge, and massacred them. a number of women and girls were taken to the church of guelliegoozan, and after being frightfully abused, were tortured to death. "when the work of destruction was nearly accomplished in the other districts, some of the kurdish armies were set on dalvorig. the people defended themselves against the overwhelming number of the barbarians, but after four or five days they saw other tribes and regular turkish troops marching on them from every side, and they took to flight, but were overtaken and massacred. the scene was most horrible. the enemy took a special delight in butchering the dalvorig people. an immense crowd of turkish and kurdish soldiery fell upon the villages, busily searching the houses and rooting out hidden treasures, and then setting fire to the village. while the troops were so occupied, a number of the fugitives fled wildly to get out of the district, and tried to hide themselves in caves, between rocks, or among bushes. three days after the complete destruction of dalvorig villages, the kurds and the regular soldiers divided among themselves the result of the plunder, and the kurds returned to their own mountains." as my use of english is defective, i take the liberty here of quoting from a long letter by e. j. dillon to the contemporary review, january, 1896. dr. dillon is an englishman who was the special correspondent of the london "daily telegraph," a most accurate and conscientious reporter, who writes as an eye-witness: "if a detailed description were possible of the horrors which our exclusive attention to our own mistaken interests let loose upon turkish armenians, there is not a man within the kingdom of great britain whose heart-strings would not be touched and thrilled by the gruesome stories of which it would be composed. "during all those seventeen years, written law, traditional custom, the fundamental maxims of human and divine justice were suspended in favor of a mohammedan saturnalia. the christians, by whose toil and thrift the empire was held together, were despoiled, beggared, chained, beaten, and banished or butchered. first their movable wealth was seized, then their landed property was confiscated, next the absolute necessaries of life were wrested from them, and finally honor, liberty, and life were taken with as little ado as if these christian men and women were wasps or mosquitoes. thousands of armenians were thrown into prison by governors like tahsin pasha and bahri pasha, and tortured and terrorized till they delivered up the savings of a lifetime, and the support of the helpless families, to ruffianly parasites. whole villages were attacked in broad daylight by the imperial kurdish cavalry without pretext or warning, the male inhabitants turned adrift or killed, and their wives and daughters transformed into instruments to glut the foul lusts of these bestial murderers. in a few years the provinces were decimated, aloghkerd, for instance, being almost entirely 'purged' of armenians. over 20,000 woe-stricken wretches, once healthy and well-to-do, fled to russia or persia in rags and misery, deformed, diseased, or dying; on the way they were seized over and over again by the soldiers of the sultan, who deprived them of the little money they possessed, nay, of the clothes they were wearing, outraged the married women in the presence of their sons and daughters, deflowered the tender girls before the eyes of their mothers and brothers, and then drove them over the frontier to starve and die. those who remained for a time behind were no better off. kurdish brigands lifted the last cows and goats of the peasants, carried away their carpets and their valuables, raped their daughters and dishonored their wives. turkish tax-gatherers followed these, gleaning what the brigands had left, and, lest anything should escape their avarice, bound the men, flogged them till their bodies were a bloody, mangled mass, cicatrized the wounds with red-hot ramrods, plucked out their beards hair by hair, tore the flesh from their limbs with pincers, and often, even then, dissatisfied with the financial results of their exertions, hung the men whom they had thus beggared and maltreated from the rafters of the room, and kept them there to witness with burning shame, impotent rage, and incipient madness, the dishonoring of their wives and the deflowering of their daughters, some of whom died miserably during the hellish outrage. "in accordance with the plan of extermination, which has been carried out with such signal success during these long years of turkish vigor and english sluggishness, all those armenians who possessed money, or money's worth were for a time allowed to purchase immunity from prison, and from all that prison life in asia minor implies. but as soon as terror and summary confiscation took the place of slow and elaborate extortion, the gloomy dungeons of erzeroum, erzinghan, marsovan, hassankaleh, and van were filled, till there was no place to sit down, and scarcely sufficient standing room. and this means more than english people can realize, or any person believe who has not actually witnessed it. it would have been a torture for turkish troopers and kurdish brigands, but it was worse than death to the educated school-masters, missionaries, priests, and physicians who were immured in these noisome hotbeds of infection, and forced to sleep night after night standing on their feet, leaning against the foul, reeking corner of the wall which all the prisoners were compelled to use as.... the very worst class of tartar and kurdish criminals were turned in here to make these hell-chambers more unbearable to the christians. and the experiment was everywhere successful. human hatred and diabolical spite, combined with the most disgusting sights, and sounds, and stenches, with their gnawing hunger and their putrid food, their parching thirst and the slimy water, fit only for sewers, rendered their agony maddening. yet these were not criminals nor alleged criminals, but upright christian men, who were never even accused of an infraction of the law. no man who has not seen these prisons with his own eyes, and heard these prisoners with his own ears, can be expected to conceive, much less realize, the sufferings inflicted and endured. the loathsome diseases, whose terrible ravages were freely displayed; the still more loathsome vices, which were continually and openly practiced; the horrible blasphemies, revolting obscenities, and ribald jests which alternated with cries of pain, songs of vice, and prayers to the unseen god, made these prisons, in some respects, nearly as bad as the black hole of calcutta, and in others infinitely worse. in one corner of this foul fever-nest a man might be heard moaning and groaning with the pain of a shattered arm or leg; in another, a youth is convulsed with the death spasms of cholera or poison; in the center, a knot of turks, whose dull eyes are fired with bestial lust, surround a christian boy, who pleads for mercy with heart-harrowing voice while the human fiends actually outrage him to death. "into these prisons venerable old ministers of religion were dragged from their churches, teachers from their schools, missionaries from their meeting-houses, merchants, physicians, and peasants from their firesides. those among them who refused to denounce their friends, or consent to some atrocious crime, were subjected to horrible agonies. many a one, for instance, was put into a sentry-box bristling with sharp spikes, and forced to stand there motionless, without food or drink, for twenty-four and even thirty-six hours, was revived with stripes whenever he fell fainting to the prickly floor, and was carried out unconscious at the end. it was thus that hundreds of armenian christians, whose names and histories are on record, suffered for refusing to sign addresses to the sultan accusing their neighbors and relatives of high treason. it was thus that azo was treated by his judges, the turkish officials, talib effendi, captain reshid, and captain hadji fehim agha, for declining to swear away the lives of the best men of his village. a whole night was spent in torturing him. he was first bastinadoed in a room close to which his female relatives and friends were shut up so that they could hear his cries. then he was stripped naked, two poles extending from his armpits to his feet were placed on each side of his body and tied tightly. his arms were next stretched out horizontally and poles arranged to support his hands. this living cross was then bound to a pillar, and the flogging began. the whips left livid traces behind. the wretched man was unable to make the slightest movement to ease his pain. his features alone, hideously distorted, revealed the anguish he endured. the louder he cried, the more heavily fell the whip. over and over again he entreated his tormentors to put him out of pain, saying, 'if you want my death, kill me with a bullet, but for god's sake don't torture me like this!' his head alone being free, he at last, maddened by excruciating pain, endeavored to dash out his brains against the pillar, hoping in this way to end his agony. but this consummation was hindered by the police. they questioned him again; but in spite of his condition, azo replied as before: 'i cannot defile my soul with the blood of innocent people. i am a christian.' enraged at this obstinacy, talib effendi, the turkish official, ordered the application of other and more effective tortures. pincers were fetched to pull out his teeth, but, azo remaining firm, this method was not long persisted in. then talib commanded his servants to pluck out the prisoner's moustachios by the roots, one hair at a time. this order the gendarmes executed, with roars of infernal laughter. but this treatment proving equally ineffectual, talib instructed the men to cauterize the unfortunate victim's body. a spit was heated in the fire. azo's arms were freed from their supports, and two brawny policemen approached, one on each side and seized him. meanwhile another gendarme held to the middle of the wretched man's hands the glowing spit. while his flesh was thus burning, the victim shouted out in agony, 'for the love of god kill me at once!' "then the executioners, removing the red-hot spit from his hands, applied it to his breast, then to his back, his face, his feet, and other parts. after this, they forced open his mouth, and burned his tongue with red-hot pincers. during these inhuman operations, azo fainted several times, but on recovering consciousness maintained the same inflexibility of purpose. meanwhile, in the adjoining apartment, a heart-rending scene was being enacted. the women and the children, terrified by the groans and cries of the tortured man, fainted. when they revived, they endeavored to rush out to call for help, but the gendarmes, stationed at the door, barred their passage, and brutally pushed them back. [2] "nights were passed in such hellish orgies and days in inventing new tortures or refining upon the old; with an ingenuity which reveals unimagined strata of malignity in the human heart. the results throw the most sickening horrors of the middle ages into the shade. some of them cannot be described, nor even hinted at. the shock to people's sensibilities would be too terrible. and yet they were not merely described to, but endured by men of education and refinement, whose sensibilities were as delicate as ours. "and when the prisons in which these and analogous doings were carried on had no more room for new-comers, some of the least obnoxious of its actual inmates were released for a bribe, or, in case of poverty, were expeditiously poisoned off. "in the homes of these wretched people the fiendish fanatics were equally active and equally successful. family life was poisoned at its very source. rape and dishonor, with nameless accompaniments, menaced almost every girl and woman in the land. they could not stir out of their houses in broad daylight to visit the bazaars, or to work in the fields, nor even lie down at night in their own homes, without fearing the fall of that damocles' sword ever suspended over their heads. tender youth, childhood itself, was no guarantee. children were often married at the age of eleven, even ten, in the vain hope of lessening this danger. but the protection of a husband proved unavailing; it merely meant one murder more, and one 'christian dog' less. a bride would be married in church yesterday, and her body would be devoured by the beasts and birds of prey to-morrow,--a band of ruffians, often officials, having within the intervening forty-eight hours seized her and outraged her to death. others would be abducted, and, having for weeks been subjected to the loathsome lusts of lawless kurds, would end by abjuring their god and embracing islam; not from any vulgar motive of gain, but to escape the burning shame of returning home as pariahs and lepers, to be shunned by those near and dear to them forever. little girls of five and six were frequently forced to be present during these horrible scenes of lust, and they, too, were often sacrificed before the eyes of their mothers, who would have gladly, madly accepted death, ay, and damnation, to save their tender offspring from the corroding poison. "one of the abducted young women who, having been outraged by the son of the deputy-governor of khnouss, hussein bey, returned, a pariah, and is now alone in the world, lately appealed to her english sisters for such aid as a heathen would give to a brute, and she besought it in the name of our common god. lucine mussegh--this is the name of that outraged young woman whose protestant education gave her, as she thought, a special claim to act as the spokeswoman of armenian mothers and daughters--lucine mussegh besought, last march, the women of england to obtain for the women of armenia the 'privilege' of living a pure and chaste life! this was the boon which she craved--but did not, could not obtain. the interests of 'higher politics,' the civilizing missions of the christian powers, are, it seems, incompatible with it! 'for the love of the god whom we worship in common,' wrote this outraged, but still hopeful, armenian lady, 'help us, christian sisters! help us before it is too late, and take the thanks of the mothers, the wives, the sisters, and the daughters of my people, and with them the gratitude of one for whom, in spite of her youth, death would come as a happy release.' "neither the christian sisters nor the christian brethren in england have seen their way to comply with this strange request. but it may perhaps interest lucine mussegh to learn that the six great powers of europe are quite unanimous, and are manfully resolved, come what will, to shield his majesty the sultan from harm, to support his rule, and to guarantee his kingdom from disintegration. these are objects worthy of the attention of the great powers; as for the privilege of leading pure and chaste lives--they cannot be importuned about such private matters. "in due time they began. over 60,000 armenians have been butchered, and the massacres are not quite ended yet. in trebizond, erzeroum, erzinghan, hassankalek, and numberless other places the christians were crushed like grapes during the vintage. the frantic mob, seething and surging in the streets of the cities, swept down upon the defenseless armenians, plundered their shops, gutted their houses, then joked and jested with the terrified victims, as cats play with mice. as rapid, whirling motion produces apparent rest, so the wild frenzy of those fierce fanatical crowds resulted in a condition of seeming calmness, composure, and gentleness which, taken in connection with the unutterable brutality of their acts, was of a nature to freeze men's blood with horror. in many cases they almost caressed their victims, and actually encouraged them to hope, while preparing the instruments of slaughter." after the horrible scenes at sassoun, and other places, the armenian protests shamed the european powers, who signed the treaty of berlin, to send a commission and investigate the atrocities. it found the stories quite true, laid the facts before the sultan--and that was the end of it. the armenians asked, "since you admit the truth of these things, why do you not punish the criminals, stop the outrages, and compel the payment of indemnity to those who were outraged and who lost their dear ones and their property?" the powers were deaf to all this. then the armenians prepared an appeal (several months ago) and carried it to the sublime porte, asking it to do them justice. as soon as the sultan heard of this, he ordered his soldiers to fire on them if they presented it. the appeal was presented, and before the eyes of the european ambassadors in constantinople, the brave soldiers of the kind-hearted sultan butchered about 3,000 armenian christians, several thousand were imprisoned, and several hundred were murdered in the central prison. then the cold, wise, and considerate european powers began to move very slowly, not for the sake of the armenians, but for their own, their citizens in constantinople and elsewhere. they ordered the sultan to reform armenia, brought their fleets to the dardanelles near constantinople to overawe him, prepared a scheme of reform for armenia, and made huge threats to the sultan if he did not accept it. but he knew that this pretended concert of the powers for armenian reform was a mere trick and sham, as i have persistently asserted all along in the face of my hopeful european and american friends; in fact, the russian government at this very time was secretly urging him to stand firm and refuse to accept the reforms. he did so, broached a scheme of his own as a substitute, and the powers accepted it as such; and then the whole thing was dropped, the sultan did nothing whatever about it, as he had never intended to. the european countries were hoodwinked, and the armenian massacres and conflagrations, plundering and deflowering, went on at a greater pace than ever. then the powers dropped the armenian question, and took up that of gunboats in the bosphorus, to protect their citizens against a rising in constantinople; that they forced the sultan to permit, because their own interests were concerned in it,--which shows that they could have forced him to stop exterminating the armenians if they had cared. all joined in this except germany; the german emperor is the sultan's friend, and backs him up. so now germany, russia, and the sultan are hand in hand, leagued to prevent any of the miserable victims of his tyranny from escaping his clutches, and the sultan has the best possible encouragement to go on killing the armenians. the german emperor says, "better that armenians be killed than have a war in europe and lose the lives of some of my soldiers." the czar says, "time must be given to the sultan to reform his country." lord salisbury says, "the sultan has promised, and we must wait and see what he will do." and the sultan, cursing every emperor and lord of them all as a set of christian hogs, orders the soldiers and the kurds to go on with the good work in armenia. and when we come to america, the monroe doctrine obliges it to quarrel over venezuela, and not only refuse help itself, but give lord salisbury a good excuse to give none either. such is the situation; the massacres are going on in armenia and the armenians in despair are crying, "o lord, how long, how long!" mass meetings are good as far as they go; raising money and sending it to relieve the armenians is good as far as it goes; the red cross society is good as far as it goes; there are no objections to any of them; they are all noble and christian. but, reader, don't you think all these good movements with good motives will hurt the armenian cause, as there is nothing to aid that cause directly? all these mass-meetings merely irritate the sultan into carrying on the murders more strenuously, since there is no force back of them. don't you think the armenian question being discussed in the united states congress, and resolutions made without any action, will hurt the armenians more than anything else? if you can't tread down the sultan, don't stir him up. miss clara barton, that noble woman, is in armenia to help the armenians. the red cross society is there and is feeding the armenians. i thank her, every armenian thanks her. but do you think that that will relieve the situation? spring has come, and what now? will the armenians have any crops? did they, or could they sow any seed? is there any farmer left alive? has any farmer, if he is alive, any oxen or horses? if he has, will he dare go to his field, sow, reap, and thresh? reader, consider all these things, and reconsider them, and i am sure you will come to the same conclusion i did many years ago, that turkey does not need a red cross society, but a red cross crusade, not like the medieval crusades, but a protestant american crusade in the nineteenth century. let me illustrate this armenian question by the following parable:-suppose a lamb is torn by a wolf, and the wolf lies in wait to finish it. you go to the lamb with a bundle of grass in your hand, pat it and say, "here, poor lamb, i pity you, i give you grass; take it and eat it." then you leave the lamb and go away. do you think you have helped the lamb? as soon as you have gone, the wolf will come and tear the lamb to pieces. if you are going to help the lamb, you must kill the wolf, else no matter how much grass you give the wounded lamb, it will do it no good. you will do no good by sending red cross societies to armenia to feed the armenians if you have not the power or the will to keep the wild beasts off. you will feed them, and then the wolves will kill them. now i will pass in review some of the leading cities in armenia where there have been great persecutions. before beginning, however, i must state that it is impossible to give an accurate census of the population in the armenian cities, or the number who have been massacred; for the turkish government never takes a correct census, and never gives or will give the true number of those it has murdered. but i think i can make a fair approximation of both. i will begin with the city of harpoot. [3] harpoot and its vicinity. this is one of the most important armenian districts, because the armenians outnumber the mohammedans there; in the city the turks are the more numerous, but there are many armenian towns and villages which make up. the district has about 150,000 people, most of them armenians, and about 40,000 were killed in the recent massacre. harpoot is built on three hills, and has a commanding view. here is located a great american missionary institution, the euphrates college; it has three departments, the college, the theological seminary, and the girls' seminary. there were twelve buildings, eight of which were burned in the outrages, a loss of $100,000. almost all the outlying villages were burned, and the movables carried off. women were made prey, boys and girls were kidnapped; the horrors can never be described. i give here a few words from a private letter, written by a mohammedan turk to his brother in this country. i have the letter in my possession, written in the turkish language. he says:- "my dear brother: "all the christian villages which belong to harpoot district, we plundered and destroyed, and killed the inhabitants. we killed them both with our swords and with our rifles. the bullets of our rifles poured upon them like rain; none of them are left, neither any dwelling was left, we burnt all their houses. we thank god that not a single mohammedan was killed. everywhere throughout armenia the christians were punished in the same manner." another testimony from another mohammedan, an officer; he says nearly 40,000 were killed in harpoot province, february 26, 1896:- "a petition in behalf of the armenians was given to the powers in the hope of improving their condition. an imperial firman was issued for carrying out the reforms suggested by the powers. on this account the turkish population was much excited, and thought that an armenian principality was to be established, and they began to show great hostility to the poor armenians, who had been obedient to them and with whom they had lived in peace for more than 600 years. to the anger of the people were added the permission and help of the government; and so, before the reforms were undertaken, the whole turkish population was aroused, with the evil intent of obliterating the armenian name; and so the turks of the province, joining with the neighboring kurdish tribes by the thousand, armed with weapons which are allowed only to the army, and with the help and under the guidance of turkish officials, in an open manner, in the daytime, attacked the armenian houses, shops, stores, monasteries, churches, schools, and committed the fearful atrocities set forth in the accompanying table. they killed bishops, priests, teachers, and common people with every kind of torture, and they showed special spite toward ecclesiastics by treating their bodies with extra indignity, and in many cases they did not allow their bodies to be buried. some they burned, and some they gave as food to dogs and wild beasts. "they plundered churches and monasteries, and they took all the property of the common people, their flocks and herds, their ornaments and their money, their house furnishings and their food, and even the clothing of the men and women in their flight. then after plundering them, they burned many houses, churches, monasteries, schools, and markets, sometimes using petroleum, which they had brought with them to hasten the burning; large stone churches which would not burn they ruined in other ways. "priests, laymen, women, and even small children were made moslems by force. they put white turbans on the men and circumcised them in a cruel manner. they cut the hair of the women in bangs, like that of moslem women, and made them go through the mohammedan prayers. married women and girls were defiled, against the sacred law, and some were married by force, and are still detained in turkish houses. especially in palu, severek, malatia, arabkir, and choonkoosh, many women and girls were taken to the soldiers' barracks and dishonored. many, to escape, threw themselves into the euphrates, or committed suicide in other ways. "it is clear that the majority of those killed in harpoot, severek, husenik, malatia, and arabkir were killed by the soldiers, and also that the schools and churches of the missionaries and gregorians in the upper quarter of harpoot city, together with the houses, were set on fire by cannon balls. "it is impossible to state the amount of the pecuniary loss. the single city of egin has given 1,200 (some say 1,500) turkish pounds as a ransom. "these events have occurred for the reasons i have mentioned. i wish to show by this statement, which i have written from love to humanity, that the armenians gave no occasion for these attacks." the turk, whose document is thus translated, figures that the total deaths in the province of harpoot during the scenes, have been 39,334; the wounded 8,000; houses burned, 28,562; and that the number of the destitutes is 94,870. "in a letter just received (jan. 18, 1896) from the rev. h. n. barnum, d.d., of harpoot, eastern turkey, where the property of the american board was burned, he says that reports have been secured from 176 villages in the vicinity of harpoot. these villages contained 15,400 houses belonging to christians. of this number 7,054 have been burned, and 15,845 persons are reported killed. dr. barnum adds: 'the reality, i fear, will prove to be much greater.'" a letter from an armenian named kallajian, written from husenik, a town about three miles from harpoot, addressed to his brother in this country, says: "sunday, november 11, the government came to our town, husenik, and asked the armenians to give up their arms, and they surrendered all they had; and in the evening asked them to take the church bell down. they also obeyed, and by night the turkish soldiers surrounded the town until the morning, and in the morning early they sounded the bugle. when they sounded the bugle, about 25,000 kurds made an attack on the town, and plundered all the houses, killing 700 men, women, and children, besides the wounded. when the attack was made, we left our house, with two of our neighbors' families and many others from our town, about thirty in all. one little boy, my nephew, i carried on my shoulders, and the other was carried by its mother, and we ran up the hill toward harpoot. the bullets were showering upon us by hundreds, and father fell. he was shot once in the head and once in the belly, and stabbed with a sword through his chin. when we reached the top of the hill, about twenty kurds came down from harpoot, and took all our clothes and money, and left us naked; and a little after, a band of turks came down and made so much trouble for us that i am unable to describe it. they took us to the city, and we finally succeeded in getting to the house of sadukh effendi, formerly of our town, but now living in the city. we went to his house, and this kind man kept us there for two days in his house, and on tuesday evening he took us to our own town, and as we came near to our house i found that father was dead under a tree. we went to the house; we saw that our house was open and stripped of everything, and father's trunk was broken open, and his papers were soaked in kerosene and set on fire, and twenty-five houses were destroyed on our street. we are hungry and in destitute condition; help us if you can. our little nephew says: 'o jesus, keep us afar from such trouble.'" there are other letters also from harpoot, but this is enough to show the nature of the scenes there. paloo and what happened there. paloo is one of the oldest cities in armenia. it had 15,000 population, 5,000 armenians and 10,000 mohammedans, and there were over forty armenian villages in the district around. about 5,000 christians were killed during the recent massacre. personal letters from paloo. december 15, 1895. "paloo is in a miserable condition. all the houses and shops have been robbed. about 2,000 persons have perished, and few have survived this great ruin; but we thank god all our family is in safety. just to-day i received a letter from our home; they write: 'we are alive, but hungry.' they have no bread to eat, and no clothes to wear; our only hope is god. if the country is soon reformed we can get our living, but if not we shall all perish. turks, kurds, and soldiers united, plundered, robbed, and burned the houses of paloo and the neighboring villages. you can guess very well who has given the order." a personal letter received by the armenian relief association, in this city, under date of paloo, armenia, november 24, presents an awful picture of the horrors to which the people there are subjected. the letter is in part as follows:- "on november 3, the turks of the town armed themselves, attacked the stores, plundered their contents, and killed those who attempted to defend themselves. a few days later the turks left the town, joined a band of 10,000 kurds, and began a general assault upon the surrounding villages, pillaging and burning the houses, and killing all the men. they poured kerosene oil on all the stored grain and set it on fire, and mixed the flour with filth, so that it could not be used. the beautiful women were delivered to the kurds, who committed the most indescribable outrages. many were carried off to slavery, and forced to accept mohammedanism. "in habab village, where the people defended themselves for six days, the government soldiers were called to the aid of the kurds, and the united forces overpowered the village and burned all except fifteen of their three hundred houses. "all of the forty-one armenian villages around paloo are in ashes, the fields laid waste, and the inhabitants massacred. nothing is left but death and desolation. "on november 11, 10,000 armed kurds fell upon the city of paloo. they plundered the houses, even pulling down the walls with hooks to discover anything valuable that might be hidden. all the large houses were burned. ten of the wealthy armenians, who have always cared for the poor, and sheltered the distressed, are left without a pair of shoes or a blanket, 1,732 men were butchered in cold blood, and of the 10,000 population, two hundred men only are left, saved on condition that they serve the turks as slaves. "more than 5,000 women and children are left without any means of living. they are begging from door to door for even a meagre pittance of bran, which is all that is left, and every day death claims more and more of the victims by starvation. all of the more beautiful women have been taken by the kurds. the armenian youths who have been forced to accept mohammedanism are also forced to take turkish wives to prove their sincerity. "all of my relations, save two, have been killed in my presence. our priests have all been butchered, except one, who was forced to accept islamism. our churches have been turned into mosques, where the remaining women and old men are compelled to go and be taught islam by the mohammedan priest." but here is another letter, from an armenian mother to her son in this country, which brings us still closer to the actual horrors, for this woman was herself a victim--turned at a blow from a comfortable matron to a naked beggar, in winter, among the ruins of her village, her own friends killed, herself foully abused. read this, and then talk, if you dare, about "exaggerated accounts"! "december 12, 1895. "my dear son:- "we received your letter dated november 14th, which we read with great pleasure. you asked for information about us, as to how we are, etc. except your father, we are all still alive, with our relatives, and long to see you very much. it is very hard to describe with the pen all the misfortunes that we have undergone. they cannot be told; but since you are very eager to know, i will try to write it down for you very briefly. my dear son, on tuesday, november 28th, they took by force the oxen that are used for ploughing the fields. until the evening of that day they gathered all the oxen for ploughing from paloo and the neighboring armenian villages, and took them for themselves, and gave us notice that they should attack the village. wednesday morning all the people of the surrounding turkish villages gathered round about our village, and our village was besieged until about noontime. from ten to fifteen persons were killed up to that time from our side, and the village was surrounded by more than twenty-two thousand turks and kurds, who bear arms. it was impossible for us to protect our village. we applied to the government, there was no government to hear us; despair reigned in the hearts of all. they fought until evening, and before they had reached us, we, all the villagers, left everything, even not taking bread for one meal with us, went to the monastery and left the village to the turks. we passed the night in the monastery, hungry and thirsty; the number of the killed reached to thirty by morning. then we learned that it was not safe, even in the monastery, although they had plundered it two or three times. thursday, by noontime, the monastery was full of villagers. at noon there was a blow on the door of the monastery. ravenous turks, zazes, and others were besieging the building. until evening they beat at the iron door to break it; fifteen persons were at it, but it was impossible for them to open it. within, the shrieks and the cries of the people reached up to heaven. men, in order to save their lives, dressed themselves in women's clothes, and covered their heads. your brother wrapped his moustaches so thickly that he should not be known, as the turks were after him by name. about 3 p. m., when the turks saw that it was not possible for them to open the gate of the monastery, they broke in one of the stones in the wall, and the plunderers entered.... i cannot describe here the sufferings of the people.... within one hour they robbed and violated a population of 1,500 people, five times each woman, married or maiden, and then left the monastery. the villagers, every one to save her or his life, left everything, property, cattle, merchandise, and provisions, and fled, the man leaving his wife, the wife her child, the son his mother, the brother his sister, and they dispersed in the adjoining mountains, plains, valleys, and hills, with only their under-garments on, as the turks and kurds had stripped them of everything else. friday morning the number of the killed had reached about fifty. your father was shot on the plain of sacrat, but the wound was not dangerous. for three days the people gathered in sacrat, hungry and thirsty; from sacrat they were given over to the zazes, to take them to the city.... i can not write down here all the things we endured at the hands of the zazes.... finally, after we had suffered unmentionable cruelties, being twice plundered in the city and violated, three brides and maidens were carried away as slaves by the kurds, more than one hundred persons were martyred, among whom were two priests, and the rest were forced to accept mohammedanism, and after that the massacre ceased. for twenty days we remained in the city, naked, hungry, and thirsty, also hopeless. the city was rescued from the massacre after having suffered the loss of six hundred houses, together with all the property of the shops and stores, and the total sum of the martyred being 2,000. our village was given over to be burned for twenty days successively. out of two hundred houses, there are hardly thirty left sound; the rest are all razed to the ground.... the rest of this story will follow by next mail. i wanted to tell you a little about our hard situation. saved with only our undergarments, hungry and thirsty, our whole family came back from the city, among the ruins. i, your mother, had to go begging wholly naked and barefoot to the familiar kurd neighbors. i had only one shirt, which i made into a bag to put the things in which i begged from the kurds. for fifty days i have provided thus for the family; after this i commit it to your care; you know best what to do. we have not got even a head covering; nothing to carry the water home in from the fountain. it is the month of december, and you know well it is the first month of the winter; we have two and a half months yet before coming to the spring. we are all of us very, very, hungry. those turks who were so friendly before have turned now not to know us, they don't even give a penny. we have no hope from anywhere else; if you do not come to our help, we shall perish! perish! perish! we, with all the villagers shall die. behold the description of our misery. read this to all the villagers that are there with you, and notify them that all of you must be the helpers and deliverers of our people, especially to us who are all helpless and on the verge of starvation. send us help. i remain "your affectionate mother." malatia and its hardships. malatia is located about midway between marash and harpoot, a little distance from the euphrates river. more fruit is raised in and about there than in any other section of armenia. the assortment is large, but the apples and pears are especially fine, perhaps better than those of any part of the world. it has about 20,000 population, two-thirds being mohammedans, and one-third armenians. the private letters which have been received from there do not state, and cannot state how many armenians have been killed during the period of the present persecutions, and it is not likely there ever will be any correct estimate of them. the region has suffered immensely, and letters from there reveal a most distressing condition of affairs. the people were plundered and violated in every conceivable way until there was nothing more for the time being for the fiends to wreak their cruelty upon. letters from malatia. malatia, dec. 22, 1895. my very dear son:- we greet you with the fondest greeting, and it is the desire of our hearts that the good lord should enable us to see each other again in this mortal flesh. in regard to ourselves, as to how we were, and what we are doing. we are all alive yet with our whole family, no loss of persons from among us. don't mourn for us. others are mourning for their loved ones. though in truth the grief and mourning of others belong to us also because we are all armenians, one flesh and blood, and we all belong to the same nation. i did not go to bring up the bride of our neighbor's with the rest, so i was at home when the massacre began. you remember that there was a well in that quarter. the turks killed the bridegroom, his brother, the priest, together with sixty-five other men, and threw them into that well. in another house they burned seventy-five men, and in still another forty-five men. finally, i am unable to describe with my pen all that passed in those days and hours. may the lord preserve your dear lives, and give you peace and happiness. your father. another letter. malatia, dec. 22, 1895. my dear friend:- i received your very kind letter about a week ago, for which i thank you very much, and i read it with great pleasure. but we do not get the boys' letters regularly. it is nearly two months since the disaster occurred, and in that time i have received but one letter. the other day an armenian handed me a letter that was torn into nearly a hundred pieces. i put all the pieces together and read it. it was also from the boys, and i read and was very glad. now i will try to give you a little information about us. the first monday i did not go to the market, for from saturday i got somehow suspicious that there was something impending over the city, and i did not let father go either. my brother was to accompany those who were going to bring up a bride for my brother's partner in business. while my brother was at the wedding house, they sent him on an errand to go and get a few policemen to accompany them as protection in bringing the bride. just at the moment when my brother was on his way to the station-house, he sees there was confusion in the market; then he drops the matter of bringing a policeman, but goes to the market and closes the shop, and then turns towards home in a hurry. while on his way, some men fired at him several times, but fortunately he was not hurt. he comes as far as to one of our neighbors, and there drops down exhausted. they came and brought me the news that he was there. then i plucked up all the courage i could, and went and brought him home. an hour or so after, the turks came and besieged that same quarter and killed about thirty persons. on tuesday, very early in the morning, we left everything, house, property, and goods, and just to save our lives we fled to the new church, and i don't know what became of the rest. we remained there in the church until friday; after that we came out of the church, being a little assured of safety, and have been living on the provision that the government allowed us, but that also ceased a few days since. when we came back home again we did not find a single thing; they had swept off everything. we brought a matting from some place, and six of us sleep in one bed. some sleep on hay. may you never have to endure such hardships. this incident seems worse than the earthquake or the cholera, or the fire. may the good lord preserve us from things worse than these. our life is not worth the living. we don't know the exact number of the killed. malatia is altogether a ruin. it is a worse ruin than the city of anni, and even worse than sassoun. it is beyond conception, one cannot keep account of it. may the lord write it down in his own account book, so that he should take the account in the day of judgment. please excuse all my shortcomings, because i am out of myself. our love to all the friends over there. yours truly, p.s. please tell the boys to know the value of money, and not waste neither their time nor their money in vain. for we have no one to look for but to god in heaven, and after him to them on earth. for the value of a son is known in the time of adversity, when he helps his elders or parents. let them not yet send any money, for there are no brokers left where we can change it. the city of sivas and the atrocities. sivas is the seat of the vilayet or province of sivas. the governor-general of that province resides there. the population is about 30,000; one-third are christian armenians, and there are many armenian christian towns and villages round about, so that, if the armenians are not more numerous than the mohammedans, they equal them in number. sivas is a missionary station, and during the atrocities, the protestant armenian pastor also was killed. his name was garabet-kilitjiam, one of the most gifted ministers of the gospel, my personal friend and successor. after i resigned my pastorate at talas, cesarea, he succeeded me. he was offered the choice of accepting mohammedanism, but refused it, and then he was martyred. in the city and province of sivas during the recent atrocities about 10,000 armenians were killed, and many villages and towns were plundered and destroyed. the following is a press dispatch:- london, nov. 16, 1895.--the representative of the united press at constantinople reports, under the date of november 15th, that at six o'clock, on the evening of november 14th, m. a. jewett, united states consul at sivas, sent a telegram to united states minister terrell informing him that in the disturbances which had taken place at sivas, eight hundred armenians and ten turks had been killed, and that, according to official reports, a large body of kurds were then approaching the town. mr. jewett gave no details of the disorders, but the discrepancy in the figures shows that the turkish allegations that the armenians were the aggressors are absolutely untrue, and that the armenians were deliberately massacred. from a private letter from sivas, nov. 21, 1895. "the air was full of wild rumors--but we could get at nothing that seemed to have any substantial truthful basis. dr. jewett--our consul--was on the alert. he interviewed the governor-general,--and asked for protection for us, for the u.s.a. vice-consul, for our schools, and for the american consulate. these were cheerfully promised, and the next day, tuesday, november 12th, at midday, like a cyclone, sivas was smitten, as i wrote you last week. mr. p. and i had steadfastly refused to believe that such violence could take place in our city, and we were totally unprepared for the shock. our walls had been taken down,--that is, our front wall had been,--a distance of 125 feet. our girls' school-building had been cut off seven and a half feet on the southwest corner, and both our schools and our dwellings were in an entirely unprotected state. the day of the terrible disaster, the city water was cut off from our street, and for several days the heat was unusual for this time of the year. the dead were buried on thursday, under the direction of the government, in the armenian graveyard, a priest of the gregorian faith being present to offer a prayer. "our good native pastor was in the market to attend to the interests of his people, when, at a given signal, a tribe of mountaineers, known as karsluks suddenly fell upon the armenians with clubs, and were soon followed by circassians and local mussulmen, with knives and pistols; quickly and lastly the police force and regular soldiers joined in with their martini rifles. it was a combined onslaught of four other races against the armenians. it has been declared that the armenians were in armed revolt against the government, and this was done to put down the revolution. when the attack was made against them, we fail to find that there was any armed resistance, so far as we can learn. if the armenians were premeditating an armed attack upon the mussulmen, we never could find it out, but that proves nothing here or there, as missionaries are well known not to sympathize with revolutionists. "badveli garabed died a martyr; his life being offered him three times if he would deny christ. he bore noble testimony before many witnesses, then fell in their presence, sealing his faith and testimony with his blood. "yours affectionately," further information about sivas by the missionaries who wrote to their friends nov. 12, 1895. "the cyclone which struck on the 12th reached marsovan on the 15th. don't be deceived by any of the silly government statements which attribute all these massacres to the armenians. it was a deliberate plan on the part of the government to punish the armenians. the sultan was irritated because he was forced to give them reforms, so he has had 7,000 armenians killed to show his power since he signed the scheme of reform. "the killing was permitted to go on here all last week; forty-six were killed saturday, november 16; sixteen on sunday, and many more on the following day. the total number killed is about 1,200 armenians and ten turks. "it is a fact that the kaimakam of gurun telegraphed to the vali at sivas, saying in effect that there is not an armenian left at gurun. the armenians at sivas made no resistance, but at gurun they tried to defend themselves from the butchery, and suffered the worse for it. "in order to have an excuse for attacking the armenians at sivas, the government smashed the windows of turkish shops and charged it to the armenians. food is scarce, and everything was carried off from the armenian shops. there will be terrible suffering all over this country." another letter from sivas, according to the constantinople correspondent, gives many details which all go to show that the whole movement against the armenians is directly traceable to the head of the turkish government, who proclaimed that his great desire was to keep always in view, "the safeguard of the rights of the people, and the maintenance of public confidence." "what cruel mockery; trebizond, erzeroum, bitlis, marash, harpoot and how many more towns rise up and point the finger of everlasting scorn and indignation to fix on abdul hamid khan the stigma of everlasting infamy! the deliberate murder of thousands of innocent and industrious men, the exposure of ten times that number of women and children and aged persons to absolute degradation and destitution, will justify the name of kanukiar--the bloodletter--which has been applied to the head authority of the empire." the riot in sivas. "last week, monday, november 11, was one of the loveliest days sivas ever had. although there were many rumors of trouble afloat, we could get at nothing which seemed to have any greater foundation than the fear that something might happen. "i went unattended to the boys' school. on my way to school that afternoon, i met a group of excited soldiers. they said nothing to me, but their strangely excited manner impressed me as being out of the usual order. when i began my class work, the boys, instead of answering my questions, broke forth with inquiries. they wanted to know if the soldiers were going to shoot them, and if they were going to be killed. that was the rumor afloat. i hushed them up as best i could, and told them it was not right to speak of such things. i succeeded in quieting the children, but went home full of anxiety. "the next day, tuesday, a large gang of turkish workmen gathered in our street to continue the public work of building up some walls which had been torn down at the vali's orders, for the purpose of widening the street. armenian carpenters were employed on our building. nothing out of the ordinary occurred until the workmen's 'bread time,' about 11 o'clock, was finished. "then all the osmanli (turkish) gang suddenly raised a hue and cry; each one grabbed a pick or club, anything he could lay his hands on, and a wild rush was made for the market-place. the air was filled with yells of the furious men, who rushed along madly. "the protestant pastor remained at home on the day before, but on tuesday was in a shop when the signal for the raid was given. a perfect cyclone of marauders rushed in and clubbed the unsuspecting men in the stores to death before they could offer any resistance. after the outbreak there was not a single armenian place of business left in the market. "no list of the dead was made out, and none could be. the victims were all buried in an immense trench in the armenian burying-ground two days afterwards. there were between seven and eight hundred bodies thus buried." marsovan and the atrocities there. marsovan has 25,000 population, 10,000 being armenians, and the remainder mohammedans. marsovan is one of the greatest stations of the american missionaries. anatolia college is there; a theological seminary for young men; and a seminary for girls. the writer was the pastor of the evangelical armenian church there till he was banished, for the reasons stated in the sketch of him. after this the turks burned the girls' school; they tried to burn the boys' college building also, but did not succeed. finally they several times massacred the armenian christians, and forced many to accept mohammedanism. i have not been able to get exact information about the number of the martyred christians in marsovan, but it is believed that in that missionary station about 1,000 were massacred altogether. the richest men among the congregation were murdered, and so thoroughly plundered that their children are left wholly destitute; and the lives of the missionaries are in danger. cesarea (kaiserieh). the writer is well acquainted with this city, as he was the pastor at talas, only three miles away, for years. it has about 50,000 population, one-third being christians; a few hundred greeks only, but more than 15,000 armenians. the richest and ablest armenians live in that city, or in constantinople, and came from there; its people are the leaders of the armenian nation, both in business and intellect. for the story of its foundation, see "the haigazian dynasty," under king aram. it is a typical armenian city; and has several great armenian churches, with flourishing schools. there is a beautiful evangelical church also, and it is a great missionary station, with several american missionaries, and several missionary schools, both for boys and for girls. the rev. dr. avedis yeretzian, one of the greatest of scholars, teachers, and preachers, and my personal friend, was martyred in that city during the recent atrocities. he was shot dead in his own house by a mohammedan mob, then his wife was shot, then his son, and the remainder of his children were captured by the mob. about 3,000 armenians were killed and wounded there, besides the loss of property. the mohammedan population of the city is very savage; side by side in the same city, the christians are rich, refined, intelligent, and the mohammedans poor, lazy, sensual, and cruel. i give here two letters from cesarea. a private letter from a girl. cesarea, turkey, dec. 31, 1895. my dear brother:- before the massacre, everybody was in fear; several families would gather in one house to protect themselves, and all the armenian stores were closed for twenty days; but as the government guaranteed that there would be no danger, and told everybody to attend to their business, and open their shops, they did so. it was the 16th of november, on saturday, that all opened their shops again, and the transaction of business commenced in full force. at 2 p. m., at the doors of the market, bugles sounded, and several hundred bashi-bazook [irregular soldiers] were at the doors of the bazaar, every one of them having in his hands stilettos, swords, yataghans, guns, revolvers, hammers, axes, hatchets, sickles, poniards, daggers, and heavy sticks with twenty or thirty nails fastened to them. then they blew horns, the signal to start the massacre. cries were heard, "first kill, cut, and butcher the giavours; the property already belongs to us; cut, cut, kill, don't care for plundering at present." then they rushed into the market and slaughtered all they met. oh! you can imagine what became of those who fell into the hands of those brutes. alas! alas! how unspeakable! they butchered them like cattle; cut their heads off like onions. some tried to run, but could not, others tried to escape, but were brought back and killed. the bazaar was full of dead bodies. people hid themselves among the goods, and in the cellars, and were saved; ten or fifteen days after, people were found there in a starving condition, not having dared to come out. they killed in avsharaghus factory thirty-eight men; in kayanjilar everybody was slain. after the massacre was over, the governor, ferick pasha, sent soldiers around, and they discovered many people hiding, and took them back to the government house (seray), examined their pockets for revolvers and knives, and not finding any, the governor sent them to their homes. they plundered the bazaar of all its goods, and then, oh, my lord! they rushed upon the houses and upon the women's turkish baths.... i cannot describe this; when i think of it, my whole body trembles. the people in the baths were killed and wounded, and they carried away the young girls; every one was killed that they came in contact with. the houses were plundered of all their contents, and buildings were torn down, and houses full of people were burned. oh, how terrible! what i say you cannot imagine to be so; you may think it is a dream, because your eyes have not seen nor your ears heard the screams, wailings, weeping, shrieks, and groaning; that even our forefathers have not heard, but of which our ears are full day and night. my brother was in the bazaar, but fortunately he had occupied a private room, where he was safe. some of the kidnapped girls were brought back by the government, but most of them were wounded, and half dead from fright. thank god, we are safe, but we are not better than those girls. we are in mr. wingate's house, where many lives were saved. he carried beds and clothing to the people, who were stripped of all. a few mussulmans also protected in their homes some armenians; for example, james imuroglov, gojaki ogloo. yeretzian avedis effendi's house is ruined, himself, his son, and wife are killed, and the rest, five of them, are carried away. our block and their block is ruined. they butchered avjinury, yuzukji, dirnhitza and carried away her three daughters, but later on brought two of them back. i mentioned them, as you know. they also butchered yuzikji apraham and his wife gaga haji, gemerlkli ohanness, mustaamelji gobra, terrzi artin, erzurumli, servant boy. avedis ago and his daughter were carried away. gussi hamimon's mother is low. oh, pity the intolerable many, many, i cannot write by my pen, or describe with my tongue the terrible sufferings. o lord, have mercy upon us! to my knowledge there were five hundred killed, six hundred wounded; many are dying from their wounds and fright. eight hundred houses are plundered, and the tenants flocked to the churches. i cannot write one hundredth part of what happened. we are lost, lost, ruined, no work, no business, every one of us looking for safety. happy, happy be you that are in america and have nothing to fear. they say to me, you ought to be with your brother in america now. if the way was opened, everybody would like to go. if you are not in good circumstances there, you must feel satisfied and give the thanks to god always. we also have to thank god that we are still living. it is one month now that we have not been able to go out in the streets. o lord, help us, oh! what shall we come to? oh, my dear brother, if you can help us in any way please do so; make lectures, get some help; everybody is dying of hunger. i cannot write any longer; we leave all to your conscience. i do not write this letter only to you, but to all. do whatever you can for us, we are in a terrible condition. i thank you, my brother, for the money that you sent to me, thank you very much. we send our best regards to every one of you. i wrote this letter with the tears in my eyes. we beg of you to write us good letters. vaham, the little boy, is in good health. we are all well including your sister, letter from cesarea. cesarea, nov. 20, 1895.--while the armenians were engaged in their business, as usual, the turkish mob fell upon them, killing 600 defenseless men and wounding 1,000 more. the mob divided into four parts. the first part plundered the stores, the second looted the houses, the third secured the maidens and young brides, while the fourth, fiends incarnate, attacked the public baths. these human devils killed six naked women in the presence of the others, snatching their babies from their arms and bayoneting the mothers. the shrieks and agonizing cries of these poor creatures made no impression upon the minds of the savage turks, who laughed at their death agonies. they then took some of the young girls, who were with their mothers at the bath, and dragged them naked, by their feet, through the streets, followed by a jeering and hooting mob. the turks who attacked the houses then killed them and fired the houses. the cries of the women, mingled with the hoarse shouts of the turks, can never be forgotten. the men who survived the sword were discovered, taken to the magistrate and searched, but no arms were found in their possession, not even a knife. when released, and allowed to return to their homes, they were confronted by a most ghastly picture. some found their wives dead, others horribly mutilated; daughters were bleeding. my hand almost fails me to write the awful particulars. it took three or four days to remove the bodies of the dead with forty carts. add to this the want, the desolation. oh, my god, for how long, how long! where are those christian powers who saved african slaves? where are those christians who advocated brotherly love and mercy, sending their missionaries to teach us? are they deaf to our piercing cry? aintab and its horrors. the writer is well acquainted with aintab, and some of his best friends live there, if they have not been killed. it has about 40,000 population, one-third of it being armenian. there are great scholars among them. central turkey college is there. it is an american college, but most of the professors are native armenians, graduates of yale college. there is also a woman's american college and a hospital. the evangelical armenians are the strongest; they have three large churches. they are considered to be the richest evangelical armenians in turkey. but hundreds of them were killed, wounded and plundered; in all about 4,000 of the armenian population were killed. a letter from aintab, november 23, 1895. aintab has had its baptism of blood and fire, and we sit in grief among ruins. we had been hoping that the many things which seemed to combine for our security would save our city from the fury of the storm which is desolating so many places about us. our christian community is large (about one-fourth of the whole population), and the christians, as a class, are exceptionally intelligent and influential; the leading moslems of the city are intelligent and able men, and have shown themselves to a degree tolerant and even friendly to christians; the governor has seemed disposed, beyond most turkish officials, to respect the rights of christians. there is a considerable number of foreign residents sure to be witnesses of any violence done to christians. the college and hospital have for years commanded a powerful influence in the city; the hospital especially has the good-will of all classes; the college, its students and teachers were no doubt regarded by many with much suspicion on account of the latent antagonisms inevitably existing between progressive and conservative ideas, but personal relations were, so far as i know, always friendly. another thing in our favor has been the fact that the christians of aintab have given very little countenance to the ultra-revolutionists, who have no doubt provoked trouble in some places. relying upon all these things, we had for nearly three weeks been hearing reports of fighting and massacre at zeitoon, marash, and oorfa, and other places, with comparatively little anxiety for ourselves. it is true we were frequently hearing of fearful threats and warnings of what the moslems were preparing to do in aintab, but we had got hardened to that sort of thing, and regarded it as largely the invention of cowardly roughs to terrify those whom they did not dare attack. the most alarming thing in the situation was that the government was disarming the christians, and at the same time giving out rifles and ammunition to moslems. this, however, was attributed to an exaggerated fear of a christian rising, of which they profess to have information. meantime the moslems liable to military service were called out and equipped and hurried off toward zeitoon, where it was reported that the christians were in rebellion. this, no doubt, was the occasion of intense irritation, and both the soldiers and their friends were saying, "if we must fight christians we will begin with those close at hand." under these circumstances the native christians became very anxious, and made such preparations for defense as circumstances permitted, at the same time keeping as quiet as possible, and avoiding all controversy and altercations with the moslems. the government increased the police force in the city, and held a considerable force of troops at the barracks near the town, and the governor and principal men seemed to be making much effort to quiet the people. several considerable tumults had occurred and been promptly suppressed without bloodshed; so day after day dragged on, each hour increasing the hope that we should tide over the crisis. saturday morning, november 16, more than three weeks after the first riot in marash, at about half past seven, just as we were rising from breakfast, our people came in with white faces saying, "the day of judgment has come in the city." we hastened to the door, and sure enough the mob was at work; all the west and south part of the city seemed to be in an uproar; crowds of people rushing in every direction, roofs covered with excited men, women, and children; the strange mingling of cries of fear, anger, and defiance, with occasional gun and pistol shots, made an exhibition of the most fearful tumult and confusion. already troops were hurrying forward, and soon a company of some sixty soldiers were stationed in front of the girls' seminary, with pickets out to cover the approaches to the hospital and college. dr. shepherd and mr. sanders mounted their horses and hastened to the hospital and seminary, where they remained until the rioting ceased. the college is about half a mile west of the seminary and hospital, and commands a full view of these buildings, and of the whole west end of the city, where most of the rioting occurred. what we, who were looking on, saw from this point was the narrow streets densely crowded with intensely excited people, now and then a rush made upon some house or gate, the rally of defenders on the roofs, among whom women were often foremost, using stones, clubs, and sometimes guns and pistols as best they could. sometimes the attack is beaten off, and the assailants withdraw to organize a new assault, sometimes a gate or wall is broken down, and then the noise of conflict subsides and the work of massacre and plunder begins. later on, long lines of people moving off to their homes laden with plunder, and later still the flames and smoke rising from the burning houses. what we heard was the indescribable roar of the mob, pierced by the sharp reports of pistols and guns, with now and then shrieks of agony and fear, and shouts of defiance or command, and over all, and most horrible of all, the loud shrill "zullghat," (wedding cry) very like the cry of our northern loons prolonged and sharpened, raised by turkish women crowded on their roofs and cheering on their men to attack. the massacre and pillage began in the markets, and in those parts of the city where christians' houses, surrounded by moslem neighbors, offered easy points of attack; these places having been looted, the mob moved on towards what are known as the christian quarters of the town. there the resistance became more obstinate; in two of these quarters the old street gates were still in use, by shutting which, the district enclosed becomes a small fortified community capable of making a strong resistance to an organized mob. the assailants were at last beaten off and arrested. under such general conditions the storm of mob violence raged on without much abatement till the middle of the afternoon, when the tumult gradually subsided, and night at last brought quiet, except in the vicinity of burning houses, where the uproar went on till near midnight. by morning, arrangements seemed to have been made which gave us hope that order would be maintained; the guard for our mission premises had been increased, and the soldiers posted at intervals around the christian quarters of the city. very early in the morning of the 17th, crowds, evidently eager to share the plunder, were seen hurrying towards the city from every direction. the soldiers met and turned them back, and even beat some of them and chased them off. they soon returned, however, increased in numbers, and being joined by friends from the city, became very turbulent. about noon we saw through our glass an officer, apparently a captain, ride forward into a mob, and address them at some length; we could not hear what he said, but immediately, without any show of opposition from any one, the whole crowd came pell-mell with the soldiers into the city. this was at the southwest corner of the town, and immediately under our eyes. at the same time much the same thing was occurring at the northwest corner; then for an hour chaos was let loose again, and the horrors of the previous day were repeated, only that this time the christians were prepared, and, being in a strong position, were generally able to beat off their assailants. at one point of the line of defense were a few moslem houses, and we were delighted to learn that the men heartily and bravely joined in the defense with their neighbors; the gallantry of this act was somewhat marred, however, by the demand which they made the next day for a large sum of money for their service; these men actually demanded and received about $5 apiece for this neighborly help. when it became apparent that the mob could not force their way into the places held by the besieged, the soldiers, perhaps having received new orders, resumed a show of activity, fired a few shots into the air, and drove the mob out of the city and dispersed them; this is the last serious fighting that has occurred up to the present time, though local tumults have broken out frequently, several houses have been pillaged and burned, and two christians at least were shot while being conducted through the streets by soldiers. strict military rule is now established, and special care is taken to safeguard the lives of property of foreigners. we are kept under very close restriction, and not allowed to visit the city except for special objects, and then under a strong guard. the amount of damage we can only estimate; as nearly as we can judge, the figures will be about 200 killed, 400 wounded, nearly all the christian shops and 250 houses pillaged, and a considerable number burned. some 1,000 men who in the first panic took refuge in khans and mosques are still held as prisoners, for purposes which we can only surmise. p.s. dec. 17. quiet has for the most part been maintained under strict military rule. no christian can yet venture out without armed escort, and there are not wanting signs that there is waiting and even expectation of another signal from above. the government, however, seems to be trying to restore order and confidence. we are glad to say that we have heard of no cases of special violence or abuse offered to women. the above-named prisoners have been gradually released, till now there are only some six of the principal christians still in confinement. the number of killed just now must be set down at over 400; the butchery in the markets where the first attacks began far exceeded our belief. a great number of bodies were thrown together into some distilleries, and these buildings set on fire and burned to the ground, thus removing for a time much of the terrible evidence of the extent of the massacre. the attack being made in the morning and beginning in the markets, it happened that the killed are about wholly from the "bread-winners" among the christians. as a result, there are now in aintab more than 4,000 people dependent on charity for daily bread, and most of those to whom they would naturally look for aid are utterly impoverished; the outlook for the winter is simply appalling. we appeal for aid speedily in the name of humanity. the city of birijik and the atrocities. the city of birijik is on the shores of the euphrates; it has a beautiful appearance from the other side of the river. the mohammedan population there are very wild and ignorant. the massacre at birijik (province of aleppo). birijik had about 300 christian houses, or say about 1,000 souls, in the midst of the mussulman population of about 9,000 souls. after the massacre at oorfa on the 27th of october, 1895, the authorities at birijik told the armenians that the muslims were afraid of them, and that therefore they (the armenians) must surrender to the government any arms that they possessed. this was done, the most rigid search being instituted to assure the authorities that nothing whatever in the way of arms remained in the hands of the armenians. this disarmament caused no little anxiety to the armenians, since the muslim population was very generally armed, and was constantly adding to its arms. in fact, during the months of november and december the christians have kept within their houses because the danger of appearing upon the streets was very great. troops were called out by the government to protect the people. since the soldiers had come to protect the christians, the christians were required to furnish animals for them to carry their goods. then they were required to furnish them beds and carpets to make them more comfortable. finally they were required to furnish the soldiers with food, and they were reduced to a state bordering on destitution by these increasing demands. the end came on the first of january, 1896, when the news of the massacre of several thousands of christians at oorfa by the soldiers appointed to guard them incited the troops at birijik to imitate this crime. the assault on the christian houses commenced at about nine o'clock in the morning and continued until night-fall. the soldiers were aided by the muslims of the city in the terrible work. the object at first seemed to be mainly plunder, but after the plunder had been secured the soldiers seemed to make a systematic search for men, to kill those who were unwilling to accept mohammedanism. the cruelty used to force men to become muslims was terrible. in one case the soldiers found some twenty people, men, women, and children, who had taken refuge in a sort of cave. they dragged them out and killed all the men and boys, because they would not become muslims. after cutting down one old man who had thus refused, they put live coals upon his body, and as he was writhing in torture, they held a bible before him, and asked him mockingly to read them some of the promises in which he had trusted. others were thrown into the river while still alive, after having been cruelly wounded. the women and children of this party were loaded up like goods upon the backs of porters and carried off to the houses of muslims. christian girls were eagerly sought after, and much quarreling occurred over the question of their division among their captors. every christian house except two, claimed to be owned by turks, was plundered. ninety-six men are known to have been killed, or about half of the adult christian men. the others have become mussulmans to save their lives, so that there is not a single christian left in birijik to-day. the armenian church has been made into a mosque, and the protestant church into a medresse seminary.--[dr. dillon. oorfa and its atrocities. oorfa, the old ur of the chaldees, where abraham, the old patriarch of the bible, was born, was called edessa in the time of christ. i have told the story of king abgar and his conversion in the historical part of this book. it had about 50,000 population, about 20,000 of whom were armenians before the massacres. out of that number 8,000 were slaughtered, according to mr. fitzmaurice, the british vice-consul who returned from oorfa to constantinople on march 21. the evangelical armenian pastor, the rev. hagop abuhayatian, was also martyred. i knew him personally. he was educated in germany, a man of great ability; a great scholar, and a great and forcible preacher. a letter from oorfa, jan. 28, 1896. dear friend:- your only remaining brother sends you a letter, but no letters can begin to explain the sad state of this city. the massacre of dec. 28 and 29 has left all homes except catholics and syrians entirety empty of any comforts. many families have not one bed even; all cooking utensils, clothing, bedding, carpets, etc., were taken. most have a little zakhere left, though some have not that. we are feeding about 175 of the most needy, and more will come to us every week. the loss by death is between 4,000 and 5,000. our pastor, the rev. hagop abouhayatian, dr. kivorc, and brother harotoun, sarkis varjebed chubukian and brother and son, garabed roumian, habbourjou avedis and brother sarkis, old sexton garabed and other sexton bogos, majar kivorc and brother bogos and berber monofa and two sons, eskejiyan marderos, zarman roomian's three eons, are some of the dead. in all, our protestant dead are 115. some of our people perished in the gregorian church, where 1,500 or 2,000 went for refuge saturday night, and on sunday were murdered or burned, very few escaping. it was the most awful of all the terrible events of those two days. thank god, two hundred and forty were saved by coming to me; sixty of them were men. i could not keep the men in my house or yard, because it was forbidden by the guards, but i hid them elsewhere, and fed them for three or four days. the government carefully protected me, and killed as many of my friends as possible. we have our house and all the schoolrooms full of the wounded and the most forlorn. our oorfa redeefs leave to-morrow; we have new soldiers now for guard of the city, and christians especially. oorfa redeefs have been poor guards, and but for them the awful work would not have been accomplished. the pastor of severek, the rev. marderos, was killed. the rev. vartan remains alive in adayaman. both in severek and adayaman the number of the killed was very great. in birijik about two hundred were killed, and all remaining have become moslems; they have been circumcised. in aintab about three hundred were killed, 847 shops plundered and 417 houses. during our first disturbance, six to seven hundred shops here were plundered, and about 175 houses. then the christians used arms to defend themselves. since then all arms have been taken by the government from the christians, and the leaders were forced to sign a paper stating the city as "in peace and harmony, thanks to the rulers," etc.; twenty-five signed it, and now almost all of these have been killed. our pastor signed for protestants. only two of the gregorian priests remain, and they are wounded. the bishop is alive, but feeble, and does not work publicly now. their state is very sad. we desire your prayers, and the aid of all who can give us help by money at this time. sincerely your friend, p.s. your brother asks you to send a letter to him by me. diarbekir and its story. diarbekir (see the historical part for its foundation) has about 40,000 population. nearly half of them are christians, but not all of them are armenians. there are chaldeans also. the armenian population numbered about 12,000, of which 5,000 were killed during the recent atrocities. a letter from diarbekir, nov. 20, 1895. my dear sir:- after salutation, i offer my thanks to god that after great dangers and tribulation we have reached the present time. god's will be done. how can i describe the horrors in our city to you? can any pen or any language tell them? no, but i shall try to write at least a very short description of them. but who knows if this letter will reach you, because of the letters we write, very few reach you, and very few of your letters reach us, since the government has control of the mail, and it is the government that persecutes us. our age is a peculiar age. god look at our misery and save us. how happy were those who were martyred on nov. 1, and have gone to their reward. the atrocities which happened here on november 1, 2, 3, cannot be matched in the history of the civilized world. i do not think they can be in that of heathen lands, where the people are barbarous. when i write these lines to you, i hardly know what i am writing; the darkness of egypt covers all around me. the former millionaires in the city have nothing and are begging bread. nov. 1 was a black day for the armenians. many were separated from their loved ones, even parents from their children. many merchants and rich people were so thoroughly plundered and stripped that they are literally left naked and hungry, and numbers have been put to unspeakable tortures by the turks and kurds. nov. 1 was friday; it was about noon when the mohammedans came out from their mosques. the native turks, the kurds who were brought from outside, and the soldiers all united, swords, pistols, guns, axes, and clubs in their hands, fell upon the armenians in the market place or business place, cut them to pieces, and plundered what they had. if they had been all killed by bullets it would have been a sudden death, and easier. but they cut them to pieces bit by bit with their axes, and made holes in the bodies with their swords. when they were killing the armenians, they were repeating the following words, "bring testimony to prophet mohammed. our sultan ordered us to kill these heathen dogs, the armenians." the governor of the city, and all other officials, with the commander of the soldiers, during the time of the atrocities were sitting near the great mosque, and while listening to the cries and screams of the martyred armenians, they were laughing and joking with great pleasure, and ordering the soldiers to carry the most valuable things to their houses. after they had killed everybody, and plundered everything in the business place, they turned to the residences where armenians lived, and began to burn and kill. some of the soldiers went to the tops of the minarets or high towers, and began to shoot the armenians from there. what a pitiful scene was the condition of the armenian ladies, who were running from house to house, from street to street, and were shot dead, and their children left orphans. during the three days' massacre 4,000 armenians were killed, and the burning of the houses and stores continued twenty-four hours. from the gate of the mosque to the place where they make saddles, and from the twin caravansary to the new caravansary, from sheik uatad to melik ahmed, all the buildings, 1,400 stores, were burnt and turned to ashes. there are other stores also which were not burnt, but everything was taken from them. the stores where goldsmiths worked every article is taken from. when the armenians go among the ruins to see if they can find any article, they are forbidden; and if some one manages to find anything, the mohammedans take it from him, cursing him, and calling him a heathen dog at the same time. when we come to the residences near your house, from the house of darakji to the covered place of sheytan aglou, all are destroyed; from alo-pasha bath to the jemil pasha palace, all destroyed. but the church of the patrees is not destroyed. st. sarkis's church was plundered and afterwards burned. before the church was burnt, they killed the priests, and unspeakable violations took place in the church. in that quarter half of the population were killed, and the other half, who survive, are naked, barefooted, hungry, and are begging bread. now the government pretends to give bread to the hungry, but nothing is given, and those who have a little give to the others who have nothing; but after a few days nothing will be left to eat. thank the lord, the kurds went out of the city. but it is twenty days now since the massacre took place, and nobody dares to go out to the streets. we have no stores, no money, nothing to eat. though my personal house was not robbed, but i have ten orphans whose fathers and mothers were killed; i am taking care of them. we have a little; we shall eat that, and see what the lord will provide. from the rev. dr. tomy's house to the church of the evangelical people all the houses were burned. hovhanness's loss is about $1,000. those who hid themselves in konsol khan and in the church of the patrees escaped death. but every one who escaped was left hungry and thirsty from twelve to fifteen days in their places of confinement, because they were afraid of going out. all the suburban towns and villages were totally destroyed. in sevorag both the armenian church and the evangelical armenian church were destroyed, and only from fifty to one hundred persons were left alive. the monastery of argen was destroyed, and the teachers and all the inmates were killed. they burnt the church of ali-punar and killed the priest. from that place only five or ten persons were left alive. your brother at kitibel with all his family are killed, and both the churches are burned. they forced the ministers to accept the mohammedan religion; on refusal all three were killed, the rev. abosh, the rev. khidershap, and the priest. all who were left alive at kitibel are only about forty persons. afram's brother kisho with all his family were killed. at renjil nobody is left. at kara bash only fifty persons are left alive. the village of satou is entirely out of existence. in all this province all the towns and villages are destroyed, and the people are killed, except the village of haziro, which is not destroyed, and the reason is that a turk, sevdim beg, did not permit the kurds and the turks to destroy it. what will become of us hereafter we do not know. we are still in danger, but we trust first in god, then in such friends as you. my personal damage is $5,000 and now is the time to show us sympathy and help us. if you cannot do it yourself personally, can you not tell the people of the united states of america to help us and relieve our suffering? sincerely yours, trebizond and its atrocities. trebizond is built on the shores of the black sea, and is a part of armenia. the population is estimated at 40,000; only 10,000 are christians; perhaps about half of them are armenians, and nearly half of the armenians were killed and wounded during the recent savageries. mr. chelton, who was going to armenia to organize consulates, was in trebizond, saw the massacre of christians, and reported to the government at washington:- "trebizond, oct. 9, 1895.--many armenians were killed here in conflicts yesterday with turks. no attempt was made to stop the massacre of the armenians. the turks were armed, and the number of troops present here is small. it is even stated that soldiers took part in the slaughter, and in the pillage which accompanied it." "london, oct. 17, 1895.--the 'daily news' publishes a dispatch from constantinople giving a description by an eye-witness of the rioting at trebizond. he says that four separate moslem mobs surrounded the armenian quarters at eleven o'clock on the morning of oct. 8, and then began to pillage the shops. being opposed, they fired on the armenians, and soon a general massacre began. "soldiers joined the mob in firing on the armenians and in pillaging the shops and houses. the scene continued until 4 o'clock in the afternoon, when nothing was left to pillage and nobody remained to be killed. the mob then began to disperse. the better class of turks did their best to protect the lives of the armenians. they sheltered the women and children and many men in their houses. the mob attacked only the orthodox armenians, leaving catholics alone." an armenian massacre. money cabled to london by the local relief association, dec. 31, 1895. "recent letters telling of the massacres in various armenian cities contain information that helps to explain many points in the awful outbreak of so-called mohammedan fanaticism. a letter from trebizond says:- "'bahri pasha, governor of van, started to come to constantinople, and it was learned that he was bringing with him four of the fairest young maidens of sassoun, who had been spared in the massacre, to make an acceptable present of them to his sultan. this aroused the armenian people of trebizond to a frenzy, and it was impossible to restrain the young men, the more daring of whom fired upon bahri pasha, wounding him. but he carried out his mission to constantinople, and was honored with the highest decoration and appointed governor of adana. "'afterward the pasha of trebizond, calling twelve of the leading men of the city, demanded that they should hand over the young men who attacked the governor, and gave them just a few hours in which to carry out his orders. the next day they answered him that the government had no means of finding the men out. "'when the mails had arrived, and the people went toward the postoffice, the trumpet was sounded three times, and both the soldiers and the mob rushed upon the people. it is impossible to describe the horror of the scene--the roar of the murderers, like that of wild beasts, the shrieks of the women in the houses from whose arms their husbands and sons were torn and murdered before their eyes, and universal tumult, added to the sighs and groans of the dying. and this we know is only one, and not even the most terrible of the massacres.'" baiburt. "constantinople, oct. 28, 1895.--another massacre of armenians, accompanied by the outraging of women, is reported to have occurred recently in the districts of baiburt, between erzeroum and trebizond. according to the news received here, a mob of about 500 mussulmans and lazes, the greater majority of whom were armed with martini-henry rifles, made an attack upon the armenians inhabiting several villages of that vicinity, and set fire to their houses and schools. as the armenians fled in terror from their dwellings they were shot down as they ran, and a number of men and women who were captured by the rioters, it is added, were fastened to stakes and burned alive. "the armenian women who fell into the hands of the mob, it is asserted, were outraged and brutally mutilated. it is also stated that the churches were desecrated and pillaged, the cattle, and all the portable property of any value belonging to the armenians being carried off by the marauders. during the disturbance 150 armenians are reported to have been killed. the surviving villages applied for protection to the governor of baiburt, who, after hearing their complaint, sent three policemen to the scene of the massacre after the slaughter was ended. "the turkish officials, it is claimed, know the ringleaders of the outbreak in the baiburt district; but apparently no steps have been taken to arrest them." another letter from baiburt. "the armenian bishop's vicar was killed, the teachers in the schools and many other men and women were massacred. women jumped into open wells to escape worse deaths; the villages round about were laid waste. "following this was the erzinghan massacre. on friday, the 25th of october, 1895, the moslems finished their noon hour of prayer by pouring out of the mosques and attacking the armenians in the market, who, taken by surprise, were shot and cut down to the number of 500; their shops being all plundered." (signed) an american missionary. erzeroum. this is a large city, almost on the boundary line between russia and turkey, in turkish armenia. it has about 60,000 people, one-third of whom are armenians. several times since the last turko-russian war the christian armenians have been massacred there by the turks and the regular soldiers, and during the recent atrocities also there were massacred, and in all about 3,000 armenians were killed. letter from erzeroum. "nov. 27, 1895.--the massacre evidently was pre-arranged. it began all over the city at the same moment. the bugle was sounded, and the soldiers began. they first said, "no harm to women or children," but they soon passed those bounds. a soldier who was on guard says the order was given by the porte. we made ready for defense, but it soon appeared that the soldiers had cut off the rabble from our section, for no mob passed our street. a few men tried to open the door, but three well-directed shots from our balcony sent them off. "the soldiers at the head of our street, apparently to guard it, broke open three or four houses within a stone's throw of us, and carried off everything they found. we saw loads of plunder carried away by soldiers. a large number of women engaged in the same work. the affair began shortly after noon and continued about six hours. one armenian was called to the door by an officer, who professed to be friendly, and was cut down in cold blood. others were cruelly murdered. the death roll must be towards 300, if not more. between fifty and sixty wounded are in the hospital. "two hundred were gathered in the armenian cemetery, some horribly mutilated. there must be many wounded in the different houses. the pillaged houses are to be counted by the hundred. no house attacked was left until it was emptied of every movable thing. the next day we went to an armenian home. in the middle of a small room (the kitchen), lying side by side on a mat, were the bodies of two young women, almost naked, a light covering thrown over their heads. at the other side of the room a grief-stricken woman was trying to make bread from a little flour that had been left. she had to borrow utensils to do it. she left her work, came forward and removed the covering from the bodies. they were those of young women developing into motherhood. the head and face of one was covered with blood, and she was also badly wounded in the hand. the other had a bullet wound through the abdomen from the right side. a companion of these two had been carried off, and was lying dead in another house. their lives were sacrificed in defense of honor. "we passed through the ruins to other rooms. boxes and furniture were in splinters, windows smashed, walls ploughed with bullets. the floor was covered with big patches of blood. the bodies lying in the cemeteries are simply wrecks of human beings. the majority have bullet wounds. nearly all have bayonet, sword and dagger wounds, some badly mutilated. two or three were skinned, and some were burned with kerosene. a great many women are missing. very many dead have been disposed of by the turks. hundreds have nothing to eat, and no means of getting anything. the villages of the plain have suffered awfully. no definite news has come; only the news that columns of smoke tell." marash. the writer became acquainted with many noble armenians here during his three years in the theological seminary, and almost all his friends were killed. among them were the rev. sdepan jirnazian, a noble christian minister,--when i was a little boy he was my pastor in the suburbs of antioch;--bedros iskiyan, an american citizen, butchered before his wife and children; garabed popalian, another noble man, and the richest among the armenian evangelical people; dr. kevork gulizian; khacher bayramian and his family; garabed salibian, in whose house i used to take my meals. a private letter says that about half the armenians were killed by the turks. marash had about 35,000 population; about 15,000 were armenians, of whom about 7,000 were killed. it has four evangelical armenian churches there, a theological seminary, and a ladies' college. the local governor led the regular soldiers to plunder and kill the people. letter from marash. london, nov. 28, 1895.--the correspondent of the united press in constantinople telegraphs, under date of november 27, that a second terrible massacre has occurred in marash, and that the houses there have been pillaged without regard to who their occupants might be. it is reported that thousands of persons were killed and many hundred wounded. the american theological seminary was plundered and burned, and two of the students in that institution were shot, one being fatally wounded. the hotels and boarding houses also were plundered. the christians at marash, and in that vicinity, thousands of whom are destitute, have appealed for aid. the following letter, under date of november 25, has been received here: "i will report the events of the 18th in this city. at 7 a. m., almost simultaneously the firing of martini rifles was heard all over the city, with conflagrations in three christian quarters. "we understood the meaning of it. soldiers began firing against two christian houses, and their inmates fled into missionary houses, and soon the soldiers were looting their buildings, followed by a mob, who smashed doors and windows, and carried away property. "towards noon a squad of soldiers approached the missionary grounds, and it was thought that a guard had been sent in behalf of the missionaries. they entered the grounds of the seminary and academy boarding department. two seminary students, who had concealed themselves in a cave, were discovered, and one of them fatally shot, while the other was badly wounded. "the soldiers looted the missionary academy boarding department of all the students' clothing and bedding, and a part of the year's provisions in store. other soldiers joined and looted the seminary. they repeatedly went to an armenian house near by, but did not force it. "three-quarters of that terrible day the missionaries were left to any chance fate that might befall them. they had been informed by a moslem of a purpose to burn the girls' college that day, and a note had been sent to the local governor asking for a special guard. he replied that the barracks near by were charged to care for them. it was soldiers in relays from that very place that were wrecking everything. "in the afternoon four or five soldiers entered the seminary, and soon after, fire broke out in the rear. as the flames wrapped the building, a trustworthy captain with thirty soldiers appeared at the gate, and the missionaries were assured of safety. the soldiers still continue with the missionaries. we cannot estimate the loss of life. leaders of society have been struck down everywhere, two missionary academy teachers among them." akhisar. the valley of the sakaria (the ancient sangarius), is, through a part of its course, followed by the anatolia line of railway. at a spot ninety miles from constantinople, where the valley broadens out into a considerable plain, is the station and town of akhisar. this town was, until the tenth of this month, the center of a considerable trade. the plain is dotted with vineyards, olive orchards, mulberry gardens, fields of cotton, wheat, etc. the town consists of about 160 houses of immigrants from bulgaria, bosnia, and rumelia (who, having been concerned in the celebrated bulgarian massacres, found refuge in turkish territory), and sixty houses of armenians. a letter oct. 15, 1895. thursday, oct. 10 (a bright, beautiful day), was market day. numbers of people from the surrounding villages had come with the fruits of their various industries. the market place consisted of sixty-three permanent shops, and about 150 temporary places of trade, where traders from the surrounding country exposed their wares for sale. the market was almost exclusively in the hands of armenians, 200 of the shops and trading places being in their hands. rumors of danger were afloat, but the armenians anticipated no attack on market-day. they had no arms, or means of defense, and had taken no precautions. they soon began to notice, however, that their mussulman neighbors had mysterious whisperings among themselves, and that some of them were searching, as with official authority, the persons of armenian young men, who were supposed to have knives or revolvers about them. those searching at last found a young armenian, a seller of calico, who had a knife in his possession. at once they fell upon him, but he escaped in the crowd that gathered, and the mussulmans turned upon the armenians, saying, "we must kill them all. let him who loves his religion join and help." with knives and clubs the work was carried on, the armenians fleeing, or hiding themselves in or about their shops. turkish officials encouraged the killers. a herald was sent through the market calling, "let the moslems go to the government house." they did go, and immediately returned with rifles and revolvers. then the slaughter increased in madness. the piteous entreaties of the threatened, the shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, the shouts of the killers, and the hysterical cries of some of the christians, who, to save their lives were calling out with desperate energy the mohammedan formula of faith, rose to the deaf heavens. ten-year-old turkish boys, as though hunting rats, rushed into holes and corners, and discovering the hiding-places of the merchants and traders, called to their fathers and big brothers, "here is a giavour!" and while that one was being dispatched they rushed off to ferret out another. for four hours the slaughter continued. ropes were attached to the feet of the corpses, which were dragged like the carcasses of dogs through the streets to dry wells, into which they were thrown. an old man, aged 75, was tumbled in alive, and left to die among the dead bodies of his friends. the money and watches of the merchants were secured by the ruffians. the notes of hand and account books were torn into shreds (the killers were debtors to the merchants), and the shops were looted. not so much as a pin or needle was left in the 200 shops. then the cry was raised, "to the houses!" to complete the destruction of the christian inhabitants. twenty-nine bodies were afterward recovered for burial; thirty-three persons (some of whom afterward died), were found to be wounded, and about forty are still missing. the lieutenant-governor arrived that night on the scene, and sent an official report (by telegram) to constantinople, to the effect that a row had occurred between turks and armenians, in which three armenians had been killed and two wounded, but that order had been restored! efforts were made to cover the matter up. christians were imprisoned for talking about the massacre, or for sending the news to friends. a prominent man, well-known throughout the country, wished to let his circle of friends know that he was still alive, and was permitted to advertise that he had met with an accident, but was quite well. great patches of dried blood in the shops presented the appearance of places used for the slaughter of sheep. groups of people were standing before the houses, statue-like, bewildered and hopeless, while other groups were wailing over the news of the corpses of friends, just recovered from the wells. i saw one of the mutilated corpses, and have seen it night and day since. an american missionary. the above missionary also says not only common people, but also officers of high rank, made free threats of massacre, and ostentatiously sharpened their swords and cleaned their weapons in the presence of their armenian neighbors. great care was taken by the authorities to deprive the armenians of arms; but the mussulmans were allowed to carry arms freely. the constantinople demonstration and consequent massacre aggravated the situation. it was pitiable to see the fear that held the armenians as in a nightmare, and to hear the threats and observe the bearing of the turks. a soldier, passing the door of a christian house and observing a young woman sitting on the door-step, ground his teeth and called out to her, "you may sit there four days more, and then i will have you on the point of this bayonet." the girl fled in terror into the house. zeitoon. zeitoon is fifteen miles from marash. the zeitoonlis are the bravest of all the armenians; there are about 15,000 in the city, and no mohammedans, save a dozen or two turkish families, and they talk the armenian language. until about thirty years ago zeitoon was a free city; but they were conquered by craft, and became tributary to turkey. the sultan garrisoned the place to keep them down, and the troops committed every sort of iniquity. finally, about two years ago, the sultan sent physicians there to poison the armenian boys. these assassins professed to have come to vaccinate the boys; every boy who was vaccinated died. then the zeitoonlis revolted, captured the barracks from the soldiers, took all the guns, cannon, and ammunition, and sent the soldiers away. this action enraged the sultan, and he sent some 20,000 regular soldiers and 30,000 bashi-bazooks to punish them; but they were repulsed with heavy loss by the zeitoonlis. it has been reported that during the battle between the zeitoonlis and turks about 15,000 of the latter were killed. finally the sultan lost hope of conquering them, and asked the european powers to use their good offices to restore peace in zeitoon, and the consuls of the different powers induced them to resume peaceful work by guaranteeing that the zeitoonlis shall not be molested. but who believes a word of it? we know, with horrible clearness, of how much value the powers' "guarantee" is; they say there is no obligation but to keep count of the massacres. a few statements from zeitoon. "turkish mendacity is again asserting itself. a few days ago the sublime porte set afloat the official report that zeitoon has fallen, after hard fighting, in which 2,500 armenians were said to have been killed as against 250 turks. now these official reports turn out to have been official lies. news from independent sources shows that zeitoon has not yet fallen; that its gallant defenders are still holding out their own. to armenians who understand ottoman tactics, the alacrity with which abdul hamid sent abroad the news of the supposed victory of his troops is a sign of misfortunes and reverses. the turks control the avenues of communication at marash, and it is not surprising that they attempt to win victories upon telegraphic despatches--but not at zeitoon. "the armenians at zeitoon are rebels against organized assassination, plunder, and arson. they have been unwilling to submit meekly to turkish outrages, and are determined to defend their lives, their homes, and their property. they have vanquished turkish armies before, and strewn the ground with thousands of turkish carcasses. they need fear nothing but the lack of supplies. will not christian nations intervene to save a valiant people who are defending their homes and their liberties, and who cannot be conquered by force of arms, yet who may be compelled to surrender to inexorable hunger?--[tigram h. suni, dec. 31. "london, feb. 3.--a dispatch from constantinople to the 'daily news' says: 'reports from turkish sources believed to be fairly accurate state that it is believed that the zeitoonlis are still holding out. the turks have made seven different attacks upon the town, but all have failed, and their losses are reported to amount to 10,000. it is alleged that 50,000 troops will be needed to capture zeitoon. "'it is believed that the zeitoonlis number from 15,000 to 20,000, well armed, and provisioned for a year. there is a doubtful report that 4,000 russian armenians crossed the persian frontier, and defeated the turks at siz, eighteen hours from zeitoon, and have joined the zeitoonlis.'" miscellaneous in the province of aleppo, the village of chizek, the armenian priest was killed for refusing to become a mohammedan. in the province of erzeroum and the district of erzinghan, six separate attacks for pillage have been made upon the village of zimara, and great pressure is being used to force the people of the village to become mohammedans. at the village of gazma the houses have been pillaged, and numbers of the people have become mohammedans to save their lives. in the province of bitlis a considerable number of armenians at sert have been forced to become mohammedans. in the district of shirvan, out of twenty-two armenian villages, the inhabitants of four entire villages have become mohammedans to save their lives. the priests also accepted mohammedanism, and the churches have been changed into mosques. at a little village at which the inhabitants could not disperse over the mountains a considerable number were killed, and the survivors accepted mohammedanism. this village is called kourine. in the district of chilain, returns from six villages have come in which show a considerable number of persons killed for refusing to accept islamism. in the province of van the stuffed skin of the superior of the monastery of khizan was still hanging from a tree in front of the monastery three weeks after the massacre took place; that is, at the date of the last news from there, nov. 27. at kharkotz in this province three priests accepted mohammedanism, and were paraded through the streets in the dress of mohammedan ulema in order to influence the people to follow their example. in the province of harpoot in many of the smaller villages, where the people have been supposed by the turks to be mere peasants, without ideas of their own, the offer of islamism has not been made, but the people seized without ceremony and circumcised by force, and are considered now as mohammedans. at haboosi, in this province, the christian dead were left unburied in the streets for the dogs to eat. the armenian church and the protestant chapel and parsonage were burned. at peri, in the same province, 450 christians were made mohammedans by threats of death. at aivos in the same province, all the buildings were destroyed. the armenian priest was forced to give the call to prayer, and was then shot for refusing to become a moslem. at garmuri the christians accepted mohammedanism at the edge of the sword, and have been circumcised. the protestant chapel and parsonage were burned, and the armenian church has been seized and made into a mosque. at hokh the armenian church and protestant chapel and parsonage were burned. at houilu in the province of harpoot, 266 out of 300 christian houses were burned, among them the fine new protestant church. two priests were killed. many of the people succeeded in escaping from the village. the rest have been forced to declare themselves mohammedans. the events above mentioned took place in the main between nov. 6 and nov. 20. but the process of forced conversion and the murder of individuals who refuse to accept mohammedanism was still going on as lately as the 20th of december, when the turkish government was assuring the european ambassadors that all is quiet in asiatic turkey, and that all that is necessary to complete the work of pacification is for turkey to be let alone. the nature of the pacification which may be expected if turkey is left free to carry out its schemes for these provinces may be judged from the following list of educated and influential protestant ministers, who have been put to death for refusing to embrace mohammedanism. in every case the offer of life on these terms was made; in several cases time was allowed for consideration of the proposal; and in each case faith in jesus christ was the sole crime charged against the victim. 1. rev. krikor, pastor at ichme, killed nov. 6, 1895. 2. rev. krikor tamzarien. 3. rev. boghos atlasian, killed nov. 13. 4. rev. mardiros siraganian, of arabkir, killed nov. 13. 5. rev. garabed kilijjian of sivas, killed nov. 12. 6. rev. mr. stepan, of the anglican church at marash, killed nov. 18. 7. the preacher of the village of hajin, killed at marash nov. 18. 8. rev. krikor baghdasarian, retired preacher at harpoot, nov. 18. 9. retired preacher at divrik, killed nov. 8. 10. rev. garabed resseian, pastor at cherwouk, nov. 5. 11. rev. metean minasian, pastor at sherik, nov. 12. pastor at cutteroul, nov. 6. 13. preacher at cutteroul, nov. 6. 14. rev. sarkis narkashjian, pastor at chounkoush, nov. 14. 15. the pastor of the church at severek, november. 16. the pastor of the church at adiyaman. 17. rev. hohannes hachadorian, pastor at kilisse, nov. 7. 18. the preacher at karabesh, near diarbekir, nov. 7. 19. rev. mardiros tarzian, pastor at keserik, near harpoot, november. telegrams from hajin (armenia). to the english consul at aleppo, and to the english ambassador of constantinople. all the suburban towns of hajin where christians live were plundered by mohammedans, and some of the christians were killed. the people of hajin and we are in danger; immediate help is needed.--nov. 5, 1895. to the american minister at constantinople. the christian villages of hajin were totally plundered by the mohammedans. about two thousand, naked and hungry, ran away and came to hajin. both the christian people at hajin and we are in danger; immediate help is needed.--nov. 5, 1895. extracts from a hajin letter. my dear sir:- nov. 25, 1895. the situation is growing worse here. all the suburban christian villages were plundered by mohammedans. some of the villages which were plundered were as follows:--shar-dere, roumlou, kokooun, and dash-olouk. all of them are left naked and hungry. came here to our city, and we are taking care of them. and the government never punished any of the plunderers. they were encouraged, and surrounded our city, and nobody can go out of the city, and if this continues so, we shall have a famine soon, and die in the city. the government does not protect us, but helps the plunderers, and we are continually threatened to be killed. our only hope is in god. another extract from a letter of an armenian. nov. 25, 1895. my dear uncle:- if you ask our condition, thank god that we are alive. but beside life we have nothing, no comfort, no happiness, no property, no church, no religion, all are taken from us. though we are alive, many of our number were killed, and those who survive are wandering here and there, naked and hungry, and are dying in that manner. god is angry, and exceedingly angry to us. perhaps he will hear your prayers; pray for us, or else all of us shall perish. i can never describe the horrible situation in which we are put. yours truly, from hadish village, armenia. my dear friend:- dec. 2, 1895. in great sorrow and in despair i am compelled to write to you a few lines to inform you of our most miserable condition. the turks and kurds came to our village, plundered everything we had, killed more than 600 persons, violated the women and girls, tortured the pregnant women, and now we who survive have nothing to live on. naked, hungry, cold, hopeless, we are crying bitterly. i write these few lines; perhaps you can inform the christian world and they may help us and relieve our sufferings. yours truly, there are many other cities, towns, and villages in armenia, where thousands of people were tortured and killed, their houses burned and plundered, their children kidnapped, the women violated. but there is no space to put all here in this book. i am sure the reader will be satisfied with reading this long chapter of armenian horrors, and the letters on the atrocities from different reliable sources. to sum up, during these frightful scenes in armenia more than 100,000 armenians were killed, and half a million left without food, homes, or clothing; they are dying in heaps; and there is no hope of getting any help from armenia itself, even when the spring comes, for those who would have supported them are killed, and most of the destitute are women and children. everything, even to clothes, is taken from them, the head of the family is killed, and they are left hopeless and in despair. how long can the red cross society help them? how long can the american people help them? not very long; when spring comes they will say, "we have done all we could for the armenians; let them take care of themselves." but will they stop to think how the armenians can take care of themselves? have they oxen and horses to plough? no. is there any man left to support his wife and children? no. suppose here and there an armenian is left (i mean in the country places, not in the cities), dare he go out to his field and work? no. were any of those who plundered and killed punished? no. what guarantee can we have, then, that those who survive will not be killed or plundered in their turn? none. will the european powers who signed the berlin treaty give any assurance to the armenians that they will be protected hereafter? no. is the sultan a better man since the massacre? no. are the turks and kurds better people since the atrocities? no. they are worse than ever before, because they have a freer hand, and all their passions are roused to greater strength. well, then, if these are all facts, what is the use of feeding people a few weeks merely to keep them alive for another massacre that will finish the rest of them? o reader, do not be cheated. the armenians need practical aid, not deceptive aid. i mean the armenians must be liberated from the cruel sultan; if not, no aid is given to the armenians. because the future will be worse than ever before. thus far i have continually assumed and tried to prove that the sultan of turkey deliberately ordered all these atrocities committed. but perhaps you will doubt the statement of a native; you will think i am prejudiced. therefore i will give you american testimonies from reliable sources. please read the following from the "review of reviews":- the massacres in turkey. from oct. 1, 1895, to jan. 1, 1896. certain persons in europe and america, misled by statements of the turkish government, have ascribed the dreadful massacres which have taken place in asia minor to sudden and spontaneous outbreaks of moslem fanaticism, caused by a revolutionary attitude among the armenians themselves. the truth is that these massacres, while sudden, have taken place according to a deliberate and preconcerted plan. according to the statement of many persons, french, english, canadian, american, turk, kurd and armenian,--persons trustworthy and intelligent, who were in the places where the massacres occurred, and who were eye-witnesses of the horrible scenes,--the outbreaks were under careful direction in regard to place, time, nationality of the victims and of the perpetrators, were prompted by a common motive, and their true character has been systematically concealed by turkish official reports. the following paper is based upon full accounts of the massacres, written on the ground by the parties above referred to. their names, for obvious reasons, cannot be made public. i. in regard to place. with only four exceptions of consequence, the massacres have been confined to the territory of the six provinces where reforms were to be instituted. when a band of two thousand kurdish and circassian raiders approached the boundary between the provinces of sivas and angora, they were turned back by the officials, who told them that they had no authority to pass beyond the province of sivas. the only large places where outrages occurred outside of the six provinces are trebizond, marash, aintab, and cesarea, in all of which the moslems were excited by the nearness of the scenes of massacre, and by the reports of the plunder which other moslems were securing. ii. in regard to time. the massacre in trebizond occurred just as the sultan, after six months of refusal, was about to consent to the scheme of reforms, as if to warn the powers that in case they persisted, the mine was already laid for the destruction of the armenians. in fact, the massacre of the armenians is turkey's real reply to the demands of europe that she reform. from trebizond the wave of murder and robbery swept on through almost every city, and town, and village in the six provinces where relief was promised to the armenians. when the news of the first massacre reached constantinople, a high turkish official remarked to one of the ambassadors that massacre was like the small-pox; they must all have it, but they wouldn't need it the second time. iii. the nationality of the victims. they were exclusively armenians. in trebizond there is a large greek population, but neither there nor elsewhere have the greeks been molested. special care has also been taken to avoid injury to the subjects of foreign nations, with the idea of escaping foreign complications and the payment of indemnities. the only marked exceptions were in marash, where three school buildings belonging to the american mission were looted, and one building was burned; and in harpoot, where the school buildings and houses belonging to the american mission were plundered and eight buildings were burned, the total losses exceeding $100,000, for which no indemnity has yet been paid. iv. the method of killing and pillaging. the method in the cities has been to kill within a limited period the largest number of armenians,--especially men of business, capacity, and intelligence,--and to beggar their families by robbing them, as far as possible, of their property. hence, in almost every place the massacres have been perpetrated during the business hours, when the armenians could be caught in their shops. in almost every place, the moslems made a sudden and simultaneous attack just after their noonday prayer. the surprised and unarmed armenians made little or no resistance, and where, as at diarbekir and gurun, they undertook to defend themselves, they suffered the more. the killing was done with guns, revolvers, swords, clubs, pick-axes, and every conceivable weapon, and many of the dead were horribly mangled. the shops and houses were absolutely gutted. upon hundreds of villages the turks and kurds came down like the hordes of tamerlane, robbed the helpless peasants of their flocks and herds, stripped them of their very clothing, and carried away their bedding, cooking utensils, and even the little stores of provisions which they had with infinite care and toil laid up for the severities of a rigorous winter. worst of all is the bitter cry that comes from every quarter that the moslems carried off hundreds of christian women and children. the number killed in the massacres thus far is estimated at fifty thousand, which includes the majority of the well-to-do, capable, intelligent armenians in the six provinces that were to have been reformed. the property plundered or destroyed is estimated at $40,000,000. not less than three hundred and fifty thousand wretched survivors, most of whom are women and children, are in danger of perishing by starvation and exposure unless foreign aid is promptly sent and allowed to reach them. v. the perpetrators. they were the resident moslem population, reinforced by kurds, circassians, and in several cases by the sultan's soldiers and officers, who began the dreadful work at the sound of a bugle, and desisted when the bugle signaled to them to stop. this was notoriously true in erzeroum. in harpoot, also, the soldiers took a prominent, part, firing on the buildings of the american mission with martini-henry rifles and krupp cannon. a shell from one of the cannon burst in the house of the american missionary, dr. barnum. in most places the killing was by the turks, while the kurds and circassians were intent on plunder, and generally killed only to strike terror or when they met with resistance. it is an utter mistake to suppose, as some have, that the local authorities could not have suppressed the "fanatical" moslem mobs and restrained the kurds. the fact is that the authorities, after looking on while the massacres were in progress, did generally intervene and stop the slaughter as soon as the limited period during which the moslems were allowed to kill and rob had expired. at marsovan the limit of time was four hours. in several places the slaughter and pillage continued from noon till sundown, or later. at sivas they continued for a whole day. in every place the carnage stopped as soon as the authorities made an earnest effort, and had it not been for their intervention after the set time of one, two, or three days, the entire armenian population might have been exterminated. vi. the motive of the turks. this is apparent to the superficial observer. the scheme of reforms devolved civil officers, judgeships, and police participation on mohammedans and non-mohammedans in the six provinces proportionately. this, while simple justice, was a bitter pill to the mohammedans, who had ruled the christians with a rod of iron for five hundred years. all that was needed to make the scheme of reforms inoperative was to alter the proportion of christians to mohammedans. this policy was at once relentlessly and thoroughly executed. the number of the armenians has been diminished, first by killing at a single blow those most capable of taking a part in any scheme of reconstruction, and secondly by compelling the survivors to die of starvation, exposure, and sickness, or to become moslems. it is the very essence of mohammedanism that the "ghiavour" has no right to live, save in subjection. the abortive scheme of europe insisting on the rights of armenians as men, has enraged the moslems against them. the arrogant and non-progressive turks know that in a fair and equal race the christians will outstrip them in every department of business and industry, and they see in any fair scheme of reforms the handwriting on the wall for themselves. if the scheme of reforms had applied to regions where greeks predominate, the latter would have been killed and robbed as readily as the armenians have been. are the greek massacres of 1822 forgotten, when 50,000 were killed, or the slaughter of 12,000 maronites and syrians in 1860, and of 15,000 bulgarians in 1876? vii. turkish official reports. the refinement of cruelty appears in this, that the turkish government has attempted to cover up its hideous policy by the most colossal lying and hypocrisy. it is true that on sept. 30, 1895, some hot-headed young armenians, contrary to the entreaties of the armenian patriarch and the orders of the police, attempted to take a well-worded petition to the grand vezir, according to a time-honored custom. it is also true that the oppressed mountaineers of zeitoon drove out a small garrison of turkish soldiers, whom, however, they treated with humanity; it is likewise true that in various places individual armenians, in despair, have advocated violent methods. but the universal testimony of impartial foreign eye-witnesses is that, with the above exceptions, the armenians have given no provocation, and that almost, if not quite, all the telegrams purporting to come from the provincial authorities accusing the armenians with provoking the massacres, are sheer fabrications of names and dates. if the armenians made attacks, where are the turkish dead? and the dreadful alternative of islam or death was offered by those who have dazzled and deceived europe with hatti shereps and hatti humayouns, promulgating civil equality and religious liberty for their christian subjects. strangest of all, he who is the head of all authority in turkey, and responsible above any and all others for the cold-blooded massacres and plundering of the past two months, wrote a letter to lord salisbury, and pledged his word of honor that the scheme of reforms should be carried out to the letter, at the very moment when he was directing the massacres. and the six great christian powers of europe, as well as the united states, still treat this man with infinite courtesy and deference; their representatives still dine at his tables, and some of them still receive his decorations. viii. the solution. if the armenians are to be left as they are, it is a pity that europe ever mentioned them in the treaty of berlin or subsequently; and to intrust reforms in behalf of the armenians to those who have devoted two months' time to killing and robbing them is simply to abandon the armenians to destruction, and to put the seal of europe to the bloody work. the only way to reform eastern turkey is by forcible foreign intervention--not the threat of it, but the intervention itself. the position and power of russia give her a unique call to this work. should she enter on it at once, the whole civilized world would approve her course. russia should have as free a hand in kurdistan as england has insisted on having in egypt. by frankly admitting this, england would gain in the respect and sympathy of the world, and strengthen her own position. inferences from the armenian atrocities. first: that devotion to christ is not lessened but increased. many people think the spirit of unbelief and indifferentism has spread so widely that in this nineteenth century people will no longer die for christ. but out of 100,000 armenians massacred, 90,000 were actually martyred because they would not deny christ. in all lands, christians praise the old martyrs, the church fathers: let them know that there are as noble church sons and daughters to-day in armenia as there were church fathers anywhere in the early centuries. thus these hideous scenes ought to awaken a true christian spirit both in this country and in europe. second: that it was a religious persecution. though the false and cruel sultan gave a political color to it, his universal order was to offer the armenians the choice of mohammedanism or death. this is proved by the fact that the leading gospel ministers were specially chosen for martyrdom. and some of the armenian priests, after having been converted by force, to escape unbearable tortures, were led through the streets, followed by great crowds, as a warning to the remaining armenians that they must follow the same road. when some of them did it, the turks forced them to take arms and kill their brothers and sisters for refusing to accept mohammedanism. to speak of the massacres as political affairs is doing injustice to the cause of christ. third: that whatever a man sows, he shall reap the same. the sultan and the turks are sowing,--they are killing, and thousands of the christians are converted by force to mohammedanism; but the time is coming when more mohammedans will be killed than armenians have been, and thousands, and even millions of the mohammedans will be converted to christianity, and the blood of the armenian martyrs will be the means of their salvation through jesus christ. the time is coming when out of this great persecution a great and happy freedom will proceed. out of this great darkness a very bright light shall shine. fourth: some of the turks helped and saved the armenians. certainly these were secret converts to christianity, but their lives being in danger, they cannot confess christ publicly. all they can do for the present is to help the needy christians and save them from murder. another class of turks who helped is those who were themselves getting a living out of the armenians. the armenians gave them employment, and if their employers were killed, how could they get a living? still another class protected the armenians, because if the armenian houses were burned, their houses also would be burned; and they asked and got money from the armenians as a reward for having saved them. it is a mistake to think that there are good mohammedans, who, from a good mohammedan motive helped the armenians. there cannot be a good mohammedan motive towards a christian; if there is a good motive, it is not a mohammedan motive. fifth: that the time has come when american and european christians should trust no longer in the promises of the sultan and the european governments, but as christian people must use something more than "moral principle" before all the armenians and american missionaries are killed. moral influence is very good as far as it goes; being a christian minister, i also believe in it. but as far as the turks are concerned it can do nothing, because they do not know what morals are, or what moral character is. all the turks are morally corrupt. they know only two things; one is the sword, the other is moral corruption. they came and captured that country by the sword, and they must go by the sword; there is no other way. europe tried the experiment century after century, but could find no other way. moral advice, wise counsel have never moved the turks, and will never move them hereafter. europe and a part of armenia were taken from them by the sword, and the only way armenia and the armenians can be saved is by using the sword. when christ comes again he will never yield; he will never be crucified, but he will judge and condemn. the time has come when christians have suffered enough; they must unite and remove that great curse, the mohammedan power, and make free that happy and beautiful bible land, armenia and palestine. reader, you cannot go and visit to-day the places where man was created, where noah's ark rested. you cannot go in safety to visit the places where christ was born and walked. why? simply because a corrupt mohammedan power wills there, and will not permit you. is it not a shame to mighty christian nations and powers that this is so? will not the christian nations be aroused with great indignation and give the last blow to such a cruel mohammedan tyranny? sixth: that turkey is a mere barbarism; it is not to be considered or treated as a nation, for it is not one in any sense. international law cannot be applied to turkey. the sultan must be considered as a brigand, a mere lawless oppressor, and the turks as mere murderers, and dealt with accordingly. the powers must give up the farce of treating the sultan as a national sovereign, who speaks for his people, and may govern, therefore, much as he pleases. as mr. w. w. howard says, "the blackest spot in the round world is the heart of the sultan of turkey." a farewell letter from a prominent armenian. march 24, 1896. "we are evidently a doomed people. a hundred thousand of us have been butchered, and more than a million of us are in extreme suffering from hunger, and cold, and nakedness. multitudes beyond the reach of foreign aid must inevitably perish before spring. as to the rest of us, our supplies of food and money are rapidly diminishing. we can prosecute no business, we are not at liberty to earn our daily bread, and for even the most fortunate, the future has only the prospect of starvation a little later than our poor brethren. "we hear the announcement that order and peace are being restored, but to us these are empty words. the terrible and wholesale massacre at oorfa and birijik occurred long subsequent to the most solemn and emphatic assurances that nothing more of the kind was to be apprehended,--long after the commission sent out from constantinople to carry the message of peace and reform to armenia had reached its field of labor. "massacres are not now so frequent as they were a few months ago, but the attitude of relentless hostility on the part of the government towards us, the ferocious aspect of our moslem neighbors, has not a whit improved. they seem to be eagerly watching for an opportune moment in which to finish their bloody work, and rid themselves forever of this troublesome demand for reform. "may we not then rightfully offer our farewell message to our fellow men? "first--to our moslem fellow countrymen: "we desire to express our deepest gratitude to those of you who have sympathized with and helped us in these days of calamity and bloodshed. towards those who have robbed and massacred us, and plundered and burned our houses, we have chiefly feelings of compassion. you have perhaps done these terrible things in what has seemed to you the service of your religion and government. "second--to our sultan--most dread and potent sovereign: "apparently you have been persuaded that we are a rebellious people deserving only utter and speedy extermination. for such as you, this work of destruction is no doubt an easy one, the more so as we have had neither the means nor the disposition to resist it. "third--to the european powers: "we have not been an importunate nor a turbulent people. we did not incite the crimean war, nor any of the subsequent wars which have stricken this empire. it is not of our will that we were begotten to a new political life by the treaty of 1856. our complaints and appeals have been based solely on the sentiment of humanity and the common rights of man. it was you who arranged the "scheme of reforms," and urged it upon our sultan till he was irritated to the extent that he seems to have adopted the plan of ridding himself finally of this annoyance by exterminating us as a people; and now, while he is relentlessly carrying out this plan, you are standing by as spectators and witnesses of this bloody work. "we wonder if sympathy and the brotherhood of man and chivalry are wholly things of the past, or are the material and political interests dividing you so great that the massacre of the whole people is a secondary thing? in either case "we who are about to die salute you." "fourth--to the christians of america: "although we have cherished strong prejudice against your mission work among us, recent events have proved that our protestant brethren are one with us, and have shared fully our anxieties and our perils. you have labored through them to promote among us the peace and prosperity of the gospel. it is not your fault that one result of their teaching and example has been to excite our masters against us. the turkish government dreads and dislikes nothing so much as the ideas of progress which you have sent us." viii. the armenians of to-day. there are about five millions of armenians in the world at present: three millions in the turkish empire, a million and a half in russian armenia, and half a million more scattered through persia, india, and burmah, egypt, europe (there are two or three hundred thousand in the austrian empire), and america. there are poor and ignorant people among them, as among every people; the majority, however, are (or were before the late horrors) well off, and many of them rich, educated, refined, and, in a word, modern christian people. of all the impudent inversions of truth ever perpetrated, the most outrageously impudent and shamelessly the exact contrary of fact is the assertion of mavroyeni bey, the turkish minister at washington, that the case of the turks against the armenians is like that of the whites against the indians in this country; that the american whites must be allowed to keep the indians down, and the turks must be allowed to keep the armenians down. if the indians possessed all the money, all the intelligence, all the cultivation, and all the morals in america, and the whites were a mob of ignorant, cruel, lustful ruffians holding them down by the organized power of the sword, the comparison would be just. as it is, the turks correspond fairly enough with the indians, and the armenians to the whites, in every other respect than military power. does a turk--a true turk--ever write a book? does he ever publish a newspaper, or read one? does he ever build a church, or pay attention to the moral precepts taught in one? does he ever found or manage a business, or even an estate? in a word, does he have any more intellectual, moral, or business part in the life of modern civilization than a hottentot or a matabele? and do not the armenians do and have all these things? are they not in the stream of the same kind of cultivated christian life led by americans? nowhere else on earth, but in the turkish empire, can one find millions of gentlemen and ladies and civilized modern citizens ruled over, oppressed, and massacred in hundreds of thousands by a gang of mediaeval asiatic barbarians, not advanced from the time of timour or jenghiz khan. it is the greatest anachronism and monstrosity of modern times. if my work is thought prejudiced, listen to what is said of them by men of the first authority,--the greatest statesmen, the best informed special correspondent, and one of the chief historians of england at the present time. first the statesman:- "the armenians are the representatives of one of the oldest civilized christian races, and beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world."--[gladstone. next the special correspondent:- "the armenians constitute the whole civilizing element in anatolia (asia minor); peaceful to the degree of self-sacrifice, law-abiding to their own undoing, and industrious and hopeful under conditions which would appall the majority of mankind. at their best, they are the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are moulded."--[e. j. dillon. lastly the historian:- "the best chance for the future of the asiatic provinces of turkey lies in the uprising of a progressive christian people, which may ultimately grow into an independent christian state. the armenians have, alone among the races of western asia, the gifts that can enable them to aspire to this mission. they are keen-witted, energetic, industrious, apt to learn, and quick in assimilating western ideas."--[james bryce. in the turkish empire. there are about two millions of armenians in armenia proper, and another million scattered through the rest of the empire. the absurd figures given by some writers, making them greatly less than this (one magazine editor got it down to 300,000! it is significant that he was a strong apologist for the massacre, and laid all the blame to the armenians) result mostly from taking the official statistics of the turkish government. now, there are three reasons why these are always grossly wrong; of no more value than the weather predictions in an almanac, and always wrong in the direction of understating the numbers. one is that it is the sultan's interest to make them as small as possible, that the armenians may not be considered to have the right to autonomy as a nation; the fewer they are, and the more outnumbered by the turks, the less right they seem to have. "an independent armenia?" shriek the turkish ministers and officers. "why, there are only a few hundred thousand armenians in their so-called country, and even so, there are three turks to one armenian in that very district!" the second is that in an oriental country a census is not a means of knowledge but an engine of taxation. the ruler has no care for information on the subject for his own sake, as western governments have. what he wants is to see how many people and in what places he can screw more taxes out of. the people know this as well as he, and use every effort to outwit his agents, and prevent them from knowing their numbers. this is why even civilized governments ruling over oriental nations can rarely get any nearer than a rough guess at the numbers of the nation; the inhabitants are suspicious, and resort to falsehood. in the case of the armenians, remember what i said in the first chapter about an armenian being taxed for every male child he has, every year as long as the child lives; naturally, he will not tell the number of his children unless he has to. here is a practical illustration. some years ago i was in an armenian village when the sultan's officers came to take the census. there were about 300 persons in the village; the officer wrote 200, because only a few names of boys were given him out of the whole. the tax is based on the registration, and if you can keep off the registers you can escape the tax. the third is the gross incompetence, the corruption, and the drunkenness of the officers. the turkish officials, governors, mayors, clerks, generals, soldiers, all drink any sort of liquor they can lay hands on, and are drunk as often and as long as sober; they are so ignorant that they cannot do their work decently even when they are sober; and they are utterly venal, without the least sense of official obligation. what sort of a census is likely to be taken by these ignorant, whiskey-swilling, venal barbarians? one of these officials, whom i know well, once came to a village to take the census. the armenians got him so drunk that he barked like a dog, bribed him, and he put down about half the number of the population. how, then, do i know the correct number? from a knowledge of the districts, the numbers of villages, and statistics resting on a better foundation than the above. i do not pretend that the number is exact; but it is near enough for practical purposes. the armenians in turkey are divided into four classes. the first comprises merchants and bankers. the second is the professional class: physicians, professors, teachers, and preachers. the third is that of artisans: weavers, blacksmiths, copper, silver, and gold smiths, tailors, shoemakers, etc. the finest oriental rugs are made by the armenians, and there are weavers of silk and cotton goods, and all kinds of hand-made embroidery. there are no factories in armenia. the fourth class is that of farmers, a pure, simple, industrious class, with beautiful farms, vineyards, and orchards, whose products i have described. one-tenth of all the armenians in turkey are in constantinople. many of them are poor, in the nature of things; but the leading bankers, merchants, and capitalists there are armenians, surpassing even the greeks and jews. i give a few representative names: gulbenkian, essayian, azarian, mosditchian, manougian, oonjian. the physicians in largest practice are armenians: khorassanjian, mateosian, dobrashian, vartanian, etc. the sultan's personal treasurer is an armenian, portukalian pasha. the chief counselor in the foreign office in constantinople is an armenian, haroutiune dadian pasha. the greatest lawyers are armenians: mosditchian, tinguerian, etc. the chief photographers of the sultan are armenians, abdullah brothers and sebah, the former considered one of the best photographic firms in the world. the personal jeweler of the sultan is an armenian, mr. chiboukjian. for all his hate of the armenians, he has to employ them, for no others are competent or trustworthy. the best musicians are armenians: chonkhajian surenian, doevletian, and an armenian young lady named nartoss, who often plays the piano before the sultan. the greatest orator in constantinople is an armenian and a professor in robert college, prof. h. jejizian, to my thinking, superior to either beecher, wendell phillips, or robert ingersoll, all of whom i have heard. finally, the armenians, as a whole, form the best "society" in constantinople, and their modes of living, dress, houses, and ways are precisely like those of americans or europeans. these are mavroyeni bey's "indians"! smyrna is a city of 150,000 or more population. about 80,000 are greeks; you may call it a greek city. the armenians there number about 8,000, or one-tenth of the greeks, but are ten times richer than all the greeks together. the principal buildings are owned by armenians; the business is in the hands of the armenians. the chief business men are well-known in europe. mr. balyivzian owns many steamers which ply on the mediterranean. mr. spartalian is another very rich and very benevolent man; he built a magnificent hospital at smyrna. in samsoun, marsovan, cesarea, adana, amassia, tocat, sivas, harpoot, mesere, malatia, diarbekir, arabkir, oorfa, aintab, marash, tarsus, angora, erzeroun, erzinghan, moosh, bitlis, baiburt, trebizond,--in a word, everywhere it is the same. go where you like in turkey, you find the armenians at the top. when i say they are the richest, i mean until early in 1894 they were the richest. but now, in many cities of armenia proper, since the recent atrocities, they have become the poorest. leading citizens, and the fathers of families, for the reasons i have mentioned, were specially singled out for vengeance. their stores, banks, and houses were plundered and then burnt, their money and jewelry taken from them, and then they were murdered wholesale. now the turks and the kurds for a time are rich with armenian property; wearing the gold watches of armenian gentlemen, their women wearing the jewelry of armenian ladies. in russia. the armenians in russia are the richest and the most cultivated of any in the world, and have great influence. mr. kasbarian, an armenian, is considered the richest even of them. the rich city of tiflis is practically an armenian city. there are about 50,000 regular armenian soldiers in the russian army, and some of its greatest generals have always been armenians. if the czar would permit this force and the capitalists to settle the armenian question, they would do it in a month, and make armenia free. the armenians have so far been treated very kindly and have prospered exceedingly in russia, but i do not believe it will last. in my opinion, the young czar is only waiting for his coronation to oppress the armenians as he has the jews. yet the czar's ablest servants and advisers have been armenians. the body-guard of nicholas' grandfather alexander was the armenian count loris melikoff, universally known; three times wounded by nihilists on account of his position. during the last turko-russian war some of the generals who accomplished the most with the least sacrifice were armenians: der, lucasoff, lazareff, melikoff. there are now no less than eighteen armenian generals in the russian service. i will mention a part: general sdepan kishmishian, commander of caucasus; general hagop alkhazian, general alexander lalayian, general demedr der asadoorian, general ishkhan manuelian, general alexander gorganian, general ishkhan gochaminassian, general khosros touloukhanian, general arakel khantamirian, general h. dikranian. there are many other prominent armenian officers. in moscow, st. petersburg, and other great cities in russia there are many armenian professors in the universities, mayors of cities, judges of courts, and high civil officers. i will give a few of their names, to show that i am not talking blindly: count hovhannes telyanian, minister of education, etc. gamazian, minister of foreign affairs in asia. muguerditch emin, counselor of education. nerses nersessian, professor in moscow in the royal university. dr. shilantz, professor in the medical college at kharcof. boghos gamparian, superintendent of the royal army of riza. melikian, professor of natural sciences in the university at odessa. a. madinian, mayor of tiflis. v. keghamian, mayor of erevan. h. moutaffian, mayor of akheltzka. hundreds and thousands are high officers in different departments of the russian government, but there is no space to give a roll of them. one, however, a personal friend, i must write a few words of, namely, professor john ayvazovski, of the council of the st. petersburg academy of fine arts, a marine painter of the first rank. he is now 79, but looks scarcely 60, with beautiful large, bright eyes. he came to the world's fair, where fifteen of his pictures were exhibited in the russian section; and he presented two other fine ones to the american people in recognition of their help to the russian famine sufferers,--one showing the arrival in port of a steamer with its cargo of grain, the other the advent of a drosky at a village of starving people, with a man in front waving an american flag. he visited and painted an excellent picture of niagara. he had seven pictures at the philadelphia exposition of 1876. his paintings are mostly in royal palaces: there are 120 in that of the russian imperial family, and 34 in the sultan's. his own gallery, at theodosia, russia, has 84. he has received many prizes from expositions. he is also a great scholar and a good christian. his brother, who lately died, was one of the greatest bishops of the armenian church. there is a very interesting story about professor ayvazovski's boyhood which i will give here: his parents were armenian peasants, living in a village not far from moscow. one day nicholas i was passing by the hamlet on horseback, and dropped his whip. the emperor beckoned to young ayvazovski, and told him to pick it up. the boy approached boldly and asked, "who are you?" nicholas replied, "i am the emperor." the boy rejoined, "if you cannot take care of your whip, how can you take care of your subjects?" the emperor was pleased at this remark, and ordered him to be educated at his own expense, and in any profession he chose. he took to the brush, and is the pride of his nation. in persia, india, etc. the armenians of persia are great merchants, and high civil officers of the shah. i name only a few: chahanguir khan is minister of arts and superintendent of the arsenal. nirza melkoum khan was the former ambassador of the shah at london; a man of great wealth and learning, and an able diplomat. he retired on account of age, and lives in london. nazar agha was ambassador of the shah at paris. general sharl bezirganian is the general superintendent of the telegraph service in persia. in india and burmah there are great armenian merchants, who are millionaires, and respected by the governments and the peoples. in egypt, though few in number, they are the ruling element. nubar pasha was the prime minister of the egyptian government until a few weeks ago; one of the richest men in egypt, and the greatest statesman in africa. he speaks several languages, and spends his summers in france, owning property in paris. dikran pasha is another rich and very gifted armenian, and boghos pasha another man of power. in europe. there are very rich merchants among the armenians at vienna, paris, marseilles, london, and manchester. there is a strong armenian colony at manchester. all of them are merchants, and some of them millionaires. almost the whole clothing trade between england and turkey is in their hands. they have a beautiful armenian church there, and always a learned armenian bishop; i speak from knowledge and observation. they are much respected by the english. some of the armenian gentlemen are married to english ladies of good family, and their domestic life is very happy. prince loosinian, an armenian, a very great scholar, and much respected by the french, lives in paris; he is descended from the last armenian dynasty. his brother khoren nar-bey loosinian was one of the foremost armenian bishops; the sultan of course hated him, and it is said had him poisoned while imprisoned in constantinople. the armenian scholars in europe are well-known, and on a level with the best of any country. there is not an institution of learning in europe where they are not to be found, either as students or professors; and the prizes and medals they win are many. there are two great centers in europe for the armenian scholars and authors: one at vienna and the other at venice. they have colleges and printing presses in these places; and they write, translate, and publish themselves in nearly all languages all sorts of valuable books. so the armenian people are well supplied with the best modern books. but it must be remembered that these valuable books are forbidden by the sultan to go into turkish armenia; he wants the people kept ignorant. some of their great scholars came home from europe to preach and teach in armenia, to elevate their nation; but some were killed and some banished during the recent atrocities. in america. the armenians are a new people in america. seventeen years ago, when the writer first came to this country, there were not more than a hundred in the united states; since then about 10,000 have come, most of them within ten years. the first ones came about forty-five years ago, among them mr. minasian and mr. sahagian,--both poor young men, now both rich. mr. minasian lives at brooklyn; mr. sahagian at yonkers, n.y. those who have come lately are mostly the poorer class; they fled from the "order" of the sultan, and not being allowed to leave turkey, bribed the police and ran away. not knowing the english language, they work in factories in various states. there are some well-to-do merchants, however, doing business in new york, boston, and elsewhere, handling oriental rugs, dry-goods, etc. some of the new york names are gulbenkian, topakian, tavshandjian, yardimian, chaderdjian, telfeyian, kostikian. in boston are ateshian, bogigian, etc. mr. kebabian is in new haven; mr. enfiyedjian in denver. there are many others also in other large cities. besides merchants, there are many professional men among them, about a dozen physicians in new york city alone: dr. dadirian, dr. gabrielian, dr. ayvazian, dr. apkarian, dr. altarian, dr. koutoojian. some of them are engravers and photographers. in new york city there are hagopian, kasparian, matigian, and others, very skillful engravers. in boston there is the new england engraving co., who are armenians; the manager is mr. g. papazian. there are about half a dozen armenians who are pastors of american churches in different states. about a dozen are special lecturers on the armenian atrocities: mr. h. kiretchjian, the secretary of the american relief association, mr. samuelian, rev. a. bulgurgian, rev. s. deviryian, mr. s. yenovkian, etc. there are hundreds of armenian students distributed among nearly all the universities, colleges, and theological seminaries in america, and most of them are of a superior sort. the greatest physicians in turkey are armenians, who were graduated from different medical colleges in this country. some of the leading pastors and professors in armenia, who were banished and killed during the recent atrocities, were graduated in this country. of the factory hands mentioned, there are about 1,000 in worcester, mass.; about 800 in new york and brooklyn; about 400 in boston, and the remainder are scattered everywhere from new york to california, from maine to florida. a number of armenian young men have married american women; i believe ninety per cent. are happy. after forty or fifty years, there will be a large class of american citizens of armenian blood, and many millionaires among them. they are gifted in business, and they are a sober, honest, and faithful people. i do not think that there is a single criminal among the 10,000 armenians in this country. some of the armenian daily and weekly newspapers are as follows: in constantinople: arevelk, avedaper, puragn, dyaghig, hayrenik, masis, pounch. in smyrna: arevlian mamoul. in etchmiazin: ararat. in tiflis: aghpour, artzakank, mishag, murj, nor-tar, darak. in venice: pazmaveb. in vienna: hantes arnsoria. in marseilles: armenia. in london: l'armenic. in new york: haik. wherever the armenians go they carry with themselves the church, the school, and the press. the armenian relief association. this association is putting forth every effort to alleviate the sufferings of needy armenians wherever they may be found; their work has already resulted in untold blessings and it deserves the hearty support and contributions of the benevolent public. the officers of the association are the following well-known american and armenian gentlemen: right rev. bishop h. y. satterlee, d.d., president. hon. levi p. morton, first vice-president. right rev. bishop potter, d.d., second vice-president. charles h. stout, esq., treasurer. j. bleeker miller, esq., chairman executive committee. nicholas r. mersereau, esq., secretary. herant m. kiretchjian, general secretary. rev. j. b. haygooni, a.m., organizing secretary. mr. h. k. samuelian, agent. the headquarters of the association is in new york. ix. the future of armenia and the battle of armageddon. i am going to predict the future of armenia. not in the usual sense of guessing at it, but in the literal sense of foretelling the truth. i am not a prophet of god, yet my prediction is based on facts, and its accuracy should be given some credit from the way my predictions two or three years ago about the recent atrocities that have already taken place, have come true to the letter. at that time no american or european could be made to believe that such horrors would be perpetrated; but i said they would be, and they were. and even now the western peoples are nearly as blind as ever; they cannot see the future of armenia even with all the facts before them. many have lost hope in it altogether; they think turkey will exist forever, and exterminate the last of the armenians. doubtless i should in their place, but i was born in turkey and know the situation. this, then, is the truth as i forecast it:-till the end of next year the armenians will suffer more than ever before. perhaps a million will be massacred yet, not only in turkey, but in russia. the jews, also, in great numbers, and not only the jews and the armenians, but the americans and englishmen too. the key rests in the character of the present czar. nicholas ii is not like his father or grandfather, a strong man. i will not discuss the moral character of the two alexanders, but i allow their powerful intellects and strong wills. they favored the armenians. but the present czar has no strength of character at all; he is weak both in intellect and morals. the sultan is called the sick man of turkey, but the czar is the sick man of russia. his short-sightedness in upholding turkey is one proof. up to the time of the coronation next may you will see no more massacres, for the czar has ordered the sultan to hold his hand, that there may be a peaceful ceremony, not clouded with horrors; that over, he will not only give the sultan leave to unchain his dogs, but he will unchain his own. the atrocities in turkish armenia will be redoubled, and the czar himself inflict on the armenians all that has been inflicted on the jews. even this is not all: the czar will instruct the sultan to get rid of all american missionaries, either banishing them as breeders of sedition, or, if they refuse to go, requiring the united states government to order them back. probably the government will obey. probably, also, the missionaries will not obey the government; they will stay where they are. then the sultan will say he is not responsible for their lives, and will issue secret orders to kill them, which will be carried out. further, the czar will begin a fresh persecution of the jews, and order the sultan to follow suit on the jews in turkey, which will be done; no fear of the sultan's refusing an order to butcher anybody. still more, the czar will command him in secret to banish the english missionaries from turkey; the sultan will request the english government to call them back, and there is little doubt that lord salisbury will comply; but they, like the americans, will refuse to go. then they will be murdered by secret orders from the sultan, who will say he is not responsible for it. these massacres will continue for two years more. the victims will cry aloud, the americans and english will have greater mass-meetings, but the governments of both will do nothing. and germany, austria, and italy will look calmly on; if they act it will be with the czar, and not against him. meantime both in europe and america the war preparations will continue with greater zeal and energy, until the cup is full, until the crisis comes; then the noble blood of the anglo-saxon race will begin to boil, and the english and american people at once will be aroused like one man, and the governments will have to yield. the wrathful jews will contribute jewish capital for the war expenses; the wrathful armenians throughout the world will give both money and soldiers to the governments fighting their battles. and a fierce battle will be fought between russia, turkey, and france on one side; america, england, the jews, and the armenians on the other. the former alliance will be beaten: the czar's greek church bigotry, the sultan's mohammedan fanaticism, and france's infidelity together will be crushed; russia will go to pieces, turkey will go to pieces, france will go to pieces; armenia will be free, judea will be free. the scattered armenians will return to armenia, the scattered jews will return to judea. both the armenians and the jews will have their separate governments; not kings, not princes, but a clean republican form of government. russia and turkey will be opened to the gospel work. where now hundreds of missionaries are going from england and america to other lands, then thousands of them will go; and christian america and england will open their hearts and purses together to send as many missionaries as they can to russia, to turkey, and to france. they will hasten the coming of the lord jesus christ. they will prepare the way for the coming king, who has the power both in heaven and on the earth. what will become of germany, austria, and italy, who form the triple alliance? that alliance will be dissolved. the german emperor is trying hard to maintain it, but he will fail. france will once in a while threaten germany with vengeance, but she will never be able to carry it out, and there is no need for it, because the german people during this century will get rid of their emperor. there will be a great civil war in germany, between the people and the army. if the german emperor could do it, he would begin to crush the socialists now. he will order his soldiers to kill their brothers and fathers, but they will not,--they are not as foolish as the emperor; the only result will be the break-up of the german union, and the division of germany into small republican governments. italy, austria, and spain will all have the same fate: civil war, and splitting into small republics. no czars, no emperors, no princes, no lords will remain. government will be for the people, of the people, by the people. the time has come; this century will purify the whole world. but until it is purified, a great deal of fire will burn, very great battles will be fought, until freedom and peace shall reign. and the armenian blood, now continually pouring like a river in armenia, will be the cause and the foundation of the coming freedom of the world. for the present, the world is not free; it is not civilized. it cannot be with such rulers. to be free and happy, the people must be aroused, and get rid of them. the united states must be the example to the older nations; they must embrace washington's principles. it is true that england and america will never go regularly to work to give freedom to judea and armenia, nor with that intention. their immediate motive will be to punish russia and turkey for the murder of the missionaries, and after the victory is won, by the help of jewish and armenian purses and swords, the armenians and jews will be rewarded by giving them their original homes and mother-lands. this will be laughed at by many, perhaps most, as a romantic and pleasant dream. they will say it can never be accomplished during this century; perhaps in the future, after a century or two, but not now. i am used to this incredulity; my predictions are never believed at the time: but after they come true they are. this century is not like the other centuries; a day in this century is equal to a year of those which have passed away. we may expect from a year of it as much as from a century in the ancient times. this world is a wonderful world now, and will be more wonderful hereafter. the future of the world is bright, and the world will be brighter and happier. why do i keep repeating "two years"? why do i not say one year or three years, or a few years? i have reasons for it: one is the political situation in europe, and the other is the bible prophecy in the book of revelation. the political situation in europe. the europeans have already made great preparations for battle. every one of them preaches peace and prepares for war; and none of them have finished their preparations yet,--if they had, they would be in the thick of it by this time. each of them declares that its preparations will be finished about the end of 1897. russia is building war-ships, england is building war-ships, france is building war-ships, and all will be finished about the end of 1897. all preparations converge on the end of 1897. when all are ready, they will begin. when newspapers write about an immediate european war, i do not believe it. there will be no european war for two years; but after that there is no escape from it,--they have to fight, and will fight. the war-ships will be ready, the cannon will be ready, the guns will be ready, the ammunition will be ready, the soldiers will be ready. the cunning sultan knows all this, and is in a hurry to exterminate the armenians, so that when they start in earnest with guns to reform armenia, he can say there is no armenia or armenians to reform. but that makes no difference for the european powers: turkey is doomed, and the turkish empire will come to an end forever within this century. there will never be any more turkish empire or mohammedan government; all the mohammedan powers will be under christian rule. the second reason is my belief in the bible prophecies. the close resemblance of the jews and armenians will be observed by the reader: both the chosen people of god. the children of israel were the chosen people before christ, and as the armenians became the first christian nation after christ, they became the chosen people after christ. and these chosen people have suffered more than any other nations on the globe; they have had more martyrs than any other nation, and have been carried into captivity, and finally scattered throughout the world. the bible lands are palestine and armenia, where the first man, adam, was created, and where christ was born and was crucified; and so these lands after christ, becoming the first christian lands, became the temple of god. we have a prophecy in the eleventh chapter of revelation that the court of the temple will be given unto the gentiles, and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months; "and i will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and three score days, clothed in sackcloth." (rev. xi, 2-3.) forty and two months and a thousand two hundred and three score days are just the same thing. each day in the bible prophecy is one year. according to this interpretation, which i consider correct, the holy city will be trampled by the gentiles one thousand, two hundred and sixty years. now the question is this, where is the holy city, and who are the gentiles who will trample the holy city? first, the holy city is both literally the holy city before christ, and spiritually the holy city after christ. literally, the holy city is jerusalem, where the temple of god was; this is very clear. spiritually, the holy city is christianity; wherever there are christians, there is the holy city. but this is very general, and takes the whole world after it is christian. but before we come to that general holy city, we find in the third verse of the same chapter the following words: "i will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand, two hundred and three score days, clothed in sackcloth." so from these statements we find that two especial witnesses in that holy city, clothed in sackcloth, will testify. who are these two witnesses? my interpretation is that they are the two chosen peoples of god and christ. and the two chosen peoples are the jews and the armenians. the jews were the chosen people before christ, and the armenians became the chosen people after christ, as king abgarus, the armenian king, believed in christ before christ was crucified, and afterwards, in the time of gregory the illuminator, the whole armenian nation became a christian nation, in 310 a.d. before palestine was considered a holy country, armenia was considered a holy land, because the first man was created there, and noah's ark rested on mount ararat. and as the armenians became the first christian nation on the globe, palestine and armenia were the holy countries or the holy city. although this is so, after all the literal holy city, jerusalem, remains a holy city; and she will be after christ, under the rule of gentiles one thousand two hundred and sixty years, while the two witnesses will testify there under sackcloth for one thousand two hundred and sixty years. now the question is this, how long is it since the city of jerusalem was captured by the gentiles, or more correctly by the "beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit" (rev. ii. 7), which is the mohammedan power? the mohammedan power in different places in revelation is called the beast, the dragon, the whore or harlot, and the false prophet, and it is the gentile kingdom after christ. and the time which is given to the mohammedan power to rule, to destroy, and to kill the jews and the christians in jerusalem or in the bible lands, is only one thousand two hundred and sixty years. since the city of jerusalem was captured by the mohammedans is 1258 years, and when this present year and the next come to an end in 1897, the mohammedan power will also come to an end, and the city of jerusalem will be restored to the jews, and armenia to the armenians. towards the end of the mohammedan power, mohammedans will begin to kill both the jews and the armenians for three and a half years (see rev. xi, 7, 8, 9). now, for a year and a half the mohammedans have been killing the christians,--which the author predicted two or three years ago; and they will kill two years more. "and the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river euphrates and the water thereof was dried up." (see rev. xvi, 12.) that means that the people on the shores of the euphrates were killed, namely the armenians. i am not writing a commentary on revelation, but simply bringing in a few passages to enlighten the mind of the reader about the future of armenia and the battle of armageddon. the battle of armageddon. (see rev. xvi, 13-16.) the battle of armageddon is the final and the greatest battle. all the nations will take part in it; but the leaders in the battle will be the ones i have said, and the other will be their followers on the one side or the other. and this battle will settle all the questions which are not settled now. the great eastern question will be settled, the great question between capital and labor will be settled, all the emperors and czars, kings, and princes will come down from their thrones, and permanent international arbitration will be established. the questions which are asked now will never be asked: what do the emperors say? what do the czars say? what do the sultans say? men will ask then, what do the people say? what is the wish of the people? then the question comes, where is armageddon? armageddon is armenia. of course this is entirely a new interpretation to european and american scholars; no one has ever been certain where armageddon is, but it is generally thought to be somewhere near jerusalem, a little hill called mount megiddo. in the time of judges, "the kings came and fought, then fought the kings of canaan in taanach by the waters of megiddo." (judges v, 19.) but as a native of the bible lands, and as a native minister, i am positive about it. the first question is, what does armageddon mean? it means the high lands. is there any higher land in the bible lands than armenia? the main land is from 4,000 to 7,000 feet above the level of the sea, and mount ararat is about 18,000 feet high. another question is, what does armenia mean? it means precisely the high lands, as armageddon does. armenia took her name from king aram or armenag; both mean high lands, or the possessors of high lands; and armenia also means the high lands. again, what does ararat mean, which is just in the center of armenia proper? it means the holy or high land. now bring all together, armageddon, armenia, ararat, all mean just the same: high lands. not only high lands, but holy high lands. long before palestine was called a holy land, armenia had the name of holy land, and the armenians were called the highlanders. in a word, armageddon is the combination of three different words, armenia--garden--eden: armageddon. so the final battle will be fought in armenia. the nation with the greatest part will have the greatest future. as man fell from grace in armenia, man will be restored to peace and holiness in armenia. and before that peace, holiness, and restoration come, the greatest battle will be fought in armenia. after the fall of man, disgrace and curse went forth from armenia; so prosperity and blessings will come forth from armenia. as the first battle in the world was fought in armenia, between cain and abel, and the other battles followed, so the last battle will be fought in armenia, and the universal peace will come out of it. as the first martyrdom in the world was in armenia, so the last and greatest martyrdom will be in armenia. and from the blood of armenian martyrs everlasting happiness will follow to all nations. and the kingdom of christ will be established throughout the world. x. poems on the armenian question. [from the new york independent, by special permission.] lord salisbury. by the rev. t. s. perry. "oh! for a year, a month, a day of oliver cromwell."--the independent. "what lord salisbury seems to lack is a little cromwellian courage."--a speaker in city temple, london. 1. oh! for an hour of cromwell, for a leader brave and grand to guide the wrath, and point the path, of a mighty christian land! to heed the cry of innocent blood, to blush for the world's disgrace, with hand to deal a blow of steel in the murderous moslem's face! 2. alas! for a leader heedless while massacred villages flame, unmoved by shrieks of maidenhood at wrong too foul for name! strong to throttle the feeble, feeble to beard the strong, with eye o'er-meek, and blanching cheek,- how long, o lord, how long? 3. and women cover their faces, and men are fain to hiss. cromwell's head upon temple bar were a leader better than this! and heaven grows black with horror, and earth grows red with wrong, and martyrs cry from earth and sky, how long, o lord, how long? orange park, florida. deus vult. by allen eastman cross. "it is time that one general shout of execration--not of men, but of deeds--one general shout of execration, directed against deeds of wickedness, should rise from outraged humanity."--gladstone's armenian address at chester. no tomb of death shall be our guest wherein the lord of life may rest. no empty sepulcher of stone across the world makes bitter moan, but christian hearts that break and bleed for our avenging pity plead. o brothers, for our brothers' sake let the crusading spirit wake! o christian england, 'tis the christ by moslem hands is sacrificed! away, away with hollow words, now sheath our speech, unsheath our sword! god wills: the guns of christendom proclaim the tyrant's doom has come! manchester, n. h. two sonnets. by henry van dyke. i. the turk's way. "stand back, ye messengers of mercy! stand far off, for i will save my troubled folk in my own way." so the false sultan spoke; and europe, harkening to his base command, stood still to see him heal his wounded land. through blinding snows of winter and through smoke of burning towns she saw him deal the stroke of cruel mercy that his hate had planned. unto the prisoners and the sick he gave new tortures, horrible, without a name; unto the thirsty, blood to drink; a sword unto the hungry; with a robe of shame he clad the naked, making life abhorred. he saved by slaughter, but denied a grave. ii. america's way. but thou, my country, tho' no fault be thine for that red horror far across the sea; tho' not a tortured wretch can point to thee, and curse thee for the selfishness supine of those great powers who cowardly combine to shield the turk in his iniquity; yet, since thy hand is innocent and free, rise, thou, and show the world the way divine. thou canst not break the oppressor's iron rod, but thou canst minister to the oppressed; thou canst not loose the captive's heavy chain, but thou canst bind his wounds and soothe his pain. armenia calls thee, empire of the west, to play the good samaritan for god. new york city. to those who died for their faith. armenia, 1894 to 189--? by mrs. merrill e. gates. "these loved their lives not, to the death!" but we at ease to-day, who claim allegiance to the one great name, could we as nobly die for faith? we challenge not the crucial test! self cannot prove to self its power if e'er should come that testing hour god give us grace to choose the best! but these have overcome! their lord in bitter death have not denied! have chosen still the crucified in face of bayonet and sword! our age heroic looms! our eyes behold white martyr brows! still hears our sin-gray world with unthrilled ears once more the martyr-chorus rise! come thou to succor the great need! thy judgment shall not long delay! god doeth his strange work to-day! the judge is at the door! take heed! amherst, mass. armenia. by willimina l. armstrong. out of storms and peace light, out of confusing things, bound in mysterious fashion by the bindings of blood and hate, lo, are the nations assembled now at the twentieth century gate. leaning beside the portal: close! in the name of god! over the garden of eden, in the evening of this our day. over the breast of the mountain old where the ark of deliverance lay. leaning beside the portal: hark to the clashing arms! hark to the voice in the garden, to the nations of earth it calls, "bid! for the woman is christian blood; and the sword and the bayonet falls!" sold! a christian woman! sold in the name of christ! sold to her death in the eden with its soil by her blood made damp! sold in the eve of our mighty age! with the light of our age for a lamp! new york city. armenia's bitter cry. by hetta lord hayes ward. i. world, world, hear our prayer oh where is russia, where? a fearful deed is done, its glare affronts the sun. smoke! flame! fire! rouse thee, great russian sire! when christian homes are ablaze, hast thou no voice to raise? thy neighbor to thee has cried, pass not on the other side. look on our dire despair! where art thou, czar, oh, where? ii. land of the sun and sea, wake, rome and italy! our ancient church in vain calls thee to break her chain. shame! shame! shame! where sleeps thy early fame? to death our priests are led, their flocks lie slaughtered, dead. awake, good pope of rome! our saints through blood go home; hear thou their dying plea, where, where is italy? iii. land of fraternite, brave france, turn not away! shall blood thy lilies stain? wilt bear the curse of cain? wake! wake! wake! for god and glory's sake! on a ghastly funeral pyre, brave men are burned with fire; god calls to france, the free, "thy brother, where is he?" lest god in wrath requite, awake, befriend the right! iv. where is good frederick's son when evil deeds are done? shall prisons reek and rot, his mother's blood speak not? haste! haste! haste! time runs too long to waste. if halts the kaiser dumb, let all the people come. your oath must sacred stand, treaties of fatherland; victims of turk and kurd, rest on your plighted word. v. your sisters' shame and blood cry out to england's god. slain on the church's floor, their blood flowed out the door. speak! speak! speak! the strong must help the weak. leave turkish bonds unsold; betray not christ for gold. let the moslem dragon feel once more saint george's heel. england, awake, awake! world, hear, for jesus' sake! newark, n.j. armenia. by geo. w. crofts. tune: "maryland, my maryland." where'er thy martyr blood has run armenia! shed by the fierce mohammedan, armenia! there nations gather in their grief- there would they bring in swift relief- oh, may thy agony be brief, armenia! god's eye of pity glances down, armenia! he sees thy rudely broken crown, armenia! his heart is touched with all thy woes, his mighty arm will interpose, he'll save thee from thy cruel foes, armenia! all o'er thy verdant plains shall spread, armenia! the golden grain where thou hast bled, armenia! thy harvest song shall yet arise to him who rules in yonder skies, whose ear has heard thy bitter cries, armenia! america extends to thee, armenia! the cordial of her sympathy, armenia! and every soul in this free land would give to thee the helping hand, and near thee in thy sorrow stand, armenia! in this dark hour be brave and strong, armenia! the right shall triumph over wrong, armenia! 'twill not be long till thou shalt see the glorious dawn of liberty, when thou shalt be forever free, armenia! armenian hymn. by alice stone blackwell. [from the armenian of nerses the graceful; born 1102, died 1172.] o dayspring, sun of righteousness, shine forth with light for me! treasure of mercy, let my soul thy hidden riches see! thou before whom the thoughts of men lie open in thy sight, unto my soul, now dark and dim, grant thoughts that shine with [ light! o father, son, and holy ghost, almighty one in three, care-taker of all creatures, have pity upon me! awake, o lord, awake to help, with grace and power divine; awaken those who slumber now, like heaven's host to shine! o lord and saviour, life-giver, unto the dead give life, and raise up those that have grown weak and stumbled in the strife! o skillful pilot! lamp of light, that burneth bright and clear! strength and assurance grant to me, now hid away in fear. o thou that makest old things new, renew me and adorn; rejoice we with salvation, lord, for which i inly mourn. giver of good, unto my sins be thy forgiveness given! lead thy disciples, heavenly king, unto the flocks of heaven. defeat the evil husbandman that soweth tares and weeds; wither and kill in me the fruits of all his evil seeds! o lord, grant water to my eyes, that they may shed warm tears to cleanse and wash away the sin that in my soul appears! on me, now hid in shadow deep, shine forth, o glory bright! sweet juice, quench thou my soul's keen thirst! show me the path [ of light! jesus, whose name is love, with love crush thou my stony heart; bedew my spirit with thy blood, and bid my griefs depart! o thou that even in fancy art so sweet, lord jesus christ, grant that with thy reality my soul may be sufficed! when thou shalt come again to earth, and all thy glory see, upon that dread and awful day, o christ, remember me! thou that redeemest men from sin, o saviour, i implore, redeem him who now praiseth thee, to praise thee evermore. dorchester, mass. miss alice stone blackwell is a noble boston woman who is greatly interested in the armenians. she has written many articles and poems, and done much toward arousing public sentiment throughout the united states in behalf of the armenians. the author of this book esteems it a privilege to offer his personal thanks, as well as those of his persecuted nation, to miss blackwell, by whose kind permission the following poems from her book, "armenian poems," are here reprinted. the lament of mother armenia. i. in alien lands they roam, my children dear; where shall i make appeal, with none to hear? where shall i find them? far away from me my sons serve others, thralls in slavery. chorus. oh, come, my children, back to me! come home, your motherland to see! ii. ages have passed, no news of them i hear; dead, dead are they, my sons that knew not fear. i weep, the blood is frozen in my veins; no one will cure my sorrows and my pains. chorus. iii. my blood is failing and my heart outworn, my face forever mournful and forlorn; to my dark grave with grief i shall descend, longing to see my children to the end. chorus. iv. o wandering shepherd, you whose mournful song rings through the valleys as you pass along! come, let us both, with many a bitter tear, weep for the sad death of our children dear! chorus. v. crane of the fatherland, fly far away, fly out of sight, beyond the setting day; my last sad greetings to my children bear, for my life's hope has died into despair! chorus. liberty. michael ghazarian nalbandian was born in russian armenia in 1830; graduated at the university of st. petersburg with the title of professor; was active as a teacher, author, and journalist; fell under suspicion for his political opinions, and underwent a rigorous imprisonment of three years, after which he was exiled to the province of sarakov, and died there, in 1866, of lung disease contracted in prison. it is forbidden in russia to possess a picture of nalbandian; but portraits of him, with his poem on "liberty" printed around the margin, are circulated secretly. i. when god, who is forever free, breathed life into my earthly frame,- from that first day, by his free will when i a living soul became,- a babe upon my mother's breast, ere power of speech was given to me, even then i stretched my feeble arms forth to embrace thee, liberty! ii. wrapped round with many swaddling bands, all night i did not cease to weep, and in the cradle, restless still, my cries disturbed my mother's sleep. "o mother!" in my heart i prayed, "unbind my arms and leave me free!" and even from that hour i vowed to love thee ever, liberty! iii. when first my faltering tongue was freed, and when my parents' hearts were stirred with thrilling joy to hear their son pronounce his first clear-spoken word, "papa, mamma," as children use, were not the names first said by me; the first word on my childish lips was thy great name, o liberty! iv. liberty answered from on high the sovereign voice of destiny: "wilt thou enroll thyself henceforth a soldier true of liberty? the path is thorny all the way, and many trials wait for thee; too strait and narrow is this world for him who loveth liberty." v. "freedom!" i answered, "on my head let fire descend and thunder burst; let foes against my life conspire, let all who hate thee do their worst: i will be true to thee till death; yea, even upon the gallows tree the last breath of a death of shame shall shout thy name, o liberty!" the wandering armenian to the swallow. by c. a. totochian. i. o swallow, gentle swallow, thou lovely bird of spring! say, whither art thou flying so swift on gleaming wing? ii. fly to my birthplace, ashdarag, the spot i love the best; beneath my father's roof-tree, o swallow, build thy nest. iii. there dwells afar my father, a mournful man and gray, who for his only son's return waits vainly, day by day. iv. if thou shouldst chance to see him, greet him with love from me; bid him sit down and mourn with tears his son's sad destiny. v. in poverty and loneliness, tell him, my days are passed: my life is only half a life. my tears are falling fast. vi. to me, amid bright daylight, the sun is dark at noon; to my wet eyes at midnight sleep comes not, late or soon. vii. tell him that, like a beauteous flower smit by a cruel doom. uprooted from my native soil, i wither ere my bloom. viii. fly on swift wing, dear swallow, across the quickening earth, and seek in fair armenia the village of my birth. notice. the author of this book delivers lectures on the following subjects: armenia, armenians, and the recent atrocities. the sultan of turkey, hamid the ii. american missions in turkey. social and political life in turkey. about 400 stereopticon views, as well as large maps, and costumes are used to illustrate the various lectures, which are highly instructive and entertaining, and never fail of interesting the most critical audiences. the lectures are delivered upon very reasonable terms. for particulars address, rev. geo. h. filian, cor. eastern parkway and cresent st., brooklyn, n.y. from the testimonials of prominent clergymen, authors, and secretaries of y.m.c.a.'s, the following few are selected. from dr. r. s. storrs, president of the american board of foreign missions. your address to my congregation was admirable in its tone, and its entire impression upon those who heard it. your knowledge of the facts presented is, of course, accurate and complete; and your method of presenting the facts is clear, impressive, and leaves the minds instructed and the hearts quickened. from the faculty of chicago theological seminary. this will introduce to you rev. george h. filian, a graduate of this seminary, a man of true character and devotion. he has been obliged to suspend work for a time in turkey, owing to his faithfulness in preaching the truth, and is recommended to the consideration of christians throughout america. by order of the faculty, h. n. scott, secretary. from prof. g. b. wilcox, d.d., chicago theological seminary. rev. g. h. filian, a graduate of this seminary in 1882, and since pastor of armenian evangelical church, marsovan, turkey, is lecturing on turkish missions and turkish manners and customs. he is an exceptionally able speaker, and may with all confidence be introduced by any pastor to his congregation. i speak from long and intimate acquaintance. g. b. wilcox. from rev. john h. barrows, d.d., pastor first presbyterian church. rev. geo. h. filian, of syria, lectured on constantinople to my people last night, greatly interesting them. his illustrations are excellent, and he speaks with great enthusiasm. the evening's entertainment was very wholesome, and i cordially commend his worthy lecture. my people have heard him also with pleasure on "social life in turkey." from the department secretary y.m.c.a. of chicago, illinois. rev. geo. h. filian delivered before one of our meetings his interesting lecture on "missions in turkey." i have never heard a speaker more interesting, and that held the attention of the audience in a greater measure than mr. filian. he is intelligent upon such a subject. he is versatile in expression, enthusiastic in delivery, and certainly very devout in heart. daniel sloan. from the secretary in charge central building, y.m.c.a., brooklyn, n.y. rev. geo. h. filian gave his stereopticon lecture on "constantinople" before our young men last night, and i am pleased to say that it is a lecture of rare interest and enjoyment. the views are beautiful and very instructive, as they are rarely thrown upon a screen. mr. filian has the advantage of speaking from actual experience, and his eloquent words, devoted spirit, and fund of humor quickly win the attention and sympathy of any audience. arthur b. wood. from rev. henry van dyke, d.d., pastor of the brick church, new york. your lecture before our young men's society on monday was a decided success. every one was interested in what you had to say, and the pictures were excellent. we shall be glad when the time comes to have you with us again. from rev. george m. stone, d.d., hartford. mr. filian is thoroughly intelligent on the whole eastern question, and gives a view of armenia and its present trial which is exceedingly valuable. from a. c. dixon, d.d., pastor hanson place baptist church, brooklyn, n.y. rev. george h. filian has lectured twice in the hanson place baptist church, and it gives me pleasure to say that his lectures are interesting and instructive. they stir the heart to work and pray for the relief of persecuted armenia. from louis albert banks, d.d., pastor of hanson place m. e. church, brooklyn, n.y. i take great pleasure in saying that the rev. geo. h. filian, who has spoken from the platform at hanson place m. e. church in behalf of the armenian christians, and also lectured in our church on constantinople, is a very eloquent and earnest speaker, who will attract attention and arouse interest anywhere. notes [1] the word "armenian" is not altogether indicative of race, it refers more particularly to those who are christians. any who have forsaken the faith and become mohammedans are no longer regarded as armenians, but are turks. [2] the above description is taken literally from a report of the british vice-consul of erzeroum. copies are in possession of the diplomatic representatives of the powers at constantinople. the scene occurred in the village of semal before the massacres, during the normal condition of things. [3] extracts from letters are left unsigned for fear of endangering the writers' lives. the eye of zeitoon by talbot mundy author of rung ho, king--of the khyber rifles, hira singh, the ivory trail, etc. contents chapter page i parthians, medes and elamites .............................. 1 ii "how did sunshine get into the garden? by whose leave came the wind?" .............................................. 21 iii "sahib, there is always work for real soldiers!" ......... 40 iv "we are the robbers, effendi!" ............................ 52 v "effendi, that is the heart of armenia burning!" ........... 74 vi "passing the buck to allah!" ............................. 91 vii "we hold you to your word!" .............................. 118 viii "i go with that man!" ................................... 128 ix "and you left your friend to help me?" ................... 142 x "when i fire this pistol--" ................................ 163 xi "that man's dose is death, and he dies unshriven!" ....... 176 xii "america's way with a woman is beyond belief!" .......... 195 xiii "'take your squadron and go find him, rustum khan!' and i, sahib, obeyed my lord bahadur's orders." ......... 211 xiv "rajput, i shall hang you if you make more trouble!"...... 229 xv "scenery to burst the heart!" ............................. 243 xvi "what care i for my belly, sahib, if you break my heart?" 257 xvii "i knew what to expect of the women!" .................. 277 xviii "per terram et aquam" .................................. 290 xix "such drilling as they have had--such little drilling!" .. 303 xx "so few against so many! i see death, and i am not sorry!" 316 xxi "those who survive this night shall have brave memories!". 333 xxii "god go with you to the states, effendim!" .............. 349 chapter one parthians, medes and elamites salvete! oh ye, who tread the trodden path and keep the narrow law in famished faith that judgment day shall blast your sluggard mists away and show what moses saw! oh thralls of subdivided time, hours measureless i sing that own swift ways to wider scenes, new-plucked from heights where vision preens a white, unwearied wing! no creed i preach to bend dull thought to see what i shall show, nor can ye buy with treasured gold the key to these hours that unfold new tales no teachers know. ye'll need no leave o' the laws o' man, for vision's wings are free; the swift unmeasured hours are kind and ye shall leave all cares behind if ye will come with me! in vain shall lumps of fashioned stuff imprison you about; in vain let pundits preach the flesh and feebling limits that enmesh your goings in and out, i know the way the zephyrs took who brought the breath of spring, i guide to shores of regions blest where white, uncaught ideas nest and thought is strong o' wing! within the hours that i unlock all customed fetters fall; the chains of drudgery release; set limits fade; horizons cease for you who hear the call no trumpet note--no roll of drums, but quiet, sure and sweet-the self-same voice that summoned drake, the whisper for whose siren sake they manned the devon fleet, more lawless than the gray gull's wait, more boundless than the sea, more subtle than the softest wind! * * * * * * oh, ye shall burst the ties that bind if ye will come with me! it is written with authority of tarsus that once it was no mean city, but that is a tale of nineteen centuries ago. the turko-italian war had not been fought when fred oakes took the fever of the place, although the stage was pretty nearly set for it and most of the leading actors were waiting for their cue. no more history was needed than to grind away forgotten loveliness. fred's is the least sweet temper in the universe when the ague grips and shakes him, and he knows history as some men know the bible--by fathoms; he cursed the place conqueror by conqueror, maligning them for their city's sake, and if sennacherib, who built the first foundations, and if anthony and cleopatra, philip of macedon, timour-i-lang, mahmoud, ibrahim and all the rest of them could have come and listened by his bedside they would have heard more personal scandal of themselves than ever their contemporary chroniclers dared reveal. all this because he insisted on ignoring the history he knew so well, and could not be held from bathing in the river cydnus. whatever their indifference to custom, anthony and cleopatra knew better than do that. alexander the great, on the other hand, flouted tradition and set fred the example, very nearly dying of the ague for his pains, for those are treacherous, chill waters. fred, being a sober man and unlike alexander of macedon in several other ways, throws off fever marvelously, but takes it as some persons do religion, very severely for a little while. so we carried him and laid him on a nice white cot in a nice clean room with two beds in it in the american mission, where they dispense more than royal hospitality to utter strangers. will yerkes had friends there but that made no difference; fred was quinined, low-dieted, bathed, comforted and reproved for swearing by a college-educated nurse, who liked his principles and disapproved of his professions just as frankly as if he came from her hometown. (her name was van-something-or-other, and you could lean against the boston accent--just a little lonely-sounding, but a very rock of gentle independence, all that long way from home!) meanwhile, we rested. that is to say that, after accepting as much mission hospitality as was decent, considering that every member of the staff worked fourteen hours a day and had to make up for attention shown to us by long hours bitten out of night, we loafed about the city. and satan still finds mischief. we called on fred in the beginning twice a day, morning and evening, but cut the visits short for the same reason that monty did not go at all: when the fever is on him fred's feelings toward his own sex are simply blunt bellicose. when they put another patient in the spare bed in his room we copied monty, arguing that one male at a time for him to quarrel with was plenty. monty, being earl of montdidier and kirkudbrightshire, and a privy councilor, was welcome at the consulate at mersina, twenty miles away. the consul, like monty, was an army officer, who played good chess, so that that was no place, either, for will yerkes and me. will prefers dime novels, if he must sit still, and there was none. and besides, he was never what you could call really sedative. he and i took up quarters at the european hotel--no sweet abiding-place. there were beetles in the denmark butter that they pushed on to the filthy table-cloth in its original one-pound tin; and there was a turkish officer in riding pants and red morocco slippers, back from the yemen with two or three incurable complaints. he talked out-of-date turkish politics in bad french and eked out his ignorance of table manners with instinctive racial habit. to avoid him between meals will and i set out to look at the historic sights, and exhausted them all, real and alleged, in less than half a day (for in addition to a lust for ready-cut building stone the turks have never cherished monuments that might accentuate their own decadence). after that we fossicked in the manner of prospectors that we are by preference, if not always by trade, eschewing polite society and hunting in the impolite, amusing places where most of the facts have teeth, sharp and ready to snap, but visible. we found a khan at last on the outskirts of the city, almost in sight of the railway line, that well agreed with our frame of mind. it was none of the newfangled, underdone affairs that ape hotels, with greek managers and as many different prices for one service as there are grades of credulity, but a genuine two-hundred-year-old turkish place, run by a turk, and named yeni khan (which means the new rest house) in proof that once the world was younger. the man who directed us to the place called it a kahveh; but that means a place for donkeys and foot-passengers, and when we spoke of it as kahveh to the obadashi--the elderly youth who corresponds to porter, bell-boy and chambermaid in one--he was visibly annoyed. truly the place was a khan--a great bleak building of four high outer walls, surrounding a courtyard that was a yard deep with the dung of countless camels, horses, bullocks, asses; crowded with arabas, the four-wheeled vehicles of all the near east, and smelly with centuries of human journeys' ends. khans provide nothing except room, heat and water (and the heat costs extra); there is no sanitation for any one at any price; every guest dumps all his discarded rubbish over the balcony rail into the courtyard, to be trodden and wheeled under foot and help build the aroma. but the guests provide a picture without price that with the very first glimpse drives discomfort out of mind. in that place there were parthians, medes and elamites, and all the rest of the list. there was even a chinaman. two hindus were unpacking bundles out of a creaking araba, watched scornfully by an unmistakable pathan. a fat swarthy-faced greek in black frock coat and trousers, fez, and slippered feet gesticulated with his right arm like a pump-handle while he sat on the balcony-rail and bellowed orders to a crowd mixed of armenians, italians, maltese, syrians and a turk or two, who labored with his bales of cotton goods below. (the italians eyed everybody sidewise, for there were rumors in those days of impending trouble, and when the turk begins hostilities he likes his first opponents easy and ready to hand.) there were kurds, long-nosed, lean-lipped and suspicious, who said very little, but hugged long knives as they passed back and forth among the swarming strangers. they said nothing at all, those kurds, but listened a very great deal. tall, mustached circassians, with eighteen-inch erzerum daggers at their waists, swaggered about as if they, and only they, were history's heirs. it was expedient to get out of their path alertly, but they cringed into second place before the turks, who, without any swagger at all, lorded it over every one. for the turk is a conqueror, whatever else he ought to be. the poorest turkish servant is race-conscious, and unshakably convinced of his own superiority to the princes of the conquered. one has to bear that fact in mind when dealing with the turk; it colors all his views of life, and accounts for some of his famous unexpectedness. will and i fell in love with the crowd, and engaged a room over the great arched entrance. we were aware from the first of the dull red marks on the walls of the room, where bed-bugs had been slain with slipper heels by angry owners of the blood; but we were not in search of luxury, and we had our belongings and a can of insect-bane brought down from the hotel at once. the fact that stallions squealed and fought in the stalls across the courtyard scarcely promised us uninterrupted sleep; but sleep is not to be weighed in the balance against the news of eastern nights. we went down to the common room close beside the main entrance, and pushed the door open a little way; the men who sat within with their backs against it would only yield enough to pass one person in gingerly at a time. we saw a sea of heads and hats and faces. it looked impossible to squeeze another human being in among those already seated on the floor, nor to make another voice heard amid all that babel. but the babel ceased, and they did make room for us--places of honor against the far wall, because of our clean clothes and nationality. we sat wedged between a georgian in smelly, greasy woolen jacket, and a man who looked persian but talked for the most part french. there were other persians beyond him, for i caught the word poul--money, the perennial song and shibboleth of that folk. the day was fine enough, but consensus of opinion had it that snow was likely falling in the taurus mountains, and rain would fall the next day between the mountains and the sea, making roads and fords impassable and the mountain passes risky. so men from the ends of earth sat still contentedly, to pass earth's gossip to and fro--an astonishing lot of it. there was none of it quite true, and some of it not nearly true, but all of it was based on fact of some sort. men who know the khans well are agreed that with experience one learns to guess the truth from listening to the ever-changing lies. we could not hope to pick out truth, but sat as if in the pit of an old-time theater, watching a foreign-language play and understanding some, but missing most of it. there was a man who drew my attention at once, who looked and was dressed rather like a russian--a man with a high-bridged, prominent, lean nose--not nearly so bulky as his sheepskin coat suggested, but active and strong, with a fiery restless eye. he talked russian at intervals with the men who sat near him at the end of the room on our right, but used at least six other languages with any one who cared to agree or disagree with him. his rather agreeable voice had the trick of carrying words distinctly across the din of countless others. "what do you suppose is that man's nationality?" i asked will, shouting to him because of the roar, although he sat next me. "ermenie!" said a turk next but one beyond will, and spat venomously, as if the very name armenian befouled his mouth. but i was not convinced that the man with the aquiline nose was armenian. he looked guilty of altogether too much zest for life, and laughed too boldly in turkish presence. in those days most armenians thereabouts were sad. i called will's attention to him again. "what do you make of him?" "he belongs to that quieter party in the opposite corner." (will puts two and two together all the time, because the heroes of dime novels act that way.) "they're gipsies, yet i'd say he's not--" "he and the others are jingaan," said a voice beside me in english, and i looked into the persian's gentle brown eyes. "the jingaan are street robbers pure and simple," he added by way of explanation. "but what nationality?" "jingaan might be anything. they in particular would call themselves rommany. we call them zingarri. not a dependable people--unless--" i waited in vain for the qualification. he shrugged his shoulders, as if there was no sense in praising evil qualities. but i was not satisfied yet. they were swarthier and stockier than the man who had interested me, and had indefinite, soft eyes. the man i watched had brown eyes, but they were hard. and, unlike them, he had long lean fingers and his gestures were all extravagant. he was not a jew, i was sure of that, nor a syrian, nor yet a kurd. "ermenie--ermenie!" said the turk, watching me curiously, and spitting again. "that one is ermenie. those others are just dogs!" the crowd began to thin after a while, as men filed out to feed cattle and to cook their own evening meal. then the perplexing person got up and came over toward me, showing no fear of the turk at all. he was tall and lean when he stood upright, but enormously strong if one could guess correctly through the bulky-looking outer garment. he stood in front of will and me, his strong yellow teeth gleaming between a black beard and mustache. the turk got up clumsily, and went out, muttering to himself. i glanced toward the corner where the self-evident gipsies sat, and observed that with perfect unanimity they were all feigning sleep. "eenglis sportmen!" said the man in front of us, raising both hands, palms outward, in appraisal of our clothes and general appearance. it was not surprising that he should talk english, for what the british themselves have not accomplished in that land of a hundred tongues has been done by american missionaries, teaching in the course of a generation thousands on thousands. (there is none like the american missionary for attaining ends at wholesale.) "what countryman are you?" i asked him. "zeitoonli," he answered, as if the word were honor itself and explanation bound in one. yet he looked hardly like an honorable man. "the chilabi are staying here?" he asked. chilabi means gentleman. "we wait on the weather," said i, not caring to have him turn the tables on me and become interrogator. he laughed with a sort of hard good humor. "since when have eenglis sportmen waited on the weather? ah, but you are right, effendi, none should tell the truth in this place, unless in hope of being disbelieved!" he laid a finger on his right eye, as i have seen arabs do when they mean to ascribe to themselves unfathomable cunning. "since you entered this common room you have not ceased to observe me closely. the other sportman has watched those zingarri. what have you learned?" he stood with lean hands crossed now in front of him, looking at us down his nose, not ceasing to smile, but a hint less at his ease, a shade less genial. "i have heard you--and them--described as jingaan," i answered, and he stiffened instantly. whether or not they took that for a signal--or perhaps he made another that we did not see--the six undoubted gipsies got up and left the room, shambling out in single file with the awkward gait they share in common with red indians. "jingaan," he said, "are people who lurk in shadows of the streets to rob belated travelers. that is not my business." he looked very hard indeed at the persian, who decided that it might as well be supper-time and rose stiffly to his feet. the persians rob and murder, and even retreat, gracefully. he bade us a stately and benignant good evening, with a poetic persian blessing at the end of it. he bowed, too, to the zeitoonli, who bared his teeth and bent his head forward something less than an inch. "they call me the eye of zeitoon!" he announced with a sort of savage pride, as soon as the persian was out of ear-shot. will pricked his ears--schoolboy-looking ears that stand out from his head. "i've heard of zeitoon. it's a village on a mountain, where a man steps out of his front door on to a neighbor's roof, and the women wear no veils, and--" the man showed his teeth in another yellow smile. "the effendi is blessed with intelligence! few know of zeitoon." will and i exchanged glances. "ours," said will, "is the best room in the khan, over the entrance gate." "two such chilabi should surely live like princes," he answered without a smile. if he had dared say that and smile we would have struck him, and monty might have been alive to-day. but he seemed to know his place, although he looked at us down his nose again in shrewd appraisal. will took out tobacco and rolled what in the innocence of his yankee heart he believed was a cigarette. i produced and lit what he contemptuously called a "boughten cigaroot"--turkish regie, with the scent of aboriginal ambrosia. the zeitoonli took the hint. "yarim sa' at," he said. "korkakma!" "meanin'?" demanded will. "in half an hour. do not be afraid!" said he. "before i grow afraid of you," will retorted, "you'll need your friends along, and they'll need knives!" the zeitoonli bowed, laid a finger on his eye again, smiled and backed away. but he did not leave the room. he went back to the end-wall against which he had sat before, and although he did not stare at us the intention not to let us out of sight seemed pretty obvious. "that half-hour stuff smacked rather of a threat," said will. "suppose we call the bluff, and keep him waiting. what do you say if we go and dine at the hotel?" but in the raw enthusiasm of entering new quarters we had made up our minds that afternoon to try out our new camp kitchen--a contraption of wood and iron we had built with the aid of the mission carpenter. and the walk to the hotel would have been a long one, through tarsus mud in the dark, with prowling dogs to take account of. "i'm not afraid of ten of him!" said i. "i know how to cook curried eggs; come on!" "who said who was afraid?" so we went out into darkness already jeweled by a hundred lanterns, dodged under the necks of three hungry bactrian camels (they are irritable when they want their meal), were narrowly missed by a mule's heels because of the deceptive shadows that confused his aim, tripped over a donkey's heel-rope, and found our stairway--thoroughly well cursed in seven languages, and only just missed by a georgian gentleman on the balcony, who chose the moment of our passing underneath to empty out hissing liquid from his cooking pot. once in our four-square room, with the rags on the floor in our especial honor, and our beds set up, and the folding chairs in place, contentment took hold of us; and as we lighted the primus burner in the cooking box, we pitied from the bottom of compassionate young hearts all unfortunates in stiff white shirts, whose dinners were served that night on silver and laundered linen. through the partly open door we could smell everything that ever happened since the beginning of the world, and hear most of the elemental music--made, for instance, of the squeal of fighting stallions, and the bray of an amorous he-ass--the bubbling complaint of fed camels that want to go to sleep, but are afraid of dreaming--the hum of human voices--the clash of cooking pots--the voice of a man on the roof singing falsetto to the stars (that was surely the pathan!)--the tinkling of a three-stringed instrument--and all of that punctuated by the tapping of a saz, the little tight-skinned turkish drum. it is no use for folk whose finger-nails were never dirty, and who never scratched themselves while they cooked a meal over the primus burner on the floor, to say that all that medley of sounds and smells is not good. it is very good indeed, only he who is privileged must understand, or else the spell is mere confusion. the cooking box was hardly a success, because bright eyes watching through the open door made us nervously amateurish. the zeitoonli arrived true to his threat on the stroke of the half-hour, and we could not shut the door in his face because of the fumes of food and kerosene. (two of the eggs, like us, were travelers and had been in more than one bazaar.) but we did not invite him inside until our meal was finished, and then we graciously permitted him to go for water wherewith to wash up. he strode back and forth on the balcony, treading ruthlessly on prayer-mats (for the moslem prays in public like the pharisees of old). "myself i am christian," he said, spitting over the rail, and sitting down again to watch us. we accepted the remark with reservations. when we asked him in at last, and we had driven out the flies with flapping towels, he closed the door and squatted down with his back to it, we two facing him in our canvas-backed easy chairs. he refused the "genuine turkish" coffee that will stewed over the primus. will drank the beastly stuff, of course, to keep himself in countenance, and i did not care to go back on a friend before a foreigner, but i envied the man from zeitoon his liberty of choice. "why do they call you the eye of zeitoon?" i asked, when time enough had elapsed to preclude his imagining that we regarded him seriously. one has to be careful about beginnings in the near east, even as elsewhere. "i keep watch!" he answered proudly, but also with a deeply-grounded consciousness of cunning. there were moments when i felt such strong repugnance for the man that i itched to open the door and thrust him through--other moments when compassion for him urged me to offer money--food--influence--anything. the second emotion fought all the while against the first, and i found out afterward it had been the same with will. "why should zeitoon need such special watching?" i demanded. "how do you watch? against whom? why?" he laughed with a pair of lawless eyes, and showed his yellow teeth. "ha! shall i speak of zeitoon? this, then: the turks never conquered it! they came once and built a fort on the opposite mountain-side, with guns to overawe us all. we took their fort by storm! we threw their cannon down a thousand feet into the bed of the torrent, and there they lie to-day! we took prisoner as many of their arab zaptiehs as still were living--aye, they even brought arabs against us--poor fools who had not yet heard of zeitoon's defenders! then we came down to the plains for a little vengeance, leaving the arabs for our wives to guard. they are women of spirit, the zeitoonli wives! "word reached zeitoon presently that we were being hard pressed on the plains. it was told to the zeitoonli wives that they might arrange to have pursuit called off from us by surrendering those arab prisoners. they answered that zeitoon-fashion. how? i will tell. there is a bridge of wood, flung over across the mountain torrent, five hundred feet above the water, spanning from crag to crag. those zeitoonli wives of ours bound the arab prisoners hand and foot. they brought them out along the bridge. they threw them over one at a time, each man looking on until his turn came. that was the answer of the brave zeitoonli wives!" "and you on the plains?" "ah! it takes better than osmanli to conquer the men of zeitoon!" he gave the turks their own names for themselves with the air of a brave fighting man conceding his opponent points. "we heard what our wives had done. we were encouraged. we prevailed! we fell back to-ward our mountain and prevailed! there in zeitoon we have weapons--numbers--advantage of position, for no roads come near zeitoon that an araba, or a gun, or anything on wheels can use. the only thing we fear is treachery, leading to surprise in overwhelming force. and against these i keep watch!" "why should you tell us all this?" demanded will. "how do you know we are not agents of the turkish government?" he laughed outright, throwing out both hands toward us. "eenglis sportmen!" he said simply. "what's that got to do with it?" will retorted. he has the unaccountable american dislike of being mistaken for an englishman, but long ago gave up arguing the point, since foreigners refuse, as a rule, to see the sacred difference. "i am, too, sportman. at zeitoon there is very good sport. bear. antelope. wild boar. one sportman to another--do you understand?" we did, and did not believe. "how far to zeitoon?" i demanded. "i go in five days when i hurry. you--not hurrying--by horse--seven--eight--nine days, depending on the roads." "are they all armenians in zeitoon?" "most. not all. there are arabs--syrians--persians--a few circassians--even kurds and a turk or two. our numbers have been reenforced continually by deserters from the turkish army. ninety-five per cent., however, are armenians," he added with half-closed eyes, suddenly suggesting that masked meekness that disguises most outrageous racial pride. "it is common report," i said, "that the turks settled all armenian problems long ago by process of massacre until you have no spirit for revolt left." "the report lies, that is all!" he answered. then suddenly he beat on his chest with clenched fist. "there is spirit here! there is spirit in zeitoon! no osmanli dare molest my people! come to zeitoon to shoot bear, boar, antelope! i will show you! i will prove my words!" "were those six jingaan in the common room your men?" i asked him, and he laughed as suddenly as he had stormed, like a teacher at a child's mistake. "jingaan is a bad word," he said. "i might kill a man who named me that--depending on the man. my brother i would kill for it--a stranger perhaps not. those men are zingarri, who detest to sleep between brick walls. they have a tent pitched in the yard." "are they your men?" "zingarri are no man's men." the denial carried no conviction. "is there nothing but hunting at zeitoon?" will demanded. "is that not much? in addition the place itself is wonderful--a mountain in a mist, with houses clinging to the flanks of it, and scenery to burst the heart!" "what else?" i asked. "no ancient buildings?" he changed his tactics instantly. "effendi," he said, leaning forward and pointing a forefinger at me by way of emphasis, "there are castles on the mountains near zeitoon that have never been explored since the turks--may god destroy them!--overran the land! castles hidden among trees where only bears dwell! castles built by the seljuks--armenians--romans--saracens--crusaders! i know the way to every one of them!" "what else?" demanded will, purposely incredulous. "beyond zeitoon to north and west are cave-dwellers. mountains so hollowed out that only a shell remains, a sponge--a honeycomb! no man knows how far those tunnels run! the turks have attempted now and then to smoke out the inhabitants. they were laughed at! one mountain is connected with another, and the tunnels run for miles and miles!" "i've seen cave-dwellings in the states," will answered, unimpressed. "but just where do you come in?" "i do not understand." "what do you propose to get out of it?" "nothing! i am proud of my country. i am sportman. i am pleased to show." we both jeered at him, for that explanation was too outrageously ridiculous. armenians love money, whatever else they do or leave undone, and can wring a handsome profit out of business whose very existence the easier-going turk would not suspect. "see if i can't read your mind," said will. "you'll guide us for some distance out of town, at a place you know, and your jingaan-gipsy brethren will hold us up at some point and rob us to a fare-you-well. is that the pretty scheme?" some men would have flown into a fury. some would have laughed the matter off. any and every crook would have been at pains to hide his real feelings. yet this strange individual was at a loss how to answer, and not averse to our knowing that. for a moment a sort of low cunning seemed to creep over his mind, but he dismissed it. three times he raised his hands, palms upward, and checked himself in the middle of a word. "you could pay me for my services," he said at last, not as if that were the real reason, nor as if he hoped to convince us that it was, but as if he were offering an excuse that we might care to accept for the sake of making peace with our own compunctions. "there are four in our party," said will, apropos apparently of nothing. the effect was unexpected. "four?" his eyes opened wide, and he made the knuckle-bones of both hands crack like caps going off. "four eenglis sportman?" "i said four. if you're willing to tell the naked truth about what's back of your offer, i'll undertake to talk it over with my other friends. then, either we'll all four agree to take you up, or we'll give you a flat refusal within a day or two. now--suit yourself." "i have told the truth--zeitoon--caves--boar--antelope--wild boar. i am a very good guide. you shall pay me handsomely." "sure, we'll ante up like foreigners. but why do you make the proposal? what's behind it?" "i never saw you until this afternoon. you are eenglis sportmen. i can show good sport. you shall pay me. could it be simpler?" it seemed to me we had been within an ace of discovery, but the man's mind had closed again against us in obedience to some racial or religious instinct outside our comprehension. he had been on the verge of taking us into confidence. "let the sportmen think it over," he said, getting up. "jannam! (my soul!) effendi, when i was a younger man none could have made me half such a sportmanlike proposal without an answer on the instant! a man fit to strike the highway with his foot should be a judge of men! i have judged you fit to be invited! now you judge me--the eye of zeitoon!" "what is your real name?" "i have none--or many, which is the same thing! i did not ask your names; they are your own affair!" he stood with his hand on the door, not irresolute, but taking one last look at us and our belongings. "i wish you comfortable sleep, and long lives, effendim!" he said then, and swung himself out, closing the door behind him with an air of having honored us, not we him particularly. and after he had gone we were not at all sure that summary of the situation was not right. we lay awake on our cots until long after midnight, hazarding guesses about him. whatever else he had done he had thoroughly aroused our curiosity. "if you want my opinion that's all he was after anyway!" said will, dropping his last cigarette-end on the floor and flattening it with his slipper. "cut the cackle, and let's sleep!" we fell asleep at last amid the noise of wild carousing; for the proprietor of the yeni khan, although a turk, and therefore himself presumably abstemious, was not above dispensing at a price mastika that the greeks get drunk on, and the viler raki, with which georgians, circassians, albanians, and even the less religious turks woo imagination or forgetfulness. there was knife-fighting as well as carousal before dawn, to judge by the cat-and-dog-fight swearing in and out among the camel pickets and the wheels of arabas. but that was the business of the men who fought, and no one interfered. chapter two "how did sunshine get into the garden? by whose leave came the wind?" a time and times and half a time when cydnus bore the taurus snows to sweeten cleopatra's keels, and rippled in the breeze that sings from kara dagh, where leafy wings of flowers fall and gloaming steals the colors of the blowing rose, old were the wharves and woods and ways-older the tale of steel and fire, involved intrigue, envenomed plan, man marketing his brother man by dread duress to glut desire. no peace was in those olden days. hope like the gorgeous rose sun-warmed blossomed and blew away and died, till gentleness had ceased to be and tarsus knew no chivalry could live an hour by cydnus' side where all the heirs of evil swarmed. and yet--with every swelling spring each pollen-scented zephyr's breath repeats the patient news to ears made dull by dreams of loveless years, "it is of life, and not of death that ye shall hear the cydnus sing!" we awoke amid sounds unexplainable. most of the moslems had finished their noisy ritual ablutions, and at dawn we had been dimly conscious of the strings of camels, mules and donkeys jingling out under the arch beneath us. yet there was a great din from the courtyard of wild hoofs thumping on the dung, and of scurrying feet as if a mile-long caravan were practising formations. so we went out to yawn, and remained, oblivious of everything but the cause of all the noise, we leaning with elbows on the wooden rail, and she laughing up at us at intervals. the six zingarri, or gipsies, had pitched their tent in the very middle of the yard, ambitious above all other considerations to keep away from walls. it was a big, low, black affair supported on short poles, and subdivided by them into several compartments. one could see unshapely bulges where women did the housekeeping within. but the woman who held us spell-bound cared nothing for turkish custom--a girl not more than seventeen years old at the boldest guess. she was breaking a gray stallion in the yard, sitting the frenzied beast without a saddle and doing whatever she liked with him, except that his heels made free of the air, and he went from point to point whichever end up best pleased his fancy. travelers make an early start in asia minor, but the yard was by no means empty yet; some folk were still waiting on the doubtful weather. her own people kept to the tent. whoever else had business in the yard made common cause and cursed the girl for making the disturbance, frightening camels, horses, asses and themselves. and she ignored them all, unless it was on purpose that she brought her stallion's heels too close for safety to the most abusive. it was only for us two that she had any kind of friendly interest; she kept looking up at us and laughing as she caught our eyes, bringing her mount uprearing just beneath us several times. she was pretty as the peep o' morning, with long, black wavy hair all loose about her shoulders, and as light on the horse as the foam he tossed about, although master of him without a second's doubt of it. when she had had enough of riding--long before we were tired of the spectacle--she shouted with a voice like a mellow bell. one of the gipsies ran out and led away the sweating stallion, and she disappeared into the tent throwing us a laugh over her shoulder. "d'you suppose those gipsies are really of that armenian's party?" will wondered aloud. "now, if she were going to zeitoon--!" feeling as he did, i mocked at him to hide my feelings, and we hung about for another hour in hope of seeing her again, but she kept close. i don't doubt she watched us through a hole in the tent. we would have sat there alert in our chairs until evening only fred sent a note down to say he was well enough to leave the hospital. we found him with his beard trimmed neatly and his fevered eyes all bright again, sitting talking to the nurse on the veranda about a niece of hers--gloria vanderman. "chicken in this desert!" will wondered irreverently, and fred, who likes his english to have dictionary meanings, rose from his chair in wrath. the nurse made that the cue for getting rid of us. "take mr. oakes away!" she urged, laughing. "he threatened to kill a man this morning. there's too much murder in tarsus now. if he should add to it--" "you know it wasn't on my account," fred objected. "it was what he wrote--and said of you. why, he has had you prayed for publicly by name, and you washing the brute's feet! let me back in there for just five minutes, and i'll show what a hospital case should really look like!" "take him away!" she laughed. "isn't it bad enough to be prayed for? must i get into the papers, too, as heroine of a scandal?" the head missionary was not there to say good-by to, life in his case being too serious an affair to waste minutes of a precious morning on farewells, so we packed fred into the waiting carriage and drove all the way to mersina, where we interrupted monty's mid-afternoon game of chess. fred oakes and monty were the closest friends i ever met--one problem for an enemy--one stout, two-headed, most dependable ally for the lucky man or woman they called friend. "oh, hullo!" said monty over his shoulder, as our names were called out by the stately consular kavass. "hullo!" said fred, and shook hands with the consul. "thought you were due to be sick for another week?" said monty, closing up the board. "i was. i would have been. bed would have done me good, and the nurse is a darling, old enough to be will's mother. but they put a biped by the name of peter measel in the bed next mine. he's a missionary on his own account, and keeps a diary. seems be contributes to the funds of a welsh mission in france, and they do what he says. he has all the people he disapproves of prayed for publicly by name in the mission hall in marseilles, with extracts out of his diary by way of explanation, so that the people who pray may know what they've got on their hands. the special information i gave him about you, monty, will make marseilles burn! he's got you down as a drunken pirate, my boy, with no less than eleven wives. but he asked me one night whether i thought what he'd written about the nurse was strong enough, and he read it aloud to me. you'd never believe what the reptile had dared suggest in his devil's log-book! i'm expelled for threatening to kill him!" "the nurse was right," said the consul gloomily. "there'll be murder enough hereabouts--and soon!" he was a fairly young man yet in spite of the nearly white hair over the temples. he measured his words in the manner of a man whose speech is taken at face value. "the missionaries know. the governments won't listen. i've been appealed to. so has the united states consul, and neither of us is going to be able to do much. remember, i represent a government at peace with turkey, and so does he. the turk has a side to his character that governments ignore. have you watched them at prayer?" we told him how close we had been on the previous night, and he laughed. "did you suppose i couldn't smell camel and khan the moment you came in?" "that was why sister vanderman hurried you off so promptly!" fred announced with an air of outraged truthfulness. "faugh! slangy talk and stink of stables!" "i was talking of turks," said the consul. "when they pray, you may have noticed that they glance to right and left. when they think there is nobody looking they do more, they stare deliberately to the right and left. that is the act of recognition of the angel and the devil who are supposed to attend every moslem, the angel to record his good deeds and the devil his bad ones. to my mind there lies the secret of the turk's character. most of the time he's a man of his word--honest--courteous--considerate--good-humored--even chivalrous--living up to the angel. but once in so often he remembers the other shoulder, and then there isn't any limit to the deviltry he'll do. absolutely not a limit!" "i suppose we or the americans could land marines at a pinch, and protect whoever asked for protection?" suggested monty. "no," said the consul deliberately. "germany would object. germany is the only power that would. germany would accuse us of scheming to destroy the value of their blessed baghdad railway." a privy councilor of england, which monty was, is not necessarily in touch with politics of any sort. neither were we; but it happened that more than once in our wanderings about the world things had been forced on our attention. "they would rather see europe burn from end to end!" monty agreed. "and i think there's more than that in it," said the consul. "armenians are not their favorites. the germans want the trade of the levant. the armenians are business men. they're shrewder than jews and more dependable than greeks. it would suit germany very nicely, i imagine, to have no armenians to compete with." "but if germany once got control of the near east," i objected, "she could impose her own restrictions." the consul frowned. "armenians who thrive in spite of turks--" "would skin a german for hide and tallow," nodded will. "exactly. germany would object vigorously if we or the states should land marines to prevent the turks from applying the favorite remedy, vukuart--that means events, you know--their euphemism for massacre at rather frequent intervals. germany would rather see the turks finish the dirty work thoroughly than have it to do herself later on." "you mean," said i, "that the german government is inciting to massacre?" "hardly. there are german missionaries in the country, doing good work in a funny, fussy, rigorous fashion of their own. they'd raise a dickens of a hocus-pocus back in germany if they once suspected their government of playing that game. no. but germany intends to stand off the other powers, while turks tackle the armenians; and the turks know that." "but what's the immediate excuse for massacre?" demanded fred. the consul laughed. "all that's needed is a spark. the armenians haven't been tactful. they don't hesitate to irritate the turks--not that you can blame them, but it isn't wise. most of the money-lenders are armenians; turks won't engage in that business themselves on religious grounds, but they're ready borrowers, and the armenian money-lenders, who are in a very small minority, of course, are grasping and give a bad name to the whole nation. then, armenians have been boasting openly that one of these days the old armenian kingdom will be reestablished. the turks are conquerors, you know, and don't like that kind of talk. if the armenians could only keep from quarreling among themselves they could win their independence in half a jiffy, but the turks are deadly wise at the old trick of divide et impera; they keep the armenians quarreling, and nobody dares stand in with them because sooner--or later--sooner, probably--they'll split among themselves, and leave their friends high and dry. you can't blame 'em. the turks know enough to play on their religious prejudices and set one sect against another. when the massacres begin scarcely an armenian will know who is friend and who enemy." "d'you mean to say," demanded fred, "that they're going to be shot like bottles off a wall without rhyme or reason?" "that's how it was before," said the consul. "there's nothing to stop it. the world is mistaken about armenians. they're a hot-blooded lot on the whole, with a deep sense of national pride, and a hatred of turkish oppression that rankles. one of these mornings a turk will choose his armenian and carefully insult the man's wife or daughter. perhaps he will crown it by throwing dirt in the fellow's face. the armenian will kill him or try to, and there you are. moslem blood shed by a dog of a giaour--the old excuse!" "don't the armenians know what's in store for them?" i asked. "some of them know. some guess. some are like the villagers on mount vesuvius--much as we english were in '57 in india, i imagine--asleep--playing games--getting rich on top of a volcano. the difference is that the armenians will have no chance." "did you ever hear tell of the eye of zeitoon?" asked will, apropos apparently of nothing. "no," said the consul, staring at him. will told him of the individual we had talked with in the khan the night before, describing him rather carefully, not forgetting the gipsies in the black tent, and particularly not the daughter of the dawn who schooled a gray stallion in the courtyard. the consul shook his head. "never saw or heard of any of them." we were sitting in full view of the roadstead where anthony and cleopatra's ships had moored a hundred times. the consul's garden sloped in front of us, and most of the flowers that europe reckons rare were getting ready to bloom. "would you know the man if you saw him again, will?" i asked. "sure i would!" "then look!" i pointed, and seeing himself observed a man stepped out of the shadow of some oleanders. there was something suggestive in his choice of lurking place, for every part of the oleander plant is dangerously poisonous; it was as if he had hidden himself among the hairs of death. "him, sure enough!" said will. the man came forward uninvited. "how did you get into the grounds?" the consul demanded, and the man laughed, laying an unafraid hand on the veranda rail. "my teskere is a better than the turks give!" he answered in english. (a teskere is the official permit to travel into the interior.) "what do you mean?" "how did sunshine come into the garden? by whose leave came the wind?" he stood on no formality. before one of us could interfere (for he might have been plying the assassin's trade) he had vaulted the veranda rail and stood in front of us. as he jumped i heard the rattle of loose cartridges, and the thump of a hidden pistol against the woodwork. i could see the hilt of a dagger, too, just emerging from concealment through the opening in his smock. but he stood in front of us almost meekly, waiting to be spoken to. "you are without shame!" said the consul. "truly! of what should i be ashamed!" "what brought you here?" "two feet and a great good will! you know me." the consul shook his head. "who sold the horse to the german from bitlis?" "are you that man?" "who clipped the wings of a kite, and sold it for ten pounds to a fool for an eagle from ararat?" the consul laughed. "are you the rascal who did that?" "who threw olim pasha into the river, and pushed him in and in again for more than an hour with a fishing pole--and then threw in the gendarmes who ran to arrest him--and only ran when the eenglis consul came?" "i remember," said the consul. "yet you don't look quite like that man." "i told you you knew me." "neither does to-day's wind blow like yesterday's!" "what is your name?" "then it was ali." "what is it now?" "the name god gave me?" "yes." "god knows!" "what do you want here?" he spread out his arms toward us four, and grinned. "look--see! four eenglis sportman! could a man want more?" "your face is hauntingly familiar," said the consul, searching old memories. "no doubt. who carried your honor's letter to adrianople in time of war, and received a bullet, but brought the answer back?" "what--are you that man--kagig?" instead of replying the man opened his smock, and pulled aside an undershirt until his hairy left breast lay bare down to where the nipple should have been. why a bullet that drilled that nipple so neatly had not pierced the heart was simply mystery. "kagig, by jove! kagig with a beard! nobody would know you but for that scar." "but now you know me surely? tell these eenglis sportman, then, that i am good man--good guide! tell them they come with me to zeitoon!" the consul's face darkened swiftly, clouded by some notion that he seemed to try to dismiss, but that refused to leave him. "how much would you ask for your services?" he demanded. "whatever the effendim please." "have you a horse?" he nodded. "you and your horse, then, two piasters a day, and you feed yourself and the beast." the man agreed, very bright-eyed. often it takes a day or two to come to terms with natives of that country, yet the terms the consul offered him were those for a man of very ordinary attainments. "come back in an hour," said the consul. without a word of answer kagig vaulted back across the rail and disappeared around the corner of the house, walking without hurry but not looking back. "kagig, by jove! it would take too long now to tell that story of the letter to adrianople. i've no proof, but a private notion that kagig is descended from the old armenian kings. in a certain sort of tight place there's not a better man in asia. now, lord montdidier, if you're in earnest about searching for that castle of your crusader ancestors, you're in luck!" "you know it's what i came here for," said monty. "these friends of mine are curious, and i'm determined. now that fred's well--" "i'm puzzled," said the consul, leaning back and looking at us all with half-closed eyes. "why should kagig choose just this time to guide a hunting party? if any man knows trouble's brewing, i suspect be surely does. anything can happen in the interior. i recall, for instance, a couple of danes, who went with a guide not long ago, and simply disappeared. there are outlaws everywhere, and it's more than a theory that the public officials are in league with them." "what a joke if we find the old family castle is a nest of robbers," smiled monty. "still!" corrected fred. i was watching the consul's eyes. he was troubled, but the prospect of massacre did not account for all of his expression. there was debate, inspiration against conviction, being fought out under cover of forced calm. inspiration won the day. "i was wondering," he said, and lit a fresh cigar while we waited for him to go on. "i vouch for my friends," said monty. "it wasn't that. i've no right to make the proposal--no official right whatever--i'm speaking strictly unofficially--in fact, it's not a proposal at all--merely a notion." he paused to give himself a last chance, but indiscretion was too strong. "i was wondering how far you four men would go to save twenty or thirty thousand lives." "you've no call to wonder about that," said will. "suppose you tell us what you've got in mind," suggested monty, putting his long legs on a chair and producing a cigarette. the consul knocked out his pipe and sat forward, beginning to talk a little faster, as a man who throws discretion to the winds. "i've no legal right to interfere. none at all. in case of a massacre of armenians--men, women, little children--i could do nothing. make a fuss, of course. throw open the consulate to refugees. threaten a lot of things that i know perfectly well my government won't do. the turks will be polite to my face and laugh behind my back, knowing i'm helpless. but if you four men--" "yes--go on--what?" "spill it!" urged will. "--should be up-country, and i knew it for a fact, but did not know your precise whereabouts, i'd have a grown excuse for raising most particular old harry! you get my meaning?" "sure!" said will. "monty's an earl. fred's related to half the peerages in burke. me and him"--i was balancing my chair on one leg and he pushed me over backward by way of identification--"just pose as distinguished members of society for the occasion. i get you." "it might even be possible, mr. yerkes, to get the united states congress to take action on your account." "don't you believe it!" laughed will. "the members for the parish pump, and the senators from ireland would howl about the monroe doctrine and washington's advice at the merest hint of a yankee in trouble in foreign parts." "what about the united states papers?" "they'd think it was an english scheme to entangle the united states, and they'd be afraid to support action for fear of the irish. no, england's your only chance!" "well," said the consul, "i've told you the whole idea. if i should happen to know of four important individuals somewhere up-country, and massacres should break out after you had started, i could supply our ambassador with something good to work on. the turkish government might have to stop the massacre in the district in which you should happen to be. that would save lives." "but could they stop it, once started?" i asked. "they could try. that 'ud be more than they ever did yet." "you mean," said monty, "that you'd like us to engage kagig and make the trip, and to remain out in case of--ah--vukuart until we're rescued?" "can't say i like it, but that's what i mean. and as for rescue, the longer the process takes the better, i imagine!" "hide, and have them hunt for us, eh?" "would it help," i suggested, "if we were to be taken prisoner by outlaws and held for ransom?" "it might," said the consul darkly. "i'd take to the hills myself and send back a wail for help, only my plain duty is here at the mission. what i have suggested to you is mad quixotism at the best, and at the worst--well, do you recall what happened to poor vyner, who was held for ransom by greek brigands? they sent a rescue party instead of money, and--" "charles vyner was a friend of mine," said monty quietly. fred began to look extremely cheerful and will nudged me and nodded. "remember," said the consul, "in the present state of european politics there's no knowing what can or can't be done, but if you four men are absent in the hills i believe i can give the turkish government so much to think about that there'll be no massacres in that one district." "whistle up kagig!" monty answered, and that was the end of the argument as far as yea or nay had anything to do with it. prospect of danger was the last thing likely to divide the party. "how about permits to travel?" asked will. "the united states consul told me none is to be had at present." the consul rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. "it may cost a little more, that's all," he said. "you might go without, but you'd better submit to extortion." he called the kavass, the uniformed consular attendant, and sent him in search of kagig. within two minutes the eye of zeitoon was grinning at us through a small square window in the wall at one end of the veranda. then he came round and once more vaulted the veranda rail, for he seemed to hold ordinary means of entry in contempt. his eye looked very possessive for that of one seeking employment as a guide, but he stood at respectful attention until spoken to. "these gentlemen have decided to employ you," the consul announced. "mashallah!" (god be praised!) for a christian he used unusual expletives. "they want to find a castle in the mountains, to hunt bear and boar, and to see zeitoon." "i shall lead them to ten castles never seen before by eenglismen! they shall kill all the bears and pigs! never was such sport as they shall see!" he exploded the word pigs as if he had the osmanli prejudice against that animal. yet he wore a pig-skin cartridge belt about his middle. "they will need enormous lots of ammunition!" he announced. "what else would the roadside robbers like them to bring?" "no turkish servants! they throw turks over a bridge-side in zeitoon! i myself will provide servants, who shall bring them back safely!" it seemed to me that he breathed inward as he said that. a turk would have added "inshallah!"--if god wills! "make ready for a journey of two months," he said. "when and where shall the start be?" it would obviously be unwise to start from the consulate. "from the yeni khan in tarsus," said will. "that is very good--that is excellent! i will send zeitoonli servants to the yeni khan at once. pay them the right price. have you horses? camels are of no use, nor yet are wheels--you shall know why later! mules are best." "i know where you can hire mules," said the consul, "with a turkish muleteer to each pair." "oh, well!" laughed kagig, leaning back against the rail and moving his hands palms upward as if he weighed one thought against another. "what is the difference? if a few turks move or less come to an end over zeitoon bridge--" it was only for moments at a time that he seemed able to force himself to speak as our inferior. a turk of the guide class would likely have knelt and placed a foot of each of us on his neck in turn as soon as he knew we had engaged him. this armenian seemed made of other stuff. "then be on hand to-morrow morning," ordered monty. but the eye of zeitoon had another surprise for us. "i shall meet you on the road," he announced with an air of a social equal. "servants shall attend you at the yeni khan. they will say nothing at all, and work splendidly! start when you like; you will find me waiting for you at a good place on the road. bring not plenty, but too much ammunition! good day, then, gentlemen!" he nodded to us--bowed to the consul--vaulted the rail. a second later he grinned at us again through the tiny window. "i am the eye of zeitoon!" he boasted, and was gone. a servant whom the consul sent to follow him came back after ten or fifteen minutes saying he had lost him in a maze of narrow streets. his latter, offhanded manner scarcely auguring well, we debated whether or not to search for some one more likely amenable to discipline to take his place. but the consul spent an hour telling us about the letter that went to adrianople, and the bringing back of the answer that hastened peace. "he was shot badly. he nearly died on the way back. i've no idea how he recovered. he wouldn't accept a piaster more than the price agreed on." "let's take a chance!" said will, and we were all agreed before he urged it. "there's one other thing," said the consul. "i've been told a miss gloria vanderrnan is on her way to the mission at marash--" "gee whiz!" said will. the consul nodded. "she's pretty, if that's what you mean. it was very unwise to let her go, escorted only by armenians. of course, she may get through without as much as suspecting trouble's brewing, but--well--i wish you'd look out for her." "chicken, eh?" will stuck both hands deep in his trousers pockets and tilted his chair backward to the point of perfect poise. "cuckoo, you ass!" laughed fred, kicking the chair over backward, and then piling all the veranda furniture on top, to the scandalized amazement of the stately kavass, who came at that moment shepherding a small boy with a large tray and perfectly enormous drinks. chapter three "sahib, there is always--work for real soldiers!" where two or three oh, all the world is sick with hate, and who shall heal it, friend o' mine? and who is friend? and who shall stand since hireling tongue and alien hand kill nobleness in all this land? judas and pharisee combine to plunder and proclaim it fate. days when the upright dared be few are they departed, friend o' mine? are bribery and rich largesse fair props for fat forgetfulness, or anodynous of distress? oh, would the world were drunk with wine and not this last besotting brew! oh, for the wonderful again-the greatly daring, friend o' mine! the simply gallant blade unbought, the soul compassionate, unsought, with no price but the priceless thought nor purpose than the brave design of giving that the world may gain! so we took two rooms at the yeni khan instead of one, not being minded to sleep as closely as the gentry of asia minor like to. will hurried us down there for a look at the gipsy girl. but the tent was gone and the gipsies with it, and when we asked questions about them people spat. your good moslem--and a moslem is good in those parts who makes a mountain of observances, regarding mole-hills of mere morals not at all--affects to despise all giaours; but a giaour, like a gipsy, who has no obvious religion of any kind, he ranks below the pig in order of reverence. it did not redound to our credit that we showed interest in the movements of such people. monty brought an enormous can of bug-powder with him, and restored our popularity by lending generously after he had treated our quarters sufficiently for three days' stay. fred did nothing to our quarters--stirred no finger, claiming convalescence with his tongue in his cheek, and strolling about until he fell utterly in love with the khan and its crowd, and the khan with him. that very first night he brought out his concertina on the balcony, and yowled songs to its clamor; and whether or not the various crowd agreed on naming the noise music, all were delighted with the friendliness. fred talks more languages fluently than he can count on the fingers of both hands. he began to tell tales in a sing-song eastern snarl--a tale in persian, then in turkish, and the night grew breathless, full of listening, until pent-up interest at intervals burst bonds and there were "ahs" and "ohs" all amid the dark, like little breaths of night wind among trees. he found small time for sleep, and when dawn came, and four zeitoonli servants according to kagig's promise, they still swarmed around him begging for more. he went off to eat breakfast with a khan from bokhara, sitting on a bale of nearly priceless carpets to drink overland tea made in a thing like a samovar. all the rest of that day, and the next, sleeping only at intervals, while monty and will and i helped the zeitoonli servants get our loads in shape, fred sharpened his wonder-gift of tongues on the fascinated men of many nations, giving them london ditties and tales from the thousand nights and a night in exchange for their news of caravan routes. he left them well pleased with their bargain. monty went off alone the second day to see about mules. the turk with a trade to make believes that of several partners one is always "easier" than the rest; consequently, one man can bring him to see swifter reason than a number can. he came back that evening with twelve good mules and four attendants. "one apiece to ride, and two apiece to carry everything. not another mule to be had. unpack the loads again and make them smaller!" fred came and sat with us that night before the charcoal brazier in his and monty's room. "they all talk of robbers on the road," he said. "northward, through the circassian gates, or eastward it's all the same. there's a man in a room across the way who was stripped stark naked and beaten because they thought he might have money in his clothes. when he reached this place without a stitch on him he still had all his money in his clenched fists! quite a sportsman--what? imagine his juggling with it while they whipped him with knotted cords!" "what have you heard about kagig?" "nothing. but a lot about vukuart.* it's vague, but there's something in the air. you'll notice the turkish muleteers are having nothing whatever to say to our zeitoonli, although they've accepted the same service. moslems are keeping together, and armenians are getting the silence cure. armenians are even shy of speaking to one another. i've tried listening, and i've tried asking questions, although that was risky. i can't get a word of explanation. i've noticed, though, that the ugly mood is broadening. they've been polite to me, but i've heard the word shapkali applied more than once to you fellows. means hatted man, you know. not a serious insult, but implies contempt." -------------* turkish word: happenings, a euphemism for massacre. -------------nothing but comfort and respectability ever seemed able to make fred gloomy. he discussed our present prospects with the air of an epicure ordering dinner. and monty listened with his dark, delightful smile--the kindliest smile in all the world. i have seen unthoughtful men mistake it for a sign of weakness. i have never known him to argue. nor did he then, but strode straight down into the khan yard, we sitting on the balcony to watch. he visited our string of mules first for an excuse, and invited a kurdish chieftain (all kurds are chieftains away from home) to inspect a swollen fetlock. with that subtle flattery he unlocked the man's reserve, passed on from chance remark to frank, good-humored questions, and within an hour had talked with twenty men. at last he called to one of the zeitoonli to come and scrape the yard dung from his boots, climbed the stairs leisurely, and sat beside us. "you're quite right, fred," he said quietly. then there came suddenly from out the darkness a yell for help in english that brought three of us to our feet. fred brushed his fierce mustaches upward with an air of satisfaction, and sat still. "there's somebody down there quite wrong, and in line at last to find out why!" he said. "i've been waiting for this. sit down." we obeyed him, though the yells continued. there came blows suggestive of a woman on the housetops beating carpets. "d'you recollect the man i mentioned at the consulate--the biped peter measel, missionary on his own account, who keeps a diary and libels ladies in it? well, he's foul of a thalukdar* from rajputana, and of a prussian contractor, recruiting men for work on the baghdad railway. i wasn't allowed to murder him. i see why now--finger of justice--i'd have been too quick. sit down, you idiots! you've no idea what he wrote about miss vanderman. let him scream, i like it!" --------------* punjabi word--landholder. --------------"come along," said monty. "if he were a bad-house keeper he has had enough!" but will had gone before us, headlong down the stairs with the speed off the mark that they taught him on the playing field at bowdoin. when we caught up he was standing astride a prostrate being who sobbed like a cow with its throat cut, and a rajput and a german, either of them six feet tall, were considering whether or not to resent the violence of his interference. the german was disposed to yield to numbers. the rajput not so. "why are you beating him?" asked monty. "gott in hinimel, who would not! he wrote of me in his diary--der liminel!--that i shanghai laborers." "do you, or don't you?" asked monty sweetly. "kreutz-blitzen! what is that to do with you--or with him? what right had he to write that people in france should pray for me in church?" the rajput all this while was standing simmering, as ready as a boar at bay to fight the lot of us, yet i thought with an air about him, too, of half-conscious surprise. several times he took a half-pace forward to assert his right of chastisement, looked hard at monty, and checked mid-stride. "you've done enough," said monty. "who are you that says so?" the german retorted. "he--who--will--attend--to--it--that--you--do--no--more!" monty's smooth voce had become without inflection. "bah! that is easy, isn't it? you are four to one!" "five to one!" the rajput's gruff throat thrilled with a new emotion. he sprang suddenly past me, and thrust himself between monty and the german, who took advantage of the opportunity to walk away. "lord montdidier, colonel sahib bahadur, burra salaam!" he made no obeisance, but stood facing monty eye to eye. the words, as be roiled them out, were like an order given to a thousand men. one almost heard the swish of sabers as the squadrons came to the general salute. "i knew you, rustum khan, the minute i set eyes on you. why were you beating this man?" "sahib bahadur, because he wrote in his book that people in france should pray for me in church, naming my honorable name, because, says he--but i will not repeat what he says. it is not seemly." "how do you know what is in his diary?" monty asked. "that german read it out to me. we were sitting, he and i, discussing how the turks intend to butcher the armenians, as all the world knows is written. they say it shall happen soon. said he to me--the german said to me--'i know another,' said he, 'who if i had my way should suffer first in that event.' saying which he showed the written book that he had found, and read me parts of it. the german was for denouncing the fellow as a friend of armenians, but i was for beating him at once, and i had my way." "where is the book?" demanded monty. "the german has it." "the german has no right to it." "i will bring it." rustum khan strode off into the night, and monty bent over the sobbing form of the self-appointed missionary. we were all alone in the midst of the courtyard, not even watched from behind the wheels of arabas, for a fight or a thrashing in the khans of asia minor is strictly the affair of him who gets the worst of it. "will you burn that book of yours, measel, if we protect you from further assault?" the man sobbed that he would do anything, but monty held him to the point, and at last procured a specific affirmative. then rustum khan came back with the offending tome. it was bulky enough to contain an account of the sins of asia minor. fred and i picked the poor fellow up and led him to where the cooking places stood in one long row. will carried the book, and rustum khan stole wood from other folks' piles, and fanned a fire. we watched the unhappy peter measel put the book on the flames with his own hands. "you're old enough to have known better than keep such a diary!" said monty, stirring the charred pages. "i am at any rate a martyr!" measel answered. the man could walk by that time--he was presumably abstemious and recovered from shock quickly. monty sent me to see him to his room, which turned out to be next the german's, and until will came over from our quarters with first-aid stuff from our chest i spent the minutes telling the german what should happen to him in case he should so far forget discretion as to resume the offensive. he said nothing in reply, but sat in his doorway looking up at me with an expression intended to make me feel nervous of reprisals without committing him to deeds. later, when we had done our best for "the martyred biped measel," as fred described him, will and i found rustum khan with fred and monty seated around the charcoal brazier in monty's room, deep in the valley of reminiscences. our entry rather broke the spell, but rustum khan was not to be denied. "you used to tell in those days, colonel sahib bahadur," he said, addressing monty with that full-measured compliment that the chivalrous, old east still cherishes, "of a castle of your ancestors in these parts. do you remember, when i showed you the ruins of my family place in rajputana, how you stood beside me on the heights, sahib, and vowed some day to hunt for that crusaders' nest, as you called it?" "that is the immediate purpose of this trip of ours," said monty. "ah!" said the rajput, and was silent for about a minute. fred oakes began to hum through his nose. he has a ridiculous belief that doing that throws keen inquirers off a scent. "colonel sahib, since i was a little butcha not as high as your knee i have spoken english and sat at the feet of british officers. little enough i know, but by the beard of god's prophet i know this: when a british colonel sahib speaks of 'immediate purposes,' there are hidden purposes of greater importance!" "that well may be," said monty gravely. "i remember you always were a student of significant details, rustum khan." "there was a time when i was in your honor's confidence." monty smiled. "that was years ago. what are you doing here, rustum khan?" "a fair enough question! i hang my head. as you know, sahib, i am a rangar. my people were all sikhs for several generations back. we converts to islam are usually more thorough-going than born moslems are. i started to make the pilgrimage to mecca, riding overland alone by way of persia. as i came, missing few opportunities to talk with men, who should have been the lights of my religion, i have felt enthusiasm waning. these weeks past i have contemplated return without visiting mecca at all. i have wandered to and fro, hoping for the fervor back again, yet finding none. and now, sahib, i find you--i, rustum khan, at a loose end for lack of inspiration. i have prayed. colonel sahib bahadur, i believe thou art the gift of god!"' monty sought our eyes in turn in the lantern-lit darkness. we made no sign. none of us but he knew the rajput, so it was plainly his affair. "suit yourself," said will, and the rest of us nodded. "we are traveling into the interior," said monty, "in the rather doubtful hope that our absence from a coast city may in some way help armenians, rustum khan." the rajput jumped to his feet that instant, and came to the salute. "i might have known as much. colonel lord montdidier sahib, i offer fealty! my blood be thine to spill in thy cause! thy life on my head--thine honor on my life--thy way my way, and god be my witness!" "don't be rash, rustum khan. our likeliest fate is to be taken prisoner by men of your religion, who will call you a renegade if you defend armenians. and what are armenians to you?" "ah, sahib! you drive a sharp spur into an open sore! i have seen too much of ill-faith--cruelty--robbery--torture--rapine--butchery, all in the name of god! it is this last threat to the armenians that is the final straw! i took the pilgrimage in search of grace. the nearer i came to the place they tell me is on earth the home of grace, the more unfaith i see! three nights ago in another place i was led aside and offered the third of the wealth of a fat armenian if i would lend my sword to slit helpless throats--in the name of god, the compassionate, be merciful! my temper was about spoilt forever when that young idiot over the way described me in his book as--never mind how he described me--he paid the price! sahib bahadur, i take my stand with the defenseless, where i know thou and thy friends will surely be! i am thy man!" "it is not included in our plans to fight," said monty. "sahib, there is always work for real soldiers!" "what do you fellows say? shall we let him come with us?" "i travel at my own charges, sahib. i am well mounted and well armed." "sure, let him come with us!" said will. "i like the man." "he has my leave to come along to england afterward," said fred, "if he'll guarantee to address me as the 'gift of god' in public!" i left them talking and returned to see whether the "martyred biped measel" needed further help. he was asleep, and as i listened to his breathing i heard voices in the next room. the german was talking in english, that being often the only tongue that ten men have in common. through the partly opened door i could see that his room was crammed with men. "they are spies, every one of them!" i heard him say. "the man i thrashed is of their party. you yourselves saw how they came to his rescue, and seduced the indian by means of threats. this is the way of the english. ("curse them!" said a voice.) they write notes in a book, and when that offense is detected they burn the book in a corner, as ye saw them do. i saw the book before they burned it. i thrashed the spy who wrote in the book because he had written in it reports on what it is proposed to do to infidels at the time ye know about. i tell you those men are all spies--one is as bad as the other. they work on behalf of armenians, to bring about interference from abroad." that he had already produced an atmosphere of danger to us i had immediate proof, for as i crossed the yard again i dodged behind an araba in the nick of time to avoid a blow aimed at me with a sword by a man i could not see. "all your charming is undone!" i told fred, bursting in on our party by the charcoal brazier. almost breathless i reeled off what i had overheard. "they'll be here to murder us by dawn!" i said. "will they?" said monty. we were up and away two hours before dawn, to the huge delight of our turkish muleteers, who consider a dawn start late, yet not too early for the servants of the khan, who knew enough european manners to stand about the gate and beg for tips. nor were we quite too early for the enemy, who came out into the open and pelted us with clods of dung, the german encouraging from the roof. fred caught him unaware full in the face with a well-aimed piece of offal. then the khan keeper slammed the gate behind us and we rode into the unknown. chapter four "we are the robbers, effendi!" the road there is a mystery concerning roads and he who loves the road shall never tire. for him the brooks have voices and the breeze brings news of far-off leafiness and leas and vales all blossomy. the clinging mire shall never weary such an one, nor yet their loads o'ercome the beasts that serve him. rock and rill shall make the pleasant league go by as hours with secret tales they tell; the loosened stone, sweet turf upturned, the bees' full-purposed drone, the hum of happy insects among flowers, and god's blue sky to crown each hill! dawn with her jewel-throated birds to him shall be a new page in the book that never had beginning nor shall end, and each increasing hour delights shall lend-new notes in every sound--in every nook new sights----new thoughts too wide for words, too deep for pen, too high for human song, that only in the quietness of winding ways from tumult and all bitterness apart can find communication with the heart-thoughts that make joyous moments of the days, and no road heavy, and no journey long! the snow threatened in the mountains had not materialized, and the weather had changed to pure perfection. about an hour after we started the khan emptied itself behind us in a long string, jingling and clanging with horse and camel bells. but they turned northward to pass through the famed circassian gates, whereas we followed the plain that paralleled the mountain range--our mules' feet hidden by eight inches of primordial ooze. "wish it were only worse!" said monty. "snow or rain might postpone massacre. delay might mean cancellation." but there was no prospect whatever of rain. the asia minor spring, perfumed and amazing sweet, breathed all about us, spattered with little diamond-bursts of tune as the larks skyrocketed to let the wide world know how glad they were. whatever dark fate might be brooding over a nation, it was humanly impossible for us to feel low-spirited. our zeitoonli armenians trudged through the mud behind us at a splendid pace--mountain-men with faces toward their hills. the turks--owners of the animals another man had hired to us--rode perched on top of the loads in stoic silence, changing from mule to mule as the hours passed and watching very carefully that no mule should be overtaxed or chilled. in fact, the first attempt they made to enter into conversation with us was when we dallied to admire a view of taurus mountain, and one of them closed up to tell us the mules were catching cold in the wind. (if they had been our animals it might have been another story.) their contempt for the zeitoonli was perfectly illustrated by the difference in situation. they rode; the armenians walked. yet the armenians were less afraid; and when we crossed a swollen ford where a mule caught his forefoot between rocks and was drowning, it was armenians, not turks, who plunged into the icy water and worked him free without straining as much as a tendon. the turks were obsessed by perpetual fear of robbers. that, and no other motive, made them tolerate the hectoring of rustum khan, who had constituted himself officer of transport, and brought up the rear on his superb bay mare. as he had promised us he would, he rode well armed, and the sight of his pistol holsters, the rifle protruding stock-first from a leather case, and his long rajput saber probably accomplished more than merely keeping turks in countenance; it prevented them from scattering and bolting home. his own baggage was packed on two mules in charge of an armenian boy, who was more afraid of our turks than they of robbers. yet, when we demanded of our muleteers what sort of men, and of what nation the dreaded highwaymen might be they pointed at rustum khan's lean servant. at the khan the night before one of them had pointed out to monty two circassians and a kurd as reputed to have a monopoly of robbery on all those roads. nevertheless, they made the new accusation without blinking. "all robbers are armenians--all armenians are robbers!" they assured us gravely. when we halted for a meal they refused to eat with our zeitoonli, although they graciously permitted them to gather all the firewood, and accepted pieces of their pasderma (sun-dried meat) as if that were their due. as soon as they had eaten, and before we had finished, ibrahim, their grizzled senior, came to us with a new demand. on its face it was not outrageous, because we were doing our own cooking, as any man does who has ever peeped into a turkish servant's behind-the-scene arrangements. "send those armenians away!" he urged. "we turks are worth twice their number!" "by the beard of god's prophet!" thundered rustum khan, "who gave camp-followers the right to impose advice?" "they are in league with highwaymen to lead you into a trap!" ibrahim answered. rustum khan rattled the saber that lay on the rock beside him. "i am hunting for fear," he said. "all my life i have hunted for fear and never found it!" "pekki!" said ibrahim dryly. the word means "very well." the tone implied that when the emergency should come we should do well not to depend on him, for he had warned us. we were marching about parallel with the course the completed baghdad railway was to take, and there were frequent parties of surveyors and engineers in sight. once we came near enough to talk with the german in charge of a party, encamped very sumptuously near his work. he had a numerous armed guard of turks. "a precaution against robbers?" monty asked, and i did not hear what the german answered. rustum khan laughed and drew me aside. "every german in these parts has a guard to protect him from his own men, sahib! for a while on my journey westward i had charge of a camp of recruited laborers. therefore i know." the german was immensely anxious to know all about us and our intentions. he told us his name was hans von quedlinburg, plainly expecting us to be impressed. "i can direct you to good quarters, where you can rest comfortably at every stage, if you will tell me your direction," he said. but we did not tell him. later, while we ate a meal, he came and questioned our turks very closely; but since they were in ignorance they did not tell him either. "why do you travel with armenian servants?" he asked us finally before we moved away. "we like 'em," said monty. "they'll only get you in trouble. we've dismissed all armenian laborers from the railway works. not trustworthy, you know. our agents are out recruiting moslems." "what's the matter with armenians?" "oh, don't you know?" "i'm asking." the german shrugged his shoulders. "i'll tell you one thing. this will illustrate. i had an armenian clerk. he worked all day in my tent. a week ago i found him reading among my private papers. that proves you can't trust an armenian." "ample evidence!" said monty without a smile, but fred laughed as we rode away, and the german stared after us with a new set of emotions pictured on his heavy face. late in the afternoon we passed through a village in which about two hundred armenian men and women were holding a gathering in a church large enough to hold three times the number. one of them saw us coming, and they all trooped out to meet us, imagining we were officials of some kind. "effendi," said their pastor with a trembling hand on monty's saddle, "the turks in this village have been washing their white garments!" we had heard in tarsus what that ceremony meant. "it means, effendi, they believe their purpose holy! what shall we do--what shall we do?" "why not go into tarsus and claim protection at the british consulate?" suggested fred. "but our friends of tarsus warn us the worst fury of all will be in the cities!" "take to the hills, then!" monty advised him. "but how can we, sir? how can we? we have homes--property--children! we are watched. the first attempt by a number of us to escape to the hills would bring destruction down on all!" "then escape to the hills by twos and threes. you ask my advice--i give it." it looked like very good advice. the slopes of the foot-hills seemed covered by a carpet of myrtle scrub, in which whole armies could have lain in ambush. and above that the cliffs of the kara dagh rose rocky and wild, suggesting small comfort but sure hiding-places. "you'll never make me believe you armenians haven't hidden supplies," said monty. "take to the hills until the fury is over!" but the old man shook his head, and his people seemed at one with him. these were not like our zeitoonli, but wore the settled gloom of resignation that is poor half-brother to moslem fanaticism, caught by subjection and infection from the bullying turk. there was nothing we could do at that late hour to overcome the inertia produced by centuries, and we rode on, ourselves infected to the verge of misery. only our zeitoonli, striding along like men on holiday, retained their good spirits, and they tried to keep up ours by singing their extraordinary songs. during the day we heard of the chicken, as will called her, somewhere on ahead, and we spent that night at a kahveh, which is a place with all a khan's inconveniences, but no dignity whatever. there they knew nothing of her at all. the guests, and there were thirty besides ourselves, lay all around the big room on wooden platforms, and talked of nothing but robbers along the road in both directions. every man in the place questioned each of us individually to find out why we had not been looted on our way of all we owned, and each man ended in a state of hostile incredulity because we vowed we had met no robbers at all. they shrugged their shoulders when we asked for news of miss gloria vanderman. there was no fear of ibrahim and his friends decamping in the night, for the zeitoonli kept too careful watch, waiting on them almost as thoughtfully as they fetched and carried for us, but never forgetting to qualify the service with a smile or a word to the turks to imply that it was done out of pity for brutish helplessness. these zeitoonli of ours were more obviously every hour men of a different disposition to the meek armenians of the places where the turkish heel had pressed. but for our armed presence and the respect accorded to the anglo-saxon they would have had the whole mixed company down on them a dozen times that night. "i'm wondering whether the armenians within reach of the turks are not going to suffer for the sins of mountaineers!" said fred, as we warmed ourselves at the great open fire at one end of the room. "rot!" will retorted. "sooner or later men begin to dare assert their love of freedom, and you can't blame 'em if they show it foolishly. some folk throw tea into harbors--some stick a king's head on a pole--some take it out for the present in fresh-kid stuff. these zeitoonli are men of spirit, or i'll eat my hat!" but if we ourselves had not been men of spirit, obviously capable of strenuous self-defense, our zeitoonli would have found themselves in an awkward fix that night. we supped off yoghourt--the turkish concoction of milk--cow's, goat's, mare's, ewe's or buffalo's (and the buffalo's is best)--that is about the only food of the country on which the anglo-saxon thrives. whatever else is fit to eat the turks themselves ruin by their way of cooking it. and we left before dawn in the teeth of the owner of the kahveh's warning. "dangerous robbers all along the road!" he advised, shaking his head until the fez grew insecure, while fred counted out the coins to pay our bill. "armenians are without compunction--bad folk! ay, you have weapons, but so have they, and they have the advantage of surprise! may allah the compassionate be witness, i have warned you!" "there will be more than warnings to be witnessed!", growled rustum khan as he rode away. "those others, who sharpened weapons all night long, and spoke of robbers, have been waiting three days at that kahveh till the murdering begins!" that morning, on rustum khan's advice, we made our turkish muleteers ride in front of us. the zeitoon men marched next, swinging along with the hillman stride that eats up distance as the ticked-off seconds eat the day. and we rode last, admiring the mountain range on our left, but watchful of other matters, and in position to cut off retreat. "the last time a turk ran away from me he took my gladstone bag with him!" said fred. "no, only armenians are dishonest. it was obedience to his prophet, who bade him take advantage of the giaour--quite a different thing! ibrahim's sitting on my kit, and i'm watching him. you fellows suit yourselves!" we passed a number of men on foot that morning all coming our way, but no armenians among them. however, we exchanged no wayside gossip, because our zeitoonli in front availed themselves of privilege and shouted to every stranger to pass at a good distance. that is a perfectly fair precaution in a land where every one goes armed, and any one may be a bandit. but it leads to aloofness. passers-by made circuits of a half-mile to avoid us, and when we spurred our mules to get word with them they mistook that for proof of our profession and bolted. we chased three men for twenty minutes for the fun of it, only desisting when one of them took cover behind a bush and fired a pistol at us with his eyes shut. "think of the lies he'll tell in the kahveh to-night about beating off a dozen robbers single-handed!" will laughed. "let's chase the next batch, too, and give the kahveh gang an ear-full!" "i rather think not," said monty. "they'll say we're armenian criminals. let's not be the spark." he was right, so we behaved ourselves, and within an hour we had trouble enough of another sort. we began to meet dogs as big as newfoundlands, that attacked our unmounted zeitoonli, refusing to be driven off with sticks and stones, and only retreating a little way when we rode down on them. "shoot the brutes!" will suggested cheerfully, and i made ready to act on it. "for the lord's sake, don't!" warned monty, riding at a huge black mongrel that was tearing strips from the smock of one of our men. the owner of the dog, seeing its victim was armenian, rather encouraged it than otherwise, leaning on a long pole and grinning in an unfenced field near by. "the consul warned me they think more of a dog's life hereabouts than a man's. in half an hour there'd be a mob on our trail. take the zeitoonli up behind us." rustum khan was bitter about what he called our squeamishness. but we each took up a man on his horse's rump, and the dogs decided the fun was no longer worth the effort, especially as we had riding whips. but skirmishing with the dogs and picking up the armenians took time, so that our muleteers were all alone half a mile ahead of us, and had disappeared where the road dipped between two hillocks, when they met with the scare they looked for. they came thundering back up the road, flogging and flopping on top of the loads like the wooden monkeys-on-a-stick the fakers used to sell for a penny on the curb in fleet street, glancing behind them at every second bound like men who had seen a thousand ghosts. we brought them to a halt by force, but take them on the whole, now that they were in contact with us, they did not look so much frightened as convinced. they had made up their minds that it was not written that they should go any farther, and that was all about it. "ermenie!" said ibrahim. and when we laughed at that he stroked his beard and vowed there were hundreds of armenians ambushed by the roadside half a mile ahead. the others corrected him, declaring the enemy were thousands strong. finally monty rode forward with me to investigate. we passed between the hillocks, and descended for another hundred yards along a gradually sloping track, when our mules became aware of company. we could see nobody, but their long ears twitched, and they began to make preparations preliminary to braying recognition of their kin. suddenly monty detected movement among the myrtle bushes about fifty yards from the road, and my mule confirmed his judgment by braying like satan at a side-show. the noise was answered instantly by a chorus of neighs and brays from an unseen menagerie, whereat the owners of the animals disclosed themselves--six men, all smiling, and unarmed as far as we could tell--the very same six gipsies who had pitched their tent in the midst of the khan yard at tarsus. then in a clearing at a little distance we saw women taking down a long low black tent, and between us and them a considerable herd of horses, mostly without halters but headed into a bunch by gipsy children. somebody on a gray stallion came loping down toward us, leaping low bushes, riding erect with pluperfect hands and seat. "i've seen that stallion before!" said i. "and the girl on his back is looking for somebody who owns her heart!" smiled monty. "hullo! are you the lucky man?"' she reined the stallion in, and took a good, long look at us, shading her eyes with her hand but showing dazzling white teeth between coral lips. suddenly the smile departed, and a look of sullen disappointment settled on her face, as she wheeled the stallion with a swing of her lithe body from the hips, and loped away. never, apparently, did two men make less impression on a maiden's heart. the six gipsies stood staring at us foolishly, until one of them at last held his hand up palm outward. we accepted that as a peace signal. "are you waiting here for us?" monty asked in english, and the oldest of the six--a swarthy little man with rather bow legs--thought he had been asked his name. "gregor jhaere," he answered. for some vague reason monty tried him next in arabic and then in hindustanee, but without result. at last he tried halting turkish, and the gipsy replied at once in german. as monty used to get two-pence or three-pence a day extra when he was in the british army, for knowing something of that tongue, we stood at once on common ground. "kagig told us to wait here and bring you to him," said gregor jhaere. "where is kagig?" monty asked, and the man smiled blankly--much more effectively than if he had shrugged his shoulders. "we obey kagig at times," he said, as if that admission settled the matter. then there was interruption. rustum khan came spurring down the road with his pistol holsters unbuttoned and his saber clattering like a sutler's pots and pans, to see whether we needed help. he had no sooner reined in beside us than i caught sight of will, drawn between curiosity and fear lest the muleteers might bolt, standing in his stirrups to peer at us from the top of the track between the hillocks. somebody else caught sight of him too. there came a shrill about from over where the women were packing up, and everybody turned to look, gregor jhaere included. as hard as the gray stallion could take her in a bee line toward will the daughter of the dawn with flashing teeth and blazing eyes was riding ventre a terre. "maga!" gregor shouted at her, and then some unintelligible gibberish. but she took no more notice of him than if he had been a crow on a branch. in a minute she was beside will, talking to him, and from over the top of the rise we could hear fred shouting sarcastic remonstrance. "she is bad!" gregor announced in english. it seemed to be all the english he knew. "are you her father?" monty asked, and gregor answered in very slipshod german: "she is the daughter of the devil. she shall be soundly thrashed! the chalana!* and he a gorgio!"** ---------------* chalana--she jockey (a compliment). ** gorgio--gentile (an insult). ---------------suddenly fred began to shout for help then, and we rode back, the gipsies following and rustum khan remaining on guard between them and their camp with his upbrushed black beard bristling defiance of asia minor. our turkish muleteers had decided to make a final bolt for it, and were using their whips on the zeitoonli, who clung gamely to the reins. as soon as we got near enough to lend a hand the turks resigned themselves with a kind of opportune fatalism. the zeitoonli promptly turned the tables on them by laying hold of a leg of each and tipping them off into the mud. ibrahim showed his teeth, and reached for a hidden weapon as he lay, but seemed to think better of it. it looked very much as if those four zeitoonli knew in advance exactly what the interruption in our journey meant. will was out of the running entirely, or else the rest of us were, depending on which way one regarded it. he had eyes for nobody and nothing but the girl, nor she for any one but him, and nobody could rightfully blame either of them. yankee though he is, will sat his mule in the western cowboy style, and he was wearing a cowboy hat that set his youth off to perfection. she looked fit to flirt with the lord of the underworld, answering his questions in a way that would have made any fellow eager to ask more. strangely enough, gregor jhaere, presumably father of the girl appeared to have lost his anger at her doings and turned his back. fred, smiling mischief, started toward them to horn in, as will would have described it, but at that moment about a dozen of the gipsy women came padding uproad, fostered watchfully by rustum khan, who seemed convinced that murder was intended somehow, somewhere. they brought along horses with them--very good horses--and fred prefers a horse trade to triangular flirtation on any day of any week. the gipsies promptly fell to and off-saddled our loads under gregor jhaere's eye, transferring them to the meaner-looking among the beasts the women had brought, taking great care to drop nothing in the mud. and at a word from gregor two of the oldest hags came to lift us from our saddles one by one, and hold us suspended in mid-air while the saddles were transferred to better mounts. but there is an indignity in being held out of the mud by women that goes fiercely against the white man's grain, and i kicked until they set me back in the saddle. monty solved the problem by riding to higher, clean ground near the roadside, where we could stand on firm grass. seeing us dismounted, the gipsies underwent a subtle mental change peculiar to all barbarous people. to the gipsy and the cossack, and all people mainly dependent on the horse, to be mounted is to signify participation in affairs. to be dismounted means to stand aside and "let george do it." gregor jhaere became a different man. he grew noisy and in response to his yelped commands they swooped in unprovoked attack on our unhappy muleteers. before we could interfere they had thrown each turk face downward, our zeitoonli helping, and were searching them with swift intruding fingers for knives, pistols, money. the turk leaves his money behind when starting on a journey at some other man's expense; but they did draw forth a most astonishing assortment of weapons. they were experts in disarmament. maga jhaere lost interest in will for a moment, and pricked her stallion to a place where she could judge the assortment better. without any hesitation she ordered one of the old women to pass up to her a mother-o'-pearl ornamented smith & wesson, which she promptly hid in her bosom. judging by the sounds he made, that pistol was the apple of ibrahim's old eye, but he had seen the last of it. when we interfered, and he could get to her stirrup to demand it back, maga spat in his face; which was all about it, except that monty made generous allowance for the thing when paying the reckoning presently. as our servants, those turks were, of course, entitled to our protection, and besides that weapon we had to pay for five knives that were gone beyond hope of recovery. monty paid our turks off (for it was evident that even had they been willing they would not have been allowed to proceed with us another mile). then, as ibrahim mounted and marshaled his party in front of him, he forgot manners as well as the liberal payment. "mashallah!" (god be praised!) he shouted, with the slobber of excitement on his lips and beard. "now i go to make armenians pay for this! let the shapkali,* too, avoid me! ya ali, ya mahoma, alahu!" (oh, ali, oh, mahomet, god is god!) --------------* shapkali--hatted man-foreigner. --------------"let's hope they haven't a spark of honesty!" said monty cryptically, watching them canter away. "why on earth--?" "let's hope they ride back to the consul and swear they haven't received one piaster of their pay. that would let him know we're clear away!" "optimist!" jeered will. "that consul's a britisher. he'd take their lie literally, and deduce we're no good!" for the moment the girl on the gray stallion had ridden away from will and was giving regal orders to the mob of women and shrill children, who obeyed her as if well used to it. gregor jhaere and his men stood staring at us, gregor shaking his head as if our letting the turks go free had been a bad stroke of policy. "aren't you afraid to travel with all that mob of women and cattle?" asked monty. "we've heard of robbers on the road." "we are the robbers, effendi!" said gregor with an air of modesty. the others smirked, but he seemed disinclined to over-insist on the gulf between us. "hear him!" growled rustum khan. "a thief, who boasts of thieving in the presence of sahibs! so is corruption, stinking in the sun!" he added something in another language that the gipsies understood, for gregor started as if stung and swore at him, and maga jhaere left her women-folk to ride alongside and glare into his eyes. they were enemies, those two, from that hour forward. he, once hindu, now moslem, had no admiration whatever to begin with for unveiled women. and, since the gipsy claims to come from india and may therefore be justly judged by indian standards, and has no caste, but is beneath the very lees of caste, he loathed all gipsies with the prejudice peculiar to men who have deserted caste in theory and in self-protection claim themselves above it. it was a case of height despising deep in either instance, she as sure of her superiority as he of his. there might have been immediate trouble if monty had not taken his new, restless, fresh horse by the mane and swung into the saddle. "forward, rustum khan!" he ordered. "ride ahead and let those keen eyes of yours keep us out of traps!" the rajput obeyed, but as he passed will he checked his mare a moment, and waiting until will's blue eyes met his he raised a warning finger. "kubadar, sahib!" then he rode on, like a man who has done his duty. "what the devil does he mean?" demanded will. "kubadar means, 'take care'!" said monty. "come on, what are we waiting for?" that was the beginning, too, of will's feud with the rajput, neither so remorseless nor so sudden as the woman's, because he had a different code to guide him and also had to convince himself that a quarrel with a man of color was compatible with yankee dignity. we could have wished them all three either friends, or else a thousand miles apart two hundred times before the journey ended. as we rode forward with even our zeitoonli mounted now on strong mules, maga jhaere sat her stallion beside will with an air of owning him. she was likely a safer friend than enemy, and we did nothing to interfere. monty pressed forward. fred and i fell to the rear. "haide!"* shouted gregor jhaere, and all the motley swarm of women and children caught themselves mounts--some already loaded with the gipsy baggage, some with saddles, some without, some with grass halters for bridles. in another minute fred and i were riding surrounded by a smelly swarm of them, he with big fingers already on the keys of his beloved concertina, but i less enamored than he of the company. ----------------* haide!--turkish, "come on!" ----------------women and children, loaded, loose and led horses were all mixed together in unsortable confusion, the two oldest hags in the world trusting themselves on sorry, lame nags between fred and me as if proximity to us would solve the very riddle of the gipsy race. and last of all came a pack of great scrawny dogs that bayed behind us hungrily, following for an hour until hope of plunder vanished. "that little she-devil who has taken a fancy to will," said fred with a grin, "is capable of more atrocities than all the turks between here and stamboul! she looks to me like santanita, cleopatra, salome, caesar's wife, and all the borgia ladies rolled in one. there's something added, though, that they lacked." "youth," said i. "beauty. athletic grace. sinuous charm." "no, probably they all had all those." "then horsemanship." "perhaps. didn't cleopatra ride?" "then what?" said i, puzzled. "indiscretion!" he answered, jerking loose the catch of his infernal instrument. "don't be afraid, old ladies," he said, glancing at the harridans between us. "i'm only going to sing!" he makes up nearly all of his songs, and some of them, although irreverent, are not without peculiar merit; but that was one of his worst ones. the preachers prate of fallen man and choirs repeat the chant, while unco' guid with unction urge repression of the joys that surge, and jail for those who can't. the poor deluded duds forget that something drew the sting when adam tiptoed to his fall, and made it hardly hurt at all. of mother eve i sing! chorus oh, mother eve, dear mother eve, the generations come and go, but daughter eve's as live as you were back in eden years ago! oh, hell's not hell with eve to tell again the ancient tale, but eden's grassy ways and bowers deprived of eve to ease the hours would very soon grow stale! red cherry lips that leap to laugh, and chic and flick and flair can make black white for any one-the task of sisyphus good fun! so what should adam care! chorus oh, daughter eve, dear daughter eve, the tribulations go and come, but no adventure's ever tame with you to make surprises hum! chapter five "effendi, that is the heart of armenia burning." the patteran (i) aye-yee--i see--a cloud afloat in air af amethyst i know its racing shadow falls on banks of gold where rain-rejoicing gravel warms the feeding roots and smells more wonderful than wine. i know the shoots of myrtle and of asphodel now stir the mould where wee cool noses sniff the early mist. aye-yee--the sparkle of the little springs i see that tinkle as they hunt the thirsty rill. i know the cobwebs glitter with the jeweled dew. i see a fleck of brown--it was a skylark flew to scatter bursting music, and the world is still to listen. ah, my heart is bursting too--aye-yee! chorus: (it begins with a swinging crash, and fades away.) aye-yee, aye-yah--the kites see far (but also to the foxes views unfold)-no hour alike, no places twice the same, nor any track to show where morning came, nor any footprint in the moistened mould to tell who covered up the morning star. aye-yee--aye-yah! (2) aye-yee--i see--new rushes crowding upwards in the mere where, gold and white, the wild duck preens himself safe hidden till the sun-drawn, lingering mists melt. i know the secret den where bruin dwelt. i see him now sun-basking on a shelf of windy rock. he looks down on the deer, who flit like flowing light from rock to tree and stand with ears alert before they drink. i know a pool of purple rimmed with white where wild-fowl, warming for the morning flight, wait clustering and crying on the brink. and i know hillsides where the partridge breeds. aye-yee! chorus: aye-yee, aye-yah--the kites see far (but also to the owls the visions change)-no dawn is like the next, and nothing sings of sameness--very hours have wings and leave no word of whose hand touched the range of kara dagh with opal and with cinnabar. aye-yee, aye-yah! (3) aye-yee--i see--new distances beyond a blue horizon flung. i laugh, because the people under roofs believe that last year's ways are this! no roads are old! new grass has grown! all pools and rivers hold new water! and the feathered singers weave new nests, forgetting where the old ones hung! aye-yah--the muddy highway sticks and clings, but i see in the open pastures new unknown to busne* in the houses pent! i hear the new, warm raindrops drumming on the tent, i feel already on my feet delicious dew, i see the trail outflung! and oh, my heart has wings! chorus: aye-yee, aye-yah--the kites see far (but also on the road the visions pass)-the universe reflected in a wayside pool, a tinkling symphony where seeping waters drool, the dance, more gay than laughter, of the wind-swept grass-oh, onward! on to where the visions are! aye-yee--aye-yah! --------------------* busne--gipsy word--gentile, or non-gipsy. --------------------russia, rumania, bulgaria, bohemia, persia, armenia were all one hunting-ground to the troupe we rode with. even the children seemed to have a smattering of most of the tongues men speak in those intriguing lands. will and the girl beside him conversed in german, but the old hag nearest me would not confess acquaintance with any language i knew. again and again i tried her, but she always shook her head. fred, with his ready gift of tongues, attempted conversation with ten or a dozen of them, but whichever language he used in turn appeared to be the only one which that particular individual did not know. all he got in reply was grins, and awkward silence, and shrugs of the shoulders in gregor's direction, implying that the head of the firm did the talking with strangers. but gregor rode alone with monty, out of ear-shot. maga (for so they all called her) flirted with will outrageously, if that is flirting that proclaims conquest from the start, and sets flashing white teeth in defiance of all intruders. even the little children had hidden weapons, but maga was better armed than any one, and she thrust the new mother-o-pearl-plated acquisition in the face of one of the men who dared drive his horse between hers and will's. that not serving more than to amuse him, she slapped him three times back-handed across the face, and thrusting the pistol back into her bosom, drew a knife. he seemed in no doubt of her willingness to use the steel, and backed his horse away, followed by language from her like forked lightning that disturbed him more than the threatening weapon. gipsies are great believers in the efficiency of a curse. nothing could be further from the mark than to say that will tried to take advantage of maga's youth and savagery. fred and i had shared a dozen lively adventures with him without more than beginning yet to plumb the depths of his respect for woman. only an american in all the world knows how to meet young woman eye to eye with totally unpatronizing frankness, and he was without guile in the matter. but not so she. we did not know whether or not she was gregor jhaere's daughter; whether or not she was truly the gipsy that she hardly seemed. but she was certainly daughter of the near east that does not understand a state of peace between the sexes. there was nothing lawful in her attitude, nor as much as the suspicion that will might be merely chivalrous. "america's due for sex-enlightenment!" said i. "warn him if you like," fred laughed, "and then steer clear! our america is proud besides imprudent!" fred off-shouldered all responsibility and forestalled anxiety on any one's account by playing tunes, stampeding the whole cavalcade more than once because the horses were unused to his clanging concertina, but producing such high spirits that it became a joke to have to dismount in the mud and replace the load on some mule who had expressed enjoyment of the tune by rolling in slime, or by trying to kick clouds out of the sky. and strangely enough he brought about the very last thing he intended with his music--stopped the flirtation's immediate progress. maga seemed to take to fred's unchastened harmony with all the wildness that possessed her. some chord he struck, or likelier, some abandoned succession of them touched off her magazine of poetry. and so she sang. the only infinitely gorgeous songs i ever listened to were maga's. almighty god, who made them, only really knows what country the gipsies originally came from, but there is not a land that has not felt their feet, nor a sorrow they have not witnessed. away back in the womb of time there was planted in them a rare gift of seeing what the rest of us can only sometimes hear, and of hearing what only very few from the world that lives in houses can do more than vaguely feel when at the peak of high emotion. the gipsies do not understand what they see, and hear, and feel; but they are aware of infinities too intimate for ordinary speech. and it was given to maga to sing of all that, with a voice tuned like a waterfall's for open sky, and trees, and distances--not very loud, but far-carrying, and flattened in quarter-tones where it touched the infinite. fred very soon ceased from braying with his bellowed instrument. her songs were too wild for accompaniment--interminable stanzas of unequal length, with a refrain at the end of each that rose through a thousand emotions to a crash of ecstasy, and then died away to dreaminess, coming to an end on an unfinished rising scale. all the gipsies and our zeitoonli and rustum khan's lean servant joined in the refrains, so that we trotted along under the snow-tipped fangs of the kara dagh oblivious of the passage of time, but very keenly conscious of touch with a realm of life whose existence hitherto we had only vaguely guessed at. the animals refused to weary while that singing testified of tireless harmonies, as fresh yet as on the day when the worlds were born. we rattled forward, on and upward, as if the panorama were unrolling and we were the static point, getting out of nobody's way for the best reason in the world--that everybody hid at first sight or sound of us, except when we passed near villages, and then the great fierce-fanged curs chased and bayed behind us in short-winded fury. "the dogs bark," quoted fred serenely, "but the caravan moves on!" an hour before dark we swung round a long irregular spur of the hills that made a wide bend in the road, and halted at a lonely kahveh--a wind-swept ruin of a place, the wall of whose upper story was patched with ancient sacking, but whose owner came out and smiled so warmly on us that we overlooked the inhospitable frown of his unplastered walls, hoping that his smile and the profundity of his salaams might prove prophetic of comfort and cleanliness within. vain hope! maga left will's side then, for there was iron-embedded custom to be observed about this matter of entering a road-house. in that land superstition governs just as fiercely as the rest those who make mock of the rule-of-rod religions, and there is no man or woman free to behave as he or she sees fit. every one drew aside from monty, and he strode in alone through the split-and-mended door, we following next, and the gipsies with their animals clattered noisily behind us. the women entered last, behind the last loaded mule, and maga the very last of all, because she was the most beautiful, and beauty might bring in the devil with it only that the devil is too proud to dawdle behind the old hags and the horses. we found ourselves in an oblong room, with stalls and a sort of pound for animals at one end and an enormous raised stone fireplace at the other. wooden platforms for the use of guests faced each other down the two long sides, and the only promise of better than usual comfort lay in the piles of firewood waiting for whoever felt rich and generous enough to foot the bill for a quantity. but an agreeable surprise made us feel at home before ever the fire leaped up to warm the creases out of saddle-weary limbs. we had given up thinking of kagig, not that we despaired of him, but the gipsies, and especially maga, had replaced his romantic interest for the moment with their own. now all the man's own exciting claim on the imagination returned in full flood, as he arose leisurely from a pile of skins and blankets near the hearth to greet monty, and shouted with the manner of a chieftain for fuel to be piled on instantly--"for a great man comes!" he announced to the rafters. and the kahveh servants, seven sons of the owner of the place, were swift and abject in the matter of obeisance. they were turks. all turks are demonstrative in adoration of whoever is reputed great. monty ignored them, and kagig came down the length of the room to offer him a hand on terms of blunt equality. "lord montdidier," he said, mispronouncing the word astonishingly, "this is the furthest limit of my kingdom yet. kindly be welcome!" "your kingdom?" said monty, shaking hands, but not quite accepting the position of blood-equal. he was bigger and better looking than kagig, and there was no mistaking which was the abler man, even at that first comparison, with kagig intentionally making the most of a dramatic situation. kagig laughed, not the least nervously. "mirza," he said in persian, "duzd ne giriftah padshah ast!" (prince, the uncaught thief is king.) he was wearing a kalpak--the head-gear of the cossack, which would make a high priest look outlawed, and a shaggy goat-skin coat that had seen more than one campaign. unmistakably the garment had been slit by bullets, and repaired by fingers more enthusiastic than adept. there was a pride of poverty about him that did not gibe well with his boast of being a robber. "that's the first gink we've met in this land who didn't claim to be something better than he looked!" will whispered. "hopeless, i suppose!" fred answered. "never mind. i like the man." it was evident that monty liked him, too, for all his schooled reserve. kagig ordered one of the owner's sons to sweep a place near the fire, and there he superintended the spreading of monty's blankets, close enough to his own assorted heap for conversation without mutual offense. will cleaned for himself a section of the opposite end of the platform, and fred and i spread our blankets next to his. that left rustum khan in a quandary. he stood irresolute for a minute, eying first the gipsies, who had stalled most of their animals and were beginning to occupy the platform on the other side; then considering the wide gap between me and monty. the dark-skinned man of breeding is far more bitterly conscious of the color-line than any white knows how to be. we watched, disinclined to do the choosing for him, racial instinct uppermost. rustum khan strolled back to where his mare was being cleaned by the lean armenian servant, gave the boy a few curt orders, and there among the shadows made his mind up. he returned and stood before monty, kagig eying him with something less than amiability. he pointed toward the ample room remaining between monty and me. "will the sahib permit? my izzat (honor) is in question." "izzat be damned!" monty answered. rustum khan colored darkly. "i shared a tent with you once on campaign, sahib, in the days before--the good days before--those old days when--" "when you and i served one raj, eh? i remember," monty answered. "i remember it was your tent, rustum khan. unless memory plays tricks with me, the orakzai pathans had burned mine, and i had my choice between sharing yours or sleeping in the rain." "truly, huzoor." "i don't recollect that i mouthed very much about honor on that occasion. if anybody's honor was in question then, i fancy it was yours. i might have inconvenienced myself, and dishonored you, i suppose, by sleeping in the wet. you can dishonor the lot of us now, if you care to, by--oh, tommyrot! tell your man to put your blankets in the only empty place, and behave like a man of sense!" "but, huzoor--" monty dismissed the subject with a motion of his hand, and turned to talk with kagig, who shouted for yoghourt to be brought at once; and that set the sons of the owner of the place to hurrying in great style. the owner himself was a true turk. he had subsided into a state of kaif already over on the far side of the fire, day-dreaming about only allah knew what rhapsodies. but the turks intermarry with the subject races much more thoroughly than they do anything else, and his sons did not resemble him. they were active young men, rather noisy in their robust desire to be of use. the gipsies, with gregor jhaere nearest to the owner of the kahveh and the fireplace, occupied the whole long platform on the other side, each with his women around him--except that i noticed that maga avoided all the men, and made herself a blanket nest in deep shadow almost within reach of a mule's heels at the far end. i believed at the moment that she chose that position so as to be near to will, but changed my mind later. several times gregor shouted for her, and she made no answer. the place had no other occupants. either we were the only travelers on that road that night or, as seemed more likely, kagig had exercised authority and purged the kahveh of other guests. certainly our coming had been expected, for there was very good yoghourt in ample quantity, and other food besides--meat, bread, cheese, vegetables. when we had all eaten, and lay back against the stone wall looking at the fire, with great fanged shadows dancing up and down that made the scene one of almost perfect savagery, gregor called again for maga. again she did not answer him. so he rose from his place and reached for a rawhide whip. "i said she shall be thrashed!" he snarled in turkish, and he made the whip crack three times like sudden pistol-shots. will did not catch the words, and might not have understood them in any case, but rustum khan, beside me, both heard and understood. "atcha!" he grunted. "now we shall see a kind of happenings. that girl is not a true gipsy, or else my eyes lie to me. they stole her, or adopted her. she lacks their instincts. the gitanas, as they call their girls, are expected to have aversion to white men. they are allowed to lure a white man to his ruin, but not to make hot love to him. she has offended against the gipsy law. the attaman* must punish. watch the women. they take it all as a matter of course." ---------------*attaman, gipsy headman. ---------------"maga!" thundered gregor jhaere, cracking the great whip again. i thought that kagig looked a trifle restless, but nobody else went so far as to exhibit interest, except that the old turk by the fire emerged far enough out of kaif to open one eye, like a sly cat's. the attaman shouted again, and this time maga mocked him. so he strode down the room in a rage to enforce his authority, and dragged her out of the shadow by an arm, sending her whirling to the center of the floor. she did not lose her feet, but spun and came to a stand, and waited, proud as satanita while he drew the whip slowly back with studied cruelty. the old turk opened both eyes. nothing is more certain than that none of us would have permitted the girl to be thrashed. i doubt if even rustum khan, no admirer of gipsies or unveiled women, would have tolerated one blow. but will was nearest, and he is most amazing quick when his nervous new england temper is aroused. he had the whip out of gregor's hand, and stood on guard between him and the girl before one of us had time to move. the old turk closed his eyes again, and sighed resignedly. "our preux chevalier--preux but damned imprudent!" murmured fred. "let's hope there's a gipsy here with guts enough to fight for title to the girl. it looks to me as if will has claimed her by patteran* law. the only man with right to say whether or not a woman shall be thrashed is her owner. once that right is established--" --------------* patteran, a gipsy word: trail. --------------"touch her and i'll break your neck!" warned will, without undue emotion, but truthfully beyond a shadow of a doubt. the gipsy stood still, simmering, and taking the measure of the capable american muscles interposed between him and his legal prey. every gipsy eye in the room was on him, and it was perfectly obvious that whatever the eventual solution of the impasse, the one thing he could not do was retreat. we were fewer in number, but much better armed than the gipsy party, so that it was unlikely they would rally to their man's aid. kagig was an unknown quantity, but except that his black eyes glittered rather more brightly than usual he made no sign; and we kept quiet because we did not want to start a free-for-all fight. will was quite able to take care of any single opponent, and would have resented aid. suddenly, however, gregor jhaere reached inside his shirt. maga screamed. rustum khan beside me swore a rumbling rajput oath, and we all four leapt to our feet. maga drew no weapon, although she certainly had both dagger and pistol handy. instead, she glanced toward kagig, who, strangely enough, was lolling on his blankets as if nothing in the world could interest him less. the glance took as swift effect as an electric spark that fires a mine. he stiffened instantly. "yok!" he shouted, and at once there ceased to be even a symptom of impending trouble. yok means merely no in turkish, but it conveyed enough to gregor to send him back to his place between his women and the turk unashamedly obedient, leaving maga standing beside will. maga did not glance again at kagig, for i watched intently. there was simply no understanding the relationship, although fred affected his usual all-comprehensive wisdom. "another claimant to the title!" he said. "a fight between will and kagig for that woman ought to be amusing, if only will weren't a friend of mine. watch america challenge him!" but will did nothing of the kind. he smiled at maga, offered her a cigarette, which she refused, and returned to his place beyond fred, leaving her standing there, as lovely in the glowing firelight as the spirit of bygone romance. at that kagig shouted suddenly for fuel, and three of the turk's seven hoydens ran to heap it on. instantly the leaping flames transformed the great, uncomfortable, draughty barn into a hall of gorgeous color and shadows without limit. there was no other illumination, except for the glow here and there of pipes and cigarettes, or matches flaring for a moment. barring the tobacco, we lay like a baron's men-at-arms in europe of the middle ages, with a captive woman to make sport with in the midst, only rather too self-reliant for the picture. feeling himself warm, and rested, and full enough of food, fred flung a cigarette away and reached for his inseparable concertina. and with his eyes on the great smoked beams that now glowed gold and crimson in the firelight, he grew inspired and made his nearest to sweet music. it was perfectly in place--simple as the savagery that framed us--fred's way of saying grace for shelter, and adventure, and a meal. he passed from annie laurie to suwannee river, and all but made will cry. during two-three-four tunes maga stood motionless in the midst of us, hands on her hips, with the fire-light playing on her face, until at last fred changed the nature of the music and seemed to be trying to recall fragments of the song she had sung that afternoon. presently he came close to achievement, playing a few bars over and over, and leading on from those into improvization near enough to the real thing to be quite recognizable. music is the sure key to the gipsy heart, and fred unlocked it. the men and women, and the little sleepy children on the long wooden platform opposite began to sway and swing in rhythm. fred divined what was coming, and played louder, wilder, lawlessly. and maga did an astonishing thing. she sat down on the floor and pulled her shoes and stockings off, as unselfconsciously as if she were alone. then fred began the tune again from the beginning, and he had it at his finger-ends by then. he made the rafters ring. and without a word maga kicked the shoes and stockings into a corner, flung her outer, woolen upper-garment after them, and began to dance. there is a time when any of us does his best. money--marriage--praise--applause (which is totally another thing than praise, and more like whisky in its workings)--ambition--prayer--there is a key to the heart of each of us that can unlock the flood-tides of emotion and carry us nolens volens to the peaks of possibility. either will, or else fred's music, or the setting, or all three unlocked her gifts that night. she danced like a moth in a flame--a wandering woman in the fire unquenchable that burns convention out of gipsy hearts, and makes the patteran--the trail--the only way worth while. opposite, the gipsies sprawled in silence on their platform, breathing a little deeper when deepest approval stirred them, a little more quickly when her muse took hold of maga and thrilled her to expression of the thoughts unknown to people of the dinning walls and streets. we four leaned back against our wall in a sort of silent revelry, fred alone moving, making his beloved instrument charm wisely, calling to her just enough to keep a link, as it were, through which her imagery might appeal to ours. some sort of mental bridge between her tameless paganism and our twentieth-century twilight there had to be, or we never could have sensed her meaning. the concertina's wailings, mid-way between her intelligence and ours, served well enough. my own chief feeling was of exultation, crowing over the hooded city-folk, who think that drama and the tricks of colored light and shade have led them to a glimpse of the hem of the garment of unrest--a cheap mean feeling, of which i was afterward ashamed. maga was not crowing over anybody. neither did she only dance of things her senses knew. the history of a people seized her for a reed, and wrote itself in figures past imagining between the crimson firelight; and the shadows of the cattle stalls. her dance that night could never have been done with leather between bare foot and earth. it told of measureless winds and waters--of the distances, the stars, the day, the night-rain sweeping down--dew dropping gently--the hundred kinds of birds-the thousand animals and creeping things--and of man, who is lord of all of them, and woman, who is lord of man--man setting naked foot on naked earth and glorying with the thrill of life, new, good, and wonderful. one of the turk's seven sons produced a saz toward the end--a little turkish drum, and accompanied with swift, staccato stabs of sound that spurred her like the goads of overtaking time toward the peak of full expression--faster and faster--wilder and wilder--freer and freer of all limits, until suddenly she left the thing unfinished, and the drum-taps died away alone. that was art--plain art. no human woman could have finished it. it was innate abhorrence of the anticlimax that sent her, having looked into the eyes of the unattainable, to lie sobbing for short breath in her corner in the dark, leaving us to imagine the ending if we could. and instead of anticlimax second climax came. almost before the echoes of the drum-taps died among the dancing shadows overhead a voice cried from the roof in armenian, and kagig rose to his feet. "let us climb to the roof and see, effendim," he said, pulling on his tattered goat-skin coat. "see what, ermenie?" demanded rustum khan. the rajput's eyes were still ablaze with pagan flame, from watching maga. "to see whether thou hast manhood behind that swagger!" answered kagig, and led the way. no man ever yet explained the racial aversions. "kopek!--dog, thou!" growled the rajput, but kagig took no notice and led on, followed by monty and the rest of us. maga and the gipsies came last, swarming behind us up the ladder through a hole among the beams, and clambering on to the roof over boxes piled in the draughty attic. up under the stars a man was standing with an arm stretched out toward tarsus. "look!" he said simply. to the westward was a crimson glow that mushroomed angrily against the sky, throbbing and swelling with hot life like the vomit of a crater. we watched in silence for three minutes, until one of the gipsy women began to moan. "what do you suppose it is?" i asked then. "i know what it is," said kagig simply. "tell then." "'effendi, that is the heart of armenia burning. those are the homes of my nation--of my kin!" "and good god, where d'you suppose miss vanderman is?" fred exclaimed. will was standing beside maga, looking into her eyes as if he hoped to read in them the riddle of armenia. chapter six "passing the buck to allah!" laus lachrimabilis so now the awaited ripe reward-your cactus crown! since i have urged "get ready for the untoward" ye bid me reap the wrath i dirged; and i must show the darkened way, who beckoned vainly in the light! i'll lead. but salt of dead sea spray were sweeter on my lips to-night! oh, days of aching sinews, when i trod the choking dust with feet afire that could not tire, atremble with the trust more mighty in my inner man than fear of men without, the word i heard on kara dagh and did not dare to doubt-timely warning, clear to me as starlight after rain when, sleepless on eternal hills, i saw the purpose plain and left, swift-foot at dawn, obedient, to break the news ye said was no avail--advice ye would not take! oh,--nights of tireless talking by the hearth of hidden fires-on roofs, behind the trade-bales--among oxen in the byres-out in rain between the godowns, where the splashing puddles warn of tiptoeing informers; when i faced the freezing dawn with set price on my head, but still the set resolve untamed, not melted by the mockery, by no suspicion shamed, to hide by day in holes, abiding dark and wind and rain that loosed me straining to the task ye ridiculed again! oh, weeks of empty waiting, while the enemy designed in detail how to loot the stuff ye would not leave behind! worse weeks of empty agony when, helpless and alone, i watched in hiding for the crops from that seed i had sown; for dust-clouds that should prove at last armenia awake-a nation up and coming! i had labored for your sake, i had hungered, i had suffered. ye had well rewarded then if ye had come, and hanged me just to prove that ye were men! but all the pride was promises, the criticism jeers; ye had no heart for sacrifice, and i no time for tears. i offered--nay, i gave! i squandered body and breath and soul, i bared the need, i showed the way, i preached a goodly goal, i urged you choose a leader, since your faith in me was dim, i swore to serve the chief ye chose, and teach my lore to him, so he should reap where i had sown. and yet ye bade me wait-and waited till, awake at last, ye bid me lead too late! and so, in place of ripe reward, your cactus crown! and i, who urged "get ready for the untoward" must drink the dregs of wrath i dirged! ye bid me set time's finger back! and stage anew the opened fight! i'll lead. but slime of dead sea wrack were sweeter on my lips this night! the first thought that occurred to each of us four was that kagig had probably lied, or that he had merely voiced his private opinion, based on expectation. the glare in the distance seemed too big and solid to be caused by burning houses, even supposing a whole village were in flames. yet there was not any other explanation we could offer. a distant cloud of black smoke with bulging red under-belly rolled away through the darkness like a tremendous mountain range. we stood in silence trying to judge how far away the thing might be, kagig standing alone with his foot on the parapet, his goat-skin coat hanging like a hussar's dolman, and monty pacing up and down along the roof behind us all. the gipsies seemed able to converse by nods and nudges, with now and then one word whispered. after a little while maga whispered in will's ear, and he went below with her. all the gipsies promptly followed. otherwise in the darkness we might not have noticed where will went. "that proves she is no gipsy!" vowed rustum khan, standing between fred and me. "they, would have trusted one of their own kind." "they call her maga jhaere," said i. "the attaman's name is jhaere. don't you suppose he's her father?" "if he were her father he would have no fear," the rajput answered. "all gipsies are alike. their women will dance the nautch, and promise unchastity as if that were a little matter. but when it comes to performance of promises the gitana* is true to the rom.** it is because she is no gipsy that they follow her now to watch. and it is because men say that americans are mormons and polygamous, and very swift in the use of revolvers, that all follow instead of one or two!" -------------* gitana, gipsy young woman. ** rom--gipsy husband, or family man. -------------"go down then, and make sure they don't murder him!" commanded monty, and rustum khan turned to obey with rather ill grace. he contrived to convey by his manner that he would do anything for monty, even to the extent of saving the life of a man he disliked. at the moment when he turned there came the sound of a troop of horses galloping toward us. "i will first see who comes," he said. "the blood of yerkes sahib on your head, rustum khan!" monty answered. at that he went below. but neither were we destined to remain up there very long. we heard colossal thumping in the kahveh beneath us and presently the rajput's head reappeared through the opening in the roof. "the fools are barricading the door," he shouted. "they make sure that an enemy outside could burn us inside without hindrance!" at that kagig came along the roof to our corner and looked into monty's eyes. fred and i stood between the two of them and the parapet, because for the first few seconds we were not sure the armenian did not mean murder. his eyes glittered, and his teeth gleamed. it was not possible to guess whether or not the hand under his goat-skin coat clutched a weapon. "it is now that you eenglis sportmen shall endure a test!" he remarked. exactly as in the yeni khan in tarsus when we first met him there was a moment now of intense repulsion, entirely unaccountable, succeeded instantly by a wave of sympathy. i laughed aloud, remembering how strange dogs meeting in the street to smell each other are swept by unexplainable antipathies and equally swift comradeship. he thought i laughed at him. "neye geldin?" he growled in turkish. "wherefore didst thou come? to cackle like a barren hen that sees another laying? nichevo," he added, turning his back on me. and that was insolence in russian, meaning that nobody and nothing could possibly be of less importance. he seemed to keep a separate language for each set of thoughts. "let us go below. let us stop these fools from making too much trouble," he added in english. "one man ought to stay on the roof. one ought to be sufficient." since he had said i did not matter, i remained, and it was therefore i who shouted down a challenge presently in round english at a party who clattered to the door on blown horses, and thundered on it as if they had been shatirs* hurrying to herald the arrival of the sultan himself. there was nothing furtive about their address to the decrepit door, nor anything meek. accordingly i couched the challenge in terms of unmistakable affront, repeating it at intervals until the leader of the new arrivals chose to identify himself. ----------------* shatir, the man who runs before a personage's horse. ----------------"i am hans von quedlinburg!" he shouted. but i did not remember the name. "only a thief would come riding in such a hurry through the night!" said i. "who is with you?" another voice shouted very fast and furiously in turkish, but i could not make head or tail of the words. then the german resumed the song and dance. "are you the party who talked with me at my construction camp?" "we talk most of the time. we eat food. we whistle. we drink. we laugh!" said i. "because i think you are the people i am seeking. these are turkish officials with me. i have authority to modify their orders, only let me in!" "how many of you?" i asked. i was leaning over at risk of my life, for any fool could have seen my head to shoot at it against the luminous dark sky; but i could not see to count them. "never mind how many! let us in! i am hans von quedlinburg. my name is sufficient." so i lied, emphatically and in thoughtful detail. "you are covered," i said, "by five rifles from this roof. if you don't believe it, try something. you'd better wait there while i wake my chief." "only be quick!" said the german, and i saw him light a cigarette, whether to convince me he felt confident or because he did feel so i could not say. i went below, and found monty and kagig standing together close to the outer door. they had not heard the whole of the conversation because of the noise the owner's sons had made removing, at their orders, the obstructions they had piled against the door in their first panic. every one else had returned to the sleeping platforms, except the turkish owner, who looked awake at last, and was hovering here and there in ecstasies of nervousness. i repeated what the german had said, rather expecting that kagig at any rate would counsel defiance. it was he, however, who beckoned the turk and bade him open the door. "but, effendi--" "chabuk! quickly, i said!" "che arz kunam?" the turk answered meekly, meaning "what petition shall i make?" the inference being that all was in the hands of allah. "of ten men nine are women!" sneered kagig irritably, and led the way to our place beside the fire. the turk fumbled interminably with the door fastenings, and we were comfortably settled in our places before the new arrivals rode in, bringing a blast of cold air with them that set the smoke billowing about the room and made every man draw up his blankets. "shut that door behind them!" thundered kagig. "if they come too slowly, shut the laggards out!" "who is this who is arrogant?" the german demanded in english. he was a fine-looking man, dressed in civilian clothes cut as nearly to the military pattern as the tailor could contrive without transgressing law, but with a too small fez perched on his capable-looking head in the manner of the prussian who would like to make the turks believe he loves them. rustum khan cursed with keen attention to detail at sight of him. the man who had entered with him became busy in the shadows trying to find room to stall their horses, but von quedlinburg gave his reins to an attendant, and stood alone, akimbo, with the firelight displaying him in half relief. "i am a man who knows, among other things, the name of him who bribed the kaimakam.* on chakallu," kagig answered slowly, also in english. --------------* kaimakam, headman (turkish). --------------the german laughed. "then you know without further argument that i am not to be denied!" he answered. "what i say to-night the government officials will confirm to-morrow! are you kagig, whom they call the eye of zeitoon?" "i am no jackal," said kagig dryly, punning on the name chakallu, which means "place of jackals." the german coughed, set one foot forward, and folded both arms on his breast. he looked capable and bold in that attitude, and knew it. i knew at last who he was, and wondered why i had not recognized him sooner--the contractor who had questioned us near the railway encampment along the way, and had offered us directions; but his manner was as different now from then as a bully's in and out of school. then he had sought to placate, and had almost cringed to monty. everything about him now proclaimed the ungloved upper hand. his party, finding no room to stall their horses, had begun to turn ours loose, and there was uproar along the gipsy side of the room--no action yet, but a threatening snarl that promised plenty of it. will was half on his feet to interfere, but monty signed to him to keep cool; and it was monty's aggravatingly well-modulated voice that laid the law down. "will you be good enough," he asked blandly, "to call off your men from meddling with our mounts?" he could not be properly said to drawl, because there was a positive subacid crispness in his voice that not even a prussian or a turk on a dark night could have over-looked. the german laughed again. "perhaps you did not hear my name," he said. "i am hans von quedlinburg. as over-contractor on the baghdad railway i have the privilege of prior accommodation at all road-houses in this province--for myself and my attendants. and in addition there are with me certain turkish officers, whose rights i dare say you will not dispute." monty did not laugh, although fred was chuckling in confident enjoyment of the situation. "you need a lesson in manners," said monty. "what do you mean?" demanded hans von quedlinburg. monty rose to his feet without a single unnecessary motion. "i mean that unless you call off your men--at once this minute from interfering with our animals i shall give you the lesson you need." the german saluted in mock respect. then he patted his breast-pocket so as to show the outline of a large repeating pistol. monty took two steps forward. the german drew the pistol with an oath. will yerkes, beyond fred and slightly behind the german, coughed meaningly. the german turned his head, to find that he was covered by a pistol as large as his own. "oh, very well," he said, "what is the use of making a scene?" he thrust his pistol back under cover and shouted an order in turkish. monty returned to his place and sat down. the newcomers at the rear of the room tied their horses together by the bridles, and hans von quedlinburg resumed his well-fed smile. "let it be clearly understood," he said, "that you have interfered with official privilege." "as long as you do your best in the way of manners you may go on with your errand," said monty. suddenly fred laughed aloud. "the martyred biped!" he yelped. he was right. peter measel, missionary on his own account, and sometime keeper of most libelous accounts, stepped out from the shadows and essayed to warm himself, walking past the german with a sort of mincing gait not calculated to assert his manliness. hans von quedlinburg stretched out a strong arm and hurled him back again into the darkness at the rear. "tchuk-tchuk! zuruck!" he muttered. it clearly disconcerted him to have his inferiors in rank assert themselves. that accounted, no doubt, for the meek self-effacement of the turks who had come with him. peter measel did not appear to mind being rebuked. he crossed to the other side of the room, and proceeded to look the gipsies over with the air of a learned ethnologist. "you speak of my errand," said hans von quedlinburg, "as if you imagine i come seeking favors. i am here incidentally to rescue you and your party from the clutches of an outlaw. the turkish officials who are with me have authority to arrest everybody in this place, yourselves included. fortunately i am able to modify that. kagig--that rascal beside you--is a well-known agitator. he is a criminal. his arrest and trial have been ordered on the charge, among other things, of stirring up discontent among the armenian laborers on the railway work. these gipsies are all his agents. they are all under arrest. you yourselves will be escorted to safety at the coast." "why should we need an escort to safety?" monty demanded. "were you on the roof?" the german answered. "and is it possible you did not see the conflagration? an armenian insurrection has been nipped in the bud. several villages are burning. the other inhabitants are very much incensed, and all foreigners are in danger--yourselves especially, since you have seen fit to travel in company with such a person as kagig." "what has peter measel got to do with it?" demanded fred. "has he been writing down all our sins in a new book?" "he will identify you. he will also identify kagig's agents. he brings a personal charge against a man named rustum khan, who must return to tarsus to answer it. the charge is robbery with violence." rustum khan snorted. "the violence was only too gentle, and too soon ended. as for robbery, if i have robbed him of a little self-conceit, i will answer to god for that when my hour shall come! how is it your affair to drag that whimpering fool through asia at your tail--you a german and he english?" the german had a hot answer ready for that, but the turks had discovered maga jhaere in hiding in the shadows between two old women. she screamed as they tried to drag her forth, and the scream brought us all to our feet. but this time it was kagig who was swiftest, and we got our first proof of the man's enormous strength. fred, will and i charged together round behind the newcomers' horses, in order to make sure of cutting off retreat as well as rescuing maga. monty leveled a pistol at the german's head. but kagig did not waste a fraction of a second on side-issues of any sort. he flew at the german's throat like a wolf at a bullock. the german fired at him, missed, and before he could fire again he was caught in a grip he could not break, and fighting for breath, balance and something more. one of the gipsies, who had not seen the need of hurrying to maga's aid, now proved the soundness of his judgment by divining kagig's purpose and tossing several new faggots on the already prodigious fire. "good!" barked kagig, bending the struggling german this and that way as it pleased him. seeing our man with the upper hand, monty and rustum khan now hurried into the melee, where two turkish officers and eight zaptieh were fighting to keep maga from four gipsies and us three. nobody had seen fit to shoot, but there was a glimmering of cold steel among the shadows like lightning before a thunder-storm. monty used his fists. rustum khan used the flat of a rajput saber. maga, leaving most of her clothing in the turk's hands, struggled free and in another second the turks were on the defensive. rustum khan knocked the revolver out of an officer's hand, and the rest of them were struggling to use their rifles, when the german shrieked. all fights are full of pauses, when either side could snatch sudden victory if alert enough. we stopped, and turned to look, as if our own lives were not in danger. kagig had the german off his feet, face toward the flames, kicking and screaming like a madman. he whirled him twice--shouted a sort of war-cry--hove him high with every sinew in his tough frame cracking--and hurled him head-foremost into the fire. the turks took the cue to haul off and stand staring at us. we all withdrew to easier pistol range, for contrary to general belief, close quarters almost never help straight aim, especially when in a hurry. there is a shooting as well as a camera focus, and each man has his own. pretty badly burnt about the face and fingers, hans von quedlinburg crawled backward out of the fire, smelling like the devil, of singed wool. kagig closed on him, and hurled him back again. this time the german plunged through the fire, and out beyond it to a space between the flames and the back wall, where it must have been hot enough to make the fat run. he stood with a forearm covering his face, while kagig thundered at him voluminous abuse in turkish. i wondered, first, why the german did not shoot, and then why his loaded pistol did not blow up in the heat, until i saw that in further proof of strength kagig had looted his pistol and was standing with one foot on it. finally, when the beautiful smooth cloth of which his coat was made bad taken on a stinking overlay of crackled black, the german chose to obey kagig and came leaping back through the fire, and lay groaning on the floor, where the kahveh's owner's seven sons poured water on him by kagig's order. his burns were evidently painful, but not nearly so serious as i expected. i got out the first-aid stuff from our medicine bag, and will, who was our self-constituted doctor on the strength of having once attended an autopsy, disguised as a reporter, in the morgue at the back of bellevue hospital in new york city, beckoned a gipsy woman, and proceeded to instruct her what to do. however, hans von quedlinburg was no nervous weakling. he snatched the pot of grease from the woman's hands, daubed gobs of the stuff liberally on his face and hands, and sat up--resembling an unknown kind of angry animal with his eyebrows and mustache burned off except for a stray, outstanding whisker here and there. in a voice like a bull's at the smell of blood he reversed what he had shouted through the flames, and commanded his turks to arrest the lot of us. kagig laughed at that, and spoke to him in english, i suppose in order that we, too, might understand. "those turks are my prisoners!" he said. "and so are you!" it was true about the turks. they had not given up their weapons yet, but the gipsies were between them and the door, and even the gipsy women were armed to the teeth and willing to do battle. i caught sight of maga's mother-o'-pearl plated revolver, and the turkish officer at whom she had it leveled did not look inclined to dispute the upper hand. "you germans are all alike," sneered kagig. "a dog could read your reasoning. you thought these foreigners would turn against me. it never entered your thick skull that they might rather defy you than see me made prisoner. fool! did men name me eye of zeitoon for nothing? have i watched for nothing! did i know the very wording of the letters in your private box for nothing? are you the only spy in asia? am i kagig, and do i not know who advised dismissing all armenians from the railway work? am i kagig, and do i not know why? kopek! (dog!) you would beggar my people, in order to curry favor with the turk. you seek to take me because i know your ways! two months ago you knew to within a day or two when these new massacres would begin. one month, three weeks, and four days ago you ordered men to dig my grave, and swore to bury me alive in it! what shall hinder me from burning you alive this minute?" there were five good hindrances, for i think that rustum khan would have objected to that cruelty, even had he been alone. kagig caught monty's eye and laughed. "korkakma!" he jeered. "do not be afraid!" then he glanced swiftly at the turks, and at peter measel, who was staring all-eyes at maga on the far side of the room. "order your pigs of zaptieh to throw their arms down!" instead, the german shouted to them to fire volleys at us. he was not without a certain stormy courage, whatever kagig's knowledge of his treachery. but the turks did not fire, and it was perfectly plain that we four were the reason of it. they had been promised an easy prey--captured women--loot--and the remunerative task of escorting us to safety. doubtless von quedlinburg had promised them our consul would be lavish with rewards on our account. therefore there was added reason why they should not fire on englishmen and an american. we had not made a move since the first scuffle when we rescued maga, but the turkish lieutenant had taken our measure. perhaps he had whispered to his men. perhaps they reached their own conclusions. the effect was the same in either case. "order them to throw their weapons down!" commanded kagig, kicking the german in the ribs. and his coat had been so scorched in the fierce heat that the whole of one side of it broke off, like a cinder slab. this time hans von quedlinburg obeyed. for one thing the pain of his burns was beginning to tell on him, but he could see, too, that he had lost prestige with his party. "throw down your weapons!" he ordered savagely. but he had lost more prestige than he knew, or else he had less in the beginning than be counted on. the turkish lieutenant--a man of about forty with the evidence of all the sensual appetites very plainly marked on his face--laughed and brought his men to attention. then he made a kind of half-military motion with his hand toward each of us in turn, ignoring kagig but intending to convey that we at any rate need not feel anxious. it was maga jhaere who solved the riddle of that impasse. she was hardly in condition to appear before a crowd of men, for the turks bad torn off most of her clothes, and she had not troubled to find others. she was unashamed, and as beautiful and angry as a panther. with panther suddenness she snatched the lieutenant's sword and pistol. it suited neither his national pride nor religious prejudices to be disarmed by a gipsy woman; but the turk is an amazing fatalist, and unexpectedness is his peculiar quality. "che arz kunam?" he muttered--the perennial comment of the turk who has failed, that always made kagig bare his teeth in a spasm of contempt. "passing the buck to allah," as will construed it. but disarming the mere conscript soldiers was not quite so simple, although maga managed it. they had less regard for their own skins than handicapped their officer, and yet more than his contempt for the female of any human breed. they refused point-blank to throw their rifles down, bringing a laugh and a shout of encouragement from the german. but she screwed the muzzle of her pistol into the lieutenant's ear, and bade him enforce her orders, the gipsy women applauding with a chorus of "ohs" and "ahs." the lieutenant succumbed to force majeure, and his men, who were inclined to die rather than take orders from a woman, obeyed him readily enough. they laid their rifles down carefully, without a suggestion of resentment. "so. the women of zeitoon are good!" said kagig with a curt nod of approval, and maga tossed him a smile fit for the instigation of another siege of troy. the gipsy women picked the rifles up, and maga went to hunt through the mule-packs for clothing. then kagig turned on us, motioning with his toe toward hans von quedlinburg, who continued to treat himself extravagantly from our jar of ointment. "you do not know yet the depths of this man's infamy!" he said. "the world professes to loathe turks who rob, sell and murder women and children. what of a german--a foreigner in turkey, who instigates the murder--and the robbery--and the burning--and the butchery--for his own ends, or for his bloody country's ends? this man is an instigator!" "you lie!" snarled von quedlinburg. "you dog of an armenian, you lie!" kagig ignored him. "this is the german sportman who tried once to go to zeitoon to shoot bears, as he said. but i knew he was a spy. i am not the eye of zeitoon merely because that title rolls nicely on the tongue. he has--perhaps he has it in his pocket now--a concession from the politicians in stamboul, granting him the right to exploit zeitoon--a place he has never seen! he has encouraged this present butchery in order that turkish soldiers may have excuse to penetrate to zeitoon that he covets. he wants you eenglis sportmen out of the way. you were to be sent safely back to tarsus, lest you should be witnesses of what must happen. perhaps you do not believe all this?"' he stooped down and searched the german's coat pockets with impatient fingers that tugged and jerked, tossing out handkerchief and wallet, cigars, matches that by a miracle had not caught in the heat, and considerable money to the floor. he took no notice of the money, but one of the old gipsy women crept out and annexed it, and kagig made no comment. "he has not his concession with him. i can prove nothing to-night. i said you shall stand a test. you must choose. this german and those turks are my prisoners. you have nothing to do with it. you may go back to tarsus if you wish, and tell the turks that kagig defies them! you shall have an escort as far as the nearest garrison. you shall have fifty men to take you back by dawn to-morrow." at that rustum khan turned several shades darker and glared truculently. "who art thou, armenian, to frame a test for thy betters?" he demanded, throwing a very military chest. and will promptly bridled at the rajput's attitude. "you've no call to make yourself out any better than he is!" he interrupted. and at that maga jhaere threw a kiss from across the room, but one could not tell whether her own dislike of rustum khan, or her approval of will's support of kagig was the motive. fred began humming in the ridiculous way he has when he thinks that an air of unconcern may ease a situation, and of course rustum khan mistook the nasal noises for intentional insult. he turned on the unsuspecting fred like a tiger. monty's quick wit and level voice alone saved open rupture. "what i imagine rustum khan means is this, kagig: my friends and i have engaged you as guide for a hunting trip. we propose to hold you strictly to the contract." kagig looked keenly at each of us and nodded. "in my day i have seen the hunters hunted!" he said darkly. "in my day i have seen an upstart punished!" growled the rajput, and sat down, back to the wall. "castles, and bears!" smiled monty. kagig grinned. "what if i propose a different quarry?" "propose and see!" monty was on the alert, and therefore to all outward appearance in a sort of well-fed, catlike, dallying mood. "this dog," said kagig, and he kicked the german's ribs again, "has said nothing of any other person he must rescue. bear me witness." we murmured admission of the truth of that. "yet i am the eye of zeitoon, and i know. his purpose was to leave his prisoners here and hurry on to overtake a lady--a certain miss vanderman, who he thinks is on her way to the mission at marash. he desired the credit for her rescue in order better to blind the world to his misdeeds! nevertheless, now that she can be no more use to him, observe his chivalry! he does not even mention her!" the german shrugged his shoulders, implying that to argue with such a savage was waste of breath. "what do you know of miss vanderman's where-abouts?" demanded will, and maga jhaere, at the sound of another woman's name, sat bolt upright between two other women whose bright eyes peeped out from under blankets. "i had word of her an hour before you came, effendi," kagig answered. "she and her party took fright this afternoon, and have taken to the hills. they are farther ahead than this pig dreamed"--once more he kicked von quedlinburg--"more than a day's march ahead from here." "then we'll hunt for her first," said monty, and the rest of us nodded assent. kagig grinned. "you shall find her. you shall see a castle. in the castle where you find her you shall choose again! it is agreed, effendi!" then he ordered his prisoners made fast, and the gipsies and our zeitoonli servants attended to it, he himself, however, binding the german's hands and feet. will went and put bandages on the man's burns, i standing by, to help. but we got no thanks. "ihr seit verruckt!" he sneered. "you take the side of bandits. passt mal auf--there will be punishment!" the zeitoonli were going to tie peter measel, but he set up such a howl that kagig at last took notice of him and ordered him flung, unbound, into the great wooden bin in which the horse-feed was kept for sale to wayfarers. there he lay, and slept and snored for the rest of that session, with his mouth close to a mouse-hole. then kagig ordered our zeitoonli to the roof on guard, and bade us sleep with a patriarchal air of authority. "there is no knowing when i shall decide to march," he explained. given enough fatigue, and warmth, and quietness, a man will sleep under almost any set of circumstances. the great fire blazed, and flickered, and finally died down to a bed of crimson. the prisoners were most likely all awake, for their bonds were tight, but only kagig remained seated in the midst of his mess of blankets by the hearth; and i think he slept in that position, and that i was the last to doze off. but none of us slept very long. there came a shout from the roof again, and once again a thundering on the door. the move--unanimous--that the gipsies' right hands made to clutch their weapons resembled the jump from surprise into stillness when the jungle is caught unawares. a second later when somebody tossed dry fagots on the fire the blaze betrayed no other expression on their faces than the stock-in-trade stolidity. even the women looked as if thundering on a kahveh door at night was nothing to be noticed. kagig did not move, but i could see that he was breathing faster than the normal, and he, too, clutched a weapon. von quedlinburg began shouting for help alternately in turkish and in german, and the owner of the place produced a gun--a long, bright, steel-barreled affair of the vintage of the comitajes and the first greek war. he and his sons ran to the door to barricade it. "yavash!" ordered kagig. the word means slowly, as applied to all the human processes. in that instance it meant "go slow with your noise!" and mine host so understood it. but the thundering on the great door never ceased, and the kahveh was too full of the noise of that for us to hear what the zeitoonli called down from the roof. kagig arose and stood in the middle of the room with the firelight behind him. he listened for two minutes, standing stock-still, a thin smile flickering across his lean face, and the sharp satyr-like tops of his ears seeming to prick outward in the act of intelligence. "open and let them in!" he commanded at last. "i will not!" roared the owner of the place. "i shall be tortured, and all my house!" "open, i said!" "but they will make us prisoner!" kagig made a sign with his right hand. gregor jhaere rose and whispered. one by one the remaining gipsies followed him into the shadows, and there came a noise of scuffling, and of oaths and blows. as gregor jhaere had mentioned earlier, they did obey kagig now and then. the turks came back looking crestfallen, and the fastenings creaked. then the door burst open with a blast of icy air, and there poured in nineteen armed men who blinked at the firelight helplessly. "kagig--where is kagig?" "you cursed fools, where should i be!" "kagig? is it truly you?" their eyes were still blinded by the blaze. "shut that door again, and bolt it! aye--kagig, kagig, is it you!" "it is kagig! behold him! look!" they clustered close to see, smelling infernally of sweaty garments and of the mud from unholy lurking places. "kagig it is! and has all happened as i, kagig, warned you it would happen?" "aye. all. more. worse!" "had you acted beforehand in the manner i advised?" "no, kagig. we put it off. we talked, and disagreed. and then it was too late to agree. they were cutting throats while we still argued. when we ran into the street to take the offensive they were already shooting from the roofs!" "hah!" that bitter dry expletive, coughed out between set teeth, could not be named a laugh. "kagig, listen!" "aye! now it is 'kagig, listen!' but a little while ago it was i who was sayin 'listen!' i walked myself lame, and talked myself hoarse. who listened to me? why should i listen to you?" "but, kagig, my wife is gone!" "hah!" "my daughter, kagig!" "hah!" a third man thrust himself forward and thumped the butt of a long rifle on the floor. -"they took my wife and two daughters before my very eyes, kagig! it is no time for talking now--you have talked already too much, kagi,--now prove yourself a man of deeds! with these eyes i saw them dragged by the hair down street! oh, would god that i had put my eyes out first, then had i never seen it! kagig--" "aye--kagig!" "you shall not sneer at me! i shot one turk, and ten more pounced on them. they screamed to me. they called to me to rescue. what could i do? i shot, and i shot until the rifle barrel burned my fingers. then those cursed turks set the house on fire behind me, and my companions dragged me away to come and find others to unite with us and make a stand! we found no others! kagig--i tell you--those bloody turks are auctioning our wives and daughters in the village church! it is time to act!" "hah! who was it urged you in season and out of season--day and night--month in, month out--to come to zeitoon and help me fortify the place? who urged you to send your women there long ago?" "but kagig, you do not appreciate. to you it is nothing not to have women near you. we have mothers, sisters, wives--" "nothing to me, is it? these eyes have seen my mother, ravished by a kurd in a turkish uniform!" "well, that only proves you are one with us after all! that only proves--" "one with you! why did you not act, then, when i risked life and limb a thousand times to urge you?" "we could not, kagig. that would have precipitated--" he interrupted the man with an oath like the aggregate of bitterness. "precipitated? did waiting for the massacre like chickens waiting for the ax delay the massacres a day? but now it is 'come and lead us, kagig!' how many of you are there left to lead?" "who knows? we are nineteen--" "hah! and i am to run with nineteen men to the rape of tarsus and adana?" "our people will rally to you, kagig!" "they shall." "come, then!" "they shall rally at zeitoon!" "oh, kagig--how shall they reich zeitoon? the cursed turks have ordered out the soldiers and are sending regiments--" "i warned they would!" "the cavalry are hunting down fugitives along the roads!" "as i foretold a hundred times!" "they were sent to protect armenians--" "that is always the excuse!" "and they kill--kill--kill! a dozen of them hunted me for two miles, until i hid in a watercourse! look at us! look at our clothes! we are wet to the skin--tired--starving! kagig, be a man!" he went back to his mess of blankets and sat down on it, too bitter at heart for words. they reproached him in chorus, coming nearer to the fire to let the fierce heat draw the stink out of their clothes. "aye, kagig, you must not forget your race. you must not forget the past, kagig. once armenia was great, remember that! you must not only talk to us, you must act at last! we summon you to be our leader, kagig, son of kagig of zeitoon!" he stared back at them with burning eyes--raised both bands to beat his temples--and then suddenly turned the palms of his hands toward the roof in a gesture of utter misery. "oh, my people!" that glimpse he betrayed of his agony was but a moment long. the fingers closed suddenly, and the palms that had risen in helplessness descended to his knees clenched fists, heavy with the weight of purpose. "what have you done with the ammunition?" he demanded. "we had it in the manure under john zimisces' cattle." "i know that. where is it now?" "the turks discovered it at dawn to-day. some one had told. they burned zimisces and his wife and sons alive in the straw!" "you fools! they knew where the stuff was a week ago! a month ago i warned you to send it to zeitoon, but somebody told you i was treacherous, and you fools listened! how much ammunition have you left now?" "just what we have with us. i have a dozen rounds." "i ten." "i nine." "i thirty-three." each man had a handful, or two handfuls at the most. kagig observed their contributions to the common fund with scorn too deep for expression. it was as if the very springs of speech were frozen. "we summon you to lead us, kagig!" words came to him again. "you summon me to lead? i will! from now i lead! by the god who gave my fathers bread among the mountains, i will, moreover, be obeyed! either my word is law--" "kagig, it is law!" "or back you shall go to where the turks are wearing white, and the gutters bubble red, and the beams are black against the sky! you shall obey me in future on the instant that i speak, or run back to the turks for mercy from my hand! i have listened to enough talk!" "spoken like a man!" said monty, and stood up. we all stood up; even rustum khan, who did not pretend to like him, saluted the old warrior who could announce his purpose so magnificently. maga jhaere stood up, and sought will's eyes from across the room. fred, almost too sleepy to know what he was doing (for the tail end of the fever is a yearning for early bed) undid the catch of his beloved instrument, and made the rafters ring. in a minute we four were singing "for he's a jolly good fellow," and kagig stood up, looking like robinson crusoe in his goat-skins, to acknowledge the compliment. the noise awoke peter measel, and when we had finished making fools of ourselves i walked over to discover what he was saying. he was praying aloud--nasally--through the mouse-hole--for us, not himself. i looked at my watch. it was two hours past midnight. "you fellows," i said, "it's sunday. the martyred biped has just waked up and remembered it. he is praying that we may be forgiven for polluting the sabbath stillness with immoral tunes!" my words had a strange effect. monty, and fred, and will laughed. rustum khan laughed savagely. but all the armenians, including kagig, knelt promptly on the floor and prayed, the gipsies looking on in mild amusement tempered by discretion. and out of the mouse-hole in the horse-feed bin came peter measel's sonorous, overriding periods: "and, o lord, let them not be smitten by thine anger. let them not be cut down in thy wrath! let them not be cast into hell! give them another chance, o lord! let the ten commandments be written on their hearts in letters of fire, but let not their souls be damned for ever more! if they did not know it was the sabbath day, o lord, forgive them! amen!" it was a most amazing night. chapter seven "we hold you to your word!" libera nos, domine! a priest, a statesman, and a soldier stood hand in each other's hand, by ruin faced, consulting to find succor if they could, till soon the lesser ones themselves abased, their sword and parchment on an altar laid in deep humility the while the priest he prayed. he prayed first for his church, that it might be upholden and acknowledged and revered, and in its opal twilight men might see salvation if in truth enough they feared, and if enough acknowledgment they gave to ritual, and rosary, and creed that save. then prayed he for the state, that it should wean well-tutored counselors to do their part full profit and prosperity to glean with dignity, although with contrite heart and wisdom that tradition wisdom ranks, that church and state might stand and men give thanks. last prayed he for the soldier--longest, too, that all the honor and the aims of war subserving him might carry wrath and rue unto repentance, and in trembling awe the enemy at length should fault confess and yield, to crave a peace of righteousness. behind them stood a patriot unbowed, not arrogant in gilt or goodly cloth, nor mincing meek, and yet not poorly proud; with eyes afire that glittered not with wrath; aware of evil hours, and undismayed because he loved too well. he also prayed. "oh, thou, who gavest, may i also give, withholding not--accepting no reward; for i die gladly if the least ones live. twice righteous and two-edged be the sword, 'neath freedom's banner drawn to prove thy word and smite me if i'm false!" his prayer was heard. the remainder of that night was nightmare pure and simple--mules and horses squealing in instinctive fear of action they felt impending--gipsies and armenians dragging packs out on the floor, to repack everything a dozen times for some utterly godless reason--rustum khan seizing each fugitive armenian in turn to question him, alternating fierce threats with persuasion--kagig striding up and down with hands behind him and his scraggly black beard pressed down on his chest--and the great fire blazing with reports like cannon shots as one of the turk's sons piled on fuel and the resinous wet wood caught. the turk and his other six sons ran away and hid themselves as a precaution against our taking vengeance on them. with situations reversed a turk would have taken unbelievable toll in blood and agony from any armenian he could find, and they reasoned we were probably no better than themselves. the marvel was that they left one son to wait on us, and take the money for room and horse-feed. "remember!" warned monty, as we four sidled close together with our backs against the wall. "until we're in actual personal danger this trouble is the affair of kagig and his men!" "i get you. if we horn in before we have to we'll do more harm than good. give the turks an excuse to call us outlaws and shoot instead of rescue us. sure. but what about miss vanderman?" said will. "i foresee she's doomed!" fred stared straight in front of him. "it looks as if we'll lose our little willy too! one woman at a time, especially when the lady totes a mother-o'-pearl revolver and about a dozen knives! if you come out of this alive, bill, you'll be wiser!" "fond of bull, aren't you! you'd jest on an ant-heap." "there's nothing to discuss," said i. "if there's a lady in danger somewhere ahead, we all know what we're going to do about it." monty nodded. "if we can find her and get word to the consul, that 'ud be one more lever for him to pull on." "d'you suppose they'd dare molest an englishwoman?" i asked, with the sudden goose-flesh rising all over me. "she's american," said will between purposely set lips. but i did not see that that qualified the unpleasantness by much. one of the armenians, whom rustum khan had finished questioning, went and stood in kagig's way, intercepting his everlasting sentry-go. "what is it, eflaton?" "my wife, kagig!" "ah! i remember your wife. she fed me often." "you must come with me and find her, kagig--my wife and two daughters, who fed you often!" "the daughters were pretty," said kagig. "so was the wife. a young woman yet. a brave, good woman. always she agreed with me, i remember. often i heard her urge you men to follow me to zeitoon and help to fortify the place!" "will you leave a good woman in the hands of turks, kagig? come--come to the rescue!" "it is too bad," said kagig simply. "such women suffer more terribly than the hags who merely die by the sword. ten times by the count--during ten succeeding massacres i have seen the turks sell armenian wives and daughters at auction. i am sorry, eflaton." "my god!" groaned will. "how long are we four loafers going to sit here and leave a white woman in danger on the road ahead?" he got up and began folding his blankets. the armenian whom kagig had called eflaton threw himself to the floor and shrieked in agony of misery. rustum khan stepped over him and came and stood in front of monty. "these men are fools," he said. "they know exactly what the turks will do. they have all seen massacres before. yet not one of them was ready when the hour set for this one came. they say--and they say the truth, that the turks will murder all europeans they catch outside the mission stations, lest there be true witnesses afterward whom the world will believe." "but a woman--scarcely a white woman?" this from will, with the tips of his ears red and the rest of his face a deathly white. "depending on the woman," answered rustum khan. "old--unpleasing--" he made an upward gesture with his thumb, and a noise between his teeth suggestive of a severed wind-pipe. "if she were good-looking--i have heard say they pay high prices in the interior, say at kaisarieh or mosul. once in a harem, who would ever know? the road ahead is worse than dangerous. whoever wishes to save his life would do best to turn back now and try to ride through to tarsus." "try it, then, if you're afraid!" sneered will, and for a moment i thought the rajput would draw steel. "i know what this lord sahib and i will do," he said, darkening three or four shades under his black beard. "it was for men bewitched by gipsy-women that i feared!" will was standing. nothing but monty's voice prevented blows. he rapped out a string of sudden rhetoric in the rajput's own guttural tongue, and rustum khan drew back four paces. "send him back, colonel sahib!" he urged. "send that one back! he and umm kulsum will be the death of us!" fred went off into a peal of laughter that did nothing to calm the rajput's ruffled temper. "who was umm kulsum?" i asked him, divining the cause. "the most immoral hag in asian legend! the aggregated essence of all female evil personified in one procuress!" "say, i'll have to teach that gink--" monty got up and stood between them, but it was a new alarm that prevented blows. a fist-blow in the rajput's face would have meant a blood-feud that nothing less than a man's life could settle, and monty looked worried. there came a new thundering on the door that brought everybody to his feet as if murder were the least of the charges against us. only kagig appeared at ease and unconcerned. "open to them!" he shouted, and resumed his pacing to and fro. our armenian servants ran to the door, and in a minute returned to say that fifty mounted men from zeitoon were drawn up outside. kagig gave a curt laugh and strode across to us. "i said you eenglis sportmen should see good sport." monty nodded, with a hand held out behind him to warn us to keep still. "i said you shall shoot many pigs!" "lead on, then." "turks are pigs!" monty did not answer. to have disagreed would have been like flapping a red cloth at a tiger. yet to have agreed with him at once might have made him jump to false conclusions. the consul's last words to us had been insistent on the unwisdom of posing as anything but hunters, legitimately entitled to protection from the turkish government. "i would like you gentlemen for allies!" "you are our servant at present." "would you think of holding me to that?" demanded kagig with a gesture of extreme irritation. it is only the west that can joke at itself in the face of crisis. "if not to that," said monty blandly, "then what agreements do you keep?" kagig saw the point. he drew a deep impatient breath and drove it out again hissing through his teeth. then he took grim hold of himself. "effendi," he said, addressing himself to monty, but including all of us with eyes that seemed to search our hearts, "you are a lord, a friend of the king of eengland. if i were less than a man of my word i could make you prisoner and oblige your friend the king of eengland to squeeze these cursed turks!" rustum khan heard what he said, and made noise enough drawing his saber to be heard outside the kahveh, but kagig did not turn his head. three gipsies attended to rustum khan, slipping between him and their master, and our four zeitoonli servants cautiously approached the rajput from behind. "peace!" ordered monty. "continue, kagig." kagig held both hands toward monty, palms upward, as if he were offering the keys of hell and heaven. "you are sportmen, all of you. shall i keep my word to you? or shall i serve my nation in its agony?" monty glanced swiftly at us, but we made no sign. will actually looked away. it was a rule we four had to leave the playing of a hand to whichever member of the partnership was first engaged; and we never regretted it, although it often called for faith in one another to the thirty-third degree. the next hand might fall to any other of us, but for the present it was monty's play. "we hold you to your word!" said monty. kagig gasped. "but my people!" "keep your word to them too! surely you haven't promised them to make us prisoner?" "but if i am your servant--if i must obey you for two piasters a day, how shall i serve my nation?" "wait and see!" suggested monty blandly. kagig bowed stiffly, from the neck. "it would surprise you, effendi," he said grimly, "to know how many long years i have waited, in order that i may see what other men will do!" monty never answered that remark. there came a yell of "fire!" and in less than ten seconds flames began to burst through the door that shut off the turks' private quarters, and to lick and roar among the roof beams. the animals at the other end of the room went crazy, and there was instant panic, the armenians outside trying to get in to help, and fighting with the men and animals and women and children who choked the way. then the hay in the upper story caught alight, and the heat below became intolerable. monty saw and instantly pounced on an ax and two crow-bars in the corner. "through the wall!" he ordered. fred, will and i did that work, he and kagig looking on. it was much easier than at first seemed likely. most of the stones were stuck with mud, not plaster, and when the first three or four were out the rest came easily. in almost no time we had a great gap ready, and the extra draft we made increased the holocaust, but seemed to lift the heat higher. then some of the zeitoonli saw the gap, and began to hurry blindfolded horses through it and in a very little while the place seemed empty. i saw the turkish owner and several of his sons looking on in fatalistic calm at about the outside edge of the ring of light, and it occurred to me to ask a question. "hasn't that turk a harem?" i asked. in another second we four were hurrying around the building, and will and i burst in the door at the rear with our crow-bars. monty and fred rushed past us, and before i could get the smoke out of my eyes and throat they were hurrying out again with two old women in their arms--the women screaming, and they laughing and coughing so that they could hardly run. then will made my blood run cold with a new alarm. "the biped!" he shouted. "the measel in the corn-bin!" they dropped the old ladies, and all four of us raced back to our hole in the wall--plunged into the hell-hot building, pulled the lid off the corn-bin (it was fastened like an ancient egyptian coffin-lid with several stout wooden pegs), dragged measel out, and frog-marched him, kicking and yelling, to the open, where fred collapsed. "measel," said will, stooping to feel fred's heart, "if you're the cause of my friend oakes' death, lord pity you!" fred sat up, not that he wished to save the "biped" any anguish, but the wise man vomits comfortably when he can, the necessity being bad enough without additional torment. "see!" said a voice out of darkness. "he empties himself! that is well. it is only the end of the fever. now he will be a man again. but the sahibs should have left that writer of characters in the corn-bin, where he could have shared the fate of his master without troubling us again!" rustum khan strode into the light, with half his fierce beard burned away from having been the last to leave by the front entrance, and a decided limp from having been kicked by a frantic mule. "what have you done with the german?" demanded monty. "i, sahib? nothing. in truth nothing. it was the seven sons of the turk--abetted i should say by gipsies. it was the german who set the place alight. the girl, maga jhaere they call her, saw him do it. she watched like a cat, the fool, hoping to amuse herself, while he burned off his ropes with a brand that fell his way out of the fire. when another brand jumped half across the room he set the place alight with it, tossing it over the party wall. he was an able rascal, sahib." "was?" demanded monty. "aye, sahib, was! in another second he released the turkish lieutenant and shouted in his ear to escape and say that armenians burned this kahveh! gregor jhaere slew the turk, however. and maga followed the german into the open, where she denounced him to some of the zeitoonli who recently arrived. they took him and threw him back into the fire--where he remained. i begin to like these zeitoonli. i even like the gipsies more than formerly. they are men of some discernment, and of action!" "man of blood!" growled monty. "what of the turkish owner and his seven sons?" "they shall burn, too, if the sahib say so!" "if they burn, so shall you! where is kagig?" "seeing that the sahibs' horses are packed and saddled. i came to find the sahibs. according to kagig it is time to go, before turks come to take vengeance for a burned road-house. they will surely say armenians burned it, whether or not there is a german to support their accusation!" then we heard kagig's high-pitched "haide--chabuk!" and picked up peter measel, and ran around the building to where the horses were already saddled, and squealing in fear of the flames. we left the turk, and his wives and seven sons, to tell what tale they pleased. chapter eight "i go with that man!" lo here! lo there! ye shall not judge men by the drinks they take, nor by unthinking oath, nor what they wear, for look! the mitered liars protest make and drinking know they lie, and knowing swear. no oath is round without the rounded fruit, nor pompous promise hides the ultimate. in scarlet as in overalls and tailored suit to-morrows truemen and the traitors wait untold by trick of blazonry or voice. but harvest ripens and there come the reaping days when each shall choose one path to bide the choice, and ye shall know men when they face dividing ways. to those who have never ridden knee to knee with outlaws full pelt into unknown darkness, with a burning house behind, and a whole horizon lit with the rolling glow of murdered villages, let it be written that the sensation of so doing is creepy, most amazing wild, and not without unrighteous pleasure. there was a fierce joy that burned without consuming, and a consciousness of having crossed a rubicon. points of view are left behind in a moment, although the proof may not be apparent for days or weeks, and i reckon our mental change from being merely hunters of an ancient castle and big game-tourists-trippers, from that hour. as we galloped behind kagig the mesmerism of respect for custom blew away in the wind. we became at heart outlaws as we rode--and one of us a privy councilor of england! the women, maga included, were on in front. the night around and behind us was full of the thunder of fleeing cattle, for the zeitoonli had looted the owner of the kahveh's cows and oxen along with their own beasts and were driving them helter-skelter. the crackling flames behind us were a beacon, whistling white in the early wind, that we did well to hurry from. it was monty who called kagig's attention to the idiocy of tiring out the cattle before dawn, and then kagig rode like an arrow until he could make the gipsies hear him. one long keening shout that penetrated through the drum of hoofs brought them to a walk, but they kept maga in front with them, screened from our view until morning by a close line of mounted women and a group of men. the turkish prisoners were all behind among the fifty armenians from zeitoon, looking very comfortless trussed up on the mounts that nobody else had coveted, with hands made fast behind their backs. a little before dawn, when the saw-tooth tips of the mountain range on our left were first touched with opal and gold, we turned off the araba track along which we had so far come and entered a ravine leading toward marash. fred was asleep on horseback, supported between will and me and snoring like a throttled dog. the smoke of the gutted kahveh had dwindled to a wisp in the distance behind us, and there was no sight or sound of pursuit. no wheeled vehicle that ever man made could have passed up this new track. it was difficult for ridden horses, and our loaded beasts had to be given time. we seemed to be entering by a fissure into the womb of the savage hills that tossed themselves in ever-increasing grandeur up toward the mist-draped heights of kara dagh. oftener than not our track was obviously watercourse, although now and then we breasted higher levels from which we could see, through gaps between hill and forest, backward along the way we had come. there was smoke from the direction of adana that smudged a whole sky-line, and between that and the sea about a dozen sooty columns mushroomed against the clouds. there was not a mile of the way we came that did not hold a hundred hiding-places fit for ambuscade, but our party was too numerous and well-armed to need worry on that account. monty and kagig drew ahead, quite a little way behind the gipsies still, but far in front of us, who had to keep fred upright on his horse. "my particular need is breakfast," said i. "and will's is the woman!" said fred, admitting himself awake at last. will had been straining in the stirrups on the top of every rise his horse negotiated ever since the sun rose. it certainly was a mystery why maga should have been spirited away, after the freedom permitted her the day before. "rustum khan has probably made off with her, or cut her head off!" remarked fred by way of offering comfort, yawning with the conscious luxury of having slept. "i don't see rustum khan. let's hope it's true! that 'ud give the american lady a better chance for her life in case we should overtake her!" will and fred have always chosen the most awkward places and the least excuse for horseplay, and the sleep seemed to have expelled the last of the fever from fred's bones, so that he felt like a schoolboy on holiday. will grabbed him around the neck and they wrestled, to their horses' infinite disgust, panting and straining mightily in the effort to unseat each other. it was natural that will should have the best of it, he being about fifteen years younger as well as unweakened by malaria. the men of zeitoon behind us checked to watch fred rolled out of his saddle, and roared with the delight of fighting men the wide world over to see the older campaigner suddenly recover his balance and turn the tables on the younger by a trick. and at that very second, as will landed feet first on the gravel panting for breath, maga jhaere arrived full gallop from the rear, managing her ugly gray stallion with consummate ease. her black hair streamed out in the wind, and what with the dew on it and the slanting sun-rays she seemed to be wearing all the gorgeous jewels out of ali baba's cave. she was the loveliest thing to look at--unaffected, unexpected, and as untamed as the dawn, with parted lips as red as the branch of budding leaves with which she beat her horse. but the smile turned to a frown of sudden passion as she saw will land on the ground and fred get ready for reprisals. she screamed defiance--burst through the ranks of the nearest zeitoonli--set her stallion straight at us--burst between fred and me--beat fred savagely across the face with her sap-softened branch--and wheeled on her beast's haunches to make much of will. he laughed at her, and tried to take the whip away. seeing he was neither hurt nor indignant, she laughed at fred, spat at him, and whipped her stallion forward in pursuit of kagig, breaking between him and monty to pour news in his ear. "a curse on rustum khan!" laughed fred, spitting out red buds. "he didn't do his duty!" he had hardly said that when the rajput came spurring and thundering along from the rear. he seemed in no hurry to follow farther, but drew rein between us and saluted with the semi-military gesture with which he favored all who, unlike monty, had not been colonels of indian regiments. "i tracked umm kulsum through the dark!" he announced, rubbing the burned nodules out of his singed beard and then patting his mare's neck. "i saw her ride away alone an hour before you reached that fork in the road and turned up this watercourse. 'by the teeth of god,' said i, 'when a good-looking woman leaves a party of men to canter alone in the dark, there is treason!' and i followed." i offered the rajput my cigarette case, and to my surprise he accepted one, although not without visible compunction. as a muhammadan by creed he was in theory without caste and not to be defiled by european touch, but the practises of most folk fall behind their professions. a hundred yards ahead of us maga was talking and gesticulating furiously, evidently railing at kagig's wooden-headedness or unbelief. monty sat listening, saying nothing. "what did you see, rustum khan?" asked fred. "at first very little. my eyes are good, but that gipsy-woman's are better, and i was kept busy following her; for i could not keep close, or she might have heard. the noise of her own clumsy stallion prevented her from hearing the lighter footfalls of my mare, and by that i made sure she was not expecting to meet an enemy. 'she rides to betray us to her friends!' said i, and i kept yet farther behind her, on the alert against ambush." "well?" "she rode until dawn, i following. then, when the light was scarcely born as yet, she suddenly drew rein at an open place where the track she had been following emerged out of dense bushes, and dismounted. from behind the bushes i watched, and presently i, too, dismounted to hold my mare's nostrils and prevent her from whinnying. that woman, maga jhaere, knelt, and pawed about the ground like a dog that hunts a buried bone!" in front of us maga was still arguing. suddenly kagig turned on her and asked her three swift questions, bitten off like the snap of a closing snuff-box lid. whether she answered or not i could not see, but monty was smiling. "i suspect she was making signals!" growled rustum khan. "to whom--about what i do not know. after a little while she mounted and rode on, choosing unerringly a new track through the bushes. i went to where she had been, and examined the ground where she had made her signals. as i say, my eyes are good, but hers are better. i could see nothing but the hoof-marks of her clumsy gray brute of a stallion, and in one place the depressions on soft earth where she had knelt to paw the ground!" monty was beginning to talk now. i could see him smiling at kagig over maga's head, and the girl was growing angry. rustum khan was watching them as closely as we were, pausing between sentences. "it may be she buried something there, but if so i did not find it. i could not stay long, for when she rode away she went like wind, and i needed to follow at top speed or else be lost. so i let my mare feel the spurs a time or two, and so it happened that i gained on the woman; and i suppose she heard me. whether or no, she waited in ambush, and sprang out at me as i passed so suddenly that i know not what god of fools and drunkards preserved her from being cut down! not many have ridden out at me from ambush and lived to tell of it! but i saw who she was in time, and sheathed my steel again, and cursed her for the gipsy that she half is. the other half is spawn of eblis!" a hundred yards ahead of us kagig had reached a decision, but it seemed to be not too late yet in maga's judgment to try to convert him. she was speaking vehemently, passionately, throwing down her reins to expostulate with both hands. "kagig isn't the man you'd think a young woman would choose to be familiar with," fred said quietly to me, and i wondered what he was driving at. he is always observant behind that superficial air of mockery he chooses to assume, but what he had noticed to set him thinking i could not guess. rustum khan threw away the cigarette i had given him, and went on with his tale. "that woman has no virtue." "how do you know?" demanded will. "she laughed when i cursed her! then she asked me what i had seen." "what did you say?" "to test her i said i had seen her lover, and would know him again by his smell in the dark!" "what did she say to that?' "she laughed again. i tell you the woman has no shame! then she said if i would tell that tale to kagig as soon as i see him she would reward me with leave to live for one whole week and an extra hour in which to pray to the devil----meaning, i suppose, that she intends to kill me otherwise. then she wheeled her stallion--the brute was trying to tear out the muscles of my thigh all that time--and rode away--and i followed--and here i am!" "how much truth is there in your assertion that you saw her lover?" will demanded. "none. i but said it to test her." "why in thunder should she want it believed?" "god knows, who made gipsies!" at that moment the advance-guard rode into an open meadow, crossed by a shallow, singing stream at which kagig ordered a halt to water horses. so we closed up with him, and he repeated to us what he had evidently said before to monty. "maga says--i let her go scouting--she says she met a man who told her that miss gloria vanderman and a party of seven were attacked on the road, but escaped, and now have doubled on their tracks so that they are far on their return to tarsus." rustum khan met monty's eyes, and his lips moved silently. "what do you know, sirdar?" monty asked him. "the woman lies!" maga was glaring at rustum khan as a leopardess eyes an enemy. as he spoke she made a significant gesture with a finger across her throat, which the rajput, if he saw, ignored. "to what extent?" demanded kagig calmly. "wholly! i followed her. she met no man, although she pawed the ground at a place where eight ridden horses had crossed soft ground a day ago." kagig nodded, recognizing truth--a rather rare gift. if the rajput's guess was wrong and maga did know shame, at any rate she did not choose that moment to betray it. "oh, very well!" she sneered. "there were eight horses. they were galloping. the track was nine hours old." kagig nodded without any symptom of annoyance or reproach. "there is an ancient castle in the hills up yonder," he said, "in which there may be many armenians hiding." he took it for granted we would go and find out, and maga recognized the drift. "very well," she said. "let that one go, and that one," pointing at fred and me. "you'll appreciate, of course," said monty, "that it's out of the question for us to go forward until we know where that lady is." kagig bowed gravely. "i am needed at zeitoon," he answered. then maga broke in shrilly, pointing at will: "take that one for hostage!" she advised. "bring him along to zeitoon. then the rest will follow!" kagig looked gravely at her. "i shall take this one," he answered, laying a respectful hand on monty's sleeve. "effendi, you are an eenglis lord. be your life and comfort on my head, but i need a hostage for my nation's sake. you others--i admit the urgency--shall hunt the missionary lady. if i have this one"--again he touched monty--"i know well you will come seeking him! you, effendi, you understand my--necessity?" monty nodded, smiling gravely. there was a fire at the back of monty's eyes and something in his bearing i had never seen before. "then i go with my colonel sahib!" announced rustum khan. "that gipsy woman will kill him otherwise!" "better help hunt for the lady, rustum khan." "nay, colonel sahib bahadur--thy blood on my head! i go with thee--into hell and out beyond if need be!" "you fellows agreeable?" asked monty. "there is no disputing kagig's decision. we're at his mercy." "we've got to find miss vanderman!" said will. "you are not at my mercy, effendi," grumbled kagig. the man was obviously distressed. "you are rather at my discretion. i am responsible. for my nation's sake and for my honor i dare not lose you. who has not seen how a cow will follow the calf in a wagon? so in your case, if i hold the one--the chief one--the noble one--the lord--the cousin of the eenglis king" (monty's rank was mounting like mercury in a tube as kagig warmed to the argument)--"you others will certainly hunt him up-hill and down-dale. thus will my honor and my country's cause both profit!" monty smiled benignantly. "it's all one, kagig. why labor the point? i'm going with you. rustum khan prefers to come with me." kagig looked askance at rustum khan, but made no comment. "one hostage is enough for your purpose. let me talk with my friends a minute." kagig nodded, and we four drew aside. "now," demanded fred, who knew the signs, "what special quixotry do you mean springing?" "shut up, fred. there's no need for you fellows to follow kagig another yard. he'll be quite satisfied if he has me in keeping. that will serve all practical purposes. what you three must do is find miss vanderman if you can, and take her back to tarsus. there you can help the consul bring pressure to bear on the authorities." "rot!" retorted fred. "didums, you're drunk. where did you get the drink?" monty smiled, for he held a card that could out-trump our best one, and he knew it. in fact he led it straight away. "d'you mean to say you'd consider it decent to find that young woman in the mountains and drag her to zeitoon at kagig's tail, when tarsus is not more than three days' ride away at most? you know the turks wouldn't dare touch you on the road to the coast." "for that matter," said fred, "the turks 'ud hardly dare touch miss vanderman herself." "then leave her in the hills!" grinned monty. "kagig tells me that the kurds are riding down in hundreds from kaisarich way. he says they'll arrive too late to loot the cities, but they're experts at hunting along the mountain range. why not leave the lady to the tender ministrations of the kurds!" "one 'ud think you and kagig knew of buried treasure! or has he promised to make you duke of zeitoon?" asked will. "tisn't right, monty. you've no call to force our band in this way." "name a better way," said monty. none of us could. the proposal was perfectly logical. three of us, even supposing kagig should care to lend us some of his zeitoonli horsemen, would be all too few for the rescue work. certainly we could not leave a lady unprotected in these hills, with the threat of plundering kurds overhanging. if we found her we could hardly carry her off up-country if there were any safer course. "time--time is swift!" said kagig, pulling out a watch like a big brass turnip and shaking it, presumably to encourage the mechanism. "the fact is," said monty, drawing us farther aside, for rustum khan was growing restive and inquisitive, "i've not much faith in kagig's prospects at zeitoon. he has talked to me all along the road, and i don't believe he bases much reliance on his men. he counts more on holding me as hostage and so obliging the turkish government to call off its murderers. if you men can rescue that lady in the hills and return to tarsus you can serve kagig best and give me my best chance too. hurry back and help the consul raise cain!" that closed the arguments, because maga jhaere slipped past kagig and approached us with the obvious intention of listening. she had discovered a knowledge of english scarcely perfect but astonishingly comprehensive, which she had chosen to keep to herself when we first met--a regular gipsy trick. fred threw down the gauntlet to her, uncovering depths of distrust that we others had never suspected under his air of being amused. "now, miss!" he said, striding up to her. "let us understand each other! this is my friend." he pointed to monty. "if harm comes to him that you could have prevented, you shall pay!" maga tossed back her loose coils of hair and laughed. "never fear, sahib!" rustum khan called out. "if ought should happen to my colonel sahib that umm kulsum shall be first to die. the women shall tell of her death for a generation, to frighten naughty children!" "you hear that?" demanded fred. maga laughed again, and swore in some outlandish tongue. "i hear! and you hear this, you old--" she called fred by a name that would make the butchers wince in the abattoirs at liverpool. "if anything happens to that man,--she pointed to will, and her eyes blazed with lawless pleasure in his evident discomfort--"i myself--me--this woman--i alone will keel--keel--keel--torture first and afterwards keel your friend 'at you call monty! i am maga! you have heard me say what i will do! as for that rustum khan--you shall never see him no more ever!" kagig pulled out the enormous watch again. he seemed oblivious of maga's threats--not even aware that she had spoken, although she was hissing through impudent dazzling teeth within three yards of him. "the time," he said, "has fleed--has fled--has flown. now we must go, effendi!" "i go with that man!" announced maga, pointing at will, but obviously well aware that nothing of the kind would be permitted. "maga, come!" said kagig, and got on his horse. "you gentlemen may take with you each one zeitoonli servant. no, no more. no, the ammunition in your pockets must suffice. yes, i know the remainder is yours; come then to zeitoon and get it! haide--haide! mount! ride! haide, zeitoonli! to zeitoon! chabuk!" chapter nine "and you left your friend to help me?" with new tongues oh, bard of avon, thou whose measured muse most sweetly sings elizabethan views to shame ungentle smiths of journalese with thy sublimest verse, what words are these that shine amid the lines like jewels set but ere thine hour no bard had chosen yet? didst thou in masterly disdain of too much law not only limn the truths no others saw but also, lord not slave of written word, lend ear to what no other poet heard and, liberal minded on the mermaid bench with bow for blade and chaff for serving wench await from overseas slang-slinging jack who brought the new vocabulary back? so we three stood still in a row disconsolate, with three ragged men of zeitoon holding our horses and theirs, and watched monty ride away in the midst of kagig's motley command, he not turning to wave back to us because he did not like the parting any better than we did, although he had pretended to be all in favor of it. kagig had left us one mule for our luggage, and the beast was unlikely to be overburdened, for at the last minute he had turned surly, and as he sat like a general of division to watch his patch-and-string command go by he showed how eye of zeitoon only failed him for a title in giving his other eye--the one he kept on us--too little credit. it was a good-looking crowd of irregulars that he reviewed, and every bearded, goat-skin clad veteran in it had a word to say to him, and he an answer--sometimes a sermon by way of answer. but he saw every item that we removed from the common packs, and sternly reproved us when we tried to exceed what he considered reasonable. at that he based our probable requirements on what would have been surfeit of encumbrance for himself. "empty your pockets, effendim!" he ordered at last. "six cartridges each for rifle, and six each for pistol must be all. your cartridges i know they are. but my people are in extremity!" when he rode away at last, sitting his horse in the fashion of a don cossack and shepherding maga in front of him because she kept checking her gray stallion for another look at will, he left us no alternative than to take to the mountains swiftly unless we cared to starve. we watched monty's back disappear over a rise, with rustum khan close behind, and then fred signed to one of the three zeitoonli to lead on. all three of the men kagig had left with us were surly, mainly, no doubt, because they disliked separation from their friends. but there was fear, too, expressed in their manner of riding close together, and in the fidgety way in which they watched the smoke of burning armenian villages that smudged the sky to our left. "if they try to bolt after kagig and leave us in the lurch i'm going to waste exactly one cartridge as a warning," fred announced. "after that--!" "probably kagig 'ud skin them if they turned up without us," remarked will. there was something in that theory, for we learned later what kagig's ferocity could be when driven hard enough. but from first to last those men of zeitoon never showed a symptom of treachery, although their resentment at having to turn their backs toward home appeared to deepen hourly. with strange unreason they made no haste, whereas we were in a frenzy of impatience; and when fred sought to improve their temper by singing the songs that had hitherto acted like charms on kagig's whole command, they turned in their saddles and cursed him for calling attention to us. "inch goozek?" demanded one of them (what would you like?), and with a gesture that made the blood run cold he suggested the choice between hanging and disembowelment. will solved the speed problem by striving to push past them along the narrow track; and they were so determined to keep in front of us that within half an hour from the start our horses were sweating freely. then we began to climb, dismounting presently to lead our horses, and all notions of speed went the way of other vanity. several times looking back toward our right hand we caught sight of kagig's string threading its way over a rise, or passing like a line of ants under the brow of a gravel bank. but they were too far away to discern which of the moving specks might be monty, although kagig was now and then unmistakable, his air of authority growing on him and distinguishing him as long as he kept in sight. we saw nothing of the footprints in soft earth that maga had read so offhandedly. in fact we took another way, less cluttered up with roots and bushes, that led not straight, but persistently toward an up-towering crag like an eye-tooth. below it was thick forest, shaped like a shovel beard, and the crag stuck above the beard like an old man's last tooth. but mountains have a discouraging way of folding and refolding so that the air-line from point to point bears no relation to the length of the trail. the last kites were drooping lazily toward their perches for the night when we drew near the edge of the forest at last, and were suddenly brought to a halt by a challenge from overhead. we could see nobody. only a hoarse voice warned us that it was death to advance another yard, and our tired animals needed no persuasion to stand still. there, under a protruding lock as it were of the beard, we waited in shadow while an invisible somebody, whose rifle scraped rather noisily against a branch, eyed every inch of us at his leisure. "who are you?" he demanded at last in armenian, and one of our three men enlightened him in long-drawn detail. the explanation did not satisfy. we were told to remain exactly where we were until somebody else was fetched. after twenty minutes, when it was already pitch-dark, we heard the breaking of twigs, and low voices as three or four men descended together among the trees. then we were examined again from close quarters in the dark, and there are few less agreeable sensations. the goose-flesh rises and the clammy cold sweat takes all the comfort out of waning courage. but somebody among the shadowy tree-trunks at last seemed to think he recognized familiar attitudes, and asked again who we might be. and, weary of explanations that only achieved delay our man lumped us all in one invoice and snarled irritably: "these are americans!" the famous "open sesame" that unlocked ali baba's cave never worked swifter then. reckless of possible traps no less than five men flung themselves out of cimmerian gloom and seized us in welcoming arms. i was lifted from the saddle by a man six inches shorter than myself, whose arms could have crushed me like an insect. "we might have known americans would bring us help!" he panted in my ear. his breath came short not from effort, but excitement. fred was in like predicament. i could just see his shadow struggling in the embrace of an enthusiastic host, and somewhere out of sight will was answering in nasal indubitable yankee the questions of three other men. "this way! come this way! bring the horses, oh, zeitoonli! americans! americans! god heard us--there have come americans!" threading this and that way among tree-trunks that to our unaccustomed eyes were simply slightly denser blots on blackness, will managed to get between fred and me. "we're all of us yankees this trip!" he whispered, and i knew he was grinning, enjoying it hugely. so often he had been taken for an englishman because of partnership with us that he had almost ceased to mind; but he spared himself none of the amusement to be drawn out of the new turn of affairs, nor us any of the chaff that we had never spared him. "take my advice," he said, "and try to act you're yanks for all you've got. if you can make blind men believe it, you may get out of this with whole skins!" i expected the retort discourteous to that from fred, who was between will and me, shepherded like us by hard-breathing, unseen men. but he was much too subtly skilful in piercing the chain-mail of will's humor--even in that hour. "sure!" he answered. "i guess any gosh-durned rube in these parts 'll know without being told what neck o' the woods i hail from. schenectady's my middle name! i'm--" "oh, my god!" groaned will. "we don't talk that way in the states. the missionaries--" "i'm the guy who put the 'oh!' in ohio!" continued fred. "i'm running mate to colonel cody, and i've ridden herd on half the cows in hocuspocus county, wis.! i can sing the star-spangled banner with my head under water, and eat a chain of frankforts two links a minute! i'm the riproaring original two-gun man from tabascoville, and any gink who doubts it has no time to say his prayers!" there were paragraphs more of it, delivered at uneven intervals between deep gasps for breath as we made unsteady progress up-hill among roots and rocks left purposely for the confusion of an enemy. at first it filled will with despair that set me laughing at him. then will threw seriousness to the winds and laughed too, so that the spell of impending evil, caused as much as anything by forced separation from monty, was broken. but it did better than put us in rising spirits. it convinced the armenians! that foolish jargon, picked up from comic papers and the penny dreadfuls, convince more firmly than any written proof the products of the mission schools, whose one ambition was to be american themselves, and whose one pathetic peak of humor was the occasional glimpse of united states slang dropped for their edification by missionary teachers! "by jimminy!" remarked an armenian near me. "gosh-all-hemlocks!" said another. thenceforward nothing undermined their faith in us. plenty of amused repudiation was very soon forthcoming from another source, but it passed over their heads. fred and i, because we used fool expressions without relation to the context or proportion, were established as the genuine article; will, perhaps a rather doubtful quantity with his conservative grammar and quiet speech, was accepted for our sakes. they took an arm on either side of us to help us up the hill, and in proof of heart-to-heart esteem shouted "oopsidaisy!" when we stumbled in the pitchy dark. when we were brought to a stand at last by a snarled challenge and the click of rifles overhead, they answered with the chorus of ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, a classic that ought to have died an unnatural death almost a quarter of a century before. suddenly we smelt standard oil, and a man emerged through a gap in ancient masonry less than six feet away carrying a battered, cheap "hurricane" lantern whose cracked glass had been reenforced with patches of brown paper. he was armed to the teeth--literally. he had a long knife in his mouth, a pistol in his left hand, and a rifle slung behind him, but after one long look at us, holding the lantern to each face in turn, he suddenly discarded all appearances of ferocity. "you know about pistols?" he demanded of me in english, because i was nearest, and thrust his mauser repeater under my nose. "why won't this one work? i have tried it every way." "lordy!" remarked will. "lead on in!" i suggested. then, remembering my new part, "it'll have to be some defect if one of us can't fix it!" the gap-guard purred approval and swung his lantern by way of invitation to follow him as he turned on a naked heel and led the way. we entered one at a time through a hole in the wall of what looked like the dungeon of an ancient castle, and followed him presently up the narrow stone steps leading to a trap-door in the floor above. the trap-door was made of odds and ends of planking held in place by weights. when he knocked on it with the muzzle of his rifle we could hear men lifting things before they could open it. when a gap appeared overhead at last there was no blaze of light to make us blink, but a row of heads at each edge of the hole with nothing but another lantern somewhere in the gloom behind them. one by one we went up and they made way for us, closing in each time to scan the next-comer's face; and when we were all up they laid the planks again, and piled heavy stones in place. then an old man lighted another lantern, using no match, although there was a box of them beside him on the floor, but transferring flame patiently with a blade of dry grass. somebody else lit a torch of resinous wood that gave a good blaze but smoked abominably. "what has become of our horses?" demanded fred, looking swiftly about him. we were in a great, dim stone-walled room whose roof showed a corner of star-lit sky in one place. there were twenty men surrounding us, but no woman. two trade-blankets sewn together with string hanging over an opening in the wall at the far end of the room suggested, nevertheless, that the other sex might be within ear-shot. "the horses?" fred demanded again, a bit peremptorily. one of the men who had met us smirked and made apologetic motions with his hands. "they will be attended to, effendi--" "i know it! i guarantee it! by the ace of brute force, if a horse is missing--! arabaiji!" one of our three zeitoonli stepped forward. "take the other two men, arabaiji, and go down to the horses. groom them. feed them. if any one prevents you, return and tell me." then he turned to our hosts. "some natives of somaliland once ate my horse for supper, but i learned that lesson. so did they! i trust i needn't be severe with you!" there was no furniture in the room, except a mat at one corner. they were standing all about us, and perfectly able to murder us if so disposed, but none made any effort to restrain our zeitoonli. "now we're three to their twenty!" i whispered, and will nodded. but fred carried matters with a high hand. "send a man down with them to show them where the horses are, please!" there seemed to be nobody in command, but evidently one man was least of all, for they all began at once to order him below, and he went, grumbling. "you see, effendi, we have no meat at all," said the man who had spoken first. "but you don't look hungry," asserted fred. they were a ragged crowd, unshaven and not too clean, with the usual air of men whose only clothes are on their backs and have been there for a week past. all sorts of clothes they wore--odds and ends for the most part, probably snatched and pulled on in the first moment of a night alarm. "not yet, effendi. but we have no meat, and soon we shall have eaten all the grain." "well," said fred, "if you need horse-meat, gosh durn you, take it from the turks!" "gosh durn you!" grinned three or four men, nudging one another. they were lost between a furtive habit born of hiding for dear life, a desire to be extremely friendly, and a new suspicion of fred's high hand. fred's next words added disconcertment. "where is miss vanderman?" he demanded, suddenly. before any one had time to answer will made a swift move to the wall, and took his stand where nobody could get behind him. he did not produce his pistol, but there was that in his eye that suggested it. i followed suit, so that in the event of trouble we stood a fair chance of protecting fred. "what do you mean?" asked three armenians together. "did you never see men try to cover a secret before?" will whispered. "or give it away?" i added. six of the men placed themselves between fred and the opening where the blankets hung, ostentatiously not looking at the blankets. "have you an american lady with you?" fred asked, and as he spoke he reached a hand behind him. but it was not his pistol that he drew. he carries his concertina slung to him by a strap with the care that some men lavish on a camera. he took it in both hands, and loosed the catch. "have you an american lady named miss vanderman with you?" he repeated. "effendi, we do not understand." he repeated in armenian, and then in turkish, but they shook their heads. "very well," he said, "i'll soon find out. a mission-school pupil might sing my country, 'tis of thee or suwannee river or poor blind joe. you know poor blind joe, eh? sung it in school? i thought so. i'll bet you don't know this one." he filled his impudent instrument with wind and forthwith the belly of that ancient castle rang to the strains of a tune no missionaries sing, although no doubt the missionary ladies are familiar with it yet from where the arctic night shuts down on behring sea to the solomon islands and beyond--a song that achieved popularity by lacking national significance, and won a war by imparting recklessness to typhus camps. i was certain then, and still dare bet to-day that those ruined castle walls re-echoed for the first time that evening to the clamor of '--a hot time in the old town to-night!" seeing the point in a flash, we three roared the song together, and then again, and then once more for interest, the armenians eying us spell-bound, at a loss to explain the madness. then there began to be unexplained movements behind the blanket hanging; and a minute later a woman broke through--an unmistakable armenian, still good-looking but a little past the prime of life, and very obviously mentally distressed. she scarcely took notice of us, but poured forth a long flow of rhetoric interspersed with sobs for breath. i could see fred chuckling as he listened. all the facial warnings that a dozen men could make at the woman from behind fred's back could not check her from telling all she knew. nor were will and i, who knew no armenian, kept in doubt very long as to the nature of her trouble. we heard another woman's voice, behind two or three sets of curtains by the sound of it, that came rapidly nearer; and there were sounds of scuffling. then we heard words. "please play that tune again, whoever you are! do you hear me? do you understand?" "boston!" announced will, diagnosing accents. "you bet your life i understand!" fred shouted, and clanged through half a dozen bars again. that seemed satisfactory to the owner of the voice. the scuffling was renewed, and in a moment she had burst through the crude curtains with two women clinging to her, and stood there with her brown hair falling on her shoulders and her dress all disarrayed but looking simply serene in contrast to the women who tried to restrain her. they tried once or twice to thrust her back through the curtain, although clearly determined to do her no injury; but she held her ground easily. at a rough guess it was tennis and boating that had done more for her muscles than ever strenuous housework did for the armenians. "who are you?" she asked, and will laughed with delight. "i reckon you'll be miss vanderman?' suggested fred in outrageous yankee accent. she stared hard at him. "i am miss vanderman. who are you, please. i sat down on the great stone they had rolled over the trap, for even in that flickering, smoky light i could see that this young woman was incarnate loveliness as well as health and strength. will was our only ladies' man (for fred is no more than random troubadour, decamping before any love-affair gets serious). the thought conjured visions of maga, and what she might do. for about ten seconds my head swam, and i could hardly keep my feet. will left the opening bars of the overture to fred, with rather the air of a man who lets a trout have line. and fred blundered in contentedly. "i'll allow my name is oakes--fred oakes," he said. "please explain!" she looked from one to the other of us. "we three are american towerists, going the grand trip." (remember, a score of armenians were listening. fred's intention was at least as much to continue their contentment as to extract humor from the situation.) "you being reported missing we allowed to pick you up and run you in to tarsus. air you agreeable?" the women were still clinging to her as if their whole future depended on keeping her prisoner, yet without hurt. she looked down at them pathetically, and then at the men, who were showing no disposition to order her release. "i don't understand in the least yet. i find you bewildering. can you contrive to let us talk for a few minutes alone?" "you bet your young life i can!" fred stepped to the wall beside us, but we none of us drew pistol yet. we had no right to presume we were not among friends. "thirty minutes interlude!" he announced. "the man who stands in this room one minute from now, or who comes back to the room without my leave, is not my friend, and shall learn what that means!" he repeated the soft insinuation in armenian, and then in turkish because he knows that language best. there is not an armenian who has not been compelled to learn turkish for all official purposes, and unconsciously they gave obedience to the hated conquerors' tongue, repressing the desire to argue that wells perennially in armenian breasts. they had not been long enough enjoying stolen liberty to overcome yet the full effects of turkish rule. "and oblige me by leaving that lady alone with us!" fred continued. "let those dames fall away!" somebody said something to the women. another armenian remarked more or less casually that we should be unable to escape from the room in any case. the others rolled the great stone from the trap and shoved the smaller stones aside, and then they all filed down the stone stairs, leaving us alone--although by the trembling blankets it was easy to tell that the women had not gone far. the last man who went below handed the spluttering torch to miss vanderman, as if she might need it to defend herself, and she stood there shaking it to try and make it smoke less until the planks were back in place. she was totally unconscious of it, but with the torch-light gleaming on her hair and reflected in her blue eyes she looked like the spirit of old romance come forth to start a holy war. "now please explain!" she begged, when i had pushed the last stone in place. "first, what kind of americans can you possibly be? do you all use such extraordinary accents, and such expressions?" "don't i talk american to beat the band?" objected fred. "sit down on this rock a while, and i'll convince you." she sat on the rock, and we gathered round her. she was not more than twenty-two or three, but as perfectly assured and fearless as only a well-bred woman can be in the presence of unshaven men she does not know. fred would have continued the tomfoolery, but will oared in. "i'm will yerkes, miss vanderman." "oh!" "i know nurse vanderman at the mission." "yes, she spoke of you." "fred oakes here is--" "is english as they make them, yes, i know! why the amazing efforts to--" "i stand abashed, like the leopard with the spots unchangeable!" said fred, and grinned most unashamedly. "they're both english." "yes, i see, but why--" "it's only as good americans that we three could hope to enter here alive. they're death on all other sorts of non-armenians now they've taken to the woods. we supposed you were here, and of course we had to come and get you." she nodded. "of course. but how did you know?" "that's a long story. tell us first why you're here, and why you're a prisoner." "i was going to the mission at marash--to stay a year there and help, before returning to the states. they warned me in tarsus that the trip might be dangerous, but i know how short-handed they are at marash, and i wouldn't listen. besides, they picked the best men they could find to bring me on the way, and i started. i had a turkish permit to travel--a teskere they call it--see, i have it here. it was perfectly ridiculous to think of my not going." "perfectly!" fred agreed. "any young woman in your place would have come away!" she laughed, and colored a trifle. "women and men are equals in the states, mr. oakes." "and the turk ought to know that! i get you, miss vanderman! i see the point exactly!" "at any rate, i started. and we slept at night in the houses of armenians whom my guides knew, so that the journey wasn't bad at all. everything was going splendidly until we reached a sort of crossroads--if you can call those goat-tracks roads without stretching truth too far--and there three men came galloping toward us on blown horses from the direction of marash. we could hardly get them to stop and tell us what the trouble was, they were in such a hurry, but i set my horse across the path and we held them up." "as any young lady would have done!" fred murmured. "never mind. i did it! they told us, when they could get their breath and quit looking behind them like men afraid of ghosts, that the turks in marash--which by all accounts is a very fanatical place--had started to murder armenians. they yelled at me to turn and run. "'run where?' i asked them. 'the turks won't murder me!' "that seemed to make them think, and they and my six men all talked together in armenian much too fast for me to understand a word of it. then they pointed to some smoke on the sky-line that they said was from burning armenian homes in marash. "s'why didn't you take refuge in the mission?' i asked them. and they answered that it was because the mission grounds were already full of refugees. "well, if that were true--and mind you, i didn't believe it--it was a good reason why i should hurry there and help. if the mission staff was overworked before that they would be simply overwhelmed now. so i told them to turn round and come to marash with me and my six men." "and what did they say?" we demanded together. "they laughed. they said nothing at all to me. perhaps they thought i was mad. they talked together for five minutes, and then without consulting me they seized my bridle and galloped up a goat-path that led after a most interminable ride to this place." "where they hold you to ransom?" "not at all. they've been very kind to me. i think that at the bottom of their thoughts there may be some idea of exchanging me for some of their own women whom the turks have made away with. but a stronger motive than that is the determination to keep me safe and be able to produce me afterward in proof of their bona fides. they've got me here as witness, for another thing. and then, i've started a sort of hospital in this old keep. there are literally hundreds of men and women hiding in these hills, and the women are beginning to come to me for advice, and to talk with me. i'm pretty nearly as useful here as i would be at marash." "and you're--let's see--nineteen-twenty--one--two--not more than twenty-two," suggested fred. "is intelligence governed by age and sex in england." she retorted, and fred smiled in confession of a hit. "go on," said will. "tell us." "there's nothing more to tell. when i started to run toward the--ah--music, the women tried to prevent me. they knew americans had come, and they feared you might take me away." "they were guessing good!" grinned will. she shook her head, and the loosened coils of hair fell lower. one could hardly have blamed a man who had desired her in that lawless land and sought to carry her off. the armenian men must have been temptation proof, or else there had been safety in numbers. "i shall stay here. how could i leave them? the women need me. there are babies--daily--almost hourly--here in these lean hills, and no organized help of any kind until i came." "how long have you been here?" i asked. "nearly two days. wait till i've been here a week and you'll see." "we can't wait to see!" will answered. "we've a friend of our own in a tight place. the best we can do is to rescue you--" "i don't need to be rescued!" "--to rescue you--take you back to tarsus, where you'll be safe until the trouble's over--and then hurry to the help of our own man." "who is your own man? tell me about him." "he's a prince." "really?" "no, really an earl--earl of montdidier. white. white all through to the wish-bone. whitest man i ever camped with. he's the goods." "if you'd said less i'd have skinned you for an ingrate!" fred announced. "monty is a man men love." miss vanderman nodded. "where is he?" "on the way to a place called zeitoon," answered will. "he's a hostage, held by armenians in the hope of putting pressure on the turks. kagig--the armenians, that's to say--let us go to rescue you, knowing that he was sufficiently important for their purpose." "and you left your friend to help me?" "of course. what do you suppose?" "and if i were to go with you to tarsus, what then?" "he says we're to ride herd on the consulate and argue." "will you?" "sure we'll argue. we'll raise particular young hell. then back we go to zeitoon to join him!" "would you have gone to tarsus except on my account?" will hesitated. "no. i see. of course you wouldn't. well. what do you take me for? you did not know me then. you do now. do you think i'd consent to your leaving your fine friend in pawn while you dance attendance on me? thank you kindly for your offer, but go back to him! if you don't i'll never speak to one of you again!" chapter ten "when i fire this pistol--" these little ones if life were what the liars say and failure called the tune mayhap the road to ruin then were cluttered deep wi' broken men; we'd all be seekers blindly led to weave wi' worms among the dead, if life were what the liars say and failure called the tune. but life is father of us all (dear father, if we knew!) and underneath eternal arms uphold. we'll mock the false alarms, and trample on the neck of pain, and laugh the dead alive again, for life is father to us all, and thanks are overdue! if truth were what the learned say and envy called the tune mayhap 'twere trite what treason saith that man is dust and ends in death; we'd slay with proof of printed law whatever was new that seers saw, if truth were what the learned say and envy called the tune. but truth is brother of us all (oh, brother, if we knew!) unspattered by the muddied lies that pass for wisdom of the wise-compassionate, alert, unbought, of purity and presence wrought,-big brother that includes us all nor knows the name of few! if love were what the harlots say and hunger called the tune mayhap we'd need conserve the joys weighed grudgingly to girls and boys, and eat the angels trapped and sold by shriven priests for stolen gold, if love were what the harlots say and hunger called the tune. but love is mother of us all (dear mother, if we knew!)-so wise that not a sparrow falls, nor friendless in the prison calls uncomforted or uncaressed. there's magic milk at mercy's breast, and little ones shall lead us all when trite love calls the tune! naturally, being what we were, with our friend monty held in durance by a chief of outlaws, we were perfectly ready to kidnap miss vanderman and ride off with her in case she should be inclined to delay proceedings. it was also natural that we had not spoken of that contingency, nor even considered it. "we never dreamed of your refusing to come with us," said will. "we still don't dream of it!" fred asserted, and she turned her head very swiftly to look at him with level brows. next she met my eyes. if there was in her consciousness the slightest trace of doubt, or fear, or admission that her sex might be less responsible than ours, she did not show it. rather in the blue eyes and the athletic poise of chin, and neck, and shoulders there was a dignity beyond ours. will laughed. "don't let's be ridiculous," she said. "i shall do as i see fit." fred's neat beard has a trick of losing something of its trim when he proposes to assert himself, and i recognized the symptoms. but at the moment of that impasse the armenians below us had decided that self-assertion was their cue, and there came great noises as they thundered with a short pole on the trap and made the stones jump that held it down. at that signal several women emerged from behind the hanging blankets--young and old women in various states of disarray--and stood in attitudes suggestive of aggression. one did not get the idea that armenians, men or women, were sheeplike pacifists. they watched miss vanderman with the evident purpose of attacking us the moment she appealed to them. "if you don't roll the stones away i think there'll be trouble," she said, and came and stood between will and me. fred got behind me, and began to whisper. i heard something or other about the trap, and supposed he was asking me to open it, although i failed to see why the request should be kept secret; but the women forestalled me, and in a moment they had the stones shoved aside and the men were emerging one by one through the opening. then at last i got fred's meaning. there was a second of indecision during which the armenians consulted their women-folk, in two minds between snatching miss vanderman out of our reach or discovering first what our purpose might be. i took advantage of it to slip down the stone stairs behind them. the opening in the castle wall was easy to find, for the star-lit sky looked luminous through the hole. once outside, however, the gloom of ancient trees and the castle's shadow seemed blacker than the dungeon had been. i groped about, and stumbled over loose stones fallen from the castle wall, until at last one of our own zeitoonli discovered me and, thinking i might be a trouble-maker, tripped me up. cursing fervently from underneath his iron-hard carcass i made him recognize me at last. then he offered me tobacco, unquestionably stolen from our pack, and sat down beside me on a rock while i recovered breath. it took longer to do that than he expected, for he had enjoyed the advantage of surprise while hampered by no compunctions on the ground of moderation. when the agony of windlessness was gone and i could question him he assured me that the horses were well enough, but that he and his two companions were hungry. furthermore, he added, the animals were very closely watched--so much so that the other two, sombat and noorian, were standing guard to watch the watchers. "but i am sure they are fools," he added. this man arabaiji had been an excellent servant, but decidedly supercilious toward the others from the time when he first came to us in the khan at tarsus. regarding himself as intelligent, which he was, he usually refused to concede that quality, or anything resembling it, to his companions. "that is why i was looking for you when you hit me in the dark with that club of a fist of yours," i answered. "i wanted to speak with you alone because i know you are not a fool." he felt so flattered that he promptly let his pipe go out. "while sombat and noorian are keeping an eye on the horses, i want you to watch for trouble up above here," i said. "in case the people of this place should seek to make us prisoner, then i want you to gallop, if you can get your horse, and run otherwise, to the nearest--" he checked me with a gesture and one word. "kagig!" "what about him?" i demanded. "if i were to bring turks here, kagig would never rest until my fingers were pulled off one by one!" "if you were to bring turks here, or appeal to turks," said i, "kagig would never get you." "how not?" "unless he should find your dead carcass after my friends and i had finished with it!" "what then?" he lighted his pipe again by way of reestablishing himself in his own esteem, and it glowed and crackled wetly in the dark beside me in response to the workings of his intelligence. "in case of trouble up here, and our being held prisoner, go and find other armenians, and order them in kagig's name to come and rescue us." "those who obey kagig are with kagig," he answered. "surely not all?" "all that kagig could gather to him after eleven years!" "in that case go to kagig, and tell him." "kagig would not come. he holds zeitoon." "are you a fool?" "not i! the other two are fools." "then do you understand that in case these people should make us prisoner--" he nodded. "they might. they might propose to sell you to the turks, perhaps against their own stolen women-folk." "then don't you see that if you were gone, and i told them you had gone to bring kagig, they would let us go rather than face kagig's wrath?" "but kagig would not come." "i know that. but how should they know it?" i knew that he nodded again by the motion of the glowing tobacco in his pipe. it glowed suddenly bright, as a new idea dawned on him. he was an honest fellow, and did not conceal the thought. "kagig would not send me back to you," he said. "he is short of men at zeitoon." "never mind," said i. "in case of trouble up above here, but not otherwise, will you do that?" "gladly. but give it me in writing, lest kagig have me beaten for running from you without leave." that was my turn to jump at a proposal. i tore a sheet from my memorandum book, and scribbled in the dark, knowing he could not read what i had written. "this writing says that you did not run away until you had made quite sure we were in difficulties. so, if you should run too soon, and we should not be in difficulties after all, kagig would learn that sooner or later. what would kagig do in that case?" "he would throw me over the bridge at zeitoon--if he could catch me! nay! i play no tricks." "good. then go and hide. hide within call. within an hour, or at most two hours we shall know how the land lies. if all should be well i will change that writing for another one, and send you to kagig in any case. no more words now--go and hide!" he put his pipe out with his thumb, and took two strides into a shadow, and was gone. then i went back through the gap in the dungeon wall, and stumbled to the stairs. apparently not missing me yet, they had covered up the trap, and i had to hammer on it for admission. they were not pleased when my head appeared through the hole, and they realized that i had probably held communication with our men. i suppose fred saw by my face that i had accomplished what i went for, because he let out a laugh like a fox's bark that did nothing toward lessening the tension. on the other hand it was quite clear that during my absence miss vanderman had not been idle. excepting the two men who had admitted me, every one was seated--she on the floor among the women, with her back to the wall, and the rest in a semicircle facing them. two of the women had their arms about her, affectionately, but not without a hint of who controlled the situation. "what have you been doing?" fred demanded, and he laughed at gloria vanderman with an air of triumph. "making preparations," i said, "to take miss vanderman to tarsus." i wish i could set down here a chart of the mixed emotions then expressed on that young lady's face. she did not look at will, knowing perhaps that she already had him captive of her bow and spear. neither did will look at us, but sat tracing figures with a forefinger in the dust between his knees, wondering perhaps how to excuse or explain, and getting no comfort. if my guess was correct, gloria vanderman was about equally distracted between the alternative ignominy of submitting her free will to armenians or else to us. compassion for the women in their predicament weighed one way--knowledge that our friend monty was in durance vile contingent on her actions pulled heavily another fred was frankly enjoying himself, which influenced her strongly toward the armenian side, she being young and, doubtless the idol of a hundred heart-sick americans, contemptuous of forty-year-old bachelors. "of course we shall not let you go!" one of the armenians assured her in quite good english, and i began fumbling at the pistol in my inner pocket, for if arabaiji was to run to zeitoon, then the sooner the better. but it needed only that imputation of helplessness to tip the beam of miss gloria's judgment. "you can attend to the sick ones. you can play music for us all. doubtless these other two have qualifications." i was too busy admiring gloria to know what effect that announcement had on fred and will. she shook herself free from the women, and stood up, splendid in the flickering yellow light. there was a sort of swift move by every one to be ready against contingencies, and i judged it the right moment to spring my own surprise. "when i fire this pistol," i said, producing it, "a man will start at once for zeitoon to warn kagig. he has a note in his pocket written to kagig. judge for yourselves how long it will take kagig and his men to reach this place!" the nearest man made a very well-judged spring at me and pinned my elbows from behind. another man knocked the pistol from my hand. the women seized gloria again. but fred was too quick--drew his own pistol, and fired at the roof. "twice, fred!" i shouted, and he fired again. "there!" said i. "do what you like. the messenger has gone!" and then gloria shook herself free a last time, and took command. "is that true?" she demanded. i nodded. "the best of our three men was to start on his way the minute he heard the second shot." then i was sure she was boadicea reincarnate, whether the old-time british queen did or did not have blue eyes and brown hair. "i will not have brave men brought back here on my account! kagig must be a patriot! he needs all his men! i don't blame him for making a hostage of lord montdidier! i would do the same myself!" will had evidently given her a pretty complete synopsis of our adventure while i was outside talking with arabaiji. it is always a mystery to the british that americans should hold themselves a race apart and rally to each other as if the rest of the anglo-saxon race were foreigners, but those two had obeyed the racial rule. they understood each other--swiftly--a bar and a half ahead of the tune. "this old castle is no good!" she went on, not raising her voice very high, but making it ring with the wholesomeness of youth, and youth's intolerance of limits. "the turks could come to this place and burn it within a day if they chose!" "the turks won't trouble. they'll send their friends the kurds instead," fred assured her. "ah-h-h-gh!" growled the armenians, but she waved them back to silence. "how much food have you? almost none! how much ammunition?" "ah-h-h-h!" they chorused in a very different tone of voice. "d'you mean you've got cartridges here?" fred demanded. "fifty cases of cartridges for government mauser rifles!" bragged the man who was nearest to will. "gee! kagig 'ud give his eyes for them!" (will devoted his eyes to the more poetic purpose of exchanging flashed encouragement with gloria.) "men, women and children--how many of you are there?" "who knows? who has counted? they keep coming." "no, they don't. you've set a guard to keep any more away for fear the food won't last--i know you have! well--what does it matter how many you are? i say let us all go to zeitoon and help kagig!" "oh, bravo!" shouted fred, but it was will's praise that proved acceptable and made her smile. "second the motion!" i added a word or two by way of make-weight, that did more as a matter of fact than her young ardor to convince those very skeptical men and women. no doubt she broke up their determination to sit still, but it was my words that set them on a course. "kagig will be angry when he comes. he's a ruthless man," said i, and the armenians, men as well as women, sought one another's eyes and nodded. "kagig must be more of a ruthless bird than we guessed!" will whispered. counting women, there was less than a score of refugees in the room, and if we had only had them to convince, our work was pretty nearly done. there was the guard among the trees down-hill that we knew about still to be converted, or perhaps coerced. but just at the moment when we felt we held the winning hand, there came a ladder thrust down through the hole in the corner of the roof, and a man whom they all greeted as ephraim began to climb down backward. he was so loaded with every imaginable kind of weapon that he made more noise than a tinker's cart. nor was ephraim the only new arrival. man after man came down backward after him, each man cursed richly for treading on his predecessor's fingers--a seeming endless chain of men that did not cease when the room was already uncomfortably overcrowded. some of these men wore clothes that suggested russia, but the majority were in rags. the ladder swayed and creaked under them, and finally, at a word from ephraim, the last-comers sat on the upper rungs, bending the frail thing with their weight into a complaining loop. several of the newcomers had torches, and their acrid smoke turned the twice-breathed air of the place into evil-tasting fog. three men put their faces close to ephraim's and proceeded to enlighten him as to what had passed. he seemed to be recognized as some sort of chieftain, and carried himself with a commanding air, but so many men talked at once, and all in armenian, that we could not pick out more than a word or two here and there. even fred, with his gift of tongues, could hardly make head or tail of it. we three pressed through the swarm and took our stand beside gloria, not hesitating to thrust the other women aside. they dragged at their men-folk to call attention to us, but the argument was too hot to be missed, and the women clawed and screamed in vain. "i believe we could get out!" i shouted in will's ear. but he shook his head. at least six men were standing on the trap, and we could not have driven them off it because there was no other space on the floor that they could occupy. so i turned to fred. "couldn't we shake those ruffians off the ladder, and climb up it and escape?" i shouted. but fred shook his head, and went on listening, trying to follow the course of the dispute. at last somebody with louder lungs than any other man made ephraim understand that it was i who sent the messenger to zeitoon. instantly that solved the problem to his mind. i should be hanged, and that would be all about it. he gesticulated. the men swarmed down off the ladder to the already overcrowded floor, and mistaking will for me several men started to thrust him forward. a face appeared through the hole in the roof and its owner was sent running for a rope. i had not recovered my pistol, and my rifle was slung at my back where i could not possibly get at it for the crowd. but fred had a colt repeater handy in his hip-pocket and he promptly screwed the muzzle of it into ephraim's ear. what he said to him i don't know, but ephraim's convictions underwent a change of base and he began to yell for silence. the men who had seized will let go of him just as the rope with a disgusting noose in the end was lowered through the roof. and then ossa was imposed on pelion. a new face appeared at the hole. not that we could see the face. we could only see the form of a man who shook the bloody stump of a forearm at us, and shrieked unintelligible things. after thirty seconds even the men in the far corner were aware of him, and then there was stony silence while he had his say. he repeated his message a dozen times, as if he had it by heart exactly, spitting foam out of his mouth and never ceasing to shake the butchered stump of an arm. at about the dozenth time he fainted and fell headlong down the ladder bringing up on the shoulders of the men below. "what does he say?" i bellowed in fred's car. but fred was forcing his way closer to gloria, to tell her. "he says the kurds are coming! he says two regiments of kurdish cavalry have been turned loose by the turks with orders to 'rescue' armenians. they are on their way, riding by night for a wonder. they cut both his hands off, but he got away by shamming dead. he says they are cutting off the feet of people and bidding them walk to tarsus. they are taking the women and girls for sale. old women and very little children they are making what they call sport with. have you heard of kurds? their ideas of sport are worse than the red-man's ever were." every tongue in the room broke loose. in another second every man was still. they looked toward ephraim. he who could order a hanging so glibly should shoulder the new responsibility. but ephraim was not ready with a plan, and could not speak english. wild-eyed, he seized the lapel of my coat in trembling fingers, and with a throat grown suddenly parched, crackled a question at me in armenian. i could have understood volopuk easier. "what does he say, fred?" "he wants to know how soon kagig can be here." "kagig!" ephraim echoed, clutching at my collar. "yes, yes, yes! kagig! come--how soon?" "we shall be all right," said another man in english over on the far side of the room. his hoarse voice sounded like a bellow in the silence. "kagig will come presently. kagig will butcher the kurds. kagig will certainly save us." "kagig!" ephraim insisted. "come----how soon?" but i knew kagig would not come, that night or at any time, and ephraim shook me in frenzied impatience for an answer. chapter eleven "that man's dose is death, and he dies unshriven!" "male and female created he them" the ancient orders pass. the fetters fall. all-potent inspiration stirs dead peoples to new birth. and over bloodied fields a new, clear call rings kindlier on deadened ears of earth. man--male--usurping--unwise overlord, indoctrinated, flattered, by himself betrayed and all-betraying since with idiot word he bade his woman bear and be afraid, awakes to see delusion of the past unmourned along with all injustice die, himself by woman wisdom blessed at last and her unchallenged right the reason why. now for a moment i became the unwilling vortex of that mob of anxious men and women--i who by, my own confession knew kagig, i who had sent kagig a message, i who five minutes ago was on the verge of being hanged in the greasy noose that still swung above the ladder through the hole in the roof--i who therefore ought to be thoroughly plastic-minded and obedient to demands. the place had become as evil smelling as the black hole of calcutta. everybody was sweating, and they shoved and milled murderously in the effort to get near me and learn, each with his own ears from my lips, just when kagig might be expected. ephraim, their presumptive leader, got shuffled to the outside of the pack--the only silent man between the four walls, watchful for new opportunity. with my clothing nearly torn off and cars in agony from bellowed questions, the only remedy i could think of was to yell to fred to start up a tune on his concertina; i had seen him change a crowd's temper many a time in just that way. but even supposing my advice had been good, he could not get his arms free, and it was gloria vanderman who saved that day. whoever has tried to write down the quality that makes the college girl, united states or english, what she is has failed, just as whoever has tried to muzzle or discredit her has failed. she is something new that has happened to the world, not because of men and women and the priests and pundits, but in spite of them. part of the reason can be given by him who knows history enough, and commands almost unlimited leisure and page; but that would only be the uninteresting part that we could easily dispense with. the college girl has happened to the world, as light did in genesis 1:3. gloria vanderman, with her back against the wall, struggled and contrived to get her foot on will's bent knee. another struggle sent her breast-high above the sea of sweating faces. there was fitful light enough to see her by, because the man who held a pine torch was privileged. if there had not been hot sparks scattering from the thing doubtless they would have closed in on him and crushed it down, and out, but he had elbow-room, and accordingly gloria's face glowed golden in its frame of disordered chestnut hair. one heard her voice because it was clear, and sweet with reasonableness, so that it vibrated in an unobstructed orbit. "surely you are not cowards?" she began, and they grew silent, because that idea called for consideration. "kagig is a patriot. kagig is fighting for all armenia. surely you are not the men to let brave kagig be tempted away from his post of danger at zeitoon? if i know you men and women you will hasten to meet kagig, taking your food, and weapons, and children with you. you will hurry--hurry--hurry to meet him--to meet him as near zeitoon as possible, so as to turn him back to his post of duty!" then ephraim saw his chance. some whisperer translated to him and he owned a voice that was worth gold for political purposes. he took up the tale in armenian, working himself up into a splendid fervor, and so amplifying the argument that he could almost fairly claim it as his own before he was half-done. she had introduced the light, but he exploited it, and he knew his nation--knew the tricks of speech most likely to spur them into action. within five minutes they were shoving the stones off the trap at imminent risk of anybody's legs, and the ladder bent groaning under the weight of twice as many as it ought to bear, as half of them essayed the short cut over the roof. a blast of sweet air through the opened trap ejected most of the smoky ten-times-breathed stuff out with the climbers; and as the room emptied and we wiped the grimy sweat from our faces i heard will talking to gloria vanderman in a new tongue--new, that is to say, to the old world. "good goods! stampeded 'em! they'll vote for you for any office--your pick! if that guy ephraim plans buttering the slide we'll set him on it--watch!" "you bet," she answered sentimentally. "i wasn't cheer leader for nothing. besides, i delivered the valedictory--say, what are we waiting here for?" "come on, then!" i urged her. "we'll leave our mule-load behind in case they've eaten your horse. come with us to the stables and--" but she interrupted me. "you men go down and get the horses. do what you can with the crowd. i'll get the women into something like order if that's possible, and we'll all meet wherever there's open ground and moonlight at the foot of the hill." "i'll come with you," will proposed. "you'll need--" "no you won't! the women are easy. they've been taught to obey orders! it'll take all the wit you three men own between you to get the men in line! let's get busy!" the men had treated the hanging blankets with the respect the ancient jews accorded to the veil of the holy of holies. (we learned afterward that there was an armenian man of the party who had followed a circus one summer all across the states, and had brought that sensible precaution home with him as rule number one for successful management of mixed assemblies.) gloria vanderman made a run for the curtain and dived behind it. we heard the women welcome her. "let's go!" said will. will had ever been our ladies' man in all our wanderings, because women could never resist his unaffected comradeship. even among americans he was rare in his gift of according to women equality not only of liberty, but of understanding and good sense, and it went like wine to the heads of some we had met, so that will was seldom without a sex-problem on his hands and ours. but will was too good a comrade to be surrendered to any woman lightly. "damn that chicken!" murmured fred by way of praying fervently, pausing in the breach in the wall to rub his shin. "feel that bruise, will you! no young woman ever brought me luck yet!" "what are you waiting for?" complained a voice from outer darkness. "come on, you rummies!" fred sat down on the protruding stone that had injured his shin, and detained me with his arm across the opening. "mark my words! in order that that young woman may be educated to consider will yerkes a paragon of unimaginable virtues, we--you and i--are going to have to do what he calls 'hustle.' we're going to see speed, and we're going to sweat, trying to catch up. there isn't a scatterbrained adventure conceivable that we're not going to be forced into, nor an imaginable peril that we're not going to have to pull him out of. we're going to be cursed for our trouble, and ridiculed to make amusement for her majesty. and at the end of it all we're going to be patronized for a couple of ignorant damned fools who don't know better than be bachelors. what's worse, we're going to submit tamely. what is infinitely worse, we're going to like it! there are times when i doubt the sanity of my whole sex!" "have you guys taken root?" demanded the familiar voice and we heard will's returning footsteps. "no, america. but i have to sit down when my shin hurts and i'm seized with the gift of prophecy." "huh! we'll find miss vanderman tired of waiting for us with the women. since when has a crack on the shin made a baby of you? you used to be tough enough!" "d'you get the idea?" chuckled fred. "we're coming, will, we're coming." perfectly unconsciously will took the lead, and most outrageously he drove us. not that his driving was not shrewd, for his usually practical and quick mind seemed to take on added brilliancy. and since we first joined partnership--he and monty and fred and i--we had always been contented to follow the lead of whichever held it at the moment. but there was new efficiency, and impatience of a brand-new kind that would not rest until every man and animal had been rummaged in darkness out of that old ruin, and men, horses, cows, goats, bags of grain, and fifty cases of cartridges were driven down through the forest like water forced through a sieve, and were gathered in the only open space discoverable. there we cooled our heels, fearful and full of vague imaginings until miss vanderman should bring the women, not at all encouraged by shouts in the distance that well might be the exulting of plundering kurds, nor by occasional rifle-shots that sounded continually nearer, nor by the angry crimson glow of burning roofs that lighted half the horizon. we waited an hour, will objecting whenever either of us proposed to return and speed miss vanderman. "aw, what's the use? d'you suppose she doesn't know we're waiting?" at last fred proposed that will himself go and investigate. he went through the form of demurring, but yielded gracefully. "the spirit," fred chuckled, "is weak, and the flesh is willing!" will handed his mule's reins to an armenian and started alone up-hill through the pitch-dark forest; and because the world is mixed of unexpectedness and grim jest in fairly equal proportions, five minutes after he left us gloria vanderman came leading the women by another path. to avoid confusion with our part, and for sake of silence, she had led them a circuit, and except for the occasional wail of a child and a little low talking that blended like the hum of insects with the night, they made very little noise. the rear was brought up by the strongest women carrying the sick and wounded on litters that had been improvised in a hurry, and like most things of the sort were much too heavy. "your mule is ready," said i. but she shook her head. "you gentlemen must give your mules up to the sick and wounded. we well ones can walk." i did not know how to answer her, although i knew she was wrong. the way to organize a marching column is not to level down to the ability of the weakest, although the pace of the weakest may have to be the measure of speed. we, who had to protect the column and shepherd it, would need our mounts; without them we should all be at the mercy of any enemy, with no corresponding gain to any one except the litter-bearers. all the same, i did not care to take issue with that capable young woman then and there. she would have put me in the wrong and left me speechless and indignant, after the fashion that is older than poor shylock's tale. but fred is made of sterner stuff than i, and was never above amusing himself at the expense of anybody's dignity. "will is the youngest," he answered. "besides, he's keeping us all waiting with his love-affairs! he ought to be made to walk!" "his love-affairs?" "he went into the woods to see a woman," fred answered imperturbably. "let him forfeit his mule. here he comes. did you find her, america?" will emerged out of gloom with a grin on his face. "just my luck!" he said simply. "what are we waiting for? i can hear the kurds. let's start." at that gloria got excited. "d'you mean you're willing to leave a woman behind alone in that forest?" she demanded, and will's jaw dropped. fred nudged my ribs. "come on! we've given 'em a ground for their first quarrel. they'll never thank us if we wait a week. mount! walk--ride!" we sent our two zeitoonli in advance to show the way. true to his word, arabaiji had left us, mule and all, and we missed him as we strove to get the unwieldy column marshaled and moving in line. we did not see will and gloria again that night, except when they passed between us, walking, arguing--will explaining--we sitting on our mules on either side of the track until the last of the swarm tailed by. then we brought up the rear together, to drive the stragglers and look out for pursuit. "not that i know what the devil we'll do if the kurds get after us!" said fred. "let's hope they make for the castle to-night, and waste time plundering that." "piffle!" he answered. "why?" "because, you ass, if they get to the place and find if empty they'll deduce, being less than idiots, that we're not far off and that we're at their mercy in the open! let's hope to god they funk attacking in the dark, and wait out of range of the walls until daylight. in that case we've a chance. otherwise--i've still got six rifle cartridges, and four for my pistol. how many have you?" "six of each." "then you owe me one for my pistol." i passed it to him. "so. now we're good for exactly twenty-two kurds between us. if we're pursued i propose to give those two young lovers a chance by making every cartridge count from behind cover." "they'd hear the shooting and--" "not if we drop far enough behind." "they'd hear shooting and will, at any rate, would ride back." "he couldn't! he'd have to look after the girl and the column." "all the same--will's--" "i know he is. very well. i'll arrange it another way. you wait behind here." so i rode along slowly, and he spurred his horse to a trot. but he did not hold the trot long. i could hear him objurgating, coaxing, encouraging, explaining, and the shrill voices of women answering, as he tried at one and the same time to pass the unfortunates in the dark and to make them see the grim necessity for speed. soon i grew as busy as he, bullying litter-bearers and mothers burdened with crying babies. in times of massacre and war, survivors are not necessarily those who enjoyed the best of it. nearly-drowned men brought to life again would forego the process if the choice were theirs, and there were nearly twenty women who would have preferred death to that night's march. but i did not dare load my horse with babies, since it would likely be needed before dawn for sterner work. it was more than an hour before fred loomed in sight again, standing beside his horse in wait for me. he, too, had resisted the temptation to relieve mothers of their living loads (not that they ever expected it). "how did you manage?" i asked, for i could tell by his air that the errand had been successful. "i lied to him." "of course. what did you say?" "said if the straggling got bad you and i might fall a long way behind and fire our pistols, so as to give the impression kurds are in pursuit. that would tickle up the rear-end to a run!" "and he believed that?" will knew as well as i fred's not exactly subtle way of maneuvering to get the post of greatest danger for himself. "he'd have believed anything! he's head-, heart-and heels-over-end in love with the girl, and she's as bad as he is. they're talking political economy and international jurisprudence. when i reached 'em they'd just arrived at the conclusion that the united states can save the world, maybe--maybe not, but nothing else can. i was decidedly de trop. they're pretty to watch. no, he hasn't kissed her yet--you could tell that even in the dark. it's my belief he won't for a long time; america's way with women is beyond belief. they're telling each other all they know, and like, and dislike, and believe, and hope. it 'ud take a bullet to divide their destinies. i delivered my message, and they were so devilish polite you'd think i was the parson come to marry 'em. they'd forgotten my very existence. when it dawned on 'em who i was they were so keen to be rid of me they'd have agreed to anything at all. so it was easy." "good." "no, it's bad. will's a friend of mine. i hate to see him squandered on a woman. however, i did better than that." "how so?" as i spoke there loomed out of the darkness just ahead of us eight men surrounding something on the track, their rifles sticking up above their shoulders. "i've found eight men with rifles all alike that fit the ammunition in the boxes. it's stolen turkish government ammunition, by the way. the rifles come from the same source. the point is that a man caught with a stolen government rifle and ammunition in his possession would be tortured. incidentally the men seem game. therefore, if we have to fight a rear-guard action we can reasonably count on them. haide!" he called to the eight men, and they picked up the case of cartridges, and resumed the march just ahead of us. fred lit his pipe contentedly, as he always is contented when he can make satisfactory arrangements to sacrifice himself unselfishly and pretend to himself he is a cynic. whether because the armed guard of their own people put new courage in them, or because rifles at their rear made them more afraid, the stragglers gave less trouble for the next few hours. perhaps they were growing more used to the march, and some of them were numb with anxiety, while not so weary yet that feet would not carry them forward. somewhere in advance a man with a high tenor voice began to sing a wild folk-song, of the sort that is common to all countries whose heritage is hope unstrangled. he and others like him with love and music in their brave hearts sang the tortured column through its night of agony, keeping alive faint hope that hell must have an end. dawn broke sweet and calm. for it makes no matter if a nation writhes in agony, or man wreaks hate on man, the wind and the sky still whisper and smile; and the scent of wild flowers is not canceled by the stench of tired humanity. fred knocked his pipe out and rode to the top of shoulder of rock beside the track, beckoning to me to follow. we could see our column, astonishingly long drawn, winding like a line of ants in and out and over, following the leaders in a dream because there seemed nothing else to do or dream about. once i thought i caught sight of will on his horse, passing between trees, but i was not sure. fred turned his horse about and looked in the direction we had come from. presently, he nudged me. "that smoke might be the castle we were in last night. see--it's red underneath. what'll you bet me kurds don't show up in pursuit before the day's an hour old?" that was nothing to bet about, and that kind of dawn is not the hour for roseate optimism. "if they come," said i, "i hope i don't live to see what they'll do to the women." fred met my eyes and laughed. "that's all right," he said. "you ride on. this rock commands the track. i'll follow later when pursuit's called off." "ride on yourself!" i answered, and he chuckled as he lighted his pipe again. one of the men had a kerosene can filled with odds and ends of personal belongings. i turned them out in a hollow of the rock, and sent him to fill the can with drinking water at a spring. then fred and i chose stations, and fred went to vast pains lecturing every one of us on how to keep cover. we had nothing to eat, and therefore no notion of putting up anything but a short fight. our best point was the surprise that unexpected, organized resistance would be likely to produce on plundering kurds. it was pleasant enough where we lay, and reminded both of us of far less strenuous days. the little animals that are always curious to the point of their undoing came out and investigated our tracks as soon as the noise of the stragglers had ceased. the armenians took no notice of the wild life; persecuted people seldom do, having their own hard case too much in mind; but fred knew the name of nearly every bird and animal that showed itself, and even ceased smoking as his interest increased. "ever go fishing as a boy?" he asked. "didn't i!" "get up before daylight and escape from the house by the back way--" "stealing bread and cheese from the pantry on the way out--" "and stopping where the grass was long near the watering place to dig worms--" "and unchain the dog with frantic efforts to keep him from barking--" "yes, but the rascal always would do it--bark and wake everybody! lucky if nobody saw you as you slipped through the gate into the fields!" "ah! but then what a time the dog had--it was almost as good fun as the fishing to watch him scamper. and how hungry he got--and he ate more than his share of the bread and cheese, so that you'd have had to go home early because of the aching void if it hadn't been for the cottage where they gave a fellow milk out of a brown dish." "yumm! didn't that country milk taste good! snff--snff--they were mornings just like this at home when i went fishing. cool and sweet and full of scent. snff--snff!" we sat still behind the ledge and let the air and scenery revive kind memories. the only noise was what our horses made cropping the grass in a hollow behind us, for the armenians were well content to ruminate. most likely they would have fallen asleep if we had not been there to keep an eye on them, for prolonged subjection to too much fear is soporific, so that tortured poor wretches sleep on the tightened rack. i was very nearly asleep myself, having had practically none of it for two nights in succession, and had taken to watching the horses to keep my mind busy, when the movement of my horse's ears struck me as peculiar. presently he ceased grazing and raised his head. i thought he was going to whinny, and turned to see fred squinting down his rifle at something that was not in the range of my vision. "here they come!" he whispered. as he spoke a kurd stepped out from between the trees, and we could see that he had tied his horse to a branch in the gloom behind him. he had the long sleeves reaching nearly to the ground peculiar to his race, and the unmistakable sheeny nose and cruel lips. from the rifle that he carried cavalierly over his shoulder hung a woman's undergarment, with a dark stain on it that looked suspiciously like blood. my horse whinnied then, and his beast answered. at that he brought his rifle to the "ready" and nearly jumped out of his skin. "i'm judge, jury, witness, prosecutor and executioner!" fred whispered. "that man's dose is death, and he dies unshriven!" then he fired, and fred could not miss at that range if he tried. the kurd clapped a hand to his throat and fell backward, and one of our armenians ran before we could stop him to seize the tied horse, and any other plunder. one of the things he brought back with him, besides the horse and rifle and ammunition belt, was a woman's finger with the ring not yet removed. he said he found it in the cartridge pouch. in proof that organized defense was the last thing they reckoned on, nine more kurds came galloping down the track pell-mell toward the place where they had heard the solitary rifle-shot, doubtless supposing their own man had come upon the quarry. we fired too fast, for the armenians were not drilled men, but we dropped two horses and five kurds, and the remaining four fled, with the riderless animals stampeding in their wake. "what next?"' said i, as fred wiped out his rifle-barrel. "they'll return in greater force. we'd better change ground. d'you notice how this rock is covered by that other one a quarter of a mile to the right? higher ground, too, and the last place they'll look--come on!" the man with the water-can spilled it all, for the sake of his medley of possessions, and i had to send him all the way back for more. but we took up our new stand at last with the horses well hidden and enough to drink to last the day out, and then had to wait half an hour before any kurds came back to the attack. they came on the second time with infinite precaution, lurking among the trees on the outskirts of the clearing and firing several random shots at our old position in the hope of drawing our fire. finally, they emerged from the forest thirty strong and rushed our supposed hiding-place at full gallop. they were not even out of pistol range. fred used the mauser rifle taken from the dead kurd, and then we both emptied our pistols at the fools, the armenians meanwhile keeping up a savage independent fire so ragged and rapid that it might have been the battle of waterloo. the kurds never knew whether or not we were another party or the first one. they never discovered whether our former post was deserted or not. we never knew how many of them we hit, for after about a dozen had tumbled out of the saddle the remainder galloped for their lives. for minutes afterward we heard them crashing and pounding away in the distance to find their friends. our loot consisted of two wounded prisoners and four good horses, in addition to rifles and cartridges. we let the dead lie where they were for a warning to other scoundrels, and we looked on while our armenians searched the bodies for anything likely to be of slightest use. they found almost nothing originally kurdish, but more armenian trinkets than would have stocked a traveling merchant's show-case, including necklaces and earrings. fred took the two prisoners aside and in persian, which every kurd can understand and speak after a fashion, offered them their choice between telling the whole truth or being handed over to armenians. and as there isn't a bloody rascal in the world but suspects his intended victims of worse hankerings than his own, they loosed their tongues and told more than the truth, adding whatever they thought likely to please fred. "they say there were only about fifty of them in this raiding party to begin with, and several came to trouble before they met us. seems there are armenians hidden here and there who are able to give an account of themselves. ten or twelve elected to stay near the castle we were in last night. they've burned it, but they have some captured women and propose to enjoy themselves. shall we ride back and break in on the party?" he meant what he said, but it was out of the question. "the party we've just trounced will give the alarm," i objected. "we'd only ride into a trap. besides, you've no proof these prisoners are not lying to you." "they say their raiding party is the only one within thirty miles. they rode ahead of the regiments to get first picking." "we're none of us fit for anything but food and sleep," said i, and fred had to concede the point. fortunately the food problem was solved for the moment by the kurds, who had a sort of cheese with them whose awful taste deprived one of further appetite. we ate, and tied our two wounded prisoners on one horse; and as we had nothing to treat their wounds with except water they finished their trip in exquisite discomfort. surprise that we should attend to their wounds at all, added to their despondency after they had time to consider what it meant. there was only one burden to their lamentation: "what are you going to do with us? we will tell what we know! we will name names! we are your slaves! we kiss feet! ask, and we will answer!" they thought they were being kept alive for torture, and we let them keep on thinking it. fred tied their horse to his own saddle and towed them along, singing at the top of his lungs to keep the rest of us awake; and for all his noise i fell asleep until he reached for his concertina and, the humor of the situation dawning on him, commenced a classic of his own composition, causing the morning to re-echo with irreverence, and making all of us except the prisoners aware of the fact that life is not to be taken seriously, even in armenia. the prisoners intuitively guessed that the song had reference to ways and means they would rather have forgotten. "ow! my name it is 'orrible 'enery 'emms, and i 'ails from a 'ell of a 'ole! the things i 'ave thought an' the deeds i 'ave did are remarkable lawless an' better kep' hid, so if morgan you think of, an' sharkey an' kidd, forget 'em! to name such beginners as them's an insult, so shivver my soul! yow! in every port o' the whole seven seas i 'ave two or three wives on the rates, for i'm free wi' my fancy an' fly wi' my picks, and i've promised 'em plenty, an' given 'em nix, but have left ev'ry one in a 'ell of a fix! 'ooever said bluebeard was brother to me's either jealous or misunderstates! "wow! for awful atrocity, murder an' theft, for battery, arson and hate, from breakin' the sabbath to coveting cows, an' false affidavits an' perjurin' vows, i'm adept at whatever the law disallows, and the gallowsmen gape at the noose that i left, for i flit while the bally fools wait!" fred kept us awake all right. like most of his original songs, that one had sixty or seventy verses. chapter twelve "america's way with a woman is beyond belief!" cui bono? did caution keep the gates of greece, ye saints of "safety first!" twixt thessaly and locris when leonidas' thousand men died scornful of the proffered peace of xerxes the accurst? watch ye have kept, ward ye have kept, but watch and ward were vain if love and gratitude have slept while ye stood guard for gain. or ye, who count the niggard cost in time and coin and gear of succoring the under-dog, how often have ye seen a hog, establishing his glutton boast, survive a famine year? fast ye have kept, feast ye have made; vain were the deeds and doles if it was fear that ye obeyed to save your coward souls. ye banish beauty to the stews for lack of eyes that see, and stifle joy with deadly rote as empty as the texts ye quote, the while forgiveness ye refuse lest wrath dishonored be. gray are your days, drab are your ways, strong are your fashioned bars, but, ye who ask if service pays-who polishes the stars? spring in armenia is almost as much like heaven as heaven itself could be, if it were not for the unspeakable turk, but his blight rests on everything. i could have kept awake that morning without fred's irreverent music, simply for sake of the scenery, if its freshness had been untainted. but there hung a sickly, faint pall of smoke that robbed the green landscape of all liveliness. one breathed weariness instead of wine. we could not possibly have lost the way, because our crawling column had left a swath behind it of trampled grass and trodden crossing-places where the track wound and rewound in a game of hide-and-seek with tinkling streams. but we began to wonder, nevertheless, why we caught up with nobody. it was drawing on to ten in the morning, and i had dozed off for about the dozenth time, with my horse in pretty much the same condition, when i heard will's voice at last, and looked up. he was standing alone on a ledge overlooking the track, but i could see the ends of rifles sticking up close by. if we had been an enemy, we should have stood small chance against him. "where are the rest of you?" i asked, and he laughed! "women, kids and wounded all swore a pitched battle was raging behind them. most of them wanted to turn back and lend a hand. i thought you guys mighty cruel to put all that scare into a crowd in their condition--but i see--" "guests, america! my country's at peace with turkey! where shall we stow our guests?" "there's a village below here." he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. but behind him was the apex of a spur thrust out in midcurve of the mountainside, and one could not see around that. we had emerged out of the straggling outposts of the forest high above the plain, and to our right the whole panorama lay snoozing in haze. the path by which we had turned our backs on monty and kagig went winding away and away below, here and there an infinitesimal thin line of slightly lighter color, but more often suggested by the contour of the hills. our zeitoonli in their zeal to return to their leader had been evidently cutting corners. if the smudge of smoke to the right front overhung marash, then we were probably already nearer zeitoon than when we and kagig parted company. "come up and see for yourselves," said will. fred passed the line that held his prisoners in tow to an armenian, and we climbed up together on foot. around the corner of the spur, within fifty feet of where will stood, was an almost sheer escarpment, and at the foot of that, a thousand feet below us, with ramparts of living rock on all four sides, crouched a little village fondled in the bosom of the mountains. "they've piled down there and made 'emselves at home. the place was deserted, prob'ly because it 'ud be too easy to roll rocks down into it. but i can't make 'em listen. ours is a pretty chesty lot, with guts, and our taking part with 'em has stiffened their courage. they claim they're goin' to hold this rats' nest against all the turks and kurds in asia minor!" "that's where the rest of us are," said will "where's miss vanderman?" "asleep--down in the village. the're all asleep. you guys go down there and sleep, too. i'll follow, soon as i've posted these men on watch. that small square hut next the big one in the middle is ours. she's in the big one with a crowd of women. now don't make a fool row and wake her! tie your horses in the shade where you see the others standing in line; there's a little corn for them, and a lot of hay that the owners left behind." so we undertook not to wake the lady, and left will there carefully choosing places, in which the men fell fast asleep almost the minute his back was turned. sleep was in the air that morning--not mere weariness of mind and limb that a man could overcome, but inexplicable coma. whole armies are affected that way on occasion. there was a man once named sennacherib. "sleepy hollow!" said fred, and as he spoke his horse pitched forward, almost spilling him; the rope that held the prisoners in tow was all that saved the lot of them from rolling down-hill. fred dismounted, and drove the horse in front of him with a slap on the rump, but the beast was almost too sleepy to make the effort to descend. there was no taint of gas or poison fumes. the air tasted fresh except for the faint smoke, and the birds were all in full song. yet we all had to dismount, and to let the prisoners walk, too, because the horses were too drowsy to be trusted. the path that zigzagged downward to the village was dangerous enough without added risk, and the eight armenian riflemen refused point-blank to lead the way unless they might drive the animals ahead of them. even so, neither we nor they were properly awake, when we reached the village. we tied up the horses in a sort of dream--fed them from instinct and habit--and made our way to the hut will had pointed out like men who walked in sleep. nobody was keeping watch. nobody noticed our arrival. men and women were sleeping in the streets and under the eaves of the little houses. nothing seemed awake but the stray dogs nosing at men's feet and hunting hopelessly among the bundles. the little house will had reserved for our use contained a stool and a string-cot. on the stool was food--cheese and very dry bread; and because even in that waking dream we were conscious of hunger, we ate a little of it. then we lay down on the floor and fell asleep--we, and the prisoners, and the eight armenian riflemen. within a quarter of an hour will followed us into the house, but we knew nothing about that. then he, too, fell asleep, and until two or three hours after dark we were a village of the dead. to this day there is no explaining it. certainly no human watch or ward saved us from destruction at the hands of roving enemies. i was awakened at last by a brilliant light, and the effort made by our two prisoners, still tied together, to crawl across my body. i threw them off me, and sat up, rubbing my eyes and wondering where i was. in the door stood kagig, with a lantern in his right hand thrust forward into the room. his eyes were ablaze with excitement, and between black beard and mustache his teeth showed in a grin mixed of scorn and amusement. next i beard will's voice: "jimminy!" and will sat up. then fred gave tongue: "that you, kagig? where's monty? where's lord montdidier?" kagig strode into the room, set the lantern on the floor, struck the remnants of the food from off the little stool, and sat down. i could see now that he was deathly tired. "he is in zeitoon," he answered. noises from outside began then to assert themselves in demonstration that the village was awake at last--also that the population had swollen while we slept. i could hear the restless movement of more than twice the number of horses we had had with us. kagig began to laugh--a sort of dry cackle that included wonder as well as rebuke. he threw both hands outward, palms upward, in a gesture that complemented the motion of shoulders shrugged up to his ears. "all around--high hills! from every side from fifty places rocks could have been rolled upon you! so--and so you sleep!" "i set guards!" will exploded. "eleven guards i found--all together in one place--fast asleep!" he showed his splendid teeth and the palms of his hands again in actual enjoyment of the situation. for the first time then i saw there was wet blood on his goat-skin coat. "kagig--you're wounded!" he made a gesture of impatience. "it is nothing--nothing. my servant has attended to it." so kagig had a servant. i felt glad of that. it meant a rise from vagabondage to position among his people. of all earthly attainments, the first and most desirable and last to let go of is an honest servant--unless it be a friend. (but the difference is not so distinct as it sounds.) a huge fear suddenly seized fred oakes. "you said monty is in zeitoon--alive or dead? quick, man! answer!" "should i leave zeitoon," kagig answered slowly, unless i left a better man in charge behind me? he is alive in zeitoon--alive--alive! he is my brother! he and i love one purpose with a strong love that shall conquer! you speak to me of lord what-is-it? hah! to me forever he is monty, my brother--my--" "where's miss vanderman?" i interrupted. "here!" she said quietly, and i turned my head to discover her sitting beside will in the shadow cast by kagig's lantern. she must have entered ahead of kagig or close behind him, unseen because of his bulk and the tricky light that he swung in his right hand. kagig went on as if he had not heard me. "there is a castle--i think i told you?--perched on a crag in the forest beside zeitoon. my men have cut a passage to it through the trees, for it had stood forgotten for god knows how long. later you shall understand. there came arabaiji, riding a mule to death, saying you and this lady are in danger of life at the hands of my nation. i did not believe that, but monty--he believed it." "and i'll wager you found him a hot handful!" laughed fred. "not so hot. not so hot. but very determined. later you shall understand. he and i drove a bargain." "dammit!" fred rose to his feet. "d'you mean you used our predicament as a club to drive him with?" kagig laughed dryly. "do you know your friend so little, and think so ill of me? he named terms, and i agreed to them. i took a hundred mounted men to find you and bring you to zeitoon, spreading them out like a fan, to scour the country. some fell in with a thing the turks call a hamidieh regiment; that is a rabble of kurds under the command of tenekelis." "what are they?" "tenekelis? the word means 'tin-plate men.' we call them that because of the tin badges given them to wear in their head-dress. in no other way do they resemble officers. they are brigands favored by official recognition, that is all. their purpose is to pillage armenians. while you slept in this village, and your watchmen slept up above there, that whole rabble of bandits with their tin-plate officers passed within half a mile, following along the track by which you came! if you had been awake--and cooking--or singing--or making any sort of noise they must have heard you! instead, they turned down toward the plain a little short distance too soon--and my men met them--and there was a skirmish--and i rallied my other men, and attacked them suddenly. we accounted for two of the tin-plate men, and so many of the thing they call a regiment that the others took to flight. jannam! (my soul!) but you are paragons of sleepers!" "do you never sleep?" i asked him. "shall a man keep watch over a nation, and sleep?" he answered. "aye--here a little, there a little, i snatch sleep when i can. my heart burns in me. i shall sleep on my horse on the way back to zeitoon, but the burning within will waken me by fits and starts." he got up and stood very politely in front of gloria vanderman, removing his cossack kalpak for the first time and holding it with a peculiar suggestion of humility. "you shall be put to no indignity at the hands of my people," he said. "they are not bad people, but they have suffered, and some have been made afraid. they would have kept you safe. but now you shall have twenty men if you wish, and they shall deliver you safely into tarsus. if you wish it, i will send one of these gentlemen with you to keep you in countenance before my men; they are foreigners to you, and no one could blame you for fearing them. the gentleman would not wish to go, but i would send him!" she shook her head, pretty merrily for a girl in her predicament. "i was curious to meet you, mr. kagig, but that's nothing to the attraction that draws me now. i must meet the other man--is it monty you all call him--or never know a moment's peace!" "you mean you will not go to tarsus?" "of course i won't!" "of course!" laughed fred. "any young woman--" "of course?" kagig repeated the extravagant gesture of shrugged shoulders and up-turned palms. "ah, well. you are american. i will not argue. what would be the use?" he turned his back on us and strode out with that air that not even the great stage-actors can ever acquire, of becoming suddenly and utterly oblivious of present company in the consciousness of deeds that need attention. generals of command, great captains of industry, and a few rare statesmen have it; but the statesmen are most rare, because they are trained to pretend, and therefore unconvincing. the generals and captains are detested for it by all who have never humbled themselves to the point where they can think, and be unselfishly absorbed. kagig stepped out of one zone of thought into the next, and shut the door behind him. a minute later we heard his voice uplifted in command, and the business of shepherding those women and children was taken out of our hands by a man who understood the business. the intoxicating sounds that armed men make as they evolve formation out of chaos in the darkness came in through open door and windows, and in another moment kagig was back again with a hand on each door-post. "you have brought all those cartridges!" he thrust out both hands in front of him, and made the knuckles of every finger crack like castanets. in another second he was gone again. but we knew we were now forgiven all our sins of omission. somewhere about midnight, with a nearly full moon rising in a golden dream above the rim of the ravine, we started. and no wheeled vehicle could have followed by the track we took. it was no mean task for men on foot, and our burdened animals had to be given time. whether or not kagig slept, as he had said he would, on horse-back, he kept himself and our prisoners out of sight somewhere in the van; and this time the rear was brought up by a squadron of ragged irregular horse that would have made any old campaigner choke with joy to look at them. drill those men knew very little of--only sufficient to make it possible to lead them. no two men were dressed alike, and some were not even armed alike, although stolen turkish government rifles far predominated. but they wore unanimously that dare-devil air, not swaggering because there is no need, that has been the key to most of the sublime surprises of all war. the commander, whose men sit that way in the saddle and toss those jokes shoulder over shoulder down the line, dare tackle forlorn hopes that would seem sheer leap-year lunacy to the martinet with twenty times their number. "who'd have thought it?" said fred. "we've all heard the turk was a first-class fighting man, but i'd rather command fifty of these, than any five hundred turks i ever saw. there was no gainsaying that. whoever had seen armies with an understanding eye must have agreed. "turks don't hate armenians for their faults," i answered. "from what i know of the turk he likes sin, and prefers it cardinal. if armenians were mere degenerates, or murdering ruffians like the kurds, the turk would like them." fred laughed. "then if a turk liked me, you'd doubt my social fitness?" "sure i would, if he liked you well enough to attract attention. the fact that the turk hates armenians is the best advertisement armenians have got." we were entering the heart of savage hills that tossed themselves in ever increasing grandeur up toward the mist-draped crags of kara dagh, following a trail that was mostly watercourse. the simple savagery of the mountains laid naked to view in the liquid golden light stirred the armenians behind us to the depths of thought; and theirs is a consciousness of warring history; of dominion long since taken from them, and debauched like pearls by swine; of hope, eternally upwelling, born of love of their trampled fatherland. they began to sing, and the weft and woof of their songs were grief for all those things and a cherished, secret promise that a limit had been set to their nation's agony. in his own way, with his chosen, unchaste instrument fred is a musician of parts. he can pick out the spirit of old songs, even when, as then, he hears them for the first time, and make his concertina interpret them to wood and wind and sky. indoors he is a mere accompanist, and in polite society his muse is dumb. but in the open, given fair excuse and the opportunity, he can make such music as compels men's ears and binds their hearts with his in common understanding. because of fred's concertina, quite without knowing it, those armenians opened their hearts to us that night, so that when a day of testing came they regarded us unconsciously as friends. taught by the atrocity of cruel centuries to mistrust even one another, they would surely have doubted us otherwise, when crisis came. nobody knows better than the turk how to corrupt morality and friendship, and armenia is honeycombed with the rust of mutual suspicion. but real music is magic stuff. no turk knows any magic. at dawn, twisting and zigzagging in among the ribs of rock-bound hills, we sighted the summit of beirut dagh all wreathed in jeweled mist. then the only life in sight except ourselves was eagles, nervously obsessed with goings-on on the horizon. i counted as many as a dozen at one time, wheeling swiftly, and circling higher for a wider view, but not one swooped to strike. once, as we turned into a track that they told us led to el oghlu, we saw on a hill to our left a small square building, gutted by fire. twenty yards away from it, on top of the same round hill, strange fruit was hanging from a larger oak than any we had seen thereabouts--fruit that swung unseemly in the tainted wind. "turks!" announced one of kagig's men, riding up to brag to us. "that square building is the guard-house for the zaptieh, put there by the government to keep check on robbers. they are the worst robbers!" the man spoke english with the usual mission-school air suggestive of underdone pie. as a rule they go to school at such great sacrifice, and then so limited for funds, that they have to get by heart three times the amount an ordinary, undriven youth can learn in the allotted time. but by heart they have it. and like the pie they call to mind, only the surface of their talk is pale. because their heart is in the thing, they under-stand. "by hanging turkish police," said fred, "you only give the turks a good excuse for murdering your friends." "come!" said the man of zeitoon. "see." he led the way down a path between young trees to a clearing where a swift stream gamboled in the sun. down at the end of it, where the grass sloped gently upward toward the flanks of a great rock was a little row of graves with a cross made of sticks at the head of each--clearly not turkish graves. "three men--eleven women," our guide said simply. "you mean that the turkish police--" "there were fifteen on their way to zeitoon. one survived, and reached zeitoon, and told. then he died, and we rode down to avenge them all. the turks took the three men and beat them on the feet with sticks until the soles of their feet swelled up and burst. then they made them walk on their tortured feet. then they beat them to death. shall i say what they did to the women?" "what did you do to the turks?" said i. "hanged them. we are not animals--we simply, hanged them." somewhere about noon we rode down a gorge into the village of el oghlu. it was a miserable place, with a miserable, tiny kahveh in the midst of it, and kagig set that alight before our end of the column came within a quarter of a mile of it. we burned the rest of the village, for he sent back ephraim to order no shelter left for the regiments that would surely come and hunt us down. but the business took time, and we were farther than ever behind kagig when the last wooden roof began to cockle and crack in the heat. will and gloria were somewhere on in front, and fred and i began to put on speed to try to overtake them. but from the time of leaving the burned village of el oghlu there began to be a new impediment. "we are not taking the shortest way," said ephraim. "the shortest way is too narrow--good for one or two men in a hurry, but not for all of us." we were gaining no speed by taking the easier road. there began to be vultures in evidence, mostly half-gorged, flopping about from one orgy to the next. and out from among the rocks and bushes there came fugitive armenians--famished and wounded men and women, clinging to our stirrups and begging for a lift on the way to zeitoon. zeitoon was their one hope. they were all headed that way. fred detached a dozen mounted men to linger behind on guard against pursuit, and the rest of us overloaded our horses with women and children, giving up all hope of overtaking gloria and will, forgetting that they had come first on the scene. in my mind i imagined them riding side by side, will with his easy cowboy seat, and gloria looking like a boy except for the chestnut hair. but that imagination went the way of other vanities. there was neither pleasure nor advantage in striding slowly beside my laboring horse, nor any hope of mounting him again myself. so i walked ahead and, being now horseless, ceased to be mobbed by fugitives. at the end of an hour i overtook two horses loaded with little children; but there was no sign of gloria and will, and losing zest for the pursuit as the sun grew stronger i sat down by the ways-side on a fallen tree. it was then that i heard voices that i recognized. the first was a woman's. "i'm simply crazy to know him." a man's, that i could not mistake even amid the roar of a city, answered her. "you've a treat in store. monty is my idea of a regular he-man." "is he good-looking?" "yes. stands and looks like a soldier. i've seen a plainsman in wyoming who'd have matched him to a t all except the parted hair and the mustache." "i like a mustache on a tall man." "it suits monty. the first idea you get of him is strength--strength and gentleness; and it grows on you as you know him better. it's not just muscles, nor yet will-power, but strength that makes your heart flutter, and you know for a moment how a woman must feel when a fellow asks her to be his wife. that's monty." i got up and retraced a quarter of a mile, to wait for fred where i could not accuse myself of "listening in." "fred," i said, when he overtook me at last and we strode along side by side, "you were right. america's way with a woman is beyond belief!" i told him what i had heard, and he thought a while. "how about maga jhaere's way, when she and will and the vanderman meet?" he said at last, smiling grimly. chapter thirteen "'take your squadron and go find him, rustum khan!' and i, sahib, obeyed my lord bahadur's orders." "to-morrow we die" all that is cynical; all that refuses trust in an altruist aim; every specious plea that excuses greed in necessity's name; studied indifference; scorn that amuses; cleverness, shifting the blame; selfishness, pitying trust it abuses-treason and these are the same. finally, when the last lees ye shall turn from (e'en intellectuals flinch in the end!) ashes of loneliness then ye shall learn from-all that's worth keeping's the faith of a friend. never to be forgotten is that journey to zeitoon. we threaded toward the heart of opal mountains along tracks that nothing on wheels--not even a wheel-barrow--could have followed. perpetually on our right there kept appearing brilliant green patches of young rice, more full of livid light than flawless emeralds. and, as in all rice country, there were countless watercourses with frequently impracticable banks along which fugitives felt their way miserably, too fearful of pursuit to risk following the bridle track. there is a delusion current that fugitives go fast. but it stands to reason they do not; least of all, unarmed people burdened with children and odds and ends of hastily snatched household goods. we found them hiding everywhere to sleep and rest lacerated feet, and there was not a mile of all that distance that did not add twenty or thirty stragglers to our column, risen at sight of us out of their lurking places. we scared at least as many more into deeper hiding, without blame to them, for there was no reason why they should know us at a distance from official murderers. hamidieh regiments, the militia of that land, wear uniforms of their own choosing, which is mostly their ordinary clothes and weapons added. with snow-crowned beirut dagh frowning down over us, and the track growing every minute less convenient for horse or man, word came from the rear that the hamidieh were truly on our trail. then we had our first real taste of what armenians could do against drilled turks, and even before fred and i could get in touch with will and gloria we realized that whether or not we took part with them there was going to be no stampede by the men-folk. nothing would persuade gloria to go on to zeitoon and announce our coming. kagig came galloping back and found us four met together by a little horsetail waterfall. he ordered her peremptorily to hurry and find monty, but she simply ignored him. in another moment he was too bent on shepherding the ammunition cases to give her a further thought. men began to gather around him, and he to issue orders. they had either to kill him or obey. he struck at them with a rawhide whip, and spurred his horse savagely at every little clump of men disposed to air their own views. "you see," he laughed, "unanimity is lacking!" then his manner changed back to irritation. "in the name of god, effendim, what manner of sportmen are you? will not each of you take a dozen men and go and destroy those cursed turks?" (they call every man a turk in that land who thinks and acts like one, be he turk, arab, kurd or circassian.) it was all opposed to the consul's plan, and lawless by any reckoning. to attack the troops of a country with which our own governments were not at war was to put our heads in a noose in all likelihood. perhaps if he had called us by any other name than "sportmen" we might have seen it in that light, and have told him to protect us according to contract. but he used the right word and we jumped at the idea, although gloria, who had no notions about international diplomacy, was easily first with her hat in the ring. "i'll lead some men!" she shouted. "who'll follow me?" her voice rang clear with the virtue won on college playing fields. "nothing to it!" will insisted promptly. "here, you, kagig--i'll make a bargain with you!" "watch!" fred whispered. "will is now going to sell two comrades in the market for his first love! d'you blame him? but it won't work!" "send miss vanderman to zeitoon with an escort and we three--" "what did i tell you?" fred chuckled. "--will fight for you all you like!" but gloria had a dozen men already swarming to her, with never a symptom of shame to be captained by a woman; and others were showing signs of inclination. she turned her back on us, and i saw three men hustle a fourth, who had both feet in bandages, until he gave her his rifle and bandolier. she tossed him a laugh by way of compensation, and he seemed content, although he had parted with more than the equivalent of a fortune. "that girl," said kagig, from the vantage point of his great horse, "is like the brave zeitoonli wives! they fight! they can lead in a pinch! they are as good as men--better than men, for they think they know less!" fred swiftly gathered himself a company of his own, the older men electing to follow his lead. gloria had the cream of the younger ones--men who in an earlier age would have gone into battle wearing a woman's glove or handkerchief--twenty or thirty youths blazing with the fire of youth. will went hot-foot after her with most of the english-speaking contingent from the mission schools. kagig had the faithful few who had rallied to him from the first--the fighting men of zeitoon proper, including all the tough rear-guard who had sent the warning and remained faithfully in touch with the enemy until their chief should come. that left for me the men who knew no english, and ephraim was enough of a politician to see the advantage to himself of deserting fred's standard for mine; for fred could talk armenian, and give his own orders, but i needed an interpreter. i welcomed him at the first exchange of compliments, but met him eye to eye a second later and began to doubt. "i'm going to hold these men in reserve," i told him, "until i know where they'll do most good. you know this country? take high ground, then, where we can overlook what's going on and get into the fight to best advantage." "but the others will get the credit," he began to object. "i'll ask kagig for another interpreter. wait here." at that he yielded the point and explained my orders to the men, who began to obey them willingly enough. but he went on talking to them rapidly as we diverged from the path the others had taken and ascended a trail that wild goats would have reveled in, along the right flank of where fighting was likely to take place. i did not doubt he was establishing notions of his own importance, and with some success. firing commenced away in front and below us within ten minutes of the start, but it was an hour before i could command the scene with field-glasses, and ten minutes after that before i could make out the positions of our people, although the enemy were soon evident--a long, irregular, ragged-looking line of cavalry thrusting lances into every hole that could possibly conceal an armenian, and an almost equally irregular line of unmounted men in front of them, firing not very cautiously nor accurately from under random cover. it became pretty evident, after studying the positions for about fifteen minutes and sweeping every contour of the ground through glasses, that the enemy had no chance whatever of breaking through unless they could outflank kagig's line. i held such impregnable advantage of height and cover and clear view that the men i had with me were ample to prevent the turning of our right wing. our left flank rested on the brawling jihun river that wound in and out between the rice fields and the rocky foot-hills. there lay the weakness of our position, and more than once i caught sight of kagig spurring his horse from cover to cover to place his men. once i thought i recognized fred, too, over near the river-bank; but of will or of gloria i saw nothing. it was obvious that if reserves were needed anywhere it would be over on that left flank by the fordable jihun. ephraim saw that, and proceeded to preach it like gospel to the men before consulting me. then, arrogant in the consciousness of majority approval, he came and advised me. "those--ah--hamidieh not coming this--ah--way. we cross over to--ah--other side. then kagig is being pleased with us. i give orders--yes?" he did not propose to wait for my consent, but i detained him with a hand on his shoulder. it would have taken us two hours to get into position by the river-bank. "find out how many of the men can ride," i ordered. taken by surprise he called out the inquiry without stopping to discover my purpose first. it transpired there were seventeen men who had been accustomed to horseback riding since their youth. that would leave nine men for another purpose. i separated sheep from goats, and made over the nine to ephraim. "you and these nine stay here," i ordered, "and hold this flank until kagig makes a move." i did not doubt kagig would fall back on zeitoon as soon as he could do that with advantage. neither did i doubt ephraim's ability to spoil my whole plan if he should see fit. yet i had to depend on his powers as interpreter. there are two ways of relieving a weak wing, and the obvious one of reenforcing it is not of necessity the best. i could see through the glasses a bowl of hollow grazing ground in which the dismounted kurds had left their horses; and i could count only five men guarding them. most of the horses seemed to be tied head to head by the reins, but some were hobbled and grazing close together. "tell these seventeen men i have chosen that i propose to creep up to the enemy's horses and steal or else stampede them," i ordered. ephraim hesitated. glittering eyes betrayed fear to be left out of an adventure, disgust to see his own advice ignored, and yet that he was alert to the advantage of being left with a lone command. "but we should--ah--cross to the--ah--other side and--ah--help kagig," he objected. perhaps he hoped to build political influence on the basis of his own account to kagig afterward of how he had argued for the saner course. "please explain what i have said--exactly!" he continued to hesitate. i could see the kurdish riflemen responding to orders from their rear and beginning to concentrate in the direction of our left wing. our center, where gloria and will were probably concealed by rocks and foliage, poured a galling fire on them, and they had to reform, and detach a considerable company to deal with that; but two-thirds of their number surged toward our left, and if my plan was to succeed almost the chief element was time. "but kagig will--" one of the men had a hide rope, very likely looted from the village we had burned. i took it from him and tied a running noose in the end. then i made the other end fast to the roots of a tree that had been rain-washed until they projected naked over fifty feet of sheer rock. "now," i said, "explain what i said, or i'll hang you in sight of both sides!" i wondered whether he would not turn the tables and hang me. i knew i would not have been willing to lessen kagig's chances by shooting any of them if they had decided to take ephraim's part. but the politician in the man was uppermost and he did not force the issue. "all right, effendi--oh, all right!" he answered, trying to laugh the matter off. "explain to them, then!" i made him do it half a dozen times, for once we were on our way along the precipitous sides of the hills the only control i should have would be force of example, aided to some extent by the sort of primitive signals that pass muster even in a kindergarten. if they should talk turkish to me slowly i might understand a little here and there, but to speak it myself was quite another matter; and in common with most of their countrymen, though they understood turkish perfectly and all that went with it, they would rather eat dirt than foul their months with the language of the hated conqueror. but, once explained, the plan was as obvious as the risk entailed, and they approved the one as swiftly as they despised the other. the kurds below were not oblivious to the risk of reprisals from the hills, and we spent five minutes picking out the men posted to keep watch, making careful note of their positions. at the point where we decided to debouch on to the plain there were two sentries taking matters fairly easy, and i told off four men to go on ahead and attend to those as silently as might be. then we started--not close together, for the kurds would certainly be looking out for an attack from the hills in force, and would not be expecting individuals--but one at a time, two armenians leading, and the rest of them following me at intervals of more than fifty yards. at the moment of starting i gave ephraim another order, and within two hours owed my life and that of most of my men to his disobedience. "you stay here with your handful, and don't budge except as kagig moves his line! few as you are, you can hold this flank safe if you stay firm." he stayed firm until the last of my seventeen had disappeared around the corner of the cliff; and five minutes later i caught sight of him through the glasses, leading his following at top speed downward along a spur toward the plain. the kurds on the lookout saw him too and, concentrating their attention on him, did not notice us when we dodged at long intervals in full sunlight across the face of a white rock. there was little leading needed; rather, restraining, and no means of doing it. instead of keeping the formation in which we started off, those in the rear began to overtake the men in front and, rather than disobey the order to keep wide intervals, to extend down the face of the hill, so that within fifteen minutes we were in wide-spaced skirmishing order. then, instead of keeping along the hills, as i had intended, until we were well to the rear of the kurdish firing-line, they turned half-left too soon, and headed in diagonal bee line toward the horses, those who had begun by leading being last now, and the last men first. being shorter-winded than the rest of them and more tired to begin with, that arrangement soon left me a long way in the rear, dodging and crawling laboriously and stopping every now and then to watch the development of the battle. there was little to see but the flash of rifles; and they explained nothing more than that the kurds were forcing their way very close to our center and left wing. not all the fighting had been done that day under organized leadership. i stumbled at one place and fell over the dead bodies of a kurd and an armenian, locked in a strangle-hold. that kurd must have been bold enough to go pillaging miles in advance of his friends, for the two had been dead for hours. but the mutual hatred had not died off their faces, and they lay side by side clutching each other's throats as if passion had continued after death. the sight of ephraim and his party hurrying across their front toward kagig's weak left wing had evidently convinced the kurds that no more danger need be expected from their own left. there can have been no other possible reason why we were unobserved, for the recklessness of my contingent grew as they advanced closer to the horses, and from the rear i saw them brain one outpost with a rock and rush in and knife another with as little regard for concealment as if these two had been the only kurds within eagle's view. yet they were unseen by the enemy, and five minutes later we all gathered in the shelter of a semicircle of loose rocks, to regain wind for the final effort. "korkakma!" i panted, using about ten per cent. of my turkish vocabulary, and they laughed so loud that i cursed them for a bunch of fools. but the man nearest me chose to illustrate his feeling for turks further by taking the corner of his jacket between thumb and finger and going through the motions of squeezing off an insect--the last, most expressive gesture of contempt. the horses were within three hundred yards of us. on rising ground between us and the kurdish firing-line was a little group of turkish officers, and to our right beyond the horses was miscellaneous baggage under the guard of kurds, of whom more than half were wounded. i could see an obviously greek doctor bandaging a man seated on an empty ammunition box. but our chief danger was from the mounted scoundrels who were so busy murdering women and children and wounded men half a mile away to the rear. they had come along working the covert like hunters of vermin, driving lances into every possible lurking place and no doubt skewering their own wounded on occasion, for which armenians would afterward be blamed. we could hear them chorusing with glee whenever a lance found a victim, or when a dozen of them gave chase to some panic-stricken woman in wild flight. through the glasses i could see two turkish officers with them, in addition to their own nondescript "tin-plate men"; and if officers or men should get sight of us it was easy to imagine what our fate would be. that thought, and knowledge that gloria vanderman and will and fred were engaged in an almost equally desperate venture within a mile of me (evidenced by dozens of wild bullets screaming through the air) suggested the idea of taking a longer chance than any i had thought of yet. a moment's consideration brought conviction that the effort would be worth the risk. yet i had no way of communicating with my men! i pointed to the turkish officers clustered together watching the effort of their firing-line. from where we lay to the horses would be three hundred yards; from the horses to those officers would be about two hundred and fifty yards farther at an angle of something like forty degrees. counting their orderlies and hangers-on we outnumbered that party by two to one; and "the fish starts stinking from the head" as the proverb says. with the head gone, the whole kurdish firing-line would begin to be useless. i tried my stammering turkish, but the men were in no mood to be patient with efforts in that loathly tongue. none of them knew a word in english. i tried french--italian--smattering arabic--but they only shook their heads, and began to think nervousness was driving me out of hand. one of them laid a soothing hand on my shoulder, and repeated what sounded like a prayer. to lose the confidence of one's men under such circumstances at that stage of the game was too much. i grew really rattled, and at random, as a desperate man will i stammered off what i wanted to say in the foreign tongue that i knew best, regardless of the fact that armenians are not black men, and that there is not even a trace of connection between their language and anything current in africa. zanzibar and armenia are as far apart as australia and japan, with about as much culture in common. to my amazement a man answered in fluent kiswahili! he had traded for skins in some barbarous district near the shore of victoria nyanza, and knew half a dozen bantu languages. in a minute after that we had the plan well understood and truly laid; and, what was better, they had ceased to believe me a victim of nerves--a fact that gave me back the nerve that had been perilously close to vanishing. we paid no more attention to the firing-line, nor to the mounted kurds who were drawing the coverts nearer and nearer to us. it was understood that we were to sacrifice ourselves for our friends, and do the utmost damage possible before being overwhelmed. we shook hands solemnly. two or three men embraced each other. the five who by common consent were reckoned the best rifle shots lay down side by side with me among the rocks, and the remainder began crawling out one by one on their stomachs toward the horses, with instructions to take wide open order as quickly as possible, with the idea of making the kurds believe our numbers were greater than they really were. when i judged they were half-way toward the horses we six opened fire on the turkish officers. and every single one of us missed! at the sound of our volley the devoted horse-thieves rose to their feet and rushed on the horse-guards, forgetting to fire on them from sheer excitement, and as a matter of fact one of them was shot dead by a horse-guard before the rest remembered they had deadly weapons of their own. i remedied the first outrageous error to a slight extent by killing the turkish colonel's orderly, missing the commander himself by almost a yard. my five men all missed with their second shots, and then it was too late to pull off the complete coup we had dared to hope for. the entire staff took cover, and started a veritable hail of fire with their repeating pistols, all aimed at us, and aimed as wildly as our own shots had been. meanwhile the mounted kurds at the rear had heard the firing and were coming on full pelt, yelling like red indians. i could see, in the moment i snatched for a hurried glance in that direction, that the purpose of cutting loose and stampeding the horses was being accomplished; but even that comparatively simple task required time, and as the kurds galloped nearer, the horses grew as nervous as the men who sought to loose them. but conjecture and all caution were useless to us six bent on attacking the colonel and his staff. we crawled out of cover and advanced, stopping to fire one or two shots and then scrambling closer, giving away our own paucity of numbers, but increasing the chance of doing damage with each yard gained. and our recklessness had the additional advantage of making the staff reckless too. the colonel kept in close hiding, but the rest of them began dodging from place to place in an effort to outflank us from both sides, and i saw four of them bowled over within a minute. then the remainder lay low again, and we resumed the offensive. the next thing i remember was hearing a wild yell as our party seized a horse apiece and galloped off in front of the oncoming kurds--straight toward kagig's firing-line. that, and the yelling of the horsemen in pursuit drew the attention of the riflemen attacking kagig to the fact that most of their horses were running loose and that there was imminent danger to their own rear. i only had time to get a glimpse of them breaking back, for the turkish colonel got my range and sent a bullet ripping down the length of the back of my shooting jacket. that commenced a duel----he against me--each missing as disgracefully as if we were both beginners at the game of life or death, and i at any rate too absorbed to be aware of anything but my own plight and of oceans of unexplained noise to right and left. i knew there were galloping horses, and men yelling; but knowledge that the turkish military rifle i was using must be wrongly sighted, and that my enemy had no such disadvantage, excluded every other thought. i had used about half the cartridges in my bandolier when a kurd's lance struck me a glancing blow on the back of the head. his horse collapsed on top of me, as some thundering warrior i did not see gave the stupendous finishing stroke to rider and beast at once. there followed a period of semi-consciousness filled with enormous clamor, and upheavings, and what might have been earthquakes for lack of any other reasonable explanation, for i felt myself being dragged and shaken to and fro. then, as the weight of the fallen horse was rolled aside there surged a tide of blissful relief that carried me over the border of oblivion. when i recovered my senses i was astride of rustum khan's mare, with a leather thong around my shoulders and the rajput's to keep me from falling. we were proceeding at an easy walk in front of a squadron of ragged-looking irregulars whom i did not recognize, toward the center of the position kagig had held. kagig's men were no longer in hiding, but standing about in groups; and presently i caught sight of fred and will and kagig standing together, but not gloria vanderman. a cough immediately behind us made me turn my head. the turkish colonel, who had fought the ridiculously futile duel with me, was coming along at the mare's tail with his hands tied behind him and a noose about his neck made fast to one of the saddle-rings. "much obliged, rustum khan!" i said by way of letting him know i was alive. "how did you get here?" "ha, sahib! not going to die, then? that is good! i came because colonel lord montdidier sahib sent me with a squadron of these mountain horsemen--fine horsemen they are--fit by the breath of allah to draw steel at a rajput's back!" "he sent you to find me?" "ha, sahib. to rescue you alive if that were possible." "how did he know where i was?" "an armenian by name of ephraim came and said you had gone over to the turks. certain men he had with him corroborated, but three of his party kept silence. my lord sahib answered 'i have hunted, and camped, and fought beside that man--played and starved and feasted with him. no more than i myself would he go over to turks. he must have seen an opportunity to make trouble behind the turks' backs. take your squadron and go find him, rustum khan!' and i, sahib, obeyed my lord bahadur's orders." "where is lord montdidier now?" "who knows, sahib. wherever the greatest need at the moment is." "tell me what has happened." "you did well, sahib. the loosing of the horses and the shooting behind their backs put fear into the kurds. they ceased pressing on our left wing. and i--watching from behind cover on the right wing--snatched that moment to outflank them, so that they ran pell-mell. then i saw the mounted kurds charging up from the rear, and guessed at once where you were, sahib. the kurds were extended, and my men in close order, so i charged and had all the best of it, arriving by god's favor in the nick of time for you, sahib. then i took this colonel prisoner. only once in my life have i seen a greater pile than his of empty cartridge cases beside one man. that was the pile beside you, sahib! how many men did you kill, and he kill? and who buried them?" "where is miss vanderman?" i asked, turning the subject. "god knows! what do i know of women? only i know this: that there is a gipsy woman bred by satan out of sin itself, who will make things hot for any second filly in this string! woe and a woman are one!" not caring to listen to the indian's opinions of the other sex any more than he would have welcomed mine about the ladies of his own land, i made out my injuries were worse than was the case, and groaned a little, and grew silent. so we rode without further conversation up to where fred and will were standing with kagig, and as i tumbled off into fred's arms i was greeted with a chorus of welcome that included gloria's voice. "that's what i call using your bean!" she laughed, in the slangy way she had whenever will had the chance to corrupt her boston manners. "it feels baked," i said. "i used it to stop a kurd's lance with. hullo! what's the matter with you?" "i stopped a bullet with my forearm!" she was sitting in a sort of improvised chair between two dwarfed tree-trunks, and if ever i saw a proud young woman that was she. she wore the bloody bandage like a prize diploma. "and i've seen your friend monty, and he's better than the accounts of him!" i glanced at will, alert for a sign of jealousy. "monty is the one best bet!" he said. and his eyes were generous and level, as a man's who tells the whole truth. chapter fourteen "rajput, i shall hang you if you make more trouble!" "lo, this is the man--" (psalm 52) choose, ye forefathers of to-morrow, choose! these easy ways there be uncluttered by the wrongs each other bears, and warmly we shall walk who can not see how thin some other fellow's garment wears, nor need to notice whose. choose, ye stock-owners in to-morrow, choose! the road these others tread is littered deep with jetsam and the bones of their dishonored dead. what altruism for defeat atones? have ye not much to lose? choose, ye inheritors of ages, choose! what owe ye to the past? the burly men who magna charta wrung from tyranny entrenched would stand aghast to see the ripples from that stone they flung, they, too, had selfish views. choose, ye investors in the future, choose! ye need pick cautious odds; to-morrow's fruit is seeded down to-day, and unwise purpose like the unknown gods tempts on a wasteful way. "ware well what guide ye use! we went and bivouacked by the brawling jihun under a roof of thatch, whose walls were represented by more or less upright wooden posts and debris; for kagig would not permit anything to stand even for an hour that turks could come and fortify. none of us believed that the repulse of that handful of kurdish plunderers and the capture of a turkish colonel would be the end of hostilities--rather the beginning. kagig, when gloria asked him what he proposed to do with rustum khan's prisoner, smiled cynically and ordered him searched by two of the zeitoonli standing guard. rustum khan was standing just out of low ear-shot absorbed in contemplation of the lie of the country. i noticed that fred began to look nervous, but he did not say anything. will was too busy fussing with gloria's wound, making a new bandage for it and going through the quite unnecessary motions of keeping up her spirits, to observe any other phenomena. an armenian woman named anna, who had attached herself to gloria because, she said, her husband and children had been killed and she might as well serve as weep, sat watching the two of them with quiet amusement. the turk offered no further objection than a shrug of his fatalist shoulders and a muttered remark about ermenie and bandits. even when the mountaineers laughed at the chink of stolen money in all his pockets he did not exhibit a trace of shame. they shook him, and pawed him, and poured out gold in little heaps on the ground (out of the magnanimity of his official heart he had doubtless left all silver coin for his hamidieh to pouch); but kagig only had eyes for the papers they pulled out of his inner pocket and tossed away. he pounced on them. "hah!" he laughed. "there! did i tell you? these are his orders--signed by a governor's secretary--countersigned by the governor himself--to 'set forth with his troops and rescue armenians in the zeitoon district.' rescue them! have you seen? did you observe his noble rescue work? here--see the orders for yourselves! observe how the stamboulis propose to prove their innocence after the event!" since they were written in turkish they were of no conceivable use to any one but fred and rustum khan. fred glanced over them, and shouted to rustum khan to come and look. that was a mistake, for it called the rajput's attention to what had been happening to his prisoner. he came striding toward us with his black beard bristling and eyes blazing with anger. "who searched him?" he demanded. "he was searched by my order," kagig answered in the calm level voice that in a man of such spirit was prophetic of explosion. "who gave thee leave to order him searched, armenian?" "i left you his money," kagig answered with biting scorn, pointing to the little heaps of gold coin on the ground. i had no means of knowing what peaks of friction had already been attained between the two, and it was not likely that i should instantly choose sides against the man who within the hour had saved my life at peril of his own. but will saw matters in another light, and fred began humming through his nose. will left gloria and walked straight up to rustum khan. he had managed to shave himself with cold jihun water and some laundry soap, and his clean jaw suggested standards set up and sworn to since ever they gave the name of yankee to men possessed by certain high ideals. "kagig needs no leave from any one to order prisoners searched!" he said, shaping each word distinctly. rustum khan spluttered, and kicked at a heap of coin. "perhaps you have bargained for your share of all loot? i have heard that in america men--" 'rajput!" said kagig, looking down on him from slightly higher ground, "i will hang you if you make more trouble!" at that i interfered. i was not the only one in rustum khan's debt; it was likely his brilliant effort at the critical moment had saved our whole fighting line. besides, i saw the turk grinning to himself with satisfaction at the rift in our good will. "suppose we refer this dispute to monty," i proposed, reasoning that if it should ever get as far as monty, tempers would have died away meanwhile. not that monty could not have handled the problem, tempers and all. "i refer no points of honor," growled the rajput. "i have been insulted." "rot!" exclaimed fred, getting to his feet. when his usually neat beard has not been trimmed for a day or two he looks more truculent than he really is. "i've been listening. the insolence was on the other side." "do you deny kagig's right to question prisoners?" i asked, thinking i saw a way out of the mess. "can i not question him?" rustum khan turned on me with a gesture that made it clear he held me to no friendship on account of service rendered. he strode toward his prisoner, with heaven knows what notion in his head, but fred interposed himself. the likeliest thing at that moment was a blow by one or the other that would have banished any chance of a returning reign of reason. rustum khan turned his back to the turk and thrust out his chest toward fred as if daring him to strike. even the kites seemed to expect bloodshed and circled nearer. it was gloria who cut the gordian knot. it was her unwounded hand, not fred's, that touched the rangar's breast. "rustum khan," she said, "i think better of you than to believe you would take advantage of our ignorance. you're a soldier. we are only civilians trying to help a tortured nation. we know nothing of rajput customs. won't you go to lord montdidier and tell him about it, and ask him to decide? we'll all obey monty, you know." rustum khan looked down at her bandaged wrist, and then into violet eyes that were not in the least degree afraid of him but only looking diligently for the honor he so boasted. "who can refuse a beautiful young woman?" he said, beginning to melt. but he refused to meet her eyes again, or even to acknowledge our existence. "i give you the prisoner!" he made her a motion of arrogant extravagance with his right hand as if performing the act of transfer. then he turned on his heel with a little simultaneous mock salute, and striding to his bay mare, mounted and rode away. kagig took over the prisoner at once without comment and began to question him under a tree twenty yards away, paying no attention to the riflemen who matched one another, laughing, for the plundered money. we four went back to the shelter of the thatch roof, for the plan was to remain behind with the company of zeitoonli whom kagig had placed carefully at vantage points, and give stragglers a chance to save themselves before we resumed the journey to zeitoon. naturally enough, rustum khan and his fiery unreason was the subject we discussed, and fred laid law down as to how he should be dealt with whenever the chance should come to bring him to book. but rustum khan was a bagatelle compared to what was coming, if we had only known it. while we talked i saw gregor jhaere, the attaman of gipsies, ride down the track on a brown mule and dismount within ten yards of kagig. he hobbled his mule, and went and sat close by kagig and the turk, engaging in a three-cornered talk with them. kagig seemed to have expected him, for there was no sign of greeting or surprise. there was nothing disturbing about gregor's arrival on the scene; he was evidently helping kagig to cross-examine the turk and check up facts. within their limits gipsies are about the best spies obtainable because of their ability to take advantage of credulity and their own immeasurable unbelief in protest or appearances. it was the individual who followed gregor at a distance, and dismounted from a gray stallion quite a long way off in order not to draw attention to herself, who made my blood turn cold. i caught sight of maga jhaere first because the others had their backs toward her. then the expression of my face brought fred to his feet. by that time magi had vanished out of view unaware that any one had seen her, creeping like a pantheress from rock to rock. "what's the matter?" fred demanded, sitting down again, ill-tempered with himself for being startled. "maga jhaere!" "how exciting!" said gloria. "i'm crazy to meet her." but will looked less excited and more anxious than i had ever seen him, and we all three laughed. "all right!" he said. "i tell you it's no joke. that woman believes she's got her hooks in." we tried to go on talking naturally, but lapsed into uncomfortable silence as the minutes dragged by and no maga put in her appearance. fred began humming through his nose again in that ridiculous way that he thinks seems unconcerned, but that makes his best friends yearn to smite him hip and thigh. "i guess you were mistaken," will said at last, spreading out his shoulders with relief at the mere suggestion. but i was facing the direction of zeitoon, as he was not, and again the expression of my face betrayed the facts. there were two large stones leaning together, with a small triangular gap between them, less than thirty feet from where we sat. in that gap i could see a pair of eyes, and nothing else. they had almost exactly the expression of a panther's that is stalking, not its quarry, but its mortal foe. in spite of having seen maga approaching, i would have believed them an animal's eyes, only that from experience i knew an animal's eyes betray fear and anger without reason, whereas these blazed with the desperate reasoning that holds fear in contempt. panthers can hate, be afraid, sweep fear aside with anger, and plan painstakingly for murderous attack; but it is only behind human eyes that one may recognize the murder--purpose based on argument. "i see her," i said. "i suspect she's got a pistol, and--" i had not known until that moment that the short hair was standing up the back of my head, but i felt it go down with a creepy cold chill as i spoke. then once more it rose. knowing she was seen and recognized, maga got to her feet and stood on the larger of the two stones, looking down on us. her hands were on her hips, and i could see no weapon, but her lips moved in voiceless imprecation. "are you maga jhaere?" asked gloria, first of us all to recover some measure of self-command. maga nodded. she was barefooted, clothed only in bodice and leather jacket and a rather short ochre-colored skirt that blew in the gaining wind and showed the outline of her lithe young figure. her long black hair billowed and galloped in the wind behind her. "i am maga jhaere," she said slowly, addressing gloria. "who are you?" "my name is gloria vanderman." "and that man beside you--who is he?" gloria did not answer. will looked more embarrassed than the devil caught in daylight, and fred recovered his mental equilibrium sufficiently to chuckle. "is he your husband?" "no." "then what you want with 'im?" no one said a word. only, fred made a movement with his hand behind him that maga noticed and spurned with a toss of her chin. "you coming to zeitoon?" gloria nodded. glancing over toward kagig i saw that he was aware of maga and was watching her out of the corner of his eye while he talked with gregor and the turk. they were both getting angry with the turk and using gestures suggestive of impending agony by way of emphasis. the turk was growing fidgety. maga spread her arms out as if she were embracing all the universe and called it hers. "then--if you ar-re coming to zeitoon--you choose first a 'usband. there are--many 'usbands. some 'ave lost a wife--some 'ave sick wife--some not yet never 'ad no wife. plenty armenians--also two other men there--but you let that one--will--alone! choose a 'usband--marry,'im--then you come to zeitoon! if you come without a 'usband--i will keel you--do you understand?" "now then, america!" grinned fred in a stage aside that maga could hear as clearly as if it had been intended for her. "let's see the eagle scream for liberty!" "eagle scream?" said maga, almost screaming herself. "what you know about eagles? you ol' fool! that man will is thinking you ar-re 'is frien'. you ar-re not 'is frien'! let 'im come with me, an' i will show 'im what ar-re eagles--what is freedom--what is knowledge--what is life! i know. you ol' fool, you not know! you ol' fool, you marry that woman--then you can bring 'er to zeitoon an' she is safe! otherwise--" she reached in the bosom of her blouse and drew out, not the mother-o'-pearl-plated pistol that i feared, but a knife with an eighteen-inch blade of glittering steel. instantly fred covered her with his own repeater, but she laughed in his face. "you ol' fool, you ar-re afraid to shoot me!" if she meant that fred would feel squeamish about shooting before she hurled the knife, then she was certainly right. but she knew better than to make one preliminary motion. and kagig knew better than to permit further pleasantries. i saw him whisper to gregor, and the gipsy attaman started on hands and knees to creep round behind her. but maga's eyes were practised like those of all other wild creatures in detecting movement behind her as well as in front. she spat, and gave vent to a final ultimatum. "you 'ave 'eard. i said--you let that man will yerr-kees alone! an' don't you dare come to zeitoon without a 'usband!" then she turned and dodged gregor, and ran for her gray stallion--mounted the savage brute with a leap from six feet away, and rode like the wind toward the gut of the pass that shut off zeitoon from our view. a minute later a shell from a small-bore cannon screamed overhead, and burst a hundred yards beyond us on a sheet of rock. "not bad for a ranging shot!" said fred, suddenly as self-possessed as if the world never held such a thing as an untamed woman. "observe, you sportmen all!" kagig exclaimed, getting to his feet. "the turkish nobility are proceeding to rescue poor armenians. behold, their charity comes even from the cannon's mouth! it is time to go now, lest it overtake us! no cannon can come in sight of zeitoon. follow me." with his usual sudden oblivion of everything but the main objective kagig mounted and rode away, followed by gregor in charge of the prisoner, and by a squadron or so of mounted zeitoonli who attempted no formation but came cantering as each detachment realized that their leader was on the move. we found ourselves last, without an armed man between us and the enemy, although without a doubt there were still dozens of fugitive poor wretches who had not had the courage or perhaps the strength to overtake us yet. kagig had had the forethought to leave comparatively fresh mules for us to ride, and there was not any particular reason for hurry. will went ahead, with gloria and anna beside him on one mule--gloria laughing him out of countenance because of his nervousness on her account, but he insistent on the danger in case of repeated gun-fire. fred rode slowly beside me in the rear, for we still hoped to encourage a few stray fugitives to come out of their hiding holes and follow us to safety. a second cannon shot, not nearly so well aimed as the first had been, went screaming over toward our left and landed without bursting among low bushes. a third and a fourth followed it, and the last one did explode. that was plainly too much for some one who had dodged into hiding when the second shot fell; we saw him come rushing out from cover like a lunatic, unconscious of direction and only intent on shielding the top of his head with his hands. "is the poor devil hurt?" i said, wondering. but fred broke into a roar of laughter; and he is not a heartless man--merely gifted more than usual with the hunter's eye that recognizes sex and species of birds and animals at long range. i can see farther than fred can, but at recognizing details swiftly i am a blind bat compared to him. "the martyred biped!" he laughed. "peter measel by the god of happenings!" we rode over toward him, and peter it was, running with his eyes shut. he screamed when we stopped him, and sobbed instead of talking when we pulled him in between our mules and offered him two stirrup leathers to hold. he seemed to think that standing between the mules would protect him from the artillery fire, and as we were not in any hurry we took advantage of that delusion to let him recover a modicum of nerve. and the moment that began to happen he was the same sweet peter measel with the same assurance of every other body's wickedness and his own divinity, only with something new in his young life to add poignancy. "what were you doing there?" demanded fred, as we got him to towing along between us at last. "i was looking for her." "for whom?" "for maga jhaere." fred allowed his ribs to shake in silent laughter that annoyed the mule, and we had to catch measel all over again because the beast's crude objections filled the martyred biped full of the desire to run. "somebody must save that girl!" he panted. "and who else can do it? who else is there?" "there's only you!" fred agreed, choking down his mirth. "i'm glad you agree with me. at least you have that much blessedness, mr. fred. d'you know that girl was willing to be a murderess? yes! she tried to murder rustum khan. rustum khan ought to be hanged, for he is a villain--a black villain! but she must not have blood on her hands--no, no!" "why didn't she murder him?" demanded fred. "qualms at the last moment?" "no. i'm sorry to say no. she has no god-likeness yet. but that will come. she will repent. i shall see to that. it was i who prevented her, and she all but murdered me! she would have murdered me, but kagig held her wrist; and to punish her he gave an order that i should preach to her morning, afternoon, and evening--three times a day. so i had my opportunity. there was a guard of gipsy women set to see that she obeyed." "continue," said fred. "what happened?" "she broke away, and came down to see the fighting." "why did you follow her? weren't you afraid?" "oh, mr. fred, if you only knew! yet i felt impelled to find her. i could not trust her out of sight." "why not? she seems fairly well able to look after herself." "oh, i can not allow wickedness. i must make it to cease! it entered my head that she intended to find kagig!" "well? why not?" "oh, mr. fred--tell me! you may know--you perhaps as well as any one, for you are such an ungodly man! what are her relations with kagig? does he--is he--is there wickedness between them?" "dashed if i know. she's a gipsy. he's a fine half-savage. why should it concern you?" "oh, i could not endure it! it would break my heart to believe it!" "then why think about it?" "how can i help it? i love her! oh, i love her, mr. fred! i never loved a woman in all my life before. it would break my heart if she were to be betrayed into open sin by kagig! oh, what shall i do? what shall i do? i love her! what shall i do?" "do?" said fred, looking forward in imagination to new worlds of humor, "why--make love, if you love her! make hot love and strong!" "will you help me, mr. fred?" the biped stammered. "you see, she's rather wild--a little unconventional--and i've never made love even to a sempstress. will you help me?" "certainly!" fred chuckled. "certainly. i'll guarantee to marry her to you if you'll dig up the courage. have you a ring?" peter measel produced a near-gold ring with a smirk almost of recklessness, a plain gold ring whose worn appearance called to mind the finger taken from a dead kurd's cartridge pouch. it may be that measel bought it, but neither fred nor i spoke to him again, for half an hour. chapter fifteen "scenery to burst the heart!" the rebel's hymn the seeds that swell within enwrapping mould, gray buds that color faintly in the northing sun, deep roots that lengthen after winter's rest, the flutter of year's youth in april's breast as young leaves in the warming hour unfold-these and my heart are one! go dam the river-course with carted earth; or bind with iron bands that riven stone that century on century has slept until into its heart a tendril crept, and in the quiet majesty of birth new nature broke into her own! or bid the sun stand still! or fashion wings to herd the heaven's stars and make them be subservient to will and rule and whim! or rein the winds, and still the ocean's hymn! more surely ye shall manage all these things than chain the life in me! great mountains shedding the reluctant snow, vision of the finish of the thing begun, spirit of the beauty of the torrent's song, unconquerable peal of carillon, and secrets that in conquest overflow-these and my heart are one! yet another night we were destined to spend on the zeitoon road, for we had not the heart to leave behind us the stragglers who balked fainting in the gut of the pass. some were long past the stage where anything less than threats could make impression on them, and only able to go forward in a dull dream at the best. but there were numbers of both men and women unexpectedly capable of extremes of heroism, who took the burden of misery upon themselves and exhibited high spirits based on no evident excuse. nothing could overwhelm those, nothing discourage them. "to zeitoon!" somebody shouted, as if that were the very war-cry of the saints of god. then in a splendid bass voice he began to sing a hymn, and some women joined him. so fred oakes fell to his old accustomed task, and played them marching accompaniments on his concertina until his fingers ached and even he, the enthusiast, loathed the thing's bray. in one way and another a little of the pall of misery was lifted. kagig sent us down bread and yoghourt at nightfall, so that those who had lived thus far did not die of hunger. women brought the food on their heads in earthen crocks--splendid, good-looking women with fearless eyes, who bore the heavy loads as easily as their mountain men-folk carried rifles. they did not stay to gossip, for we had no news but the stale old story of murder and plunder; and their news was short and to the point. "come along to zeitoon!" was the burden of it, carried with a singsong laugh. "zeitoon is ready for anything!" before we had finished eating, each two of them gathered up a poor wretch from our helpless crowd and strode away into the mountains with a heavier load than that they brought. "come along to zeitoon!" they called back to us. but even fred's concertina, and the hymns of the handful who were not yet utterly spent, failed to get them moving before dawn. we did not spend the night unguarded, although no armed men lay between us and the enemy. we could hear the kurds shouting now and then, and once, when i climbed a high rock, i caught sight of the glow of their bivouac fires. imagination conjured up the shrieks of tortured victims, for we had all seen enough of late to know what would happen to any luckless straggler they might have caught and brought to make sport by the fires. but there was no imagination about the calls of kagig's men, posted above us on invisible dark crags and ledges to guard against surprise. we slept in comfortable consciousness that a sleepless watch was being kept--until fleas came out of the ground by battalions, divisions and army corps, making rest impossible. but even the flea season was a matter of indifference to the hapless folk who lay around us, and although we fussed and railed we could not persuade them to go forward before dawn broke. then, though, they struggled to their feet and started without argument. but an hour after the start we reached the secret of the safety of zeitoon, without which not even the valor of its defenders could have withstood the overwhelming numbers of the turks for all those scores of years; and there was new delay. the gut of the pass rose toward zeitoon at a sharp incline--a ramp of slippery wet clay, half a mile long, reaching across from buttress to buttress of the impregnable hills. it was more than a ridden mule could do to keep its feet on the slope, and we had to dismount. it was almost as much as we ourselves could do to make progress with the aid of sticks, and we knew at last what kagig had meant by his boast that nothing on wheels could approach his mountain home. the poor wretches who had struggled so far with us simply gave up hope and sat down, proposing to die there. the martyred biped copied them, except that they were dry-eyed and he shed tears. "to think that i should come to this--that i should come to this!" he sobbed. yet the fool must have come down by that route, and have gone up that way once. we should have been in a quandary but for the sound of axes ringing in the mountain forest on our left--a dense dark growth of pine and other evergreens commencing about a hundred feet above the naked rock that formed the northerly side of the gorge. where there were axes at work there was in all likelihood a road that men could march along, and our refugees sat down to let us do the prospecting. "it would puzzle napoleon to bring cannon over this approach, and the turks don't breed napoleons nowadays!" fred shouted cheerily. "give me a hundred good men and i'll hold this pass forever! wait here while i scout for a way round." he tried first along the lower edge of the line of timber, encouraged by ringing axes, falling trees, and men shouting in the distance. "it looks as if there once had been a road here," he shouted down to us, "but nothing less than fire would clear it now, and everything is sopping wet. i never saw such a tangle of roots and rocks. a dog couldn't get thought!" will volunteered to cross to the right-hand side and hunt over there for a practicable path. gloria stayed beside me, and i had my first opportunity to talk with her alone. she was very pale from the effects of the wound in her wrist, which was painful enough to draw her young face and make her eyes burn feverishly. even so, one realized that as an old woman she would still be beautiful. i watched the eagles for a minute or two, wondering what to say to her, and she did not seem to object to silence, so that i forced an opening at last as clumsily as peter measel might have done it. "what is it about will that makes all women love him?" i asked her. "oh, do they all love him?" "looks like it!" said i. she still wore the bandolier they had stripped from the man with the bandaged feet, although will had relieved her of the rifle's weight. to the bottom of the bandolier she had tied the little bag of odds and ends without which few western women will venture a mile from home. opening that she produced a small round mirror about twice the size of a dollar piece, and offered it to me with a smile that disarmed the rebuke. "perhaps it's his looks," she suggested. i took the mirror and studied what i saw in it. in spite of a cracking headache due to that and the gaining sun (for i had lost my hat when the kurd rode me down with his lance) the episode of rustum khan carrying me back out of death's door on his bay mare had not lingered in memory. there had been too much else to think about. now for the first time i realized how near that lance-point must have come to finishing the chapter for me. i had washed in the jihun when we bivouacked, but had not shaved; later on, my scalp had bled anew, so that in addition to unruly hair tousled and matted with dry blood i had a week-old beard to help make me look like a graveyard ghoul. "i beg pardon!" i said simply, handing her the mirror back. at that she was seized with regret for the unkindness, and utterly forgot that i had blundered like a bullock into the sacred sanctuary of her newborn relationship to will. "oh, i don't know which of you is best!" she said, taking my hand with her unbandaged one. "you are great unselfish splendid men. will has told me all about you! the way you have always stuck to your friend monty through thick and thin--and the way you are following him now to help these tortured people--oh, i know what you are--will has told me, and i'm proud--" the embarrassment of being told that sort of thing by a young and very lovely woman, when newly conscious of dirt and blood and half-inch-long red whiskers, was apparently not sufficient for the mirth of the exacting gods of those romantic hills. there came interruption in the form of a too-familiar voice. "oh, that's all right, you two! make the most of it! spoon all you want to! my girl's in the clutches of an outlaw! kiss her if you want to--i won't mind!" i dropped her hand as if it were hot lead. as a matter of fact i had hardly been conscious of holding it. "oh, no, don't mind me!" continued the "martyred biped" in a tone combining sarcasm, envy and impudence. "shall i kill him?" i asked. "no! no!" she said. "don't be violent--don't--" peter measel, whom we had inevitably utterly forgotten, was sitting up with his back propped against a stone and his legs stretched straight in front of him, enjoying the situation with all the curiosity of his unchastened mind. i hove a lump of clay at him, but missed, and the effort made my headache worse. "if you think you can frighten me into silence you're mistaken!" he sneered, getting up and crawling behind the rock to protect himself. but it needed more than a rock to hide him from the fury that took hold of me and sent me in pursuit in spite of gloria's remonstrance. viewed as revenge my accomplishment was pitiful, for i had to chase the poor specimen for several minutes, my headache growing worse at every stride, and he yelling for mercy like a cur-dog shown the whip, while the armenians--women and little children as well as men--looked on with mild astonishment and gloria objected volubly. he took to the clay slope at last in hope that his light weight would give him the advantage; and there at last i caught him, and clapped a big gob of clay in his mouth to stop his yelling. even viewed as punishment the achievement did not amount to much. i kicked him down the clay slope, and he was still blubbering and picking dirt out of his teeth when will shouted that he had found a foot-track. "do you understand why you've been kicked?" i demanded. "yes. you're afraid i'll tell mr. yerkes!" "oh, leave him!" said gloria. "i'm sorry you touched him. let's go!" "it was as much your fault as his, young woman!" snarled the biped, getting crabwise out of my reach. "you'll all be sorry for this before i'm through with you!" i was sorry already, for i had had experience enough of the world to know that decency and manners are not taught to that sort of specimen in any other way than by letting him go the length of his disgraceful course. carking self-contempt must be trusted to do the business for him in the end. gloria was right in the first instance. i should have let him alone. however, it was not possible to take his threat seriously, and more than any man i ever met he seemed to possess the knack of falling out of mind. one could forget him more swiftly than the birds forget a false alarm. i don't believe any of us thought of him again until that night in zeitoon. the path will had discovered was hardly a foot wide in places, and mules could only work their way along by rubbing hair off their flanks against the rock wall that rose nearly sheer on the right hand. from the point of view of an invading army it was no approach at all, for one man with a rifle posted on any of the overhanging crags could have held it against a thousand until relieved. it was a mystery why kagig, or some one else, had not left a man at the foot of the clay slope to tell us about this narrow causeway; but doubtless kagig had plenty to think about. he and most of his men had gone struggling up the clay slope, as we could tell by the state of the going. but they were old hands at it and knew the trick of the stuff. we had all our work cut out to shepherd our poor stragglers along the track will found, and even the view of zeitoon when we turned round the last bend and saw the place jeweled in the morning mist did not do much to increase the speed. as kagig had once promised us, it was "scenery to burst the heart!" not even the himalayas have anything more ruggedly beautiful to show, glistening in mauve and gold and opal, and enormous to the eye because the summits all look down from over blowing cloud-banks. there were moss-grown lower slopes, and waterfalls plunging down wet ledges from the loins of rain-swept majesty; pine trees looming blue through a soft gray fog, and winds whispering to them, weeping to them, moving the mist back and forth again; shadows of clouds and eagles lower yet, moving silently on sunny slopes. and up above it all was snow-dazzling, pure white, shading off into the cold blue of infinity. men clad in goat-skin coats peered down at us from time to time from crags that looked inaccessible, shouting now and then curt recognition before leaning again on a modern rifle to resume the ancient vigil of the mountaineer, which is beyond the understanding of the plains-man because it includes attention to all the falling water voices, and the whispering of heights and deeps. we came on zeitoon suddenly, rising out of a gorge that was filled with ice, or else a raging torrent, for six months of the year. over against the place was a mountainside so exactly suggesting painted scenery that the senses refused to believe it real, until the roar and thunder of the jihun tumbling among crags dinned into the ears that it was merely wonderful, and not untrue. the one approach from the southward--that gorge up which we trudged--was overlooked all along its length by a hundred inaccessible fastnesses from which it seemed a handful of riflemen could have disputed that right of way forever. the only other line of access that we could see was by a wooden bridge flung from crag to crag three hundred feet high across the jihun; and the bridge was overlooked by buildings and rocks from which a hail of lead could have been made to sweep it at short range. zeitoon itself is a mountain, next neighbor to the beirut dagh, not as high, nor as inaccessible; but high enough, and inaccessible enough to give further pause to its would-be conquerors. not in anything resembling even rows, but in lawless disorder from the base to the shoulder of the mountain, the stone and wooden houses go piling skyward, overlooking one another's roofs, and each with an unobstructed view of endless distances. the picture was made infinitely lovely by wisps of blown mist, like hair-lines penciled in the violet air. distances were all foreshortened in that atmosphere, and it was mid-afternoon before we came to a halt at last face to face with blank wall. the track seemed to have been blocked by half the mountain sitting down across it. we sat down to rest in the shadow of the shoulder of an overhanging rock, and after half an hour some one looked down on us, and whistled shrilly. kagig with a rifle across his knees looked down from a height of a hundred and fifty feet, and laughed like a man who sees the bitter humor of the end of shams. "welcome!" he shouted between his hands. and his voice came echoing down at us from wall to wall of the gorge. five minutes later he sent a man to lead us around by a hidden track that led upward, sometimes through other houses, and very often over roofs, across ridiculously tiny yards, and in between walls so closely set together that a mule could only squeeze through by main force. we stabled the mules in a shed the man showed us, and after that kagig received us four, and anna, gloria's self-constituted maid, in his own house. it was bare of nearly everything but sheer necessities, and he made no apology, for he had good taste, and perfect manners if you allowed for the grim necessity of being curt and the strain of long responsibility. a small bench took the place of a table in the main large room. there was a fireplace with a wide stone chimney at one end, and some stools, and also folded skins intended to be sat on, and shiny places on the wall where men in goat-skin coats had leaned their backs. two or three of the gipsy women were hanging about outside, and one of the gipsies who had been with him in the room in the khan at tarsus appeared to be filling the position of servitor. he brought us yoghourt in earthenware bowls--extremely cool and good it was; and after we had done i saw him carry down a huge mess more of it to the house below us, where many of the stragglers we had brought along were quartered by kagig's order. "where's monty?" fred demanded as soon as we entered the room. "presently!" kagig answered--rather irritably i thought. he seemed to have adopted monty as his own blood brother, and to resent all other claims on him. the afternoon was short, for the shadow of the surrounding mountains shut us in. somebody lighted a fire in the great open chimney-place, and as we sat around that to revel in the warmth that rests tired limbs better than sleep itself, kagig strode out to attend to a million things--as the expression of his face testified. then in came maga, through a window, with self-betrayal in manner and look of having been watching us ever since we entered. she went up to will, who was squatted on folded skins by the chimney corner, and stood beside him, claiming him without a word. her black hair hung down to her waist, and her bare feet, not cut or bruised like most of those that walk the hills unshod, shone golden in the firelight. i looked about for peter measel, expecting a scene, but he had taken himself off, perhaps in search of her. she had eyes for nobody but gloria, and no smile for any one. gloria stared back at her, fascinated. "you married?" she asked; and gloria shook her head. "you 'eard me, what i said back below there!" gloria nodded. "you sing?" "sometimes." "you dance?" "oh, yes. i love it." "ah! you shall sing--you shall dance--against me! first you sing--then i sing. then you dance--then i dance--to-night--you understan'? if i sing better as you sing--an' if i dance better as you dance--then i throw you over zeitoon bridge, an' no one interfere! but if you sing better as i sing--an' if you dance better as i dance--then you shall make a servant of me; for i know you will be too big fool an' too chicken 'earted to keel me, as i would keel you! you understan'?" it rather looked as if an issue would have to be forced there and then, but at that minute gregor entered, and drove her out with an oath and terrific gesture, she not seeming particularly afraid of him, but willing to wait for the better chance she foresaw was coming. gregor made no explanation or apology, but fastened down the leather window-curtain after her and threw more wood on the fire. then back came kagig. "where the devil's monty?" fred demanded. "come!" was the only answer. and we all got up and followed him out into the chill night air, and down over three roofs to a long shed in which lights were burning. all the houses--on every side of us were ahum with life, and small wonder, for zeitoon was harboring the refugees from all the district between there and tarsus, to say nothing of fighting men who came in from the hills behind to lend a hand. but we were bent on seeing monty at last, and had no patience for other matters. however, it was only the prisoners he had led us out to see, and nothing more. "look, see!" he said, opening the heavy wooden door of the shed as an armed sentry made way for him. (those armed men of zeitoon did not salute one another, but preserved a stoic attitude that included recognition of the other fellow's right to independence, too.) "look in there, and see, and tell me--do the turks treat armenian prisoners that way?" we entered, and walked down the length of the dim interior, passing between dozens of prisoners lying comfortably enough on skins and blankets. as far as one could judge, they had been fed well, and they did not wear the look of neglect or ill-treatment. at the end, in a little pen all by himself, was the colonel whom rustum khan had made a present of to gloria. "what's the straw for?" fred demanded. "ask him!" said kagig. "he understands! if there should be treachery the straw will be set alight, and he shall know how pigs feel when they are roasted alive! never fear--there will be no treachery!" we followed him back to his own house, he urging us to make good note of the prisoners' condition, and to bear witness before the world to it afterward. "the world does not know the difference between armenians and turks!" he complained again and again. once again we arranged ourselves about his open chimney-place, this time with kagig on a foot-stool in the midst of us. heat, weariness, and process of digestion were combining to make us drowsily comfortable, and i, for one, would have fallen asleep where i sat. but at last the long-awaited happened, and in came monty striding like a norman, dripping with dew, and clean from washing in the icy water of some mountain torrent. "oh, hello, didums!" fred remarked, as if they had parted about an hour ago. "you long-legged rascal, you look as if you'd been having the time of your life!" "i have!" said monty. and after a short swift stare at him fred looked glum. those two men understood each other as the clapper understands the bell. chapter sixteen "what care i for my belly, sahib, if you break my heart?" "it was very good" (genesis 1:31) i saw these shambles in my youth, and said there is no god! no pitiful presides over such obsequies as these. the end alike is darkness whether foe or friend, beast, man or flower the event abides. there is no heaven for the hopeful dead-no better haven than forgetful sod that smothers limbs and mouth and ears and eyes, and with those, love and permanence and strife and vanity and laughter that they thought was life, making mere compost of the one who dies. to whose advantage? nay, there is no god! but he, whose other name is pitiful, was pleased by melting gentleness whose measures broke the ramps of ignorance and keeps of lust, tumbling alike folly and the fool to dust, to teach me womanhood until there spoke still voices inspiration had released, and i heard truly. all the voices said: out of departed yesterday is grown to-day; out of to-day to-morrow surely breaks; out of corruption the inspired awakes; out of existence earth-clouds roll away and leave all living, for there are no dead! after we had made room for monty before the fire and some one had hung his wet jacket up to dry, we volleyed questions at him faster than he could answer. he sat still and let us finish, with fingers locked together over his crossed knee and, underneath the inevitable good humor, a rather puzzled air of wishing above all things to understand our point of view. over and over again i have noticed that trait, although he always tried to cover it under an air of polite indifference and easy tolerance that was as opaque to a careful observer as fred's attempts at cynicism. in the end he answered the last question first. "my agreement with kagig?" "yes, tell them!" put in kagig. "if i should, they would say i lied!" "it's nothing to speak of," said monty offhandedly. "it dawned on our friend here that i have had experience in some of the arts of war. i proposed to him that if he would take a force and go to find you, i would help him to the limit without further condition. that's all." "all, you ass? didums, i warned you at the time when you let them make you privy councilor that you couldn't ever feel free again to kick over traces! dammit, man, you can be impeached by parliament!" "quite so, fred. i propose that parliament shall have to do something at last about this state of affairs." "you'll end up in an english jail, and god help you!--social position gone--milked of your last pound to foot the lawyers' bills--otherwise they'll hang you!" "let 'em hang me after i'm caught! i've promised. remember what byron did for greece? i don't suppose his actual fighting amounted to very much, but he brought the case of greece to the attention of the public. public opinion did the rest, badly, i admit, but better badly and late than never. i'm in this scrimmage, fred, until the last bell rings and they hoist my number." "fine!" exclaimed gloria, jumping to her feet. "so am i in it to a finish!" monty smiled at her with understanding and approval. "almost my first duty, miss vanderman," he said kindly, "will be to arrange that you can not possibly come to harm or be prejudiced by any course the rest of us may decide on." "quite so!" will agreed with a grin, and fred began chuckling like a schoolboy at a show. "nonsense!" she answered hotly. "i've come to harm already--see, i'm wounded--i've been fighting--i'm already prejudiced as you call it! if you're an outlaw, so am i!" she flourished her bandaged wrist and looked like joan of arc about to summon men to sacrifice. but the argument ready on her lips was checked suddenly. the night was without wind, yet the outer door burst open exactly as if a sudden hurricane had struck it, and maga entered with a lantern in her hand. she tried to kick the door shut again, but it closed on peter measel who had followed breathlessly, and she turned and banged his head with the bottom of the lantern until the glass shattered to pieces. "that fool!" she shouted. "oh, that fool!" then she let him come in and close the door, giving him the broken lantern to hold, which he did very meekly, rubbing the crown of his head with the other hand; and she stood facing the lot of us with hands on her hips and a fine air of despising every one of us. but i noticed that she kept a cautious eye on kagig, who in return paid very little attention to her. "fight?" she exclaimed, pointing at gloria. "what does she know about fighting? if she can fight,--let her fight me! i stand ready--i wait for 'er! give 'er a knife, an' i will fight 'er with my bare 'ands!" gloria turned pale and will laid a hand on her shoulder, whispering something that brought the color back again. "maga!" kagig said that one word in a level voice, but the effect was greater than if he had pointed a pistol. the fire died from her eyes and she nodded at him simply. then her eyes blazed again, although she looked away from gloria toward a window. the leather blind was tied down at the corners by strips of twisted hide. she began to jabber in the gipsy tongue--then changed her mind and spat it out in english for our joint benefit. "all right. she is nothing to do with me, that woman, and she shall come to a rotten end, i know, an' that is enough. but there is some one listening! not a woman--not with spunk enough to be a woman! that dirty horse-pond drinking unshaven black bastard rustum khan is outside listening! you think 'e is busy at the fortifying? then i tell you, no, 'e is not! 'e is outside listening!" the surprising answer to that assertion was a heavy saber thrust between the window-frame and blind and descending on the thong. next followed rustum khan's long boot. then came the man himself with dew all over his upbrushed beard, returning the saber to its scabbard with an accompanying apologetic motion of the head. "aye, i was listening!" he spoke as one unashamed. "umm kulsum" (that was his fancy name for maga) "spoke truth for once! i came from the fortifying, where all is finished that can be done to-night. i have been the rounds. i have inspected everything. i report all well. on my way hither i saw umm kulsum, with that jackal trotting at her heel--he made a scornful gesture in the direction of peter measel, who winced perceptibly, at which fred oakes chuckled and nudged me--"and i followed umm kulsum, to observe what harm she might intend." "black pig!" remarked maga, but rustum khan merely turned his splendid back a trifle more toward her. his color, allowing for the black beard, was hardly darker than hers. "why should i not listen, since my heart is in the matter? lord sahib--colonel sahib bahadur!--take back those words before it is too late! undo the promise made to this armenian! what is he to thee? set me instead of thee, sahib! what am i? i have no wives, no lands any longer since the money-lenders closed their clutches on my eldest son, no hope, nor any fellowship with kings to lose! but i can fight, as thou knowest! give me, sahib, to redeem thy promise, and go thou home to england!" "sit down, rustum khan!" "but, sahib--" "sit down!" monty repeated. "i will not see thee sacrificed for this tribe of ragged people, colonel sahib!" monty rose to his feet slowly. his face was an enigma. the rajput stood at attention facing him and they met each other's eyes--east facing west--in such fashion that manhood seemed to fill the smoky room. every one was silent. even maga held her breath. monty strode toward rustum khan; the rajput was the first to speak. "colonel sahib, i spoke wise words!" it seemed to me that monty looked very keenly at him before he answered. "have you had supper, rustum khan? you look to me feverish from overwork and lack of food." "what care i for my belly, sahib, if you break my heart?" the rajput answered. "shall i live to see turks fling thy carcass to the birds? i have offered my own body in place of thine. am i without honor, that my offer is refused?" monty answered that in the rajput tongue, and it sounded like the bass notes of an organ. "brother mine, it is not the custom of my race to send substitutes to keep such promises. that thou knowest, and none has reason to know better. if thy memories and honor urge thee to come the way i take, is there no room for two of us?" "aye, sahib!" said the rajput huskily. "i said before, i am thy man. i come. i obey!" "obey, do you?" monty laid both hands on the rajput's shoulders, struck him knee against knee without warning and pressed him down into a squatting posture. "then obey when i order you to sit!" the rajput laughed up at him as suddenly sweet-tempered as a child. "none other could have done that and not fought me for it!" he said simply. "none other would have had the strength!" he added. monty ignored the pleasantry and turned to maga, so surprising that young woman--that she gasped. "bring him food at once, please!" "me? i? i bring him food? i feed that black--" "yes!" snapped kagig suddenly. "you, maga!" maga's and kagig's eyes met, and again he had his way with her instantly. peter measel, standing over by the door, looked wistful and sighed noisily. "why should you obey him?" he demanded, but maga ignored him as she passed out, and fred nudged me again. "a miracle!" he whispered. "did you hear the martyred biped suggest rebellion to her? he'll be offering to fight kagig next! guess what is kagig's hold over the girl--can you?" but a much greater miracle followed. rather than disobey monty again; rather than seem to question his authority, or differ from his judgment in the least, rustum khan forebore presently from sending for his own stripling servant and actually accepted food from maga's hands. as a mahammadan, he made in theory no caste distinctions. but as a rajput be had fixed hindu notions without knowing it, and almost his chief care was lest his food should be defiled by the touch of outcasts, of whom he reckoned gipsies lowest, vilest and least cleansible. nevertheless he accepted curds that had been touched by gipsy fingers, and ate greedily, in confirmation of monty's diagnosis; and after a few minutes he laid his head on a folded goat-skin in the corner, and fell asleep. then monty sent a servant to his own quarters for some prized possession that he mentioned in a whisper behind his hand. none of us suspected what it might be until the man returned presently with a quart bottle of scotch whisky. kagig himself got mugs down from a shelf three inches wide, and monty poured libations. kagig, standing with legs apart, drank his share of the strong stuff without waiting; and that brought out the chief surprise of the evening. "ah-h-h!" he exclaimed, using the back of his hand to wipe mobile lips. "not since i drank in tony's have i tasted that stuff! the taste makes me homesick for what never was my home, nor ever can be! tony's--ah!" "what tony's?" demanded will, emerging from whispered interludes with gloria like a man coming out of a dream. "tony's down near the battery." "what--the battery, new york--?" "where else? tony was a friend of mine. tony lent me money when i landed in the states without a coin. it was right that i should take a last drink with tony before i came away forever." fred reached into the corner for a lump of wood and set it down suggestively before the fire. kagig accepted and sat down on it, stretching his legs out rather wearily. "i noticed you've been remembering your english much better than at first," said will. "go on, man, tell us!" kagig cleared his throat and warmed himself while his eyes seemed to search the flames for stories from a half-forgotten past. "weren't the states good enough for you?" will suggested, by way of starting him off. "good enough? ah!" he made all eight fingers crack like castanets. "much too good! how could i live there safe and comfortable--eggs and bacon--clean shirt--good shoes--an apartment with a bath in it--easy work--good pay--books to read--kindness--freedom--how could i accept all that, remembering my people in armenia?" he ran his fingers through his hair, and stared in the fire again--remembering america perhaps. "there was a time when i forgot. all young men forget for a while if you feed them well enough. the sensation of having money in my pocket and the right to spend it made me drunk. i forgot armenia. i took out what are called first papers. i was very prosperous--very grateful." he lapsed into silence again, holding his head bowed between his hands. "why didn't you become a citizen?" asked will. "ah! many a time i thought of it. i am citizen of no land--of no land! i am outlaw here--outlaw in the states! i slew a turk. they would electrocute me in new york--for slaying the man who--have you heard me tell what happened to my mother, before my very eyes? well--that man came to america, and i slew him!" "why did you leave armenia in the first place?" asked gloria, for he seemed to need pricking along to prevent him from getting off the track into a maze of silent memory. "why not? i was lucky to get away! that cursed abdul hamid had been rebuked by the powers of europe for butchering bulgars, so he turned on us armenians in order to prove to himself that he could do as he pleased in his own house. i tell you, murder and rape in those days were as common as flies at midsummer! i escaped, and worked my passage in the stoke-hole of a little merchant steamer--they were little ships in those days. and when i reached america without money or friends they let me land because i had been told by the other sailors to say i was fleeing from religious persecution. the very first day i found a friend in tony. i cleaned his windows, and the bar, and the spittoons; and he lent me money to go where work would be plentiful. those were the days when i forgot armenia." he began to forget our existence again, laying his face on his forearms and staring down at the floor between his feet. "what brought it back to memory?" asked gloria. "the turk brought it back--fiamil--who bought my mother from four drunken soldiers, and ill-treated her before my eyes. he came to the turkish consulate, not as consul but in some peculiar position; and by that time i was thriving as head-waiter and part-owner of a new york restaurant. thither the fat beast came to eat daily. and so i met him, and recognized him. he did not know me. "remember, i was young, and prosperous for the first time in all my life. you must not judge me by too up-right standards. at first i argued with myself to let him alone. he was nothing to me. i no longer believed in god. my mother was long dead, and armenia no more my country. my money was accumulating in a savings bank. i was proud of it, and i remember i saw visions of great restaurants in every city of america, all owned by me! i did not like to take any step that should prevent that flow of money into the savings bank. "but fiamil inflamed my memory, and i saw him every day. and at last it dawned on me what his peculiar business in america must be. he was back at his old games, buying women. he was buying american young women to be shipped to turkey, all under the seal of consular activity. one day, after he had had lunch and i had brought him cigarettes and coffee, he made a proposal. and although i did not care very deeply for the women of a free land who were willing to be sold into turkish harems, nevertheless, as i said, he inflamed my memory. a love of armenia returned to me. i remembered my people, i remembered my mother's shame, and my own shame. "after a little reflection i agreed with fiamil, and met him that night in an up-stairs room at a place he frequented for his purposes. i locked the door, and we had some talk in there, until in the end he remembered me and all the details of my mother's death. after that i killed him with a corkscrew and my ten fingers, there being no other weapon. and i threw his body out of the window into the gutter, as my mother's body had been thrown, myself escaping from the building by another way. "not knowing where to hide, i kept going--kept going; and after two days i fell among sportmen--cow-punchers they called themselves, who had come to new york with a circus, and the circus had gone broke. to them i told some of my story, and they befriended me, taking me west with them to cook their meals; and for a year i traveled in cow camps. in those days i remembered god as well as armenia, and i used to pray by starlight. "and armenia kept calling--calling. fiamil had wakened in me too many old memories. but there was the money in the savings bank that i did not dare to draw for fear the police might learn my address, yet i had not the heart to leave behind. "so i took a sportman into my confidence, and told him about my money, and why i wanted it. he was not the foreman, but the man who took the place of foreman when the real foreman was too drunk--the hungriest man of all, and so oftenest near the cook-fire. when i had told him, he took me to a township where a lawyer was, and the lawyer drew up a document, which i signed. "then the sportman--his name was larry atkins, i remember--took that document and went to draw the money on my behalf. and that was the last i saw of him. not that he was not sportman--all through. he told me in a letter afterward that the police arrested him, supposing him to be me, but that he easily proved he was not me, and so got away with the money. enclosed in the package in which the letter came were his diamond ring and a watch and chain, and he also sent me an order to deliver to me his horse and saddle. "he explained he had tried to double my money by gambling, but had lost. therefore he now sent me all he had left, a fair exchange being no robbery. oh, he was certainly sportman! "so i sold his watch and chain and the horse--but the diamond ring i kept--behold it!--see, on maga's hand!--it was a real diamond that a woman had given him; and with the proceeds i came back to armenia. in armenia i have ever since remained, with the exception of one or two little journeys in time of war, and one or two little temporary hidings, and a trip into persia, and another into russia to get ammunition. "how have i lived? mostly by robbery! i rob turks and all friends of turks, and such people as help make it possible for turks as a nation to continue to exist! i--we--i and my men--we steal a cartridge sooner than a piaster--a rifle sooner than a thousand roubles! outlaws must live, and weapons are the chief means! i am the brains and the eye of zeitoon, but i have never been chieftain, and am not now. observe my house--is it not empty? i tell you, if it had not been for my new friend monty there would have been six or seven rival chieftains in zeitoon to-night! as it is, they sulk in their houses, the others, because monty has rallied all the fighting men to me! now that monty has come i think there will be unity forever in zeitoon!" he turned toward monty with a gesture of really magnificent approval. caesar never declined a crown with greater dignity. "you, my brother, have accomplished in a few days what i have failed to do in years! that is because you are sportman! just as larry atkins was sportman! he sent me all he had, and could not do more. i understood him. why did he do it? simply sportman--that is all! why do you do this? why do you throw your life into the hot cauldron of zeitoon? because you are sportman! and my people see, and understand. they understand, as they have never understood me! i will tell you why they have never understood me. this is why: "i have always kept a little in reserve. at one time money in a bank. at another time money buried. sometimes a place to run and hide in. now and then a plan for my own safety in case a defense should fail. never have i given absolutely quite all, burning all my bridges. had i been larry atkins i would not have gambled with the money of a man who trusted me; but, having lost the money, i would not have sent my diamond and the watch and chain! neither, if the horse and saddle bad been within my reach would i have sent an order to deliver those! that is why zeitoon has never altogether trusted me! some, but never all, until to-night! "my brother--" he stood up, with the motions of a man who is stiff with weariness. "i salute you! you have taught me my needed lesson!" "i wonder!" whispered fred to me. "remember peter at the fireside? methinks friend kagig doth too much protest! we'll see. nemesis comes swiftly as a rule." i shoved fred off his balance, rolled him over, and sat on him, because cynicism and iconoclasm are twin deities i neither worship nor respect. but at times fred oakes is gifted with uncanny vision. while he struggled explosively to throw me off, the door began resounding to steady thumps, and at a sign from kagig, maga opened it. there strode in nine armenians, followed closely by one of the gipsies of gregor jhaere's party, who whispered to maga through lips that hardly moved, and made signals to kagig with a secretive hand like a snake's head. i got off fred's stomach then, and when he had had his revenge by emptying hot pipe ashes down my neck he sat close beside me and translated what followed word for word. it was all in armenian, spoken in deadly earnest by hairy men on edge with anxiety and yet compelled to grudging patience by the presence of strangers and knowledge of the hour's necessity. when the gipsy had finished making signals to kagig be sat down and seemed to take no further interest. but a little later i caught sight of him by the dancing fire-light creeping along the wall, and presently he lay down with his head very close to rustum khan's. nothing points more clearly to the clarifying tension of that night than the fact that rustum khan with his notions about gipsies could compel himself to lie still with a gipsy's head within three inches of his own, and sham sleep while the gipsy whispered to him. i was not the only one who observed that marvel, although i did not know that at the time. the nine armenians who had entered were evidently influential men. elders was the word that occurred as best describing them. they were smelly with rain and smoke and the close-kept sweat beneath their leather coats--all of them bearded--nearly all big men--and they strode and stood with the air of being usually heard when they chose to voice opinion. kagig stood up to meet them, with his back toward the fire--legs astraddle, and hands clasped behind him. "ephraim says," began the tallest of the nine, who had entered first and stood now nearest to kagig and the firelight, "that you will yourself be king of armenia!" "ephraim lies!" said kagig grimly. "he always does lie. that man can not tell truth!" two of the others grunted, and nudged the first man, who made an exclamation of impatience and renewed the attack. "but there is the turk--the colonel whom your indian friend took prisoner--he says--" "pah! what turk tells the truth?" "he says that the indian--what is his name? rustum khan--was purposing to use him as prisoner-of-war, whereas in accordance with a private agreement made beforehand you were determined to make matters easy for him. he demands of us better treatment in fulfilment of promise. he says that the army is coming to take zeitoon, and to make you governor in the sultan's name. he offered us that argument thinking we are your dupes. he thought to--" "dupes?" snarled kagig. "how long have ye dealt with turks, and how long with me, that ye take a turk's word against mine?" "but the turk thought we are your friends," put in a harsh-voiced man from the rear of the delegation. "otherwise, how should he have told us such a thing?" "if he had thought you were my friends," kagig answered, "he would never have dared. if you had been my friends, you would have taken him and thrown him into jihun river from the bridge!" "yet he has said this thing," said a man who had not spoken yet. "and none has heard you deny it, kagig!" added the man nearest the door. "then hear me now!" kagig shouted, on tiptoe with anger. then he calmed himself and glanced about the room for a glimpse of eyes friendly to himself. "hear me now. those turks--truly come to set a governor over zeitoon. i forgot that the prisoner might understand english. i talked with this friend of mine--he made a gesture toward monty. "perhaps that turk overheard, he is cleverer than he looks. i had a plan, and i told it to my friend. the turk was near, i remember, eating the half of my dinner i gave him." "have you then a plan you never told to us?" the first man asked suspiciously. "one plan? a thousand! am i wind that i should babble into heedless ears each thought that comes to me for testing? first it was my plan to arouse all armenia, and to overthrow the turk. armenia failed me. then it was my plan to arouse zeitoon, and to make a stand here to such good purpose that all armenia would rally to us. bear me witness whether zeitoon trusted me or not? how much backing have i had? some, yes; but yours? "so it was plain that if the turks sent a great army, zeitoon could only hold out for a little while, because unanimity is lacking. and my spies report to me that a greater army is on the way than ever yet came to the rape of armenia. these handful of hamidieh that ye think are all there is to be faced are but the outflung skirmishers. it was plain to me that zeitoon can not last. so i made a new plan, and kept it secret." "ah-h-h! so that was the way you took us into confidence? always secrets behind secrets, kagig! that is our complaint!" "listen, ye who would rather suspect than give credit!" he used one word in the armenian. "it was my plan--my new plan, that seeing the turks insist on giving us a governor, and are able to overwhelm us if we refuse, then i would be that governor!" "ah-h-h! what did we say! unable to be king, you will be governor!" "i talked that over with my new friend, and he did not agree with me, but i prevailed. now hear my last word on this matter: i will not be governor of zeitoon! i will lead against this army that is coming. if you men prevent me, or disobey me, or speak against me, i will hang you--every one! i will accept no reward, no office, no emolument, no title--nothing! either i die here, fighting for zeitoon, or i leave zeitoon when the fighting is over, and leave it as i came to it--penniless! i give now all that i have to give. i burn my bridges! i take inviolable oath that i will not profit! and by the god who fed me in the wilderness, i name my price for that and take my payment in advance! i will be obeyed! out with you! get out of here before i slay you all! go and tell zeitoon who is master here until the fight is lost or won!" he seized a great firebrand and charged at them, beating right and left, and they backed away in front of him, protesting from under forearms raised to protect their faces. he refused to hear a word from them, and drove, them back against the door. strange to say, it was rustum khan who gave up all further pretense at sleeping and ran round to fling the door open--rustum khan who took part with kagig, and helped drive them out into the dark, and rustum khan who stood astraddle in the doorway, growling after them in persian--the only language he knew thoroughly that they likely understood: "bismillah! ye have heard a man talk! now show yourselves men, and obey him, or by the beard of god's prophet there shall be war within zeitoon fiercer than that without! take counsel of your women-folk! ye--" (he used no drawing-room word to intimate their sex)--"are too full of thoughts to think!" then he turned on kagig, and held out a lean brown hand. kagig clasped it, and they met each other's eyes a moment. "am i sportman?" kagig asked ingenuously. "brother," said rustum khan, "next after my colonel sahib i accept thee as a man fit to fight beside!" we were all standing. a free-for-all fight had seemed too likely, and we had not known whether there were others outside waiting to reinforce the delegation. rustum khan sought monty's eyes. "you have the news, sahib?" kagig laughed sharply, and dismissed the past hour from his mind with a short sweep of the hand. "no. tell me," said monty. "the gipsy brought it. a whole division of the turkish regular army is on the march. their rear-guard camps to-night a day's march this side of tarsus. dawn will find the main body within sight of us. half a brigade has hurried forward to reenforce the men we have just beaten. are there any orders?" fred's face fell, and my heart dropped into my boots. a division is a horde of men to stand against. "no," said monty. "no orders yet." "then i will sleep again," said rustum khan, and suited action to the word, laying his head on the same folded goat-skin he had used before and breathing deeply within the minute. nobody spoke. rustum khan's first deep snore had not yet announced his comment on the situation, and we all stood waiting for kagig to say something. but it was peter measel who spoke first. "i will pray," he announced. "i saw that gipsy whispering to the indian, and i know there is treachery intended! o lord--o righteous lord--forgive these people for their bloody and impudent plans! forgive them for plotting to shed blood! forgive them for arrogance, for ambition, for taking thy name in vain, for drinking strong drink, for swearing, for vanity, and for all their other sins. forgive above all the young woman of the party, who is not satisfied with a wound already but looks forward with unwomanly zest to further fighting! forgive them for boasting and--" "throw that fool out!" barked kagig suddenly. "o lord forgive--" fred was nearest the door, and opened it. maga laughed aloud. i was nearest to peter measel, so it was i who took him by the neck and thrust him into outer darkness. kagig kicked the door shut after him; but even so we heard him for several minutes grinding out condemnatory prayers. "now sleep, sportmen all!" said kagig, blessing us with both hands. "sleep against the sport to-morrow!" chapter seventeen "i knew what to expect of the women!" "and delilah said--" always at fault is the fellow betrayed (majorities murder to prove it!) as samson discovered, delilah lies, the stigma's stuck on by the cynical wise, and nothing can ever remove it. we'll cast out delilah and spit on her dead, (that revenge is remarkably human), and pity the victim of underhand tricks so be that it's moral (the sexes don't mix); but, oh, think what the cynical wise would have said if judas were only a woman! we slept until monty called us, two hours before dawn, although i was conscious most of the night of stealthy men and women who stepped over me to get at kagig and whisper to him. his marvelous spy system was working full blast, and he seemed to run no risks by letting the spies report to any one but himself. fred, who slept more lightly than i did, told me afterward that the women principally brought him particulars of the workings of local politics; the men detailed news of the oncoming concrete enemy. there was breakfast served by maga in the dark--hot milk, and a strange mess of eggs and meat. for some reason no one thought of relighting the fire, and although the ashes glowed we shivered until the food put warmth in us. by the light of the smoky lamp i thought that monty wore a strangely divided air, between gloom and exultation. fred had been wide awake and talking with him since long before first cock-crow and was obviously out of sorts, shaking his head at intervals and unwilling more than to poke at his food with a fork. i crossed the room to sit beside them, and came in for the tail end of the conversation. "i might have known it, didums, when i let you go on alone. i'll never forgive myself. i had a premonition and disobeyed it. you pose as a cast-iron materialist with no more ambition than money enough to retrieve your damned estates, and all the while you're the most romantic ass who ever wore out saddle-leather! found it, have you? then god help us all! i know what's coming! you're about to 'vert back to crusader days, and try to do damsilly deeds of chivalry without the war-horse or the suit of mail!" "no need for you to join me, fred. you take charge of the others and get them away to safety." "take charge of hornets! i'd leave you, of course, like a shot! but can you see will yerkes, for instance, riding off and leaving you to play don quixote? damn you, didums, can't you see--?" "destiny, fred. manifest destiny." "can't you see crusading is dead as a dead horse?" "so am i, old man. i'm no use but to do this very thing. i can serve these people. if i'm killed, there'll be a howl in the papers. if i'm taken, there'll be a row in parliament." "you don't intend to be taken--i know you!" "honest, fred, i--" "have i known you all these years to be fooled now? smelling rats 'ud be subtle to it--i can feel the air bristling! you mean to raise the montdidier banner and die under it, last of your race. but you're not last, you bally ass!" "last in the direct line, fred." "yes, but there's that rotter charles ready to inherit! if you're bent on suicide--" "i'm not. you know i'm not." "--you might have the decency to kill that miserable cousin first and bring the line to an end in common honor! he'll survive you, and as sure as i sit here and swear at you, he'll bring the montdidier name into worse disgrace than judas iscariot's!" "i've no intention of suicide, fred. i assure you--" but fred waved the argument aside contemptuously, and stood up to gather our attention. "listen!" he thrust forward his van dyke beard that valiantly strove to hide a chin like a piece of flint. "monty has found the robbers' nest that used to belong to his infernal ancestors. i charge any of you who count yourselves his friends to help me prevent him from behaving like an idiot!" "that'll do, fred!" said monty, pressing him back against the wall. "the fact is," he twisted at his black mustache and eyed us each for a second in turn, looking as handsome as the devil, "that i have found what i originally set out to look for. it overlooks zeitoon, hidden among trees. i propose to use it. as for quixotism--is there any one here not willing to fight in the last ditch to help kagig and these armenians?" "i'm with you!" laughed gloria, and she and will had a scuffle over near the fireplace. "i knew what to expect of the women," said monty rather bitterly. "i'm speaking to fred and the men!" "where's peter measel?" i asked. but the others did not see the connection. "come along," said monty. "seems to me we're wasting time," and he strode out through the window on to the roof of the house below--usually the shortest way from point to point in zeitoon. kagig followed him, and then rustum khan. the stars were no longer shining in the pale sky overhead, but it was dark where we were because of the mountains that shut out the dawn. fred came last, grumbling and stumbling, too disturbed to look where he was going. "fancy me acting cassandra at my time of life and none to believe me!" he muttered. then, louder: "i warn you all! i know that fellow monty. if he comes out of this alive it'll be because we haul him out by the hair! won't you listen?" outside the window i remembered the field-glasses i had laid down in a corner, and returned to get them. in the room were maga and the woman anna, who had appointed herself gloria vanderman's maid; they were apparently about to sweep the floor and tidy the place, but as i crossed the room an older gipsy woman entered by the door, and she and maga promptly drove anna out through the window after my party. then the old woman came close to me, her beady bright eyes fixed on mine, and went through the suggestive gipsy motions that invite the crossing of a palm with silver. there seemed at first no excuse for listening to her. every gipsy will beg, whether there is need or not, and knowledge of their habits did not make me less short-tempered; besides i had no silver within reach, nor time to waste. "not now!" i said, pushing her aside. but maga came to her rescue, and clutched my arm. "see!" she said, and took a maria theresa dollar from some hiding-place in her skirt. "i give silver for you. so." the old hag pouched the coin with exactly the same avidity with which she would have taken it from me. "now she will make magic. then i see. then i tell you something. you listen!" it began to dawn on me that i would better listen after all. every human is superstitious, whether or not he admits if to himself; but the particular fraud of pretending to tell fortunes never did happen to find the joint in my own armor. it seemed likely these two women had some plan that included the preliminary deception of myself, and the sooner i knew something about it the better. so i sat down on kagig's stool, to give them a better opinion of their advantage over me, there being nothing like making the enemy too confident. then i held out the palm of my hand for inspection and tried to look like a man pretending he does not believe in magic. whatever maga thought, the old hag was delighted. she began to croak an incantation, shuffling first with one foot, then with the other, and finally with both together in a weird dance that almost shook her old frame apart. then she went through a pantomime of finger-pointing, as if transferring from herself to maga the gift of divining about me. presently, standing a little to one side of me, with eyes on the old hag's and my hand held between her two, maga began chanting in english. the fact that her voice was musical and low where the bag's had been high-pitched and rasping heightened interest, if nothing else. "you now four men," she began, with a little pause, and something like a swallow between each sentence. "you all love one another ver' much. you all like kagig. kagig is liking you. but turks are coming presently, and they keel kagig--keel heem, you understan'? that man monty is also keel--keel dead. that man fred--i not know--i not see. you i see----you i see two ways. first way, you marry that woman gloria--you go away--all well--all good. second way--you not marry her. then you all die--dam' quick--monty, fred, will, you, gloria, everybody--an' zeitoon is all burn' up by bloody turks!" she paused and looked at me sidewise under lowered eyelids. i stared straight in front of me, as if in the state of self-hypnotism that is the fortune-teller's happy hunting-ground. "you understan'?" "yes," i said. "i think i see. but how shall i marry miss gloria? suppose she does not want me?" "you must! never mind what she want! listen! this is only way to save your frien's and zeitoon! i am giving men--four--five--six men. they are seizing gloria. you go with them. they take you safe away. then zeitoon is also safe, an' your frien's are also safe." "monty, too?" i asked. "yes, then he is also safe." but--i felt her hands tremble slightly as she said that. "do you mean i should leave him?" i asked. "you must! you must!" she almost screamed at me, and shook my hand between her two palms as if by that means to drive the fact into my consciousness. the old hag had her eyes fixed on my right temple as if she would burn a hole there, and between them they were making a better than amateur effort to control me by suggestion. it seemed wise to help them deceive themselves. maga let go my hand gently, and began passing her ten fingers very softly through my hair, and there are other men who will bear me witness that there exists sensation less appealing than when a pretty girt does that. "you must!" she said again more quietly. "that is the only way to save zeitoon. god is angry." "what do you know about god?" i asked unguardedly, knowing well that whatever their open pretenses, gipsies despise all religion except diabolism. they study creeds for the sake of plunder, just as hunters study the habits of the wild. "maybe nothing--maybe much! peter measel, he say--" she paused, as if in doubt whether she was using the right argument. and in that moment i recalled what rustum khan had once said about her being no true gipsy. "go on," i urged her. "peter measel is an expert. he's a high priest. he knows it all." "peter measel is saying, god is ver' angry with zeitoon and is sending to destroy such bloody people what plan fighting and rebellion." "i'll think it over," i said, moving to get up. but independent thinking was the last thing that maga intended to permit me. "no, no! no, no, no! you must dee-cide now--at once! there is no time. now--now i give you five--six mens--now they seize that woman gloria--now you carry 'er away into the mountains--now you make 'er yours--your own, you understan', so as she is ashamed to deny it afterward--yes?--you see?" "where are the men?" i demanded. "i fetch them quick!" i could see the hilt of her knife, and the bulge of her repeating pistol, but i could also feel the weight of my own loaded colt against my hip. i did not doubt i could escape before her men could arrive on the scene, but that would have been to leave some secret only part uncovered. there was obviously more behind this scheme than met the ear. it is my experience that if we throw fear to the winds, and are willing to wait in tight places for the necessary inspiration, then we get it. "very well," i said. "i agree. bring your men." "you wait. i get 'em." i nodded, and she said something in the gipsy language to the old hag, who went out through the door in a hurry. alone with maga i felt less than half as safe as i had been. she proceeded to make use of every moment in the manner they say makes millionaires. "gloria, she is ver' nice girl!" she made a wonderful gesture of both hands that limned in empty air the curves of her detested rival. "you will love her. by-and-by she love you--also ver' much." the thought flashed through my head again that i ought to escape whole while i had the chance; but the answer to that was the certainty that she would thence-forward be on guard against me without having given me any real information. i was perfectly convinced there was a deep plot underlying the foolishness she had proposed. the fact that she considered me so venial and so gullible was no proof that the hidden purpose was not dangerous. the mystery was how to seem to be fooled by her and yet get in touch with my friends. then suddenly i recalled that she and the hag had been trying to use the gipsy's black art. unless they can trick their victim into a mental condition in which innate superstition becomes uppermost, players of that dark game are helpless. yet gipsies are more superstitious than any one else. hanging to her neck by a skein of plaited horse-hair was the polished shell of a minute turtle--smaller than a dollar piece. "give me that," i said, "for luck," and she jumped at the idea. "yes, yes--that is to bring you luck--ver' much luck!" she snatched it off and hung it around my neck, pushing the turtle-shell down under my collar out of sight. "that is love-token!" she whispered. "now she love you immediate'! now you 'ave ver' much luck!" the last part of her prophecy was true. the luck seemed to change. that instant the key was given me to escape without making her my relentless enemy, a voice that i would know among a million began shouting for me petulantly from somewhere half a dozen roofs away. "what in hell's keeping you, man? here's monty getting up a tourist party to his damned ancestral nest and you're delaying the whole shebang! good lord alive! have you fallen in love with a woman, or taken the belly-ache, or fallen down a well, or gone to sleep again, or all of them, or what?" "coming, fred!" i shouted. "coming!" "you'd better!" he began playing cat-calls on his concertina--imitation bugle-calls, and fragments of serenades. for a second maga looked reckless--then suspicious--then, as it began to dawn on her from studying my face that i, too, was afraid of fred, relieved. "does he know anything?" i asked her. "he? that fred? no! no, no, no! an' you no tell 'im. you 'ear me? you no tell 'im! you go now--go to 'im, or else 'e is get suspicious--understan'? my men--they go an' get that woman. when they finish getting that woman, then i send for you an' you come quick--understan'?" i nodded. "listen! if you tell your frien's--if you tell that frrred, or those others--then i not only keel you, but my men put out your eyes first an' then pull off your toes an' fingers--understan'?" i shrugged my shoulders, suggesting an attempt to seem at ease. "besides--i warn you! you tell kagig anything against me an' kagig is at once your enemy!" i nodded, and tried to look afraid. perhaps the speculation that the last boast started in my mind helped give me a look that convinced her. fred began calling again. "you go!" she ordered imperiously, with a last effort to impress me with her mental predominance. "go quickly!" i made motions of hand and face as nearly suggestive of underhanded cunning as i could compass, and climbed out through the window without further invitation. seeing me emerge, fred beckoned from fifty yards away and turned his back. morning was just beginning to descend into the valley, suddenly bright from having finished all the dawn delays among the crags higher up; but there were deep shadows here and especially where one roof overhung another. jumping from roof to roof to follow fred, i was suddenly brought up short by a figure in shadow that gesticulated wildly without speaking. it was below me, in a narrow, shallow runway between two houses, and i had been so impressed by my interview with maga that assassination was the first thought ready to mind. i sprang aside and tried to check myself, missed footing, and fell into the very runway i had tried to avoid. a friend unmistakable, anna--gloria's self-constituted maid--ran out of the darkest shadow and kept me from scrambling to my feet. "wait!" she whispered. "don't be seen talking to me. listen!" my ankle pained considerably and i was out of breath. i was willing enough to lie there. "maga has made a plot to betray zeitoon! she has been talking with that turkish colonel who was captured. i don't know what the plot is, but i listened through a chink in the wall of the prison, and i heard him promise that she should have will yerkes!" "what else did you hear?" "nothing else. there was wind whistling, and the straw made a noise." at that moment fred chose to turn his head to see whether i was following. not seeing me, he came back over the roofs, shouting to know what had happened. i got to my feet but, although he hardly looks the part, he is as active as a boy, and he had scrambled to a higher roof that commanded a view of my runway before my twisted ankle would permit me to escape. "so that's it, eh? a woman!" "keep an eye on miss gloria!" i whispered to anna, and she ducked and ran. if i had had presence of mind i would have accepted the insinuation, and turned the joke on fred. instead, i denied it hotly like a fool, and nothing could have fed the fires of his spirit of raillery more surely. "i've unearthed a plot," i began, limping along beside him. "no, sir! it was i who unearthed the two of you!" "see here, fred--" "look? i'd be ashamed! no, no--i wasn't looking!" "fred, i'm serious!" "entanglements with women are always serious!" "i tell you, that girl maga--" "two of 'em, eh? worser and worser! you'll have will jealous into the bargain!" "have it your own way, then!" i said, savage with pain (and the reasons he did not hesitate to assign to my strained ankle were simply scandalous). "i'll wait until i find a man with honest ears." "try kagig!" he advised me dryly. and kagig i did try. we came on him at our end of the bridge that overhung the jihun river. our party were waiting on the far side, and fred hurried over to join them. kagig was listening to the reports of a dozen men, and while i waited to get his ear i could see fred telling his great joke to the party. it was easy to see that gloria vanderman did not enjoy the joke; nor did i blame her. i did not blame her for sending word there and then to anna that her services would not be required any more. as soon as kagig saw me he dismissed the other men in various directions and made to start across the bridge. i called to him to wait, and walked beside him. "i've uncovered a plot, kagig," i began. "maga jhaere has been talking with the turkish prisoner." "i know it. i sent her to talk with him!" "she has bargained with him to betray zeitoon!" for answer to that kagig turned his head and stared sharply at me--then went off into peals of diabolic laughter. he had not a word to offer. he simply utterly, absolutely, unqualifiedly disbelieved me--or else chose to have it appear so. chapter eighteen "per terram et aquam." and he who would save his life shall lose it the fed fools beat their brazen gong for gods' ears dulled by blatant praise, awonder why the scented fumes and surplices at evensong avail not as in other days. shrunken and mean the spirit fails like old snow falling from the crags and priest and pedagog compete with nostrums for the age that ails, but learn not why the spirit lags. tuneless and dull the loose lyre thrums ill-plucked by fingers strange to skill that change and change the fever'd chords, but still no inspiration comes though priest and pundit labor still. lust-urged the clamoring clans denounce whate'er their sires agreed was good, and swift on faith and fair return with lies the feud-leaders pounce lest truth deprive them of their food. dog eateth dog and none gives thanks; all crave the fare, but grudge the price their nobler forbears proudly paid, that now for moonstruck madness ranks-the only true coin--sacrifice! the man who is a hero to himself perhaps exists, but the surface indications are no proof of it. i don't pretend to be satisfied, and made no pretense at the time of being satisfied with my share in maga's treachery. but i claim that it was more than human nature could have done, to endure the open disapproval of my friends, begun by fred's half-earnest jest, and continued by my own indignation; and at the same time to induce them to take my warning seriously. will avoided me, and walked with gloria, who made no particular secret of her disgust. fred naturally enough kept the joke going, to save himself from being tripped in his own net. he had probably persuaded himself by that time that the accusation was true, and therefore equally probably regretted having made it; for he would have been the last man in the world to give tongue about an offense that he really believed a friend of his had committed. monty, who believed from force of habit every single word fred said, walked beside me and was good enough to give me fatherly advice. "not the time, you know, to fool with women. i don't pretend, of course, to any right to judge your private conduct, but--you can be so awfully useful, you know, and all that kind of thing, when you're paying strict attention. women distract a man." all, things considered, i might have done worse than decide to say no more about the plot, but to keep my own eyes wide open. (i was particularly sore with gloria, and derived much unwise consolation from considering stinging remarks i would make to her when the actual truth should out.) monty began making the best of my, in his eyes, damaged character by explaining the general dispositions he and kagig had made for the defense of zeitoon. "according to my view of it," he said, "this bridge we've just crossed is the weakest point--or was. i think we can hold that clay ramp you came up yesterday against all comers. but there's a way round the back of this mountain that leads to the dismantled fort you see on this side of the river. that is the fort built by the turkish soldiers whom kagig told us the women of zeitoon threw one by one over the bridge." he stopped (we had climbed about two hundred feet of a fairly steep track leading up the flank of beirut dagh) and let the others gather around us. "you see, if the enemy can once establish a footing on this hill, they'll then command the whole of zeitoon opposite with rifle fire, even if they don't succeed in bringing artillery round the mountain." between us and zeitoon there now lay a deep, sheer-sided gash, down at the bottom of which the jihun brawled and boiled. i did not envy any army faced with the task of crossing it, even supposing the bridge should not be destroyed. but they would not need to cross in order to make the town untenable. "the zeitoonli are, you might say, superstitious about that bridge," monty went on. "they refuse as much as to consider making arrangements to blow it up in case of need. another remarkable thing is that the women claim the bridge defense as their privilege. that doesn't matter. they look like a crowd of last-ditch fighters, and we're awfully short of men. but we're almost equally short of ammunition; and if it ever gets to the point where we're driven in so that we have to hold that bridge, we shall be doling out cartridges one by one to the best shots! i have tried to persuade the women to leave the bridge until there's need of defending it, and to lend us a hand elsewhere meanwhile; but they've always held the bridge, and they propose to do the same again. even kagig can't shift them, although the women have been his chief supporters all along." fred interrupted, pointing toward a few acres of level land to our left, below zeitoon village but still considerably above the river level. "is that rustum khan?" "he it is," said kagig. "a devil of a man--a wonder of a devil--no friend of mine, yet i shook hands with him and i salute him! a genius! a cavalryman born. our people are not cavalrymen. no place for horses, this. yet, as you have seen, there are some of us who can ride, and that rustum khan found many others--refugees from this and that place. see how he drills them yonder--see! it was the gift of god that so many horses fell into our hands. some of the refugees brought horses along for food. instead, rustum khan took men's corn away, to feed the hungry horses!" "we could never have held the place without rustum khan," said monty. "as it is we've a chance. the last thing the turks will expect from us is mounted tactics. allowing for plenty of spare horses, we shall have two full squadrons--one under rustum khan, and one i'll lead myself. from all accounts they're bringing an awful number of men against us, and we expect them to try to force the clay ramp. in that case--but come and see." he led on up-hill, and after a few minutes the well-worn track disappeared, giving place to a newly cleared one. trees had been cut down roughly, leaving stumps in such irregular profusion that, though horses could pass between them easily, no wheeled traffic could have gone that way. the undergrowth and the tree-trunks had been piled along either side, so that the new path was fenced in. it was steep and crooked, every section of it commanded by some other section higher up, with plenty of crags and boulders that afforded even better cover than the trees. "discovered this the first day i got here," said monty. "asked about bears, and a man offered to show me where a dozen of them lived. i was curious to see where a 'dozen bears could live in amity together--didn't believe a word of it. we set out that afternoon, and didn't reach the top until midnight. worst climb i ever experienced. lost ourselves a hundred times. next day, however, kagig agreed to let me have as many men as could be crowded together to work, and i took a hundred and twenty. set them to cutting this trail and another one. they worked like beavers. but come along and look." "how about the bears?" fred demanded. "did you get them?" "smelt 'em. saw one--or saw his shadow, and heard him. followed him up-hill by the smell, and so found the castle wall. haven't seen a bear since." "hssh!" said kagig, and sprang up-hill ahead of us to take the lead. "there are guards above there, and they are true zeitoonli--they will shoot dam' quick!" they did not shoot, because we all lay in the shadow of a great rock as soon as we could see a ragged stone wall uplifted against the purple sky, and kagig whistled half a dozen times. we plainly heard the snap of breech-blocks being tested. "they are weary of talking fight!" kagig whispered. but the sixth or seventh whistle was answered by a shout, and we began to climb again. close to the castle the tree-cutters had been able to follow the line of the original road fairly closely, and there were places underfoot that actually seemed to have been paved. finally we reached a steep ramp of cemented stone blocks, not one of which was out of place, and went up that toward an arch--clear, unmistakable, round roman that had once been closed by a portcullis and an oak gate. all of the woodwork had long ago disappeared, but there was little the matter with the masonry. under the echoing arch we strode into a shadowy courtyard where the sun had not penetrated long enough to warm the stones. in the midst of it a great stone keep stood as grim and almost as undecayed as when crusaders last defended it. that castle had never been built by crusaders; they had found it standing there, and had added to it, norman on to roman. the courtyard was littered with weeds that kagig's men had slashed down, and here and there a tree had found root room and forced its way up between the rough-hewn paving stones. animals had laired in the place, and had left their smell there together with an air of wilderness. but now a new-old smell, and new-old sounds were awakening the past. there were horses again in the stables, whose roof formed the fighting-platform behind the rampart of the outer wall. monty led the way to the old arched entrance of the keep, and pointed upward to a spot above the arch where some one had been scraping and scrubbing away the stains of time. there, clean white now in the midst of rusty stonework, was a carved device--shield-shaped--two ships and two wheat-sheaves; and underneath on a scroll the motto in latin--per terram et aquam--by land and sea--in token that the old montdidiers held themselves willing to do duty on either element. the same device and the same motto were on the gold signet ring on monty's little finger. "what's happening on top of the keep?" demanded will. fred laughed aloud. we could not see up from inside, for at least one of the stone floors remained intact. "can't you guess?" demanded fred. "didn't i tell you the man has 'verted to crusader days?" but monty explained. "there's an old stone socket up there that used to hold the flag-pole. two or three fellows have been kind enough to haul a tree up there, and they're trimming it to fit." "if we were wise we'd hang you to it, didums, and save you from a lousy turkish jail!" "thank you, fred," monty answered. "there are capitulations still, i fancy. no turk can legally try me, or imprison me a minute. i'm answerable to the british consul." "they're fine, legal-minded sticklers for the rules, the turks are!" fred retorted. "but we've a net laid for the turks!" smiled monty. fred shook his head. monty led the way toward stone steps, whose treads bad been worn into smooth hollows centuries before by the feet of men in armor. up above on the outer rampart we could see kagig's sentries outlined against the sky, protected against the chilly mountain air by goat-skin outer garments and pointed goat-skin hats. we mounted the stone stair, holding to a baluster worn smooth by the rub of countless forgotten hands, as perfect yet as on the day when the masons pronounced it finished; and emerged on to a wide stone floor above the stables, guarded by a breast-high parapet pierced by slits for archers. from below the breathing of the pines came up to us, peculiarly audible in spite of the titan roar of jihun river. immediately below us was a ledge of forest-covered rock, and beyond that we could see sheer down the tree-draped flank of beirut dagh to the foaming water. we leaned our elbows on the parapet, and stared in silence all in a row, stared at in turn by the more than half-suspicious sentries. "how does it feel, old man" asked will at last, "standing on ramparts where your ancestors once ruled the roost?" "stranger than perhaps you think," monty answered, not looking to right or left, or downward, but away out in front of him toward the sky-line on top of the opposite hills. "i bet i know," said will. "you hate to see the old order passing. you'd like the old times back." "you're wrong for once, america!" monty turned his back on the parapet and the view, and with hands thrust deep down in his pockets sought for words that could explain a little of his inner man. fred had perhaps seen that mood before, but none of the rest of us. usually he would talk of anything except his feelings. he felt the difficulty now, and checked. "how so?" demanded will. "i've watched the old order passing. i'm part of it. i'm passing, too." gloria watched him with melting eyes. fred turned his back and went through the fruitless rigmarole of trying to appear indifferent, going to the usual length at last of humming through his nose. "that's what i said. you'd like these castle days back again." "you're wrong, will. i pray they never may come back. the place is an anachronism. so am i!--useless for most modern purposes. you'd have to tear castle or me so to pieces that we'd be unrecognizable. the world is going forward, and i'm glad of it. it shall have no hindrance at my hands." "if men were all like you--" began gloria, but he checked her with a frown. "you can call this castle a robbers' nest, if you like. it's easy to call names. it stood for the best men knew in those days--protection of the countryside, such law and order as men understood, and the open road. it was built primarily to keep the roads safe. there are lots of things in england and america to-day, will, that your descendants (being fools) will sneer at, just as it's the fashion to-day to sneer at relics of the past like this--and me!" "who's sneering? not i! not we!" "this castle was built for the sake of the countryside. i've a mind to see it end as it began--that's all." "aw--what's eating you, monty?" "shut up croaking, you old raven!" grumbled fred. "show us the view you promised. this isn't it, for there isn't a turk in sight." monty knew better than mistake fred's surliness for anything but friendship in distress. without another word he led the way along the parapet toward a ragged tower at the southern corner. it had been built by normans, evidently added to the earlier roman wall. "now tell me if the old folk didn't know their business," said monty. "very careful, all! the steps inside are rough. the roof has fallen in, and the ragged upper edge that's left probably accounts for the castle remaining undetected from below all these years--looks like fangs of discolored rock." we followed him through the doorless gap in the tower wall, and up broken stone stairs littered with fragments of the fallen roof, until we stood at last in a half-circle around the jagged rim, our feet wedged between rotten masonry, breasts against the saw-edge parapet, and heads on a level with the eagles. from that dizzy height we had a full view between the mountains, not only of the immediate environs of zeitoon, but of most of the pass--up which we ourselves had come, and of some of the open land beyond it. "d'you see turks now?" monty pointed, but there was no need. dense masses of men were bivouacked beyond the bottom of the wide clay ramp. through the glasses i could see artillery and supply wagons. they were coming to make a thorough job of "rescuing" zeitoon this time! after a while i was able to make out the dark irregular line of kagig's men, and here and there the lighter color of freshly dug entrenchments. none of zeitoon's defenders appeared to be thrown out beyond the clay ramp, but they evidently flanked it on the side of the pass that was farthest from us. "now look this way, and you'll understand." monty pointed to our right, and the significance of the voices we had heard so close to us when fred was searching for a path around the clay on the morning of our arrival, was made plain instantly. down from the ledge on which the castle stood to a point apparently within a few yards of the clay ramp there had been cut a winding swath through the forest, along which four horses abreast could be ridden, or as many men marched. "how did you do all that in time?" demanded will. "it looks like one of those contractor's jobs in the states--put through while you wait and to hell with everything!" "it follows the old road," monty answered. "there was too much cobble-paving for the trees to take hold, and most of what they had to cut was small stuff. that accounts, too, for the freedom from stumps. but, do you get the idea? the trees between the end of the cutting and the clay ramp are cut almost through--ready to fall, in fact. i'm afraid of a wind. if it blows, our screen may fall too soon! but if the turks try to storm the ramp, we'll draw them on. then, hey--presto! down go the remaining trees, and into the middle of 'em rides our cavalry!" "what's the use of cavalry four abreast?" demanded fred, in no mood to be satisfied with anything. "rustum khan is concentrating all his energy on teaching that one maneuver," monty answered. "we come--" "thought it 'ud be 'we!' your place is at the rear, giving orders!" "we come down the track at top speed, and the impetus will carry us clear across the ramp. some of the horses'll go down, because the slope is slippery. but the remainder will front form squadron, and charge down hill in line. then watch!" "all right," fred grumbled. "but how about you rear while all that's going on? the turk must have worked his way around beirut dagh on former occasions--or how else could he ever have built and held that dismantled fort? what's to stop him from doing it again?" "it's a fifteen-mile fight ahead of him," monty answered, "with riflemen posted at every vantage-point all the way--" "who is in charge of the riflemen?" kagig leaned back until he looked in danger of falling, and tapped his breast significantly three times. "i--i have picked the men who will command those riflemen and women!" "well," fred grumbled, "what are your plans for us?" "for the last time, fred, i want you, old man, to help me to persuade these others to escape into the hills while there's still a chance, and i want you to go with them." "i also!" exclaimed kagig. "i also desire that!" "now you've got that off your chest, didums, suppose you talk sense," suggested fred. "what are your plans?" monty recognized the unalterable, and set his face. "you first, miss vanderman. there's one way in which we can always use a gentlewoman's services." "mayn't i fight?" she begged, and we all laughed. "'fraid not. no. the women have cleared out several houses for a hospital. please go and superintend." "damn!" exclaimed gloria, boston fashion, not in the least under her breath. "i am sending word," said kagig, "that they shall obey you or learn from me!" "the rest of us," monty went on, "will know better what to do when we know what the turk intends, but i expect to send all of you from time to time to wherever the fighting is thickest. kagig, of course, will please himself, and my orders are subject to his approval." "i'll go, then," said gloria. "good-by!" and she kissed will on the mouth in full view of all of us, he blushing furiously, and kagig cracking all his finger-joints. "go with her, will!" urged monty, as she disappeared down the steps. "go and save yourself. you're young. i've notions of my own that i've inherited, and the world calls me a back number. you go with miss vanderman!" i seconded that motion. "go with her, will! i've warned you she's unsafe alone! go and protect her!" will grinned, wholly without malice. "thanks!" he said. "she's a back number, too. so'm i! if i left monty in this pinch she'd never look at me, and i'd not ask her to! inherited notions about merit and all that kind of thing, don't you know, by gosh! no, sir! she and i both sat into this game. she and i both stay! wish esau would open the ball, though. i'm tired of talking." chapter nineteen "such drilling as they have had--such little drilling!" ich dien is honor out of fashion and the men she named fit only to be buried and defamed who dared hold service was true nobleness and graced their service in a fitting dress? are manners out of date because the scullions scoff at whosoever shuns the common trough liking dry bread better than the garbled stew nor praising greed because the style is new? let go the ancient orders if so be their ways are trespassing on decency these days. so i go, rather than accept the trampled spoil or gamble for what great men earned by toil. for rather than trade honor for a mob's foul praise i'll keep full fealty to the ancient ways and, hoistinq my forebear's banner in the face of hell, will die beneath it, knowing i die well! fifteen minutes after gloria vanderman left us i saw a banner go jerkily mounting up the newly placed flag-pole on the keep. a man blew a bugle hoarsely by way of a salute. i raised my hat. monty raised his. in a moment we were all standing bare-headed, and the great square piece of cloth caught the wind that whistled between two crags of beirut dagh. fred, our arch-iconoclast, stood uncovered longest. "who the devil made it for you?" he inquired. stitched on the banner in colored cloth were the two wheat-sheaves and two ships of the montdidiers, and a scroll stretched its length across the bottom, with the motto doubtless, although in the wind one could not read it. "the women. good of 'em, what? miss vanderman drew it on paper. they cut it out, and sat up last night sewing it." "i suppose you know that's filibustering, to fly your private banner on foreign soil?" "they may call it what they please," said monty. "i can't well fly the flag of england, and armenia has none yet. let's go below, fred, and see if there's any news." "yes, there is news," said kagig, leading the way down. "i did not say it before the lady. it is not good news." "that's the only kind that won't keep. spit it out!" said will. kagig faced us on the stable roof, and his finger-joints cracked again. "it is the worst! they have sent mahmoud bey, against us. i would rather any six other turks. mahmoud bey is not a fool. he is a young successful man, who looks to this campaign to bolster his ambition. he is a ruthless brute!" "which turk isn't?" asked will. "this one is most ruthless. this mahmoud is the one who in the massacres of five years ago caused armenian prisoners to have horse-shoes nailed to their naked feet, in order, he said, that they might march without hurt. he will waste no time about preliminaries!" kagig was entirely right. mahmoud bey began the overture that very instant with artillery fire directed at the hidden defenses flanking the clay ramp. next we caught the stuttering chorus of his machine guns, and the intermittent answer of kagig's riflemen. "now, effendim, one of you down to the defenses, please! there is risk my men may use too many cartridges. talk to them--restrain them. they might listen to me, but--" his long fingers suggested unhappy fragments of past history. "you, fred!" said monty, and fred hitched his concertina to a more comfortable angle. fred was the obvious choice. his gift of tongues would enable him better than any of us to persuade, and if need were, compel. we had left our rifles leaning by the wall at the castle entrance, and in his cartridge bag was my oil-can and rag-bag. i asked him for them, and he threw them to me rather clumsily. trying to catch them i twisted for the second time the ankle i had hurt that morning. fred mounted and rode out through the echoing entrance without a backward glance, and i sat down and pulled my boot off, for the agony was almost unendurable. "that settles your task for to-day," laughed monty. "help him back to the top of the tower, will. keep me informed of everything you see. will--you go with kagig after you've helped him up there." "all right," said will. "where's kagig bound for?" "round behind beirut dagh," kagig announced grimly. "that's our danger-point. if the turks force their way round the mountain--" he shrugged his expressive shoulders. only he of all of us seemed to view the situation seriously. i think we others felt a thrill rather of sport than of danger. i might have been inclined to resent the inactivity assigned to me, only that it gave me a better chance than i had hoped for of watching for signs of maga jhaere's promised treachery. will helped me up and made the perch comfortable; then he and kagig rode away together. presently monty, too, mounted a mule, and rode out under the arch, and fifteen minutes later fifty men marched in by twos, laughing and joking, and went to saddling the horses in the semicircular stable below me. after that all the world seemed to grow still for a while, except for the eagles, the distant rag-slitting rattle of rifle-fire, and the occasional bursting of a shell. most of the shells were falling on the clay ramp, and seemed to be doing no harm whatever. away in the distance down the pass, out of range of the fire of our men, but also incapable of harm themselves until they should advance into the open jaws below the clay ramp, i could see the turks massing in that sort of dense formation that the germans teach. even through the glasses it was not possible to guess their numbers, because the angle of vision was narrow and cut off their flanks to right and left; but i sent word down to monty that a frontal attack in force seemed to be already beginning. for an hour after that, while the artillery fire increased but our rifle-fire seemed to dwindle under fred's persuasive tongue, i watched monty mustering reenforcements in the gorge below the town. he overcame some of the women's prejudice, for it was a force made up of men and women that he presently led away. i was rather surprised to see rustum khan, after a talk with monty, return to his squadron and remain inactive under cover of the hill; that fire-eater was the last man one would expect to remain willingly out of action. however, twenty minutes later, rustum khan appeared beside me, breathing rather hard. he begged the glasses of me, and spent five minutes studying the firing-line minutely before returning them. "the lord sahib has more faith in these undrilled folk than i have!" he grumbled at last. "observe: he goes with that bullet-food of men and women mixed, to hide them in reserve behind the narrow gut at the head of the ramp. the turks are fools, as kagig said, and their general is also a fool, in spite of kagig. they propose to force that ramp. you see that by frredd sahib's orders the firing on our side has grown greatly less. that is to draw the turks on. see! it has drawn them! they are coming! the lord sahib will send for frredd sahib to take command of that reserve, to man the top of the ramp in case the turks succeed in climbing too far up it. then he himself will gallop back to take charge of my squadron below there; and i take charge of his squadron up here. he and i are interchangeable, i having drilled all the men in any case--such drilling as they have had--such little, little drilling!" the turks began their advance into the jaws of that defile with a confidence that made my heart turn cold. what did they know? what were they depending on in addition to their weight of numbers? mahmoud bey had evidently hurried up almost his whole division, and was driving them forward into our trap as if he knew he could swallow trap and all. not even foolish generals act that way. it needs a madman. kagig had said nothing about mahmoud being mad. "listen, rustum khan!" i said. "go with a message to lord montdidier. tell him the whole turkish force is in motion and coming on as if their general knows something for certain that we don't know at all. tell him that i suspect treachery at our rear, and have good reason for it!" rustum khan eyed me for a minute as if he would read the very middle of my heart. "can you ride?" he asked. "of course," i answered. "it's only walking that i can't do." "then leave those glasses with me, and go yourself!" "why won't you go?" i asked. "because here are fifty men who would lack a leader in that case." the answer was honest enough, yet i had my qualms about leaving the post monty had assigned to me. the thought that finally decided me was that i would have opportunity to gallop past the hospital, two hundred yards over the bridge on the zeitoon side, and make sure that gloria was safe. "have you seen maga jhaere anywhere?" i asked. "no," said the rajput, swearing under his breath at the mere mention of her name. "then help me down from here. i'll go." he muttered to himself, and i think he thought i was off to make love to the woman; but i was past caring about any one's opinion on that score. five minutes later i was trotting a good horse slowly down the upper, steeper portion of the track toward zeitoon, swearing to myself, and dreading the smoother going where i should feel compelled to gallop whether my ankle hurt or not. as a matter of fact i began to suspect a broken bone or ligament, for the agonizing pain increased and made me sit awkwardly on the horse, thus causing him to change his pace at odd intervals and give me more pain yet. however, gallop i had to, and i reached the bridge going at top speed, only to be forced to rein in, chattering with agony, by a man on foot who raced to reach the bridge ahead of me, and made unmistakable signals of having an important message to deliver. he proved to be from kagig, with orders to say that every man at his disposal was engaged by a very strong body of turks who had spent the night creeping up close to their first objective, and had rushed it with the bayonet shortly after dawn. "order the women to stand ready by the bridge!" were the last words (the man had the whole by heart), and then there was a scribbled note from will by way of make-weight. "this end of the action looks pretty serious to me. we're badly outnumbered. the men are fighting gamely, but--tell gloria for god's sake to look out after herself!" i could hear no firing from that direction, for the great bulk of beirut dagh shut it off. "how far away is the fighting?" i demanded. "oh, a long way yet." i motioned to him to return to kagig, and sent my horse across the bridge, catching sight of gloria outside the hospital directly after i had crossed it. she waved her hand to me; so, seeing she was safe for the present, i let the message to her wait and started down the valley toward monty as fast as the horse could go. i had my work cut out to drive him into the din of firing, for it was evidently his first experience of bursting shells, and even at half-a-mile distance he reared and plunged, driving me nearly crazy with pain. i found monty shepherding the reserves he had brought down, watching through glasses from over the top of the spur that formed the left-hand wall of the gut of the pass. "i left rustum khan in my place," i began, expecting to be damned at once for absenting without leave. "glad you came," he said, without turning his head. i gave him my message, he listening while he watched the pass and the oncoming enemy. "i tried to warn you of treachery this morning!" i said hotly. pain and memory did nothing toward keeping down choler. "where's peter measel? seen him anywhere? where's maga jhaere? seen her, either? those turks are coming on into what they must know is a trap, with the confidence that proves their leaders have special information! look at them! they can see this pass is lined, with our riflemen, yet on they come! they must suspect we've a surprise in store--yet look at them!" they were coming on line after line, although fred had turned the ammunition loose, and the rifle-fire of our well-hidden men was playing havoc. monty seemed to me to look more puzzled than afraid. i went on telling him of the message kagig had sent, and offered him will's note, but he did not even look at it. "ah!" he said suddenly. "now i understand! yes, it's treachery. i beg your pardon for my thoughts this morning." "granted," said i, "but what next?" "look!" he said simply. there were two sudden developments. what was left of the first advancing company of turks halted below the ramp, and with sublime effrontery, born no doubt of knowledge that we had no artillery, proceeded to dig themselves a shallow trench. the zeitoonli were making splendid shooting, but it was only a question of minutes until the shelter would be high enough for crouching men. the second disturbing factor was that in a long line extending up the flank of the mountain, roughly parallel to the lower end of the track that monty had caused to be cut from the castle, the trees were coming down as if struck by a cyclone! there must have been more than a regiment armed with axes, cutting a swath through the forest to take our secret road in flank! that meant two things clearly. some one had told mahmoud of our plan to charge down from the height and surprise him, thus robbing us of all the benefit of unexpectedness; and, when the charge should take place, our men would have to ride down four abreast through ambush. and, if mahmoud had merely intended placing a few men to trap our horsemen, he would never have troubled to cut down the forest. plainly, he meant to destroy our mounted men at point-blank range, and then march a large force up the horse-track, so turning the tables on us. considering the overwhelming numbers he had at his disposal, the game to me looked almost over. not so, however, to monty. he glanced over his shoulder once at the men and women waiting for his orders, and i saw the women begin inspiriting their men. then he turned on me. "now damn your ankle," he said. "try to forget it! climb up there and tell fred to choose a hundred men and bring them down himself to oppose the enemy in front if he comes over the top of that ditch. then you gallop back and get word to rustum khan to bring both squadrons down here. tell him to stay by fred and hold his horses until the last minute. then you get all the women you can persuade to follow you, and man the castle walls! hurry, now--that's all!" there was a man holding my horse. i tied the horse securely to a tree instead, and told the man to help me climb, little suspecting what a samson i had happened on. he laughed, seized me in his arms, and proceeded to carry me like a baby up the goat-track leading to the hidden rifle-pits and trenches. i persuaded him to let me get up on his shoulders, and in that way i had a view of most of what was happening. monty led his men and women at a run across the top of the ramp flanked by the full fire of the entrenched company below; and his action was so unexpected that the turks fired like beginners. there were not many bodies lying quiet, nor writhing either when the last woman had disappeared among the trees on the far side. those that did writhe were very swiftly caused to cease by volleys aimed at them in obedience to officers' orders. it began to look as if gloria's hospital would not be over-worked. the tables were now turned on the turks, except in regard to numbers. in the first place, as soon as monty's command had penetrated downward through the trees parallel with the side of the ramp, he had the entrenched company in flank. it did not seem to me that he left more than ten or fifteen men to make that trench untenable, but the turks were out of it within five minutes and in full retreat under a hot fire from fred's men. then monty pushed on to the far side of the castle road and held the remaining fringe of trees in such fashion that the turks could not guess his exact whereabouts nor what number he had with him. cutting down trees in a hurry is one thing, but cutting them down in face of hidden rifle-fire is most decidedly another, especially when the axmen have been promised there will be no reprisals. the tree-felling suddenly ceased, and there began a close-quarters battle in the woods, in which numbers had less effect than knowledge of the ground and bravery. the turk is a brave enough fighter, but not to be compared with mountain-armenians fighting for their home, and it was easy to judge which held the upper hand. i found fred smoking his pipe and enjoying himself hugely, with half a dozen runners ready to carry word to whichever section of the defenses seemed to him to need counsel. he could see what monty had done, and was in great spirits in consequence. "i've bagged two turk officers to my own gun," he announced. "murder suits me to a t." i gave him the message. "piffle!" he answered. "they can never take the ramp by frontal attack! the right thing to do is hold the flanks, and wither 'em as they cone!" "monty's orders!" i said, "and i've got to be going." "damn that fellow didums!" he grumbled. "all right. but it's my belief he's turning a classy little engagement into a bloody brawl! cut along! i'll pick my hundred and climb down there." cutting along was not so easy. my magnificent human mount was hit by a bullet--a stray one, probably, shot at a hazard at long range. he fell and threw me head-long; and the agony of that experience pretty nearly rendered me unconscious. however, he was not hit badly, and essayed to pick me up again. i refused that, but he held on to me and, both of us being hurt in the leg on the same side, we staggered together down the goat-track. down below we found the horse plunging in a frenzy of fear, and he nearly succeeded in breaking away from both of us, dragging us out into full view of the enemy, who volleyed us at long range. fortunately they made rotten shooting, and one ill-directed hail of lead screamed on the far side, causing the horse to plunge toward me. the armenian took me by the uninjured foot and flung me into the saddle, and i left up-pass with a parting volley scattering all around, and both hands locked into the horse's mane. he needed neither whip nor spur, but went for zeitoon like the devil with his tail on fire. i suppose one never grows really used to pain, but from use it becomes endurable. when anna ran out to stop me by the great rock on which the lowest zeitoon houses stand, and seized me by the foot, partly to show deference, partly in token that she was suppliant, and also partly because she was utterly distracted, i was able to rein the horse and listen to her without swearing. "she is gone!" she shouted. "gone, i tell you! gloria is gone! six men, they come and take her! she is resisting, oh, so hard--and they throw a sack over her--and she is gone, i tell you! she is gone!" "where is maga?" "gone, too!" "in which direction did they take miss gloria?" "i do not know!" i rode on. there were crowds of women near the bridge, all armed with rifles, and i hurried toward them. but they refused to believe that any one in zeitoon would do such a thing as kidnap gloria, and while i waited for anna to come and convince them a man forced himself toward me through the crowd. he was out of breath. one arm was in a bloody bandage, but in the other hand he held a stained and crumpled letter. it proved to be from will, addressed to all or any of us. "kagig is a wonder!" it ran, "he has put new life into these men and we've thrashed the turk soundly. how's gloria? kagig says, 'can you send us reenforcements?' if so we can follow up and do some real damage. send 'em quick! make gloria keep cover! will. chapter twenty "so few against so many! i see death, and i am not sorry!" thou land of the glad hand thou land of the glad hand, whose frequent boast is of the hordes to whom thou playest host! whose liberty is full! whose standard high has reached and taken stars from out the sky! whose fair-faced women tread the streets unveiled, unchallenged, unaffronted, unassailed! whose little ones in park and meadow laugh, nor know what cost that precious cup they quaff, nor pay in stripes and bruises and regret ten times each total of a parent's debt! thou nation born in freedom--land of kings whose laws protect the very feathered things, uplifting last and least to high estate that none be overlooked--and none too great! is all thy freedom good for thee alone? is earth thy footstool? are the clouds thy throne? shall other peoples reach thy hand to take that gladdens only thee for thine own sake? to get word to rustum khan was simple enough, for he himself came riding down to get news. the minute he learned what monty wanted of him he turned his horse back up-hill at a steady lope, and i began on the next item in the program. nor was that difficult. the reading aloud of will's letter, translated to them by anna, convinced the women that their beloved bridge was in no immediate danger, and no less than three hundred of them marched off to reenforce kagig's men behind beirut dagh. i reckoned that by the time they reached the scene of action we would have a few more than three thousand men and women in the field under arms--against mahmoud bey's thirty thousand turks! there remained to scrape together as many as possible to man the castle walls; and what with wounded, and middle-aged women, and men whose weapons did not fit the plundered turkish ammunition, i had more than a hundred volunteers in no time. the only disturbing feature about this new command of mine was that it contained more than a sprinkling of the type of malcontents who had bearded kagig in his den the night before. those looked like thoroughly excellent fighting men, if only they could have been persuaded to agree to trust a common leader. not one of them but knew a thousand times more of zeitoon, and their people, and the various needs of defense than, for instance, i did. yet they clustered about me for lack of confidence in one another, and shouted after the women who marched away advice to watch lest kagig betray them all. not for nothing had the unspeakable turk inculcated theories of misrule all down the centuries! i led them up to the castle, they carrying with them food enough for several days. we passed rustum khan coming down with the horsemen, and i fell behind to have word with him. "which of these men shall i pick to command the rest?" i asked him. "you've more experience of them." "any that you choose will be pounced on by the rest as wolves devour a sheep!" the rajput answered. "should i have them vote on it?" "they would elect you," he answered. "i've got to be free to look for miss gloria. she's kidnapped--disappeared utterly!" rustum khan swore under his breath, using a language that i knew no word of. "a woman again, and more trouble!" he said at last grimly. "let like cure like then! choose a woman herdsman!" he grinned. "it may be she will surprise them into obedience!" "i'll take your advice," said i, although i resented his insinuation that they were a herd--so swiftly does command make partisans. "the last thing you may take from me, sahib!" he answered. "how so?" "so few against so many! i see death and i am not sorry. only may i die leading those good mountain-men of mine!" it was part and parcel of him to praise those he had drilled and scorn the others. i shook hands and said nothing. it did not seem my place to contradict him. "let us hope these people are the gainers by our finish!" he called over his shoulder, riding on after his command. "they are not at all bad people--only un-drilled, and a little too used to the ways of the turk! good-by, sahib!" within the castle gate i found a woman, whom they all addressed as marie, very busy sorting out the bundles they had thrown against the wall. she was putting all the food together into a common fund, and as i entered she shouted to her own nominees among the other women to get their cooking pots and begin business. still pondering rustum khan's advice, in the dark whether or not be meant it seriously, i chose marie chandrian to take command. she made no bones about it, but accepted with a great shrill laugh that the rest of them seemed to recognize--and to respect for old acquaintance' sake. she turned out to have her husband with her--an enormous, hairy man with a bull's voice who ought to have been in one or other of the firing-lines but had probably held back in obedience to his better half. she made him her orderly at once, and it was not long before every soul in the castle had his or her place to hold. then i mounted once more and rode at top speed down the new road that monty was defending, taking another horse this time, not so good, but much less afraid of the din of battle. i found monty scarcely fifty paces from the track, on the outside edge of the fringe of trees that the turks had been unable to cut down. there were numbers of wounded laid out on the track itself, with none to carry them away; and the turks were keeping up a hot fire from behind the shelter of the felled trees and standing stumps. the outside range was two hundred yards, and there were several platoons of the enemy who had crept up to within thirty or forty yards and could not be dislodged. i pulled monty backward, for he could not hear me, and he and i stood behind two trees while i told him what i had done, shouting into his ear. "i've got to go and find gloria!" i said finally, and he frowned, and nodded. "go first and take a look at the ramp through the trees. tell me what's happening." so i limped down to the end of the track and made my way cautiously through the lower fringe of trees that had been cut three-parts through in readiness for felling in a hurry. just as i got there the turks began a new massed advance up the ramp, as if in direct proof of monty's mental alertness. the men posted on the opposite flank to where i was opened a terrific fire that would have made poor kagig bite his lips in fear for the waning ammunition. then fred came into action with his hundred, throwing them in line into the open along the top, where they lay down to squander cartridges--squandering to some purpose, however, for the turkish lines checked and reeled. but mahmoud bey had evidently given orders that this advance should be pressed home, and the turks came on, company after company, in succeeding waves of men. there were some in front with picks and shovels, making rough steps in the slippery clay; and i groaned, hating to go and tell monty that it was only a matter of minutes before the frontal attack must succeed and the pass be in enemy hands. "here goes armenia's last chance!" i thought; and i waited to see the beginning of the end before limping back to monty. and it was well i did wait. i had actually forgotten rustum khan and his two squadrons. nor would i ever have believed without seeing it that one lone man could so inspirit and control that number of aliens whom he had only as much as drilled a time or two. it said as much for the zeitoonli as for rustum khan. without the very ultimate of bravery, good faith, and intelligence on their part he could never have come near attempting what he did. he brought his two squadrons in line together suddenly over the brow of the ramp, galloped them forward between fred's extended riflemen, and charged down-hill, the horses checking as they felt the slippery clay under foot and then, unable to pull up, careering head-long, urged by their riders into madder and madder speed, with rustum khan on his beautiful bay mare several lengths in the lead. cavalry usually starts at a walk, then trots, and only gains its great momentum within a few yards of the enemy. this cavalry started at top speed, and never lost it until it buried itself into the advancing turks as an avalanche bursts into a forest! no human enemy could ever have withstood that charge. many of the horses fell in the first fifty yards, and none of these were able to regain their feet in time to be of use. some of the riders were rolled on and killed. and some were slain by the half-dozen volleys the astonished turks found time to greet them with. but more than two-thirds of rustum khan's men, armed with swords of every imaginable shape and weight, swept voiceless into an enemy that could not get out of their way; and regiments in the rear that never felt the shock turned and bolted from the wrath in front of them. i climbed out to the edge of the trees, and yelled for fred, waving both arms and my hat and a branch. he saw me at last, and brought his hundred men down the ramp at a run. "join monty," i shouted, "and help him clear the woods." he led his men into the trees like a pack of hounds in full cry, and i limped after them, arriving breathless in time to see the turks in front of monty in full retreat, fearful because the rajput's cavalry had turned their flank. then monty and fred got their men together and swung them down into the pass to cover rustum khan's retreat when the charge should have spent itself. the rajput had managed to demoralize the turkish infantry, but mahmoud's guns were in the rear, far out of reach. bursting shells did more destruction as he shepherded the squadrons back again than bullet, bayonet and slippery clay combined to do in the actual charge itself. monty gave orders to throw down the fringe of trees and let them through to the castle road, so saving them from the total annihilation in store if they had essayed to scramble up the slippery ramp. and then fred's men joined monty's contingent, helping them fortify the new line--deepening and reversing the trench the turks had dug below the ramp, and continuing that line along through the remaining edge of trees that still stood between the enemy and the castle road. but by cutting down the fringe at the end of the road to let rustum khan through we had forfeited the last degree of secrecy. if the turks could come again and force the gut of the pass, nothing but the hardest imaginable fighting could prevent them from swinging round at that point and making use of our handiwork. "that castle has become a weakness, not a strength, colonel sahib!" said rustum khan, striding through the trees to where monty and fred and i were standing. "i have lost seven and thirty splendid men, and three and forty horses. one more such charge, and--" "no, rustum khan. not again," monty answered. "what else?" laughed the rajput. "that castle divides our forces, making for weakness. if only--" "we must turn it to advantage, then, rustum khan!" "ah, sahib! so speaks a soldier! how then?" "mahmoud knows by now that the trees are down," said i. "his watchers must have seen them fall. some of the trees are lying outward toward the ramp." "exactly," said monty. "his own inclination will lead him to use our new road, and we must see that he does exactly that. the guns are making the ramp too hot just now for amusement, but let some one--you, fred--run a deep ditch across the top of the ramp; and if we can hold them until dark we'll have connected ditches dug at intervals all the way down." looking over the top of the trees i could just see the montdidier standard bellying in the wind. "i'll bet you mahmoud can see that, too!" said i, drawing the others' attention to it. "let's hope so," monty answered quietly. "now, rustum khan, find one of those brave horsemen of yours who is willing to be captured by the enemy and give some false information. i want it well understood that our only fear is of a night attack!" "you say, colonel sahib, there will be no further use for cavalry?" "not for a charge down that ramp, at any rate!" "then send me! my word will carry conviction. i can say that as a moslem i will fight no longer on the side of christians. they will accept my information, and then hang me for having led a charge into their infantry. send me, sahib!" monty shook his head. rustum khan seemed inclined to insist, but there came astonishing interruption. kagig appeared, with arms akimbo, in our midst. "oh, sportmen all!" he laughed. "this day goes well!" "thank god you're here!" said monty. "now we can talk." "that will--what is his name?--will yerkees is a wonderful fighter!" said kagig, snapping his fingers and making the joints crack. "he accuses you of that complaint," said i. "me? no. i am only enthusiast. the road behind beirut dagh is rough and narrow. the turks had hard work, and less reason for eagerness than we. so we overcame them. they have fallen back to where they were at dawn, and they are discouraged"--he made his finger-joints crack again--"discouraged! the women feel very confident. the men feet exactly as the women do! the turks are preparing to bivouac where they lie. they will attack no more to-day--i know them!" "listen, kagig!" monty drew us all together with a gesture of both hands. "these turks are too many for us, if we give them time. our ammunition won't last, for one thing. we must induce mahmoud to attack to-night--coax him up this castle road, and catch him in a trap. it can be done. it must be done!" "i know the right man to send to the turk to tell him things!" kagig answered slowly with relish. "that is my business!" growled rustum khan, but kagig laughed at him. "no turk would believe a word you say--not one leetle word!" he said, snapping his fingers. "you are a good fighter. i saw your charge from the castle tower; it was very good. but i will send an armenian on this errand. go on, lord monty; i know the proper man." "that's about the long and short of it," said monty. "if we can induce mahmoud to attack to-night, we've a fair chance of hitting him so hard that he'll withdraw and let us alone. otherwise--" kagig's finger-joints cracked harder than ever as his quick mind reviewed the possibilities. "have you any idea what can have happened to miss vanderman?" i asked him. "miss vanderman? no? what? tell me!" he seemed astonished, and i told him slowly, lest he miss one grain of the enormity of maga's crime. but instead of appearing distressed he shook his bands delightedly and rattled off a very volley of cracking knuckles. "that is the idea! we have mahmoud caught! i know mahmoud! i know him! the man i shall choose shall tell mahmoud that gloria vanderman--the beautiful american young lady, who is outlawed because of her fighting on behalf of armenians--who--who could not possibly be claimed by the american consul, on account of being outlawed--is in the castle to-night and can be taken if he only will act quickly! oh, how his eyes will glitter! that mahmoud--he buys women all the time! a young--beautiful--athletic american girl--mahmoud will sacrifice three thousand men to capture her!" monty ground his teeth. fred turned his back, and filled his pipe. rustum khan brushed his black beard upward with both hands. "suppose you go now and try to find miss vanderman," said monty rather grimly to me. "if you find her, hide her out of harm's way and communicate with will!" so fred helped me on the horse and i rode back to the castle, where i explained the details of the fighting below to the defenders, and then rode on down to zeitoon by the other road. it was wearing along into the afternoon, and i had no idea which way to take to look for gloria; but i did have a notion that maga jhaere might be looking out for me. there was a chance that she might have been in earnest in persuading me to elope, and that if i rode alone she might show herself--she or else gloria's captors. failing signs of maga jhaere or her men, i proposed to ride behind beirut dagh in search of will, and to get his quick yankee wit employed on the situation. so, instead of crossing the bridge into zeitoon i guided my horse around the base of the mountain, riding slowly so as to ease the pain in my foot and to give plenty of opportunity to any one lying in wait to waylay me. it happened i guessed rightly. the track swung sharp to the left after a while, and passed up-hill through a gorge between two cliffs into wilder country than any i had yet seen in armenia. from the top of the cliff on the right-hand side a pebble was dropped and struck the horse--then another--then a third one. i thought it best to take no notice of that, although the horse made fuss enough. the third pebble was followed by a shrill whistle, which i also decided to ignore, and continued to ride on toward where a clump of scrawny bushes marked the opening out of a narrow valley. i heard the bushes rustle as i drew near them, and was not surprised to see maga emerge, looking hot, impatient and angry, although not less beautiful on that account. "fool!" she began on me. "why you wait so long? another half-hour and it is too late altogether! come now! leave the horse. come quick!" wondering what important difference half an hour should make, it occurred to me that will was probably impatient long ago at receiving no news of gloria. if i judged will rightly, he would be on his way to look for her. "come quick!" commanded maga. "i can't climb that cliff," said i. "i've hurt my foot." "i help you. come!" she stepped up close beside me to help me down, but that instant it seemed to me that i heard more than one horse approaching. "quick!" she commanded, for she heard them, too, and held out her arms to help me. "quick! i have two men to help you walk!" i could have reached my pistol, but so could she have reached hers, and her hand and eye were quicker than forked lightning. besides, to shoot her would have been of doubtful benefit until gloria's whereabouts were first ascertained. she put an arm round me to pull me from the saddle, and that settled it. i fell on her with all my weight, throwing her backward into the bushes, and kicking the horse in the ribs with my uninjured foot. the horse took fright as i intended, and went galloping off in the direction of the approaching sounds. i had not wrestled since i was a boy at school, and then never with such a spitting puzzle of live wires as maga proved herself. i had the advantage of weight, but i had told her of my injured foot, and she worked like a she-devil to damage it further, fighting at the same time with left and right wrist alternately to reach pistol and knife. i let go one wrist, snatched the pistol out of her bosom and threw it far away. but with the free and she reached her knife, and landed with it into my ribs. the pain of the stab sickened me; but the knowledge that she had landed fooled her into relaxing her hold in order to jump clear. so i got hold of both wrists again, and we rolled over and over among the bushes, she trying like an eel to wriggle away, and i doing my utmost to crush the strength out of her. we were interrupted by will's voice, and by will's strong arms dragging us apart. "catch her!" i panted. "hold her! don't let her go!" "never fear!" he laughed. "her men have kidnapped gloria! tie her hands!" will had two men with him, one of whom was leading my runaway horse. they gazed open-eyed while will tied maga's wrists behind her back. "kagig--what will he say?" one of them objected, but will laughed. "what you do with me?" demanded maga. "take you to kagig, of course. where's miss vanderman?" then suddenly maga's whole appearance changed. the defiance vanished, leaving her as if by magic supple again, subtle, suppliant, conjuring back to memory the nights when she had danced and sung. the fire departed from her eyes and they became wet jewels of humility with soft love lights glowing in their depths. "you do not want that woman!" she said slowly, smiling at will. "you give 'er to this fool!" she glanced at my bleeding ribs, as if the blood were evidence of folly. "you take me, will yerkees! then i teach you all things--all about people--all about land, and love, and animals, and water, and the air--i teach you all!" she paused a moment, watching his face, judging the effect of words. he stood waiting with a look of puzzled distress that betrayed regret for her tied wrists, but accepted the necessity. perhaps she mistook the chivalrous distress for tenderness. "i 'ave tried to make that man kagig king! i 'ave tried, and tried! but 'e is no good! if 'e 'ad obeyed me, i would 'ave made 'im king of all armenia! but 'e is as good as dead already, because mahmoud the turk is come to finish 'im--so!" she spat conclusively. "so now i make you king instead of 'im! you let that gloria vanderman go to this fool, an' i show you 'ow to make all armenians follow you an' overthrow the turks, an' conquer, an' you be king!" will laughed. "better stick to kagig! i'm going to take you to him!" "you take me to 'im?" she flashed again, swift as a snake to illustrate resentment. "yes." "then i tell 'im things about you, an' 'e believe me!" "let's bargain," laughed will. "show me miss vanderman, alive and well, and--" "steady the buffs!" i warned him. "gloria's not far away. there were pebbles dropped on my horse. there may be a cave above this cliff--or something of the sort." will nodded. "--and i won't tell kagig you made love to me!" he continued. "poof! pah! kagig, 'e know that long ago!" will turned to his two men and bade them tie the horses to a bush. "how are the ribs?" he asked me. "nothing serious," said i. "do you think you can watch her if i tie her feet?" "she's slippery and strong! better tie her to a tree as well!" so between them will and the two men trussed her up like a chicken ready for the market, making her bound ankles fast to the roots of a bush. then he led the two men up the cliff-side, and maga lay glaring at me as if she hoped hate could set me on fire, while i made shift to stanch my wound. but she changed her tactics almost before will was out of sight beyond a boulder, beginning to scream the same words over and over in the gipsy tongue and struggling to free her feet until i thought the thongs would either burst or strip the flesh from her. the screams were answered by a shout from up above. then i heard will shout, and some one fired a pistol. there came a clatter of loose stones, and i got to my feet to be ready for action--not that my hurts would have let me accomplish much. a second later i saw three of gregor jhaere's gipsies scurrying along the cliff-side, turning at intervals to fire pistols at some one in pursuit. so i joined in the fray with my colt repeater, and flattered myself i did not do so badly. the first two shots produced no other effect than to bring the runaways to a halt. the next three shots brought all three men tumbling head over heels down the cliff-side, rolling and sliding and scattering the stones. one fell near maga's feet and lay there writhing. the other two came to a standstill in a hideous heap beside me, and i stooped to see if i could recognize them. what happened after that was almost too quick for the senses to take in. one of the gipsies came suddenly to life and seized me by the neck. the other grasped my feet, and as i fell i saw the third man slash loose maga's thongs and help her up. my two assailants rolled me over on my back, and while one held me the other aimed blows at my head with the butt of his empty pistol. once he hit me, and it felt like an explosion. twice by a miracle i dodged the blows, growing weaker, though, and hopeless. he aimed a fourth blow, taking his time about it and making sure of his aim, and i waited in the nearest approach to fatalistic calm i ever experienced. in a strange abstraction, in which every movement seemed to be slowed down into unbelievable leisureliness, i saw the butt of the pistol begin to approach my eye--near--nearer. then suddenly i heard a woman scream, and a shot ring out. instead of the pistol butt the gipsy's brains splashed on my face, and the man collapsed on top of me. next i realized that gloria vanderman was wiping my face with a cloth of some kind, holding a hot pistol in her other hand, while will was standing laughing over me, and maga jhaere with the other gipsy had disappeared altogether. "did you shoot maga?" i mumbled. "no," will laughed. "i'd hate to shoot a woman who'd offered to make me king! she ought to be hung, though, for a horse-thief! she and that other gipsy got away with the mounts! never mind--there are four of us to carry you, if gloria lends a hand!" but i have no notion how they carried me. all i remember is recovering consciousness that evening in the castle, to discover myself copiously bandaged, and painfully stiff, but not so much of an invalid after all. chapter twenty-one "those who survive this night shall have brave memories!" fragment oh, fear and hate shall have their spate (for both of the twain are one) and lust and greed devour the seed that else had growth begun. fiercely the flow of death shall go and short the good man's shrift! all hell's awake full toll to take, and passions hour is swift. but there be cracks in evil's tracks where seed shall safe abide, and living rocks shall breast the shocks of overflowing tide. castle and wall and keep shall fall, prophet and plan shall fail, and they shall thank nor wit nor rank who in the end prevail. looking back after this lapse of time there seems little difference between the disordered dreams of unconsciousness and the actual waking turmoil of that night. at first as i came slowly to my senses there seemed only a sea of voices all about me, and a constant thumping, as of falling weights. there were great pine torches set in the rusty old rings on the wall, and by their fitful light i saw that i lay on a cot in the castle keep. monty, fred, will, kagig and rustum khan were conversing at a table. gloria sat on an up-ended pine log near me. a dozen armenians, including the "elders" who had disagreed with kagig, stood arguing rather noisily near the door. "what is the thumping?" i asked, and gloria hurried to the cot-side. but i managed to sit up, and after she had given me a drink i found that my foot was still the most injured part of me. it was swollen unbelievably, whereas my bandaged head felt little the worse for wear, and the knife-wound did not hurt much. "they're bringing in wood," she answered. "why all that quantity?" the thumping was continuous, not unlike the noise good stevedores make when loading against time. "to burn the castle!" at that moment rustum khan left the table, and seeing me sitting up strode over. "good-by, sahib!" he said, reaching out for my hand. "the lord sahib has given me a post of honor and i go to hold it. those who survive this night shall have brave memories!" i got to my feet to shake hands with him, and i think he appreciated the courtesy, for his stern eyes softened for a moment. he saluted gloria rather perfunctorily as became his attitude toward women, and strode away to a point half-way between the door and monty. there he turned, facing the table. "lord sahib bahadur!" he said sonorously. monty got up and stood facing him. "salaam!" "salaam, rustum khan!" monty answered, returning the salute, and the others got to their feet in a hurry, and stood at attention. then the rajput faced about and went striding through the doorless opening into the black night--the last i was destined to see of him alive. "may we all prove as faithful and brave as that man!" said monty, sitting down again, and kagig cracked his knuckles. gloria and i went over and sat at the table, and seeing me in a state to understand things monty gave me a precis of the situation. "we're making a great beacon of this castle," he said. "three hundred men and women are piling in the felled logs and trees and down-wood--everything that will burn. we shall need light on the scene. rustum khan has gone to hold the clay ramp and make sure the turks turn up this castle road. fred is to hold the corner; we've fortified the zeitoon side of the road, and fred and his men are to make sure the turks don't spread out through the trees. kagig, will and i, with twenty-five very carefully picked men for each of us, wait for the turks at the bottom of the road and put up a feint of resistance. our business will be to make it look as little like a trap and as much like a desperate defense as possible. we hope to make it seem we're caught napping and fighting in the last ditch." "last ditch is true enough!" fred commented cheerfully. fred was obviously in his best humor, faced by a situation that needed no cynicism to discolor it--full of fight and perfectly contented. "practically all of the rest of the men and women who are not watching the enemy on the other side of beirut dagh," monty went on, "are hidden, or will be hidden in the timber on either side of the road. we're hoping to god they'll have sense enough to keep silent until the beacon is lighted. you're to light the beacon, since you're recovering so finely--you and miss vanderman." "yes, but when?" said i. "when the bugles blow. we've got six bugles--" "only two of them are cornets and one's a trombone," fred put in. "and when they all sound together, then set the castle alight and kill any one you see who isn't an armenian!" "or us!" said fred. "you're asked not to kill one of us!" "as a matter of fact," said monty, "i rather expect to be near you by that time, because we don't want to give the signal until as many turks as possible are caught in the road like rats. at the signal we dose the road at both ends; rustum khan and fred from the bottom end, and we at the top." "most of the murder," fred explained cheerfully, "will be done by the women hidden in the trees on either flank. as long as they don't shoot across the road and kill one another it'll be a picnic!" "how do you know the turks will walk into the trap?" i asked. "ten 'traitors,'" said monty, "have let themselves get caught at intervals since noon. one of kagig's spies has got across to us with news that mahmoud means to finish the hash of zeitoon to-night. his men have been promised all the loot and all the women." "except one!" fred added with a glance at gloria. "two! except two!" remarked kagig with a glance at the door. we looked, and held our breath. maga jhaere stood there, with a hand on the masonry on each side! "you fool, kagig, what you fill this castle full of wood for?" she demanded. kagig beckoned to her. "to burn little traitoresses!" he answered tenderly. "come here!" she walked over to him, and he put his arm around her waist, looking up from his seat into her face as if studying it almost for the first time. she began running her fingers through his hair. "is she not beautiful?" he asked us naively. then, not waiting for an answer: "she is my wife, effendim. you would not have me be revengeful--not toward my wife, i think?" "your wife? why didn't you tell us that before?" gloria seemed the most surprised, as well as the most amused, although we were all astonished. "not tell you before? oh--do you remember abraham--in the bible--yes? she has been my best spy now and then. as kagig's wife what good would she be?" yet, had i not married her, i should have lost the services of most of my best spies--gregor jhaere for one. he is not her father, no. they call her their queen. she is daughter of another gipsy and of an armenian lady of very good family. she has always hoped to see me a monarch!" he laughed, and cracked his finger-joints. "to make of me a monarch, and to reign beside me! ha-ha-ha! i did those gipsies a favor by marrying her, for she was something of a problem to them, no gipsy being good enough in her eyes, and no busne (gentile) caring for the honor until i saw and fell in love! oh, yes, i fell in love! i, kagig, the old adventurer, i fell in love!" he drew her down and kissed her as tenderly as if she were a little child; then rose to his feet. "you forgive her, effendim?" he asked. "you forgive her for my sake?" none answered him. perhaps he asked too much. "never mind me, then, effendim. not for my sake, but for the good work she has so often done, and for the work she shall do--you forgive her?" we all looked toward gloria. it was her prerogative. gloria took maga's left hand in her right. "i don't blame you," she said, "for coveting will. i've coveted him myself! but you needn't have let your men handle me so roughly!" "no?" said maga blandly. "then why did you 'urt two of them so badly that they run away? did not you shoot that other one? so--i give 'im to you. i give you that will yerkees--" "thanks!" put in will, but maga ignored the interruption. "--not because you are cleverer than me--or more beautiful. you are uglee! you can not dance, and as for fighting, i could keel you with one 'and! but because i like kagig better after all!" at that kagig suddenly dismissed all such trivialities as treachery and matrimony from his mind with one of his napoleonic gestures. "it is time, effendim, to be moving!" he led the way out without another word, i limping along last and the armenian "elders" following me. it was pitchy dark in the castle courtyard, and without the light from numerous kerosene lanterns it would not have been possible to find the way between the heaped-up logs. there was only a crooked, very narrow passage left between the keep and the outer gate, and they had long ago left off using the gate for the lumber, but were hoisting it over the wall with ropes. one improvised derrick squealed in the darkness, and the logs came in by twos and tens and dozens. no sooner were we out of the keep than women came and tossed in logs through the door and windows, until presently that building, too, contained fuel enough to decompose the stone. and over the whole of it, here, there and everywhere, men were pouring cans and cans of kerosene, while other men were setting dry tinder in strategic places. there was no moon that night. or if there was a moon, then the dark clouds hid it. no doubt mahmoud thought he had a night after his own heart for the purpose of overwhelming our little force; for how should he know that we were ready for the massed battalions forming to storm the gorge again. at a little after eight o'clock mahmoud resumed the offensive with his artillery, and a messenger that monty sent down to watch returned and reported the shells all bursting wild, with rustum khan's men taking careful cover in the ditches they had zigzagged down the whole face of the ramp. an hour later the turk's infantry was reported moving, and shortly before ten o'clock we heard the opening rattle of rustum khan's stinging defense. there was intended to be no deception about that part of our arrangements; nor was there. the oncoming enemy was met with a hail of destruction that checked and withered his ranks, and made the succeeding companies only too willing to turn at the castle road instead of struggling straight forward. nor was the turn accomplished without further loss; for our zeitoonli, still entrenched on the flank of the pass, loosed a murderous storm of lead through the dark that swept every inch of the open castle road, and the turn became a shambles. but mahmoud had reckoned the cost and decided to pay it. company after company poured up the gorge in the rear of the front ones, and turned with a roar up the road, butchered and bewildered, but ever adding to the total that gained shelter beyond the first turn in the road. those, however, had to deal at once with monty, will and kagig, who opened on them guerrilla warfare from behind trees--never opposing them sufficiently to check them altogether, but leading them steadily forward into the two-mile trap. from where i stood on the top of the castle wall i could judge pretty accurately how the fight went; and i marveled at the skill of our men that they should retire up the road so slowly, and make such a perfect impression of desperate defense. gloria refused from the first to remain inactive beside me, but went through the trees down the line of the road, crossing at intervals from side to side, urging and begging our ambushed people to be patient and reserve their fire until the chorus of bugles should blow. about eleven o'clock a breathless messenger came to say that the turks had renewed the attack on the other side of beirut dagh; but i did not even send him on to kagig. if the attack was a feint, as was probable, intended to distract us from the main battle, then there were men enough there to deal with it. if, on the other hand, mahmoud had divided forces and sent a formidable number around the mountain, then our only chance was nevertheless to concentrate on our great effort, and defeat the nearest first. there was not the slightest wisdom in sending down a message likely to distract monty or will or kagig from their immediate task. the women kept piling in the pine trees, until i thought the very weight of lumber might defeat our purpose by delaying the blaze too long. but kagig had requisitioned every drop of kerosene in zeitoon, and the stuff was splashed on with the recklessness that comes of throwing parsimony to the winds. then i grew afraid lest they should fire the stuff too soon, or lest some stray spark from a man's pipe or an overturned lantern should do the work. every imaginable fear presented itself, because, having no active part in the fighting, i had nothing to distract me from self-criticism. it became almost a foregone conclusion after a while that the night's work was destined to be spoiled entirely by some oversight or stupidity of mine. the battle down in the valley dinned and screamed like the end of the world, although the turks could not use their artillery for fear of slaughtering their own men. i could hear fred hotly engaged, holding the corner of the turn where the turks were seeking in vain to widen it. probably the turks supposed he was put there with a hundred men to defend the road, instead of to drive their thinned battalions up it. in the end it was an accident that set the bugles blowing, and probably that accident saved our fortunes. monty shouted to a man to run and ask for news of the fighting below. mistaking the words in the din, the messenger ran to the rock in the clearing on which the musicians waited, and a minute later the first bars of the marseillaise rang clearly through the trees. the almost instant answer was a volley from each side of the road that sounded like the explosion of the whole world. and the turks hardly half into the trap yet! monty and will and kagig brought their men back up the road at the double, as the only way to escape the fire of our ambushed friends. i was two minutes fumbling with matches in the wind before i could light the kindling set ready in the entrance arch; and it was about three minutes more before the first long flame shot skyward and the beacon we had set began to do its appointed work. then, though, that castle proved to be a very vesuvius, for the draught poured in through the doorless arch and hurried the hot flames skyward to be mushroomed roaring against the belly of black clouds. none of us knew then where mahmoud was, nor that he had given the order that minute to his trapped battalions to halt, face the trees on either side, and advance in either direction in order to widen their front. the firing of the castle, for some mad reason of the sort that mothers every catastrophe, caused them to disobey that order and, instead, to charge forward at the double. in a moment the new fury (for it was not panic, nor yet exactly the reverse) communicated itself all along the road, and the regiments at the rear, in spite of the murderous fire from our ambush, yelled and milled to drive the men in front more swiftly. then fred saw the castle flames, and led his men forward to plug up the lower end of the road. next rustum khan saw it, and advanced three hundred down the ramp to hold the ditch at the bottom and prevent reserves from coming to the rescue. it was then, so he told us afterward, that fred realized who was the person in authority who had sought to change the line of battle at the critical moment. mahmoud himself, surrounded by his staff, had ridden forward to see what the true nature of the difficulty might be, and had got caught in the trap when fred closed it and rustum khan cut off the flow of men! fred did his best by rapid fire to put an end to mahmoud, staff and all. but the light from the castle did not reach down in among the trees, and when he told the nearest men who the target was that only made the shooting wilder. nor was mahmoud a man without decision. realizing that he was trapped, at any rate from behind, he galloped forward with his staff, scattering bewildered men to right and left of him, to find out whether the trap could not be forced from the upper end, knowing that there were plenty of men on the road already to account for any possible total we could bring against them, if only they could be led forward and deployed. so it came about that mahmoud on a splendid war-horse, and five of his mounted staff, arrived at the head of the oncoming column; and kagig saw them in a moment when the flare from the castle roared like a rocket hundreds of feet high and scattered all the shadows on that section of the road. kagig passed the word along, but it was monty who devised the instant plan, and one of will's men who came running to find me. so i forgot pain and disability in the excitement of having a part to play. gloria had found her way back to the castle, and it was she who rallied all the men and women who had worked at piling fuel, and brought them to where i lay. then i begged her to get back somewhere and hide, but she laughed at me. our business was to burry down the road and plug it against mahmoud and his men, while kagig got behind him by sheer hand-to-hand fighting, and monty and will approached him from the flanks. we had to be cautious about shooting, because of kagig, for one thing, but for another, will had sent the message, "don't kill mahmoud." and that, of course, was obvious. mahmoud alive would be worth a thousand to us of any mahmoud dead. gloria ran down the road beside me, and will caught sight of her in the dancing light. i heard him shout something in united states english about women and hell-fire and burned fingers, but beyond that it was not polite, and was intended for me as much as for gloria, i did not get the gist of it. then the battle closed up around us, and we all fought hand to hand--women harder than the men--to close in on mahmoud and drag him from his horse. three times in the fitful dark and even more deceptive dancing light we almost had him. but the first time he fought free, and his war-horse kicked a clear way for him for a few yards through the scrimmage. then kagig closed in on him from the rear. but three of the staff engaged kagig alone, and twenty or thirty of mahmoud's infantry drove kagig's men back on the still advancing column. kagig went down, fighting and shouting like a berserker, and monty let mahmoud go to run to kagig's rescue. monty did not go alone, for his men leapt after him like hounds. but he fought his way in the lead with a clubbed rifle, and stood over kagig's body working the weapon like a flail. that was all i saw of that encounter, for mahmoud decided to attempt escape by the upper way again, and it was i who captured him. i landed on him through the darkness with my clenched fist under the low hung angle of his jaw and, seizing his leg, threw him out of the saddle. there gloria helped me sit on him; and the greater part of what we had to do was to keep the women from tearing him to pieces. at last gloria and i, with a dozen of them, took mahmoud up-hill and made him sit down in full firelight with his back against a rock. he had nothing to say for himself, but stared at gloria with eyes that explained the whole philosophy of all the turks; and she, for sake of the decency that was her birthright, went and stood on the far side of the rock and kept the bulge of it between them. then i sent for kagig, and monty, and will; and after they had seen to the barricading of the upper end of the road with fallen trees and a fairly wide ditch, kagig and will came, followed by half a dozen of the elders, who had been lending a stout hand during that part of the night's work. kagig was out of breath, but apparently not hurt much. they came so slowly that i wondered. gloria, who could see much farther through the dark than i, gave a little scream and ran forward. i saw then by a sudden burst of flame from the castle that they were carrying something heavy, and i guessed what it was although my heart rebelled against belief; but i did not dare leave mahmoud, who seemed inclined to take advantage of the first stray opportunity. i stuck my pistol into his ear and dared him to move hand or foot. gloria came back in tears, and took mahmoud's cape and my jacket, and spread them on the ground. on these they laid monty very tenderly, kagig looking on with cracking finger-joints that i could hear quite plainly in spite of the awful rage of battle that thundered and crashed and screamed among the woods. it was as one sometimes hears the ticking of a watch beneath the pillow in a nightmare. monty was alive, but in spite of what gloria could do the dark blood was welling out from a sword gash on his right side, and we had not a surgeon within miles of us. from somewhere out of the darkness maga appeared, bringing water, her face all black with the filth of fighting among trees, and her eyes on fire. monty seemed to be listening to the noise of battle--kagig to think of nothing but his loss. he pointed at mahmoud, who was eying monty curiously. "see the prisoner!" he said. "ha! i would give a hundred of him a hundred times for monty, my brother!" monty turned his head to see mahmoud, and appeared partly satisfied. "you hold the key," he said painfully. "mahmoud will make terms. but it will take time to stop the fighting. you must send down reserves to fred and rustum khan--that is where the strain is--you must see that surely--the enemy from below will be trying to come forward, and those in the trap to return. fred and rustum khan are bearing all the brunt. relieve them!" it did not look good to me that will should leave gloria again; and kagig must surely stay there to do the bargaining. so i took monty's hand to bid him good-by, and limped off through the dark to try to find men who would come with me to the shambles below. it wag kagig and will together who overtook me, picked me off my feet, and dragged me back, and will went down alone, with a wave of the hand to gloria, and a laugh that might have made the devil think he liked it. then began the conference, i holding a mere watching brief with a pistol reasonably close to mahmoud's ear. and for a time, while monty lived, the elders supported kagig and insisted on the full concession of his demands. but monty, with his head on gloria's lap, died midway of the proceedings; and after that the elders' suspicion of kagig reawoke, so that mahmoud took courage and grew more obstinate. kagig called them aside repeatedly to make them listen to his views. "you fools!" he swore at them, cracking his knuckles and twisting at his beard alternately. "do you not realize that mahmoud is ambitious! do you not understand that he must yield all, if you insist! otherwise we hang him here to a tree in sight of the burning castle and his own men! no ambitious rascal is ever willing to be hanged! insist! insist!" "ah, kagig!" one of them answered. "speak for yourself. you would not like to be hanged perhaps! but we must concede him something, or how shall he satisfy ambition? he must be able to go back with something to his credit in order to satisfy the politicians." "oh, my people! oh, my people!" grumbled kagig. "can you never see?" but they went back to mahmoud with a fresh proposal, milder than the first; and eventually, after yielding point by point, until kagig begged them kindly to blow his brains out and bury him with monty, they reached a basis on which mahmoud was willing to capitulate--or to oblige them, as he expressed it. he won his main point: zeitoon was to accept a turkish governor. they won theirs, that the governor was to bring no troops with him, but to be contented with a body-guard of zeitoonli. for the rest: mahmoud was to go free, taking his wounded with him, but surrendering all the uninjured turkish soldiers in the trap as hostages for the release of all armenian prisoners taken anywhere between tarsus and zeitoon. it was agreed there were to be no subsequent reprisals by either side, and that hostages were not to be released until after mahmoud's army corps should have returned to whence it came. kagig wrote the terms in turkish by the light of the holocaust in monty's ancestral keep, and mahmoud signed the paper in the presence of ten witnesses. but whether he, or his brother turks, have kept, for instance, the last clause of the agreement, history can answer. chapter twenty-two "god go with you to the states, effendim!" armenia first of the christian nations; the first of us all to feel the fire of infidel hatred, the weight of the pagan heel; faithfullest down the ages tending the light that burned, tortured and trodden therefore, spat on and slain and spurned; branded for others' vices, robbed of your rightful fame, clinging to truth in a truthless land in the name of the ancient name; generous, courteous, gentle, patient under the yoke, decent (hemmed in a harem land ye were ever a one-wife folk); royal and brave and ancient--haply an hour has struck when the new fad-fangled peoples shall weary of raking muck, and turning from coward counsels and loathing the parish lies, in shame and sackcloth offer up the only sacrifice. then thou who hast been neglected, who hast called o'er a world in vain to the deaf deceitful traders' ears in tune to the voice of gain, thou cinderella nation, starved that our appetites might live, when we come with a hand outstretched at last--accept it, and forgive! the fighting lasted nearly until dawn, because of the difficulty of conveying mahmoud's orders to the turks, and kagig's orders to our own tree-hidden firing-line. but a little before sunrise the last shot was fired, at about the time when most of the castle walls fell in and a huge shower of golden sparks shot upward to the paling sky. the cease fire left all zeitoon's defenders with scarcely a thousand rounds of rifle ammunition between them; but mahmoud did not know that. an hour after dawn fred joined us. he had the news of monty's death already, and said nothing, but pointed to something that his own men bore along on a litter of branches. a minute or two later they laid rustum khan's corpse beside monty's, and we threw one blanket over both of them. i don't remember that fred spoke one word. he and monty had been closer friends than any brothers i ever knew. no doubt the awful strain of the fighting at the corner of the woods had left fred numb to some extent; but he and monty had never been demonstrative in their affection, and, as they had lived in almost silent understanding of each other, hidden very often for the benefit of strangers by keen mutual criticism, so they parted, fred not caring to make public what he thought, or knew, or felt. kagig, not being in favor with the elders, vanished, maga following with food for him in a leather bag, and we saw neither of them again until noon that day, by which time we ourselves had slept a little and eaten ravenously. then he came to us where we still sat by the great rock with mahmoud under guard (for nobody would trust him to fulfil his agreement until all his troops had retired from the district, leaving behind them such ammunition and supplies as they had carried to the gorge below the ramp). we had laid both bodies under the one blanket in the shade, and kagig pointed to them. "i have found the place--the proper place, effendim!" he said simply. "maga has made it fit." not knowing what he meant by that last remark, we invited some big armenians to come with us to carry our honored dead, and followed kagig one by one up a goat track (or a bear track, perhaps it was) that wound past the crumbled and blackened castle wall and followed the line of the mountain. here and there we could see that kagig had cleared it a little on his way back, and several times it was obvious that there had been a prepared, frequented track in ancient days. "it took time to find," said kagig, glancing back, "but i thought there must be such a place near such a castle." presently we emerged on a level ledge of rock, from a square hole in the midst of which a great slab had been levered away with the aid of a pole that lay beside it. all around the opening maga had spread masses of wild flowers, and either she or kagig had spread out on the rock the great banner with its ships and wheat-sheaves that the women had made by night in monty's honor. we could read the motto plainly now--per terram et aquam--by land and sea; and kagig pointed to some marks on the stone slab. moss had grown in them and lichens, but he or else maga had scraped them clean; and there on the stone lay the same legend graven bold and deep, as clear now as when the last crusader of the family was buried there, lord knew how many centuries before. the tomb was an enormous place--part cave, and partly hewn--twenty feet by twenty by as many feet deep at the most conservative guess; and on four ledges, one on each side, not in their armor, but in the rags of their robes of honor, lay the bones of four earlier montdidiers--all big men, broad-shouldered and long of shin and thigh. we did not need to go down into the tomb and break the peace of centuries. under the very center of the opening was a raised table of hewn rock, part of the cavern floor, about eight feet by eight that seemed to have been left there ready for the next man, or next two men when their time should come. down on to that we lowered monty's body carefully with leather ropes, and then rustum khan's beside him, rustum khan receiving christian burial, as neither he nor his proud ancestors would have preferred. but his line was as old as monty's, and he died in the same cause and the selfsame battle, so we chose to do his body honor; and if the prayers that fred remembered, and the other cheerfuller prayers that gloria knew, were an offense to the rajput's lingering ghost, we hoped he might forgive us because of friendship, and esteem, and the homage we did to his valor in burying his body there. we covered monty's body with the banner the women had made, and rustum khan's with flowers, for lack of a better shroud; then levered and shoved the great slab back until it rested snugly in the grooves the old masons had once cut so accurately as to preserve the bones beneath. then, when gloria had said the last prayer: "what next, kagig?" will demanded. kagig was going to answer, but thought better of it and strode away in the lead, we following. he did not stop until we reached the open and the smoking ruins of the castle walls. when he stopped: "has any one seen peter measel?" i asked. "forget him!" growled will. "why?" demanded maga. "will you bury him in that same hole with them two?" "has any one seen him?" i asked again, uncertain why i asked, but curious and insistent. "sure!" said maga. "yes. me i seen 'im. i keel 'im--so--with a knife--las' night! you not believe?" whether we believed or not, the news surprised us, and we waited in silence for an explanation. "you not believe? why not? that dog! 'e make of me a dam-fool! 'e tell me about god. 'e say god is angry with zeitoon, an' kagig is as good as a dead man, an' i shall take advantage. 'e 'ope 'e marry me. i 'ope if kagig die i marry will yerkees, but i agree with measel, making pretend, an' 'e run away to talk 'is fool secrets with the turks. then i make my own arrangements! but mahmoud is not succeeding, and i like kagig better after all. an' then last night in the darkness peter measel he is coming on a 'orse with mahmoud because mahmoud is not trusting him out of sight. an' i see him, an' 'e see me, an' 'e call me, an' i go to 'im through all the fighting, an' 'e get off the 'orse an' reach out 'is arms to me, an' i keel 'im with my knife--so! an' now you know all about it!" "what next?" will demanded dryly. "next?" said kagig. "you effendim make your escape! the turks will surely seek to be revenged on you. i will show you a way across the mountains into persia." "and you?" i asked. "into hiding!" he answered grimly. "maga--little maga, she shall come with me, and teach me more about the earth and sky and wind and water! perhaps at last some day she shall make me--no, never a king, but a sportman." "come with us," said will. "come to the states." "no, no, effendi. i know my people. they are good folk. they mistrust me now, and if i were to stay among them where they could see me and accuse me, and where the turks could make a peg of me on which to hang mistrust, i should be a source of weakness to them. nevertheless, i am ever the eye of zeitoon! i shall go into hiding, and watch! there will come an hour again--infallibly--when the turks will seek to blot out the last vestige of armenia. if i hide faithfully, and watch well, by that time i shall be a legend among my people, and when i appear again in their desperation they will trust me." will met gloria's eyes in silence for a moment. "i've a mind to stay with you, kagig, and lend a hand," he said at last. "nay, nay, effendi!" "we can attach ourselves to some mission station, and be lots of use," gloria agreed. "use?" said kagig, cracking his fingers. "the missions have done good work, but you can be of much more use--you two. you have each other. go back to the blessed land you come from, and be happy together. but pay the price of happiness! you have seen. go back and tell!" "tell about armenian atrocities?" said will. "why, man alive, the papers are full of them at regular intervals!" kagig made a gesture of impatience. "aye! all about what the turks have done to us, and how much about us ourselves? america believes that when a turk merely frowns the armenian lies down and holds his belly ready for the knife! who would care to help such miserable-minded men and women? but you have seen otherwise. you know the truth. you have seen that armenia is undermined by mutual suspicion cunningly implanted by the turk. you have also seen how we rally around one man or a handful whom we know we dare trust!" "true enough!" said will. "i've wondered at it." "then go and tell america," kagig almost snarled with blazing eyes, "to come and help us! to give us a handful of armed men to rally round! tell them we are men and women, not calves for the shambles! tell them to reach us out but one finger of one hand for half a dozen years, and watch us grow into a nation! preach it from the house-tops! teach it! tell it to the sportmen of america that all we need is a handful to rally round, and we will all be sportmen too! go and tell them--tell them!" "you bet we will!" said gloria. "then go!" said kagig. "go by way of persia, lest the turks find ways of stopping up your mouths. monty has died to help us. i live that i may help. you go and tell the sportmen all. tell them we show good sport in zeitoon--in armenia! god go with you all, effendim!" gutenberg in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the armenian genocide. armenia travels and studies by h. f. b. lynch nature's vast frame, the web of human things. shelley, alastor. who can foretell our future? spare me the attempt. we are like a harvest reaped by bad husbandmen amidst encircling gloom and cloud. john katholikos armenian historian of the xth century ch. clxxxvii. in two volumes with 197 illustrations, reproduced from photographs and sketches by the author, numerous maps and plans, a bibliography and a map of armenia and adjacent countries vol. i the russian provinces longmans, green, and co. london: 39 paternoster row new york and bombay 1901 preface this book contains the account of two separate journeys in armenia, the first extending from august 1893 to march 1894, and the second from may to september 1898. before embarking upon them, i was already familiar with the contiguous countries, having spent a considerable portion of the years 1889 and 1890 in mesopotamia and persia. the routes shown in my map from aleppo to diarbekr and down the tigris, and from batum across georgia and the caspian to resht, were taken during the course of these earlier wanderings, and they contribute no part of the ensuing narrative. what attracted me to armenia? i had no interests public or private in a country which has long been regarded even by asiatic travellers as a land of passage along prescribed routes. one inducement was curiosity: what lay beyond those mountains, drawn in a wide half-circle along the margin of the mesopotamian plains? the sources of the great rivers which carried me southwards, a lake with the dimensions of an inland sea, the mountain of the ark, the fabled seat of paradise. with each step forward in my knowledge of the countries west of india came a corresponding increase of my original emotion. sentimental were reinforced by purely practical considerations; and i seemed to see that the knot of politics tightening year by year around these countries was likely to be resolved in armenia. i became impatient to set foot upon armenian soil. when my wish was realised, my first experiences of the country and of the armenians in the russian provinces exceeded my expectations--fringed with doubt as these were by disappointment with much i had seen in the east. so i passed over the russian frontier, struck across to the lake of van, and spent the winter in erzerum. when i came to setting down on the map my routes in turkish armenia, the scantiness of existing knowledge was painfully plain. i soon realised that it would be necessary to undertake a second journey for the purpose of acquiring the necessary framework upon which to hang the routes. meanwhile the events occurred with which we are all familiar--the armenian massacres, and the comedy of the concert of europe. it was with difficulty that i was at length enabled to return to the country. these later travels were almost exclusively occupied with the natural features, our tents spread upon the great mountain masses, whence plain and lake and winding river were unfolded before us like a map. primitive methods were rendered necessary for transferring these features to paper. one is not allowed in turkey the use of elaborate or obvious instruments, and miles of ground had to be crossed in full view of turkish officials before reaching the field of our work. but i was able to transport to erzerum a standard mercurial barometer, which was duly set up in that centre and read several times a day during our absence. we carried two aneroids, a boiling-point apparatus, a four-inch prismatic compass, used upon a tripod and carefully tested at kew; lastly, a rather troublesome but very satisfactory little instrument called a telemeter, and made by steward. the measurements were checked by cross-readings with the compass, and we found that they could be relied upon. once we were upon the mountains our operations were not impeded, and, indeed, were assisted by the authorities. i was accompanied on this second journey by my friend, mr. f. oswald, who had been helping me disentangle the voluminous works of the great abich upon the geology of the caucasus and russian armenia. the varied talents of oswald were of the greatest service to the work in hand, while his society was a constant source of pleasure and repose. he is now engaged with the geological results of this journey, and with a well-considered study of the geology of armenia as a whole. these he hopes to publish before very long. the illustrations are for the most part reproductions of my photographs, being a selection from a collection which fills several cases. on my first armenian journey i was accompanied as far as erzerum by mr. e. wesson of the polytechnic in london, who not only developed the films and plates upon the spot, but rendered the most valuable assistance in the photographic work. he also displayed the qualities of a veteran campaigner before the journey was done. and i was always missing him after his return home and during the second journey, when the work devolved entirely upon myself. my cousin, major h. b. lynch, now serving in south africa, travelled with us as far as ararat and took charge of the camp. it is, i think, a legitimate cause for satisfaction that, except for momentary lapses on the part of the cook, not one of the party during either of the two long journeys fell ill or became incapable of hard work. and on both occasions the horses were sold at a small profit when the coast was at length reached. why does one write a book? i find it difficult to answer the question, which, indeed, demands a knowledge of human nature greater than any i possess. there are societies and individuals who, i feel sure, would offer a price if the potential author would agree to keep his material to himself. the sum might probably be augmented by the contributions of weary students; and a revenue could be collected from these various sources far exceeding any royalties received from publishers. moreover the author would escape the foreboding of condign punishment, which he is made to feel suspended over his head. on the other hand, there is the fascination of feeling possessed by a subject, stronger than yourself and elemental. and there is the joy and the impersonality of the work reacting upon the personality of the writer. the country and the people which form the theme of the ensuing pages are deserving, the one of enthusiasm and the other of the highest interest. it is very strange that such a fine country should have lain in shadow for so many centuries, and that even the standard works of greek and roman writers should display so little knowledge of its features and character. much has been done to dispel the darkness during the progress of the expired century; and i have been at some pains to collect and co-ordinate the work of my predecessors. in this task i have been assisted by my friend, the hon. mrs. arthur pelham, to whom the credit of the bibliography accompanying my second volume is due. in taking leave of the book--and it has been a long connection--the mind rests with pleasure and gratitude upon the help given without stint by fellow-workers in the same or in different fields. to my friend, mr. r. w. graves, now consul-general in crete, i am indebted for a lengthy spell of hospitality and delightful companionship in distant erzerum. i have borrowed freely from his intimate knowledge of extensive regions in turkish armenia, as well as from that acquired by my friend, major maunsell, now our consul at van, the principal contemporary authority on kurdistan. geheimrath dr. g. radde of tiflis has rendered me valuable assistance on more than one occasion; and it is also a pleasure to feel conscious in many ways of my obligations to my friend, mr. l. de klupffell, formerly of batum. at home i have received much kindness from mr. fortescue of the british museum library, and from dr. mill, who has so long presided over the library of the royal geographical society, and whose recent retirement from that office in order to devote himself to his scientific work is keenly regretted by those whom he encouraged by his assistance and advice. the book has brought me several new friends, among them mr. f. c. conybeare of oxford, the extent of my debt to whom, in various directions, it would be difficult to estimate. professor sayce has kindly looked over the sheets dealing with the vannic empire, and contributed several valuable suggestions. prof. e. denison ross has helped me with the mussulman inscriptions, besides informing me upon a number of obscure points. a portion of the narrative of the ascent of ararat has already appeared in messrs. scribner's magazine, reprinted in mountain climbing, a book published by this firm. parts of the concluding chapters of each volume, entitled "statistical and political," have seen the light in the shape of a series of articles in the contemporary review. h. f. b. lynch. the map which accompanies my first volume will be on sale separately at messrs. stanford's in longacre. contents page chapter i the coast and the port 1 chapter ii ascent to armenia 37 chapter iii to akhaltsykh 53 chapter iv to akhalkalaki 72 chapter v at akhalkalaki 86 chapter vi prospect from abul 92 chapter vii gorelovka and queen lukeria 96 chapter viii to alexandropol 118 chapter ix at alexandropol 124 chapter x to erivan 133 chapter xi to ararat 143 chapter xii ascent of ararat 156 chapter xiii the heart of ararat 179 chapter xiv return to erivan 200 chapter xv at erivan 206 chapter xvi edgmiatsin and the armenian church 228 chapter xvii to ani and to kars 316 chapter xviii ani, and the armenian kingdom of the middle ages 334 chapter xix kars 393 chapter xx across the spine of armenia 409 chapter xxi geographical 421 chapter xxii statistical and political 446 list of plates ararat from aralykh frontispiece trebizond from above the head of the western ravine to face page 12 trebizond: hagia sophia 24 trebizond: façade of hagia sophia on the south 25 plain of the rion from the southern slopes of caucasus: kutais in the foreground 46 view north from the zikar pass back to page 52 view south from the zikar pass 53 safar: st. saba from the west 62 safar: porch of st. saba 63 akhaltsykh from the road to akhalkalaki to face page 65 castle of khertvis 76 vardzia, the troglodyte city 80 mount abul from akhalkalaki 92 summer pavilion at gorelovka 109 alagöz from the plain of alexandropol 122 alexandropol from the armenian cemetery 125 ararat from near aramzalu 153 great ararat from above sardar bulakh 165 our kurd porters on ararat 167 akhury: the great chasm from aralykh 179 akhury: inside the great chasm 194 erivan and ararat from the north 208 erivan: interior of the kiosque of the sirdars 216 edgmiatsin: the great court and the cathedral 243 edgmiatsin: ceremony of the consecration of the katholikos--anointing with oil from the beak of a golden dove 254 edgmiatsin: interior of the cathedral 267 edgmiatsin: exterior of st. ripsime 269 edgmiatsin: exterior of st. gaiane 270 edgmiatsin: exterior of shoghakath 271 talin: mouldings on south side of ruinous church 322 walls and gateway of the city of ani from outside, looking east 369 ani: the cathedral from south-east 370 ani: niche in eastern wall of cathedral 371 ani: apse of the cathedral 372 ani: church of st. gregory from the west 373 ani: north wall of the church of st. gregory 374 ani: detail of the porch of st. gregory 375 ani: mosque and minaret 376 ani: detail of doorway of chapel near citadel 379 ani: chapel of st. gregory, east side 380 ani: chapel of st. gregory, entrance 381 ani: interior of the chapel of st. gregory 382 ani: chapel of the redeemer 383 ani: doorway of the castle 384 ani: portal of the church of the apostles from the west 385 ani: east front of the church of the apostles 386 khosha vank: pronaos 387 khosha vank: exterior of pronaos and church from south-west 388 khosha vank: hall of the synod 389 looking down the valley of kagyzman 417 a rib or buttress of aghri dagh 419 pass over aghri dagh 420 illustrations in the text entrance to the black sea from the bosphorus 3 interior of hagia sophia 27 banks of the rion above kutais 46 road in the forest 50 georgians 51 portrait of ivan 59 group of villagers at khertvis 77 archimandrite and deacon at vardzia 82 head waters of the arpa chai 121 byzantine picture in greek church 128 wedding party at alexandropol 130 church of marmashen from s.w. 131 alagöz from the head waters of the abaran 136 ararat: aralykh in the foreground 155 our cavalcade on ararat 159 our encampment at sardar bulakh 163 little ararat from near sardar bulakh 164 summit of ararat from the south-east, taken at a height of about 13,000 feet 180 boulders near akhury 191 ararat from a house-top in erivan 207 alagöz from a house-top in erivan 208 entrance to gök jami, erivan 213 court with basin of gök jami, erivan 214 the temple, gök jami 215 pilgrims' court, edgmiatsin 230 the katholikos mekertich khrimean 237 the lake at edgmiatsin 246 ararat from the lake at edgmiatsin 247 armenian nun 252 interior of the portal of the cathedral 266 episcopal staves 268 sculptured stone 271 village of talin, with mount bugutu 322 mouldings on north side of ruinous church at talin 323 tartar khan at talin } 324 pristav of talin } priest of talin 325 tartar of akhja kala 326 alagöz from the plains on the west 327 greek girl of subotan 331 ani: bas-relief on the inner wall of the gateway 369 ani: sculptured stone moulding 373 ani: walled enclosure and chapel 376 ani: building on the citadel 378 ani: pilaster in the building on the citadel 379 ani: landscape from the southern extremities of the site 380 ani: the castle 383 the monastery of khosha vank: east side 386 khosha vank: chapels in the ravine of the arpa chai 387 the citadel of kars 406 molokan elder at vladikars 411 house at novo-michaelovka 412 aghri dagh from the araxes cañon 414 cliffs composing northern wall of araxes cañon 415 the araxes near kagyzman 416 kara vank on aghri dagh 419 map of the armenian plateau 452 list of maps and plans plan of the ancient fortifications of trebizond to face page 13 trebizond and surroundings 30 plan of the monastery and churches of edgmiatsin between pages 244 and 245 plan of the deserted city of ani to face page 390 kars and surroundings 395 the structural features of asia between pages 422 and 423 map of armenia and adjacent countries cover chapter i the coast and the port on four different occasions, both in summer and in winter, i have sailed along the southern shore of the black sea almost from one extremity to the other; yet i do not remember having seen the sky free from heavy clouds during two consecutive days. as the ship speeds eastwards along the mountains of bithynia, a thin veil of haze will blend the land outlines together; while, as the range grows in height with every mile of progress, the vapour will collect about its upper slopes in long, horizontal, black banks. even when the sun of this southern climate has swept the sky of every lingering film, when the zenith and the water recall the hues of the mediterranean--the whole scale of brilliant blues--somewhere upon the wide circle of the horizon will be lurking the scattered forces of the mist. but the stronghold of the cloud is in the mountains of akhaltsykh, at the foot of caucasus, in the extreme eastern angle of the sea. can there exist a more gloomy coast? there the sky is always lowering above the inky water, and the forests of fir which clothe the range from foot to summit wave darkly, like feathers over a pall. such, i think, are the impressions which the mind most closely associates with the aspect of this sea and shore. what a contrast to the smiling landscape of the bosphorus, the strait through which we enter this sad sea or leave it on our return home! the cold draught follows the home-coming ship up the narrow channel between the wooded cliffs, and frets the running tide into crisp little waves which sparkle in the brilliant light. the dolphins leap from the blue water and dart shining through the air. to the traveller who is returning from a long journey in asia and a tedious tossing on this grey sea, the bosphorus, always bright and gay and beautiful, may appear as the promised gate of paradise beyond the world of shades. the character of the coast cannot fail to be affected by this climate, by this atmosphere. just as the vapours gather thickest where the mountains are most lofty, at the south-eastern angle of the sea, so the vegetation increases in luxuriance and variety the further eastwards we proceed on our course. the cliffs or rolling hills about the entrance of the bosphorus--the closing cliffs of the greek legend, which caught the tail-feathers of the dove--soon give place to the belt of wooded mountains which rise from the immediate margin of the water, and stretch from west to east along the entire seaboard to the phasis and batum. tier upon tier they rise from the narrow strip of sand and pebbles, and grow both in height and in boldness of outline as they stretch towards the east. the winds of the open sea, the cold winds of scythia, fly over the barrier of the range; and the ship may often anchor in smooth water at a point where least protection would appear to be offered by the configuration of the shore. but the moisture of the air is arrested at the coast-line, and hangs about the upper tiers of the mountains or clings to the fir-clad slopes. these natural conditions are extremely favourable to vegetation, and the larger grows the scale upon which they are operating, the more abundant becomes the growth of trees and shrubs. when at last we have reached the neighbourhood of the phasis, where the wall of this range towers highest above us on the one side, and the line of caucasus closes the horizon on the other, the shore becomes clothed with dense forests, plants and creepers flourish with tropical exuberance; the traveller, threading the maze of evergreen woodland, might be walking along the banks of the amazon or through the glades of mazanderan. august 13, 14.--our ship is outward bound for the banks of the phasis, "the furthest point to which vessels sail." it was evening when we hove anchor from constantinople, and night had already closed as we passed the cliffs of buyukdere and opened the mouth of the strait (fig. 1). this morning we are skirting the bithynian mountains, our head well up towards amasra, behind us the bluff of cape baba, a promontory of twin hills. that cape hides the site of heraklea, one of the most important of the old greek cities, now patched with the relics of its former splendour, and shorn of the glory of its statue of herakles, with lion-skin, club, quiver, bow and arrows all wrought of solid gold. the same lofty coast and bold headlands accompany our course; in a few hours we double cape karembe, and the sun has not yet set as we cast anchor off ineboli, the outlet of the rich districts about kastamuni, and perhaps at present the most prosperous of these western pontic ports. herakli, ineboli, sinope, samsun--the ships often stop at one or two of these places; yet how little now remains of the old greek cities of the argonautic shore! step on land, and there are the high-prowed galleys drawn up, quite in the ancient fashion, upon the narrow strip of sand. but the hill to which we look for the ancient akropolis appears bare of any building now, and it is only by careful searching and diligent enquiry that you will find some faced stone with a greek inscription of the roman period built into the buttress of a modern bridge, or mocking the ruder masonry of a turkish wall. here at ineboli, indeed, half-bedded in the soil a few paces from the shore, lies a shining fragment of white marble with sculptures in relief. a line of white-faced houses with roofs of red tiles nestles beneath the mountain wall. the greeks live on one side, the turks on the other; and the intelligent man to whom you naturally address yourself is an armenian in european dress. our ship does not call at sinope this voyage--sinope of the open site and spacious roadstead, whose walls seem to have resisted the general crumbling, and rise from the water a still perfect model of a fortified mediæval town. during the night we round the hump of anatolia, and before mid-day we are lying in the bay of samsun, towards the centre of the long curve lined with white-faced, red-tiled houses, beyond which the ruined walls of ancient amisus still emerge from the briars on the summit of the hillside which closes the landscape on the north-west. but at samsun also destruction has been busy; i look in vain for the massive tower of old acquaintance at the south-eastern extremity of the shore. i recognise the spot where it stood at the end of the long sea-wall, some parts of which still remain; but the foundations alone have escaped demolition, and the few large blocks of stone which still lie scattered on the ground testify rather to the carelessness of the turkish building-contractor than to any respect on the part of his employers for the beauty and interest of their town. the sites of these coast towns have been determined by the characteristics of the range of wooded limestone ridges which rise along the shore. sometimes it will be a cleft in this latitudinal belt of mountains, a transverse fissure in the grain of the range, which, with its rustling river giving access to the interior, has attracted a settlement. the eye rests with pleasure on the deep green of these narrow valleys; the limestone towers high above them and protects the rich growth of trees and shrubs. or the range recedes from the margin of the water, sweeping inland in the shape of a vast amphitheatre, and curving outwards again to form a distant promontory of the bold and sinuous coast. the first description will apply to the position of ineboli; the second may be illustrated in a typical manner by the site of samsun. there the open stage of the wide hemicycle is filled with rolling hills and level expanses which yield abundant crops of cereals. it is true that the estuaries of the two larger rivers, halys and iris, present exceptions to the normal configuration of the seaboard. these considerable streams form extensive deltas which project far out into the sea. for awhile, as you pass them, you almost lose sight of the mountains, and the view ranges across low, marshy tracts, studded with trees. as we skirted the delta of the halys, we looked down upon such a wooded plain across a narrow bank of sandy shore. it appeared as if inside that slender barrier the solid land had sunk beneath the level of the waters upon which we sailed. the delta of the halys is as celebrated for its tobacco as that of the iris for its indian corn, and bafra and charshembeh are becoming serious rivals to the old greek cities of the coast. indeed, even along this remote seaboard the flowing tide of western civilisation is surely setting eastwards again. how the conditions of human life around these lonely waters have altered within the last sixty years! sixty years ago the first steamer drew her train of smoke and foam past these forelands and bays of still uncertain fame. the slave ships infested the harbours of the coast, and if a sail rose upon the horizon it was likely to be a slaver's sail. armed bands still forayed into the recesses of georgia for their loot of beautiful boys and girls, and parents who wished to preserve their daughters from the market would place them, when quite children, in one of the numerous fortified convents which crowned the summits of their native hills. slowly the grip of law has fastened upon the peoples of caucasia, a stern force moving with the insistence of a vice from distant russia, from the north; while from the west, with, perhaps, less system, less coherence of methods, european commerce creeps along this turkish shore of the sea, and extends ever further into the inland country the solvent influences of her sway. already towards the middle of the century the russians swept these waters with their steam cruisers, while their police boats blockaded all the coast of circassia to guard against the import of arms. only when the season was most tempestuous, when the cruisers had retired within their harbours and the cossacks no longer dared to face the open sea, the captain of the slave ship would venture out upon his perilous voyage from some wooded inlet of the eastern shore. at the present time this traffic has either ceased entirely or is conducted through obscure and secret channels, where it would be difficult to trace. to russia belongs the credit of this achievement, which has accompanied the extension of her empire down the eastern coast of the black sea. to europe and to the increasing intercourse with european markets is due the growing prosperity of these towns of the turkish seaboard, and indeed the very appearance which they present. new houses, in construction far more solid than their predecessors, are transforming the aspect of the shore; burnt bricks or stone masonry take the place of wood, and these materials are faced with a coat of concrete, painted a pure white. the window apertures are large, and at evening or morning a row of wide glass panes reflects the glow. even the government can show some signs of progress; carriageable roads have been constructed to the towns of the interior, from ineboli to the inland centre of kastamuni, from samsun to amasia and sivas. august 15.--weighing from samsun at night, it is early morning as we cast anchor off kerasun--kerasun with its castled rock thrown seawards from the range, the lofty headland of the bay, from which the town curves westwards and sinks to the waterside under the shadow of the mountain wall. were it not for the needle forms of minaret and cypress, rising against the terraces of white walls and red roofs which mount from the water's edge, we might be sailing on the rhine, past some grim old burgh, dominating the cluster of peaceful habitations which cower at its skirts. in less than three hours the barges are emptied, and we are proceeding on our course. almost immediately we pass close to a little island, a rare object along this shore. it is a mere fleck of rock, picturesquely encircled by feudal walls and towers. the range on our right hand is always rising in elevation; hard porphyritic rocks are beginning to take the place of the crumbling limestone; the ridges, clad with firs to the very summits, stand up one behind another ever loftier and more abrupt. at the same time the lower slopes increase in verdure; orchards and plantations clothe each respite of open ground. small settlements succeed one another more closely, the houses peeping out with their white faces from the soft, leafy background of green. such is the appearance of the shore we are skirting this morning--the range growing in height, the vegetation increasing, the characteristic beauties of the coast now, perhaps, for the first time imprinting a lasting image upon the mind. like the mediterranean, this sea is almost tideless--the narrow strip of sand, upon which the waves plash, is unencumbered with those oozy beds of giant seaweed which, scattered in fragrant streamers upon our english seaboards, whet the freshness of our sea-breeze. beyond this margin rise the first spurs of the mountains, or immediately descend into the deep, clear waters in the form of bold capes. if this coast yields to some in variety of outline, and is wanting in those combinations of sinuous bays and sea-thrown islands which lend such beauty to the landscapes of western asia minor and to the european shore of the mediterranean sea, it is surpassed by none in distinctness of character, in singleness of effect. day after day it is the same long belt of mountains always following the shore, the same long series of parallel ridges rising roughly parallel to the shore. the persistence of the range, the regularity of the system, the many signs along the seaboard of an ever-increasing development in the scale of the mountain walls which lie behind--all contribute to the growing consciousness that this foot of the barrier, the pleasing inlets of this shore, are but the threshold of some commanding piece of natural architecture of which we long to realise the plan. while the imagination is stimulated by this largeness of feature, the eye also is pleased. groves of lofty fir trees clothe the slopes and climb the summits, standing out on the undulating backs of the ridges against the light of the sky. wherever the soil favours, there are pretty orchards, and an abundant growth of plants and trees. nature strikes the first note of that "evergreenness" for which the coast of kolchis has been famed. towards mid-day we are holding up for a well-defined headland, projecting towards the north. it is distinguished by bold bluffs, breaking off in the form of cliffs before they reach the water's edge, and by a succession of deep valleys which descend on either side to the margin of the shore. it is the promontory of the "sacred mountain"--hieron oros, now called yoros, ieros, or simply oros--and it forms the western border of that series of smaller indentations which make up the beautiful bay of trebizond. platana, most picturesque of little settlements, nestles well under the shelter of this cape upon the west, when once you have doubled the points; while on the eastern side of the bay, exposed to the strong north-westerly winds of the seaboard, lies the site of the old city of trebizond. from this port starts the principal avenue of communication between turkish armenia and the sea; and beyond the mountains, on the south of this wild coast range, now traversed by a metalled road, lie the plains of the armenian tableland. the width of this mountain belt which borders armenia--this continuous chain of latitudinal ridges which, rising one behind and higher than the other, lead up like a ladder to the edge of the armenian plateau--is on this section of the range a direct distance of nearly fifty miles. when the roses are blowing in the gardens of the seaboard, the armenian rivers may be bound with ice; an unbroken sheet of snow may dazzle the eyes of the traveller, as he penetrates from this border country of parallel crests and depressions to the open landscapes of the tableland. fifty miles of intricate mountain country, inhabited at all periods by a sparse and little civilised population of doubtful or mixed race! the fact goes far towards explaining the isolation of armenia, the remoteness throughout history of the great grain-growing plains of the interior from the coast towns of the black sea. while the greek cities of the seaboard, sheltered behind the barrier of the range, found a natural and almost uninterrupted connection with the main currents of western history and western life, the armenian country and people, full exposed to the revolutions of asia, belonged essentially to the east. yet these crumbling walls and towers, emerging at intervals from a leafy overgrowth of creepers and trees, claim a larger share of our attention than a merely passing notice of the port of trebizond. for, in the first place, no traveller, about to enter the interior by this well-known and well-beaten route, can fail to undergo the spell which belongs to these ruins, or to feel his interest aroused by the monuments which still remain here of an empire long forgotten in the west. nor will a mind which has been fed upon western literature ignore the importance of realising the events of western history as they touch this remote shore. the annals of trebizond, while they illustrate and in themselves to a great extent resume the fortunes of these coast towns, were joined by a thread which was seldom severed to the web of western things. august 16.--the morning is the time to arrive at trebizond, perhaps to wake when the ship lies secure at anchor, while a fresh land-wind blows. the vessel coming from the west crosses the bay from cape ieros to an answering headland in the east, and does not bring up till she has doubled this lesser promontory and closed or almost closed the wide bay from sight. the anchorage lies at the foot of the eastern suburb of the city, now the most flourishing portion of the town, and the suburb mounts the back of the little promontory, and descends to the water on the opposite or western side. the inlet which recedes from the cape is not deep or extensive, and the shelter which it offers is so partial that in stormy weather a ship may be obliged to run for platana, and seek shelter under the lee of cape ieros, now some fifteen miles away. this configuration of the shore may be said to give two faces to the site of trebizond. while the ancient city with the ruins looks seawards and westwards, commanding the softer landscape of the bay, to the anchorage belongs an easterly aspect, and a view past the estuary of the famous river pyxitis along the wildest portion of the coast range. facing the anchorage, on the east of the white houses which climb the western skirts of the rising land, a bold cliff towers up above the water with abrupt walls of dark rock. the face of this cliff is almost bare of vegetation; but the summit, which is flat, is completely covered with a soft carpet of old turf. the elevation of this lofty platform above the sea-level is 850 feet. east and west the hill descends with gentler gradients, on the one side to the estuary of the pyxitis, and on the other to the little cape and to the town; but whether you approach it from the city or from the river valley, the slopes are no light matter to climb. on the south it joins on to the half-circle of the coast range, which recedes from beyond the river in a wide amphitheatre, embracing both the bays and all the town. thus the town itself is shut off from the level ground about the river by this peninsula of table-topped rock; and while one road climbs these slopes to unite the two valleys, the other winds outwards along the foot of the cliff, following the curve of the shore. i remember that, when for the first time i looked out upon the city, i was at once impressed with the manner in which this bold natural feature corresponded to the name of the town (trapezous). could the shape which is denoted by the figure of a table be presented by nature in a more convincing manner than by this mass of rock, towering up above the sea and from the valleys to a summit which is almost perfectly flat? yet the name does not appear to take its origin in a justification at once so striking and so clear, but rather to derive from the configuration of the ground in the western bay upon which the ancient fortress was built. still this platform is surely the most impressive characteristic of the site of trebizond. the turks, who have no antiquarian sympathies, apply to it the bald and undiscriminating appellation of boz tepe, the grey hill, basing the name upon the colour of the trachytic rock of which the hill is composed. the greeks of old knew it as the mount of mithros--mithrios--from a statue of the god mithras which used to stand upon this elevated spot. it is not easy to imagine a more delightful ground of vantage from which to overlook the town and command the coast. you may step a distance of some 500 paces by 200 on a level surface of springy turf, with no object between you and the wide expanse about you, in air which is at once full of sun and vigorous; and, if the day be clear, you may descry beyond the endless stretch of water the faint blue line of distant caucasus closing the horizon in the east. the anchorage of trebizond receives the first flush of morning; a mellow light is thrown upon the terraces of the eastern suburb, circling seawards down the lower slopes of mount mithros to the point of the little cape. here and there among the buildings rows of tall cypresses still hold the shadows of night; but the white faces of the houses soon dispel the darkness, and their glass windows reflect in a glow of dazzling splendour the lurid brilliance of the rising sun. nowhere else than in these landscapes of the black sea and the caspian is the dawn more essentially the "rosy-fingered," or the sea at sunrise "the glass-green." as the rays commence to break, the wind freshens and the black cypresses wave and sway. down the coast, beyond the dark cliff of mithros, the mountains of the seaboard are massed in savage parapets beneath the rising sun; the faithful clouds cling to their slopes or float above them, a sky of cold, silvery greys. westwards, above the point of the little promontory, under the immediate lee of which we lie, you just discern the softer setting of the greater bay itself, as the outline of the range sweeps in long undulations far out into the western sea. the day wakes; the colours start; the world of pinks and opals disappears. the aspect of the town is warm and genial, even in winter, when the background of broken ridges look their wildest and the sparse fir trees stand out darkly from the snow. sunny meadows and flashes of green turf caress the traveller, who may have journeyed through the long eastern summer and autumn in countries where scarcely a blade of grass grows. the shore is soon astir, and the cries of the boatmen are carried down the wind. large, high-prowed galleys bear down upon us, the crews racing for the first berth. we are surrounded by a swarm of ragged human beings, shouting, scrambling, gesticulating, as their boats and heavily laden barges drive against our tall iron sides. the steamers anchor at some little distance from the shore, and it takes a long pull, at a time when the wind is setting off the land, to reach the little mole. the shore-boats are manned with ill-miened youngsters, whose clamour never ceases from ship-side to landing-stage. on the quay are arrayed the customs officers and their assistants, motley groups in which the cast-off wardrobes of europe mingle with the coloured cottons of the east. what a relief to escape from all this turmoil, to repose for a few minutes in a spacious coffee-house, rising high above the harbour and the noise! a youth is just completing his lustral service of the morning; the floor has been swept and watered, the nargilehs are coiled--the peaceful figure of ion rises in the mind. our road leads up the hillside, at first by the town garden and wide streets, lined with houses and shops built in european style, and then through the narrow alleys which intersect the christian quarters, a labyrinth of winding ways. these streets of trebizond have a width not exceeding six or eight feet, and sometimes less, and are lined by the dull walls of garden enclosures which shut out all prospect over the town. a raised pavement runs along them, sometimes on both sides of the way, and always on one. here and there the fresh green leaves of a fig tree overhang the walls, or the cherry-laurel with its clusters of claret-coloured fruit, or the pink flowers of the oleander. the houses are, for a great part, quite eastern in character--blank, featureless wall, broken only at mid-height by little windows with gratings made of laced strips or mortised cubes of wood. but the modern villa is rapidly taking their place. what waifs of all the ages may be met within these alleys! yet i think, and our consul, mr. longworth, seems inclined to agree with me, that the greek type prevails. our conversation turns upon these race questions; one can indeed never cease learning what fallacious guides in such questions religion and nationality are. there are whole villages on this seaboard whose inhabitants are mussulmans, and would resent being called by any other name than osmanli; yet their greek origin is established both by history and by the traditions which they themselves still in part retain. thus take surmeneh and of, two considerable villages on the east of trebizond. these versatile greeks are as famous now for their theological eminence as they were formerly under the eastern empire, with this difference, that whereas in those days they supplied the church with bishops, it is now mollahs that they furnish to islam. yet, fanatical as they are, they still hold to certain customs which connect them with the old faith they once served with such distinction, and have, no doubt, since persecuted with equal zeal. under the stress of illness the madonna again makes her appearance, her image is again suspended above the sick-bed; the sufferer sips the forbidden wine from the old cup of the communion, which still remains a treasured object with the whole community, much as they might be puzzled to tell you why. as we are talking, a little girl happens to pass down the lane, a child of some ten years. her limbs are scarcely covered by a loose cotton skirt, although her complexion has not suffered from the sun. the waxen texture of the flesh, the transparent colouring, and the rich setting of auburn hair remind one of the favourites of venetian painters and of faces seen in north italian towns. it is besides only natural that the people of this city should possess a strain of italian blood; not so many centuries ago the genoese controlled the commerce and menaced the independence of trebizond. it is a long climb from the anchorage to the british consulate, which, although within the limits of this suburb of gardens, has an elevation of at least 150 feet. still, the site has the advantages of a middle position between the old fortified city in the western bay below us and the open walks around boz tepe. and if the mornings be devoted to the town and the ruins, the evenings may be spent on that airy platform or upon the lonely slopes of the adjacent hills. there are many pleasant spots which, in the course of these rambles, invite a view over the town. the landscape which you overlook is that of the west--the vague succession of endless little capes and inlets, disappearing and combining to form the single feature of a wide and open bay. below you lies the old city, mediæval walls and towers, overgrown by a canopy of leaves, gently sloping to the sea (fig. 2). yet, however beautiful in itself may be the scene that expands before you, it is rather upon the thoughts and the memories which it raises that the mind is inclined to dwell. the sea is not so much the blue floor without limits to which the sinuous outline of the coast descends, as the open thoroughfare which leads across to europe, joining asia to the west. the fir-clad ridges, which close the prospect towards the interior, are rather the first outrunners of that wide belt of troughs and ridges in which so many armies have become entrapped, than the background of sterner features which supports the peaceful landscape in which the ruined burgh lies. the scene itself is the same that brought tears to the eyes of xenophon, and which was associated in the mind of the emperor hadrian with his first view of this shore and sea. but the morning is not the time, nor is this the occasion for such retrospective thoughts. fresh from sleep, our first interest is the ivy-grown ruins of trapezus, which lie far below us in the western bay. we descend from the slopes about boz tepe, by the neat villas and garden enclosures of the eastern suburb, to the ravine which separates this suburb, with the anchorage and commercial quarter, from the site of the old fortified town. it is indeed a position not readily forgotten and not easy to mistake. if the descriptions of trapezus which have come down to us portray in a defective manner the many remarkable features which are characteristic of the place, they, at least, leave no doubt as to the identity of the historical city with the position of these ruins. at the foot of the precipitous slopes of boz tepe, on the western side of that table-topped hill, the surface of the ground is broken by two deep ravines, which, at a narrow interval, descend from the interior to the seaboard about at right angles to the margin of the shore. they represent the lower course of two of those wooded valleys of which the landscape towards cape ieros contains a succession, various in feature, but in character the same. peculiar to these two ravines is their close proximity to one another; the streams which flow along them are only about 400 yards apart as they approach the sea. indeed, at one point, over 1000 yards from the coast, the mass of rock by which they are separated forms a neck or isthmus of which the top is less than 60 yards across. in this manner a site is constituted which is bounded on three sides by natural defences--on the west and east by the ravines, and on the north by the sea. draw a wall across the neck or narrowest portion of the rock, and you at once enclose the figure of an irregular parallelogram, of which the fourth side is the short cross-wall. these natural features, so favourable for defence, have not escaped the ingenuity of man; the cross-wall has been built in the shape of a massive tower and citadel, while the inner sides of the ravines have been lined with walls and castellations, which still frown above the leafy abysses and the streams rustling through the shade. in appearance the protected enclosure, with its flanking ravines, has been described by some writers as a peninsular plateau, while to others it has suggested the shape of a table and seemed to justify the name of trebizond (trapezous). neither likeness appears to me to be quite happily chosen. both contain in themselves the conception of a disparity of levels, the plateau of a stage raised above the surrounding country, the table above the surface of the floor. such are not the characteristics of the site. the metaphor of a table seems the more inappropriate, inasmuch as the least one might expect of such an object is that it should have a flat and horizontal top. this site possesses neither of these qualities. on the one hand, the upper portion, which supports the citadel, rises above the lower like a dais or step; while, on the other, the plane of the ground is an inclined plane, and follows the general configuration of the country, shelving from the hills towards the sea. yet these images and the impressions from which they derive are no doubt founded upon real conditions. the isolation of the figure, together with its elevation--not indeed above the levels which adjoin it on either side, but above the level of the sea--these are the two factors which have supplied the real substance of such impressions. the first of these features would appeal to the eye with more distinctness, were it not for the thick growth of trees and underwood which rises from the floors and up the slopes of the ravines, and almost conceals the escarpment of their sides. the depth of the gulfs may be gauged by the following measurement made at the head of the western ravine. standing at the bottom of the abyss, the rock which supports the citadel and palace overtops you by about 150 feet at the highest point. the width across them, from cliff to cliff, varies considerably, according as each gulf opens or closes in; the length of each of the two bridges which span the ravines is about 100 paces. both ravines tend to flatten as they descend towards the shore, or in other words, to increase in width and diminish in depth. as for the elevation of the enclosure, it is of course most considerable at the narrow isthmus and the citadel. this highest portion, containing the keep and palace, is about 200 feet above the sea. it is plain from the description which has just been given that the characteristic features of the site attain their greatest development in that part of the enclosure which is most remote from the shore; that it is there the protecting gulfs are deepest, and the rock loftiest which they flank. indeed, during the byzantine and earlier comnenian periods the fortress was confined to this upper portion, and the outer wall on the side of the sea was drawn from gulf to gulf at a distance of about 460 yards from the present margin of the shore. a few sentences may suffice to present the plan of the fortifications, as it may be traced among the ruins that remain. at the very head of the formation came the keep and citadel, the outer wall being drawn across the narrow isthmus between the two ravines; this was the weakest point in the whole circumference of the fortress, and the works were strongest upon this side. built into this outer wall stands a massive square tower, which rises boldly above the battlements and faces the approaches from the south. the ground shelves upwards almost from the immediate foot of the tower to the amphitheatre of hills which surround the bay. thus the fortress is commanded by the slopes upon the south, where already it is by nature most vulnerable. it was from the south that its assailants delivered their principal attacks: the goths, the georgians, the seljuks, the turkomans, the ottoman turks. all the space inside the wall and between the two ravines was filled up at this uppermost part of the fortress, first by the keep, and then by the palace itself; the citadel served as the kingly residence, and the wall with the bold windows which rises along the edge of the western ravine was alike fortress and palace wall. this uppermost fortress or citadel, with the palace of the king, was separated from the lower but more extensive portion of the site by a cross-wall, equal in height to the walls along the ravines, and supported at either end by towers. so much loftier is this upper stage than the stage which lies below it that, whereas the palace, which occupies the most elevated point, towers high above the battlements of the cross-wall, the base of this wall itself overtops the highest buildings of the second and lower stage. below the cross-wall, with its massive double gate, lay that part of the fortress which contained the cathedral and public buildings, and formed the inhabited portion of the original fortified town. like the citadel, it was protected on two sides by the ravines, lined on their inner edge by a lofty wall seven feet in thickness, with towers at intervals. a second cross-wall, extending from ravine to ravine, was its bulwark on the side of the sea, and constituted the outer rampart of the enclosure as it existed in the ancient form. this outer rampart followed the edge of a natural declivity in the surface of the shelving ground, and presented a bold front to the lower levels lying between it and the shore. the third and lowest stage of the fortified enclosure filled the space that yet remained between this outer wall of the city and the immediate margin of the sea. the ravines open outwards as they approach the seaboard, and the figure widens which they bound; but on the other hand, the sides of these natural barriers flatten and take the surface of the adjoining ground. thus the plan of the lower fortress did not display the same subservience to the natural features of the site, and was protracted on the west beyond the outer margin of the western ravine. indeed, the area enclosed by this later work of the fourteenth century was considerably greater than that of the ancient burgh; and in proportion as it was deficient in natural defences, so it was stronger in those of art. a wall six feet and a half in thickness, with towers at irregular intervals, surrounded the new work; and, except on the side of the sea, this rampart was flanked by a second and lower wall with a moat on its outer side. but, although the lower fortress formed a third and separate unity, overstepping the natural limits of the site, it was connected in the closest manner with the upper enclosure, and with the walls flanking the ravines. on the east the new ramparts joined the old wall, and continued its direction in a straight line to the shore, at which point they turned at right angles, along the shore. thus the old cross-wall was completely covered by the new fortifications, and the principal gate of the old city, leading through that wall and facing the sea, instead of standing at the outer extremity of the fortress, now became situated in about the middle of the fortified plan. the new wall along the sea was protracted further westwards than the western extremity of the old cross-wall; it was drawn across the mouth of the western ravine, and far overlapped the parallel line of the old wall. some little distance west of the depression it again changed direction, and stretched up towards the south, until it reached a point opposite to the bridge which leads out from the middle fortress, and over 100 paces from the edge of the ravine. from this point, which was emphasised by a rectangular tower of extraordinary size, the line of wall was taken at right angles, and met the margin of the ravine. this threefold disposition of the walls and fortifications is characteristic of the plan of the fortified city, and forms a feature well noted in the descriptions of the topographers and still distinguished in popular speech. indeed, even at the present day, when most of the great gates have disappeared, and houses with several storeys obscure the plan, the hillside is lined by three complete fortresses, each separated from the other and one higher than another, yet all three welded closely into one. the appearance of the city in the days of her splendour must have justified her reputation as "queen of the euxine," and lent colour to her claim to be the capital of a restored roman empire of the east. between extensive suburbs, filled with busy streets and markets, rising from the shore on either hand, through a labyrinth of gardens and garden-houses, clustered on the higher slopes, the two converging lines of massive parapets and towers mounted slowly up the shelving ground. the further they receded from the margin of the seaboard, the clearer grew the essential features of the site--the ravines opening darkly at the immediate foot of either wall, the walls closely following the irregular course of the chasms, and now rising, now declining, along the uneven surface of the cliffs. near the head of the figure stood the royal palace, raised high above the massive works of the citadel, deeply moated by the sister gulfs on either side. broad windows opened from the royal reception hall of white marble to the varied prospects on every side, while within, the vast apartment was adorned with rich paintings, the portraits of successive holders of the imperial office, their insignia and arms. on the east, beyond the abyss, the slope gathered gradually to the side of mithros, the table-topped hill, in which direction, just opposite the palace, the church and fortified enclosure of st. eugenius crowned an almost isolated site which was flanked on the further side by a third and lesser ravine. towards the interior, on the side of the narrow isthmus, the view ranged wide, above the battlements, over the hills encircling the broad bay; while the rising ground, opening upwards from the tongue of the isthmus, was occupied by the theatre and by the extensive walled enclosure of the polo-ground or hippodrome. a royal gate gave access from the palace to these pleasure-places, the distance of a short walk from the wall; and through this gate the imperial party and their brilliant court would pass to their marble seats above the race-course, whence the whole landscape of city and field and ocean lay outspread at their feet. if the several divisions of the fortified enclosure may be described as so many steps, or shelving terraces, rising one behind another from the shore, then the race-course outside the walls will be the fourth stage of the platform, the last and highest, and the fairest of all. indeed the prospect over the walls and towers of the city to the distant sea beyond must at all times have been one of surpassing beauty, whether seen from the windows of the imperial residence, or from these airy heights above the town. to the palace was displayed the long perspective of the city architecture outlined against the blue bay--the massive cross-walls cleaving the crowded quarters, the domes of the churches glancing in the brilliant sunlight, and, interspersed, quiet respites of shade and leafiness, where some portico with frescoed walls and row of marble pillars recalled the habits of the classical age. from the higher standpoint of the race-course all the rich detail of this scene was blended and subdued; the eye would follow the long line of parapets and towers descending by the side of the sinuous streak of verdure which marked the course of the western ravine. the palace windows, which still rise above the head of that ravine, commanded the landscape of the west, the wide bay with its peaceful setting of cultivated hillsides stretching seawards to the distant cape. among the most pleasing and, perhaps, not the least striking feature in the composition of these scenes must at all times have been the luxuriance and variety of the vegetation which is natural to this soil. the necessary moisture is provided, not by stagnant pools and marshes, as in the country watered by the kolchian rivers further east, but by salubrious springs, bubbling from the surface of the rock and collecting in rustling streams. the sun is indeed the fiery orb of eastern landscapes; but the climate is tempered by the chilling winds from across the sea, bringing rain and mist in their train. the outcome of these conditions is the simultaneous exuberance of the trees and plants which flourish upon the coasts of the mediterranean and of the leafy giants of our northern woods; side by side with shady thickets of chestnut, elm, oak and hazel, groves of cypress, laurel and olive grace the shore. the wild vine hangs in festoons from the branches, and in sheltered places the orange tree, the lemon, and the pomegranate thrive and yield their fruit. all our fruits are found in the well-stocked gardens, while the fig of trebizond is of old as famous as the grapes of tripoli and the cherry of kerasun. cucumbers are cultivated, and heavy pumpkins, and tobacco, and indian corn, with its reed-like stalks and luscious leaves. the beautiful pink flowers of the oleander may be seen rising above some orchard wall. in the middle of the seventeenth century we are told of upwards of thirty thousand gardens and vineyards inscribed in the city registers, and at that time the slopes about boz tepe were completely covered with vines. but it is on the western rather than on the eastern side of the fortress that nature has most freely lavished her gifts; and on no spot with more abundance or greater effectiveness than on the western ravine. the beauties of that valley, almost as we see them to-day, have been described in glowing language by cardinal bessarion in the fifteenth century, himself a son of trebizond, and by the historian of the comnenian empire whose warm imagination was kindled by scenes which recalled and intensified the graces of his native tyrol. [1] a path leads down from the suburb on the west into the shade and freshness of the gorge, through thickets of lofty forest-trees, their leafy branches laced together by wild vines. even at mid-day, when the sun hangs cloudless over the narrow vista, the rays scarcely penetrate to the deep shadows of the evergreens--a luxuriant undergrowth of myrtle, laurel and ivy, rising from the floor and up the cliffs. from the highest point of the castle rock some 150 feet above you, amongst a wild confusion of creepers and trees, the bold wall of the palace, now reduced to an empty skeleton, still stands up against the sky; and the broad windows which once opened from the emperor's apartments still overlook the verdant scene below. past mossy banks, upon which the iris and primrose flourish, through leafy brakes, where trees of laurel hide the ground, the little stream cascades into the laps of the hollows or plashes over ledges of hard rock. but we are anticipating on our walk, which has not yet brought us further than the edge of the eastern ravine. we cross the bridge, and at once find ourselves within the fortified enclosure, which is traversed by a broad road. following that road, we are passing through the middle fortress--that part of the site which constituted the inhabited quarter of the walled city in its original form. now as in ancient times it is crowded by buildings, while a considerable portion is taken up by the serai, or government house (no. 17 on plan of trebizond and surroundings), which is situated about in the middle of the space between the ravines, on the south side of our road. here the pasha will be sitting within an inner room, a bundle of papers by his side on the divan. entering the court, you have on one side this palace, thronged with applicants, and, on the other, the iron gratings of a prison, banding the faces of the captives as they stare on the scene below. past the gateway of the serai, a narrow way leads up the enclosure, diverging at right angles from the road which joins the ravines. it conducts us to the upper fortress through a quarter filled by private houses, and inhabited exclusively by mohammedans. a walk of some two or three hundred yards brings us to the foot of the lofty cross-wall, which is almost as fresh to-day as when it was reared. by a steep incline we enter a gateway into a hollow tower adjoining the outer wall on the east, which constitutes the only passage into the citadel. the massive ancient gate still rests upon its hinges, its rusty iron plates riddled with bullets. a second gate, placed at right angles to the first in the further wall, gives issue from the tower. the citadel, like the middle fortress, is occupied by modern houses; but they are less frequent, and are almost confined to the spaces immediately neighbouring the cross-wall. there is some difficulty in examining the extensive ancient works which still in part remain upon the site. one of the principal buildings is occupied by military stores, and is forbidden ground. i contrive to effect an entrance, and find it quite empty--a palpable reason for such exclusive measures. then the walls which enclose the gardens of the private dwellings are no less the discreet protectors of the life of the harem than the veil to hide the squalor of faded opulence. while one of us is taking readings with the prismatic compass, the whole quarter is raised by the protestations of a young minx, who will insist that she is the object of his unmannerly stares. i have said that the palace is now a mere skeleton; a rambling old house, with a picturesque overhanging roof, fills a portion of the ground plan of the royal apartments, where they overlooked the western ravine. we are tardily given admission by a female voice. from an embrasure in the massive wall of the fortress, just below the row of eight arched windows, which stand up blank against the sky, we feast our eyes upon the charming view over the western ravine, following its sinuous outline into the background of leafy hills, or resting upon the cypresses and minaret of the khatunieh mosque among the villas on the opposite margin of the abyss. within this outer wall, a little south of our standpoint, a square tower rises above the outline of the battlements, displaying in its upper storey the interior of a spacious apartment with windows opening upon the landscape. the fragment of a wall juts out towards us from beside the tower; and three large windows, of which two are double, with slim dividing pillars, have been spared to it by the ravages of time. just north of us, three more windows rise from the outer wall, on a higher plane than those above our heads. both rows are but the remains of much longer series, once the life and pride of these grim parapets. they enable us to reconstruct the ancient splendour of the imperial residence, which, day by day, is slowly passing towards the world of unsubstantial memories, to share the fate of sacred troy and of king priam, rich in flocks. above the palace, within the narrowing tongue of the circumvallation, the space is occupied by the substructures of the keep, over which we clamber to the parapets of the outer wall. beside us, the square tower at the extreme end of the fortress frowns out upon the knife-like ridge between the ravines. it is probable that this tower is composed of a solid mass, for one cannot trace any sign of a passage in. the battlements of the wall rise to a height of nearly 200 feet above the western ravine. just on the east of the tower is placed the only entrance to the citadel from the side of the ridge. it consists of a long passage, flanked by a parallel outer wall, and abutting on a huge angular tower. but the inner doorway is now walled up, and one is obliged to retrace one's steps to the middle fortress, in order to pass without the walls. the gate is situated just below the entrance to the citadel, in the wall on the east. it too is furnished with double doors, which, like their neighbours, have been riddled by musket fire. south of this gateway there is just enough room between the wall and the edge of the eastern ravine to permit of a narrow road. leaving the interior of the fortress, one is taken along this road, with the wooded precipice on one hand and on the other the ivy-grown battlements. peasants, carrying baskets, pass by on their way to market; and beneath a fig tree, teeming with fruit, some mussulman women, resting from their wayfaring, cower within their veils as we approach. the colossal angular tower projects from the head of the irregular wall towards the leafy abyss, a large inscription gleaming white upon the wall which faces us, the record of the conquest of mohammed ii. but the point at which you pause is at the head of the fortification, beneath the soaring escarpment of the square tower. it is the same site upon which the peoples from the remote recesses of asia have stood with the lust of conquest in their eyes. on the opposite bank of the eastern ravine the drum-shaped dome of st. eugenius rises from among a cluster of red-roofed villas. it was there that the seljuk sultan issued his threats and insults, while the greek emperor fasted and prayed. from within the limits of that same sanctuary were heard the shouts of the revellers, mingling with the voices of their concubines. and a white minaret proclaims the event of the long and unequal struggle between the full-blooded followers of the prophet and the emaciated children of the cross. the tower itself has evidently been built at a later period than the wall from which it rises in a continuous face. the colour of the stone is slightly paler, and an inscription, now much decayed, attests it to be the work of the emperor john the fourth, the last but one of the comnenian dynasty. the ground widens like a fan from the foot of this tower, and the ravines, which have almost met, diverge and become great valleys, stretching into the bosom of the hills. within that ampler space, a few hundred yards south of the fortress, one may still recognise the enclosure of the hippodrome and the great gateway on its northern side. the wall still rises in places to a height of from six to ten feet, but all the interior structures have disappeared. a field of tobacco grows upon the site. adjoining the gateway, and facing the palace, one is impressed by the shape and appearance of a projecting tongue of land with a flat top. the theatre may once have stood upon this spot. the ancient churches of trebizond, some converted into mosques and others into public baths, are among the most interesting relics which the town contains. retracing our steps to the middle fortress and to the road which joins the two ravines, we have almost reached the bridge over the westerly depression before attaining the old cathedral, sacred to the golden-headed virgin, of which the southern wall borders our road on the north (no. 18). how bare and bleak it looks, shorn of its southern and western porches, and covered with a thick coating of whitewash! a little court, paved with flagstones, adjoins it on the east, over which you pass to an entrance at the north-east corner which has destroyed the side apse on that side. if you scrutinise the outer wall of the principal apse, you may still distinguish beneath the whitewash a design of figures in mosaic, one of which perhaps represents the seated virgin. time has worn down the few sculptured mouldings of which any trace remains. there is little to attract the eye in this mangled group of gables, surmounted by the drum of a duodecagonal dome. on the northern side rises the minaret, adjoining the principal entrance which has made use of the old porch on the north. four marble pillars with ionic capitals, probably the spoil of some pagan temple, support the roof of this spacious porch. we are about to enter, when we are called aside to observe an old fountain in the court on the east. it contains a marble slab with a greek inscription, which is illegible; and the water issues from a much-worn bronze spout, representing the head of a serpent or dragon, which is said to have belonged to a bronze model of such a monster, killed by the spear of alexius the first. near the fountain is a tomb, still maintained in good order, in which repose the remains of a shepherd youth to whom the townspeople attribute the capture of the fortress by the ottoman turks. the story runs that mohammed the second, foiled by the strength of the citadel, had recourse to a final expedient of which the result should determine the alternatives of further effort or abandonment of the siege. a number of shots were to be fired from a cannon at the chain which supported the drawbridge. should it be severed, it would be a signal for a renewal of operations; in the contrary case the siege was to be raised. the experiment failed; the sultan broke up his camp and removed the bulk of his army, leaving, however, the loaded cannon still in site. a young shepherd, happening to pass by, was prompted by the hardihood of his years to try his skill at the difficult mark. he discharged the gun, and the drawbridge fell. this child of a short-lived future sped to the camp of mohammed, who was making his way up the valley of the pyxitis towards baiburt. but his story was derided, and the sultan, in a fit of anger, caused him to be killed. the rage of the despot was turned to grief when the confirmation reached him of this miraculous exploit. his return was followed by the fall of the city; and he endeavoured to atone for his rash action by loading his victim with posthumous rewards. over the coffin one may still see the ball suspended which decided the fate of trebizond. and the martyr is known by a name which repeats the sultan's sorrowful exclamation: "khosh oghlan," or "well done! oghlan." the interior of the mosque produces an effect of extraordinary massiveness, with its bulky piers supporting the dome, with the walls which join these piers to the walls of the church and screen off the aisles from the open space beneath the dome. except for the two inner columns of the porch, not a single pillar is to be seen. the aisles are narrow, and their ceilings low; they are surmounted by a gallery, from which you look through low, arched apertures into the nave. the turks have placed a wooden stage in the northern arm of the church, between the two walls which screen off the aisle. this erection faces their altar, and is reserved for their women; you reach it by a staircase placed inside the building, in front of the north-east entrance. a doorway leads from this wooden structure into the old gallery over the aisle, through which you pass to the women's gallery in the original design, which fills the space above the ceilings of the narthex and exo-narthex on the western side of the mosque. two lofty vaulted openings display the interior to this gallery; while the wall between narthex and exo-narthex is pierced by three arches in a similar style. the door on the west in the storey below, which in christian times gave access through these outer spaces into the body of the church, is no longer used, now that the religious focus of the building has been changed from the apse to the southern arm between the aisles. the exo-narthex has a width of 18 feet, and the narthex of 9 feet 7 inches. the piers upon which repose the vaulted ceilings of these courts are of such thickness that the entire space, measured from the inner side of the outer wall to the outer side of the wall of the nave, amounts to 37 feet 5 inches. the interior measurements of the church proper are a length of 93 feet 6 inches from the commencement of the nave to the head of the apse, and a breadth of only 50 feet 5 inches. it is well lit from windows in the apse and along the walls; but the twelve windows in the dome are small. beautiful marble plaques of various colours, and designs in mosaic, may still be admired in the apse; but there is an almost total lack of ornament elsewhere. as to the date of the building, it is ascribed by texier to the grand-comneni; with much less knowledge i hesitate to offer the opinion that the design belongs to an earlier period. from this mosque of the middle fortress, orta hisar jamisi, the ancient cathedral, it is but a few steps to the bridge over the western ravine. like its fellow on the east of the enclosure, it consists of a lofty stone embankment, with a single narrow arch through which the stream flows. the prospect on either side is of great beauty, while the deep shadows of the vegetation, rising from the floor of the ravine, rest the eye and refresh the sense. towards the south, beyond an irregular line of ivy-grown parapets, and towers of varying features and size, the stately works of palace and citadel rise against the sky; while in the direction of the sea, where the depression flattens and is lost in a maze of houses, the tiers of red-tiled roofs are pierced by a double series of battlements and embowered forts. the wall of the middle fortress is seen extending for some distance along the uneven edge of its rocky support; but it is overpowered in the landscape by the outer line of walls, which, starting from the opposite side of the ravine, are drawn in a long perspective to the shore. our goal is now the famous church of hagia sophia; it is situated upon the coast on the west of the city, at a distance of over a mile from the walls (no. 25). the bridge leads over into the western suburb, and for a short space you follow the outer wall of the lower fortress, stretching westwards at right angles to the ravine. on the right hand this solid masonry and a massive rectangular tower; on the left, a little further on, the cypresses of the turkish burying-field, the leaning white headstones with their gilt arabic inscriptions better disposed and tended than is usually the case. we have passed the street which turns upwards to the mosque khatunieh (no. 20), the spacious and still well-ordered mosque and medresseh which keeps alive the memory of the mother of selim the first. like the middle and lower fortress, this western suburb is inhabited for the most part by mohammedans--what a contrast to the bustling town on the east of the city where the christian quarters lie! there, busy streets, lined with the broad-paned windows of offices and shops; here, the silent graveyard and widely scattered dwellings which seem to shrink from contact with life. a brighter aspect belongs to the meidan or open place, to which we pass and which we cross (kavak meidan, or plane tree square)--an extensive stretch of green turf, resembling an english common, where in old times the jerid or spear exercise was performed. several tombs (kumbets) are to be seen on this grassy lawn, but i do not know to whom they have been raised. a little later we have left the last settlements behind us, and are winding outwards towards the sea-shore. the church of hagia sophia, or the divine wisdom, now converted into a mosque, has been described as one of the most interesting monuments of byzantine architecture, sculpture, and painting that time has spared. [2] this appreciation can only be partially tested by the traveller of the present day, because the frescos which once covered the interior of the building have been daubed over with successive coats of whitewash. it is possible that when the time comes for restoring the building to christian worship, or at least, as we may hope, for preserving it as a relic to instruct an enlightened age, the scales may fall away and disclose in some of their ancient brightness the solemn faces and gorgeous robes of the grand-comneni as they looked down upon the congregation of monks and pilgrims six centuries ago. in the meanwhile we may consult those descriptions of the paintings which have come down to us in the accounts of modern travellers more fortunate than ourselves, for at some periods a portion of the plaster has fallen and revealed the rich work below. of the sculpture and architectural merits we are able to judge on the spot, for, although the turks have introduced some alterations in the structure, they are too clumsy to mislead. the first view of the building, high-seated on the left hand where the road debouches upon the sands, at once exhibits the beauties which are peculiar to it: the choice of site and the skilful grouping of the component parts (fig. 3). a broad terrace or esplanade, which is partly natural and in part supported by an embankment and a wall, forms the summit of a gentle slope which rises from the water beyond a fringe of cactus and leafy shrubs. the surface of the platform is flat and even, and is covered by a green carpet of turf. the prospect ranges wide across the bay to cape ieros, and seawards without limit over the waves. on the east, rising ground shuts out the city and the suburb, while on the south, the open landscape of hill and valley is felt rather than observed. from the peaceful elevation of this pleasant terrace the well-preserved remains of an ancient monastery look down upon the shore. on the west, at the further extremity of the platform, a lofty square bell-tower or campanile stands out alone, like a sentinel, fronting the sea; just below it lies the church, a cluster of roofs and gables centring in a drum-shaped dome. of the monastic buildings only one has been spared, a massive square edifice at the south-western corner of the platform, which is almost concealed by trees. we mount the slope and reach the platform on the southern side, with the church between us and the blue waters of the bay. a custodian has been found in some hovel among the orchards, but no meaner object breaks the grassy surface of the terrace from which the building rises, the even masonry exposed from base to dome. against the plain grey spaces of the walls which lie behind it, the rich façade of the southern entrance at once attracts the eye (fig. 4). it consists of a porch or lateral structure, which once gave access to a door in the main wall of the church. two graceful marble pillars with corinthian capitals supported the façade; but the turks have closed this entrance and walled up the columns, which are only visible from the inside. the new work does not rise much higher than the tops of the capitals, and the openings of the three arches which spring from the pillars have been filled with window glass. of these, the central arch is slightly pointed, and those on either side are round. a pleasing feature of the design is the bold rounded arch which spans the porch from one wall to the other, and envelops the three lesser vaultings and their marble columns within a broad band of unsculptured stone. on the outer side, a narrow beading of grapes and vine-leaves accentuates the studied absence of all ornament upon the masonry of the span; and the keystone is enriched by the figure of the single-headed eagle of the comneni, with open talons and wings outspread. the space of wall which is framed in this stately manner, and which is supported by the pillars of the façade, forms a panel or panels which are admirably adapted to receive that style of decorative treatment in which byzantine art excelled. about in the centre, the space is broken by a quatrefoil window, above which, and on either side, plaques of varied mosaic have been inserted into the wall. below the window, and from end to end, runs a frieze in low relief, surmounted by an inscription in greek, "have mercy upon me, save me from my sins, o succour me, lord, god, holy! holy!" in the frieze may be discerned among the shapes of plants and trees, rendered with the highest skill and with much grace, human figures which indeed have suffered mutilation, but which, like corresponding works of the romanesque style, appear deformed in size. adam lies asleep among the foliage of the garden; a serpent, coiled round a leafless trunk, confronts the standing figure of eve. of the mosaics two at least of the plaques have been removed or have perished; you see the vacant oblong spaces on either side of the quatrefoil. the largest panels contain geometrical patterns; but the most beautiful and best preserved, if perhaps the smallest, is composed of two doves and two sprays of pomegranate in white on a black ground. this plaque has been placed just above the window and below the talons of the royal bird. the reader will have divined that the great charm of this façade lies as much in the skill of the design--the wide span of the arch above the lesser arches, and the pleasing combination of these forms with the vertical lines of walls and columns, and with the sharp angle of the roof--as in the decorative effect of delicate mouldings and elaborate sculptures, and of rich mosaics thrown on the grey stone. porches of similar plan give access to the interior, both on the western and northern sides; but their tympana or panels are without ornament. the western porch has an arab niche with a deep honeycomb moulding from which the outer arch springs, and this moulding is continued in the form of imposts above the capitals of the columns. that on the north is without any remarkable feature, except that the capitals, which are of fresh white marble, appear to be of much later date. they are without carving, but in each is cut a panel, bearing the figure of a latin cross. a walk round the building confirms the impression which a first view produced. it is the number of roofs at various levels, the different grouping of the gables at every turn, that arrests and pleases the eye. the walls themselves are of hewn stone, with plain mouldings, of which the most delicate runs round the apse and side chapels, above the windows, in a continuous band. on the face of the apse itself you see the eagle of the grand-comneni, set in panel in the wall. the entrance to the mosque is through the porch on the west. it is much shorter or less deep than its two counterparts, but, unlike them, gives access through a marble doorway to a second vestibule or outer court. this court or narthex extends the whole width of the building, and is both lofty and well lit. a door opens from it into the church proper, an airy interior of pleasing proportions, into which the light streams from the twelve windows in the circumference of the dome (fig. 5). four massive marble pillars with carved byzantine capitals support the pendentives from which the dome springs; but the sharpness of the sculpture has been obliterated by thick coats of buff and green paint. the turks have also introduced some structural changes. the southern porch has been thrown into the body of the building, and an altar (mihrab) placed between the two columns which properly belong to the façade. in this manner the porch, with its orientation towards mecca, has become the religious focus of the mosque; a wooden gallery, from which my illustration was taken, has been erected against the opposite wall. the apse, which is lit by three windows, is supplemented by two smaller apses or side chapels at the extremities of the aisles. like most of the ancient churches we are about to visit during the course of our journey south, hagia sophia is a building of small dimensions according to modern ideas. the interior has a length of not more than 69 feet from the inner door to the head of the apse, with a breadth, excluding the side porches, of 36 feet. a building of this size is admirably adapted to the art of the painter in fresco, while his work derives the greatest possible advantage from the features of the design. the lofty vaulted spaces of the dome and apse were once resplendent with bright effects; and on the walls were depicted the richly-apparelled figures of the princes of the comnenian line. from the partial glimpses of the paintings obtained by various travellers, it is possible to realise, at least in some measure, the former splendour of the scene. at the entrance above the door was seen the image of alexius, first emperor of trebizond, surrounded by his court, like justinian at ravenna; in his hands the golden globe of empire, and on his forehead a white diadem. on the right of the same door stood the first manuel (r. a.d. 1238-63), the prince who was known as "the great captain," and who, according to the description at the side of the figure, was the founder of this monastery. the emperor was without crown, but his forehead was encircled by a cinglet with a double row of pearls. the front of the royal robe was adorned on either side by a band of large circular medallions, bearing the device of the single-headed eagle; a similar ornament, engraved with the equestrian figure of st. eugenius, hung upon the royal breast. many of the successors of these two princes were without doubt represented on the remaining spaces of the walls; while the portraits included those of saints and evangelists, all attired in costliest style. the apse displayed a group of three figures, of whom the central one appears to have designated st. paul; on his right hand st. james and on his left st. john were identified by written scrolls. from the inner sides of the arches, as from the vault of heaven, the faces of angels looked down. the floor was paved by a rich marqueterie of marbles; you admired in particular a design of geometrical character in which the tracing was done in black marble on a ground of vivid reds and pinks and greens. but the impression which we should take away from this elaborate interior would be one of sadness, perhaps of pain. the art, the life, here represented, was an art in shackles, an expiring phase of life. the peculiar wooden quality of these expressionless faces may be gauged by the examples which have been preserved for us by the care of texier. strict conventions had taken the place of realities alike in life and in art; and how sad after the unsurpassed beauty of hellenic vigour are the gaudy get-up and childish love of baubles which mark the declining years of the greek world! vanished, or hidden from sight behind the inexorable whitewash, lies the vivid evidence of that departed age; repugnant alike to the spirit and to the mission of mohammedanism, this rich collection of christian images must, from the first, have courted effacement. at the time of our visit the walls had been recently limed over to purify the edifice after the service of state prison to which, during the prevalence of cholera in the town, it had been temporarily assigned. in the upper storey of the campanile, a later work of the fifteenth century, the frescos are still exposed; but it is evident that they can never have possessed much importance. the baptistery, which is said to have been covered with such paintings, has been removed many years ago. it stood near the edge of the terrace, on the north. before retracing our steps towards the city, it is worth while to extend the excursion to the neighbouring ruin of mevla khaneh (house of gods, no. 23), if only for the sake of a ramble through the pleasant country lanes and a view over the peaceful landscape of the bay. against the background of the line of heights, at a distance from hagia sophia of about three-quarters of a mile, the scanty remains of a heathen temple emerge from a leafy brake which fills a recess of the hillside. portions of a tower and doorway, the lower parts of two walls have escaped the ravages of time. small square niches are seen in the walls at close intervals, said to have contained the statues of the gods. from the floor of the temple rise tall elm trees, festooned with wild vine; and an ancient laurel tree bends over the ivy-grown masonry. rarely do people pass this way; and, on the occasion of our visit, we were the unwilling authors of a rather serious offence. among the lanes below the ruin we surprised a young woman, combing her long hair on the margin of a stream from which she had just stepped out. one may return to trebizond by the old road towards platana, which has been replaced by a new chaussée nearer the shore. from the kavak meidan, with its one fine plane tree, we proceed through the quarter of sotke towards the gate of the same name in the wall of the lower fortress. the riparian quarters on the east of the city are well worthy of a visit; they may be reached either by crossing the crowded spaces of the fortified enclosure, or by making the more pleasant circuit by the side of the sea. choosing the second alternative, we soon arrive at the angle of the wall, and are treading the broad strip of sand. all the elements of the picturesque are present in the varied scene--the line of walls, the massive tower just on the east of the gate of molos, the broad-prowed ships drawn up on the shore, the groups of people in motley attire. in the autumn large quantities of nuts are spread out on the sand, awaiting shipment to france. the tower is flanked on the west by the parapet of a modern battery, while on the east it is adjoined by the vault through which the stream issues which comes from the western ravine. in front of the vault there is a little bridge. the submerged remains of a semicircular mole--a work of the old greek times--are indicated by a line of surf in the sea. it is evident that the entrance to this harbour was on the east. on that side too there is a tower, projecting into the waves with the form of a wedge, and still joined to the north-eastern angle of the fortress by the substructures of a massive wall. it is through an opening in that wall that we pass from the life of the sea-shore into the more intense and throbbing life of the bazar. in old times one of the great gates gave issue from the lower fortress to the important riparian quarters on the east. this gate, the bazar gate or gate of mumkhaneh (candle factories), has been removed to give space to a broad street. the stream from the eastern ravine, which passes outside the walls, is taken by a tunnel through this crowded quarter. the bazars adjoin the fortress; they are well stocked and extensive. the more one walks in trebizond, the more one is impressed by the shyness of the women; nowhere in the east have i seen them more ashamed to show the face. nowhere does one realise more keenly the loss of colour and gaiety which this muffling and veiling of women entails. a fine example of an old italian magazine may be seen in this neighbourhood; it is called the bezestan (repository of stuffs, no. 16). where the bazar is at its busiest, a massive square building of stone and brick rises above the lines of booths with their shadowed recesses. it is entered by four doors, of wood plated with iron, one on each side. in the centre is a well; the roof rested on four piers and sprang from vaultings at each angle of the square. the piers and vaultings still remain, but the roof is gone. the place is occupied by sellers of quilts, or coverlets stuffed with cotton, which take the place of blankets in the east. south of this building, beyond the large mosque of the quarter, which is without architectural interest, are situated the two greek churches of aivasil and aiana, the first almost on the fringe of the bazars. aivasil (no. 14) has been rebuilt, or rather the site of the old church has been covered by a modern and tasteless erection. but a long stone, part of a frieze, containing an inscription of justinian, which belonged to the earlier edifice, is still preserved as an historical relic in the body of the church. aiana (no. 13), its close neighbour, is, on the other hand, quite intact, and remains a most interesting example of the beginnings of christian architecture. a small and unpretentious building of stone, not too evenly put together, with the arches over the little windows constructed of brick, it would almost escape notice were it not for a large bas-relief in marble which is inserted into the wall over the door on the south. although the stone is cracked and the sculpture has suffered mutilation, one can recognise that there is represented a colossal seated figure, with a smaller figure, holding a shield, at her feet. the interior is built of brick, and consists of a nave and two aisles, the principal apse being flanked by two side apses. [3] but there is no dome; and the scanty light which falls on the withered frescos comes from nine little windows in the walls. each aisle has two arches, the more easterly pair resting on piers, and the more westerly on marble pillars with ionic capitals. one remarks the narrowness of the apse, in which is placed a primitive altar, resembling those in the oldest armenian churches. it consists of a horizontal slab resting on a circular stone, and on the side of the slab is a greek inscription. several of the frescos remain with which the walls were once covered, the building being still used as a church. besides biblical subjects, one observes several portraits upon the wall on the west. the greater portion of the space is filled with the pictures of saints and monks; but on the north side there is represented a colossal figure, of which the head has unfortunately been effaced. the figure is attired in a purple robe, with bands of gold embroidered in black, the same costume as that in which the emperor alexius iii. is depicted in the bull at sumelas. he holds a circular ornament or emblem in his left hand. an inscription, partially effaced, is seen on the wall below the figure. [4] such is this relic of the early city, with its spoils of still earlier temples, bridging the periods of the old worship and the new. returning to the commercial quarter from the narrow alleys which surround this building, we pass an old house which is an example of a style of architecture now rapidly being replaced by the modern villa. the exterior, with its projecting upper storey and semicircular, roofed balcony, where the inmates would enjoy the freshness of the afternoon, produces an impression at once of somewhat costly solidity and of picturesque charm. the rooms are panelled in wood, both walls and ceilings; and screens of open woodwork, placed before the windows, preserve the privacy of the life within. in the little niches and in the details of the ornamentation the spirit is that of persian art. the magazines of the merchants are situated along the shore between the fortified city and the point of güzel serai. proceeding eastwards, we need scarcely stop to visit the greek cathedral (no. 12), a large modern building of extraordinary ugliness on the margin of the sea. on the south side of this pretentious church we are shown the tomb of the last of the georgian kings. a road leads upwards through the crowded christian quarter, frank mahalla, past the wall and tower of güzel serai (no. 10). these buildings date, i believe, from a comparatively recent period; but they occupy the site of the famous fortress of leontocastron, long in dispute between the comnenian emperor and the genoese. the companion fort of daphnus, another genoese possession, probably stood in the bay on the west, where the quarter of dia funda, an italian corruption of the greek name, faces the modern anchorage. the walls of güzel serai overlook a park of artillery, drawn up on a grassy platform at the point. our walk through the eastern suburb may be protracted to the slope of boz tepe, where an ancient nunnery, famous for its frescos, commands the landscape of the city from a well-chosen site just outside its extreme fringe (no. 6). adjacent to the building, which presents the appearance of a fortress, was placed the summer residence or pleasure-house whence the grand-comneni used to survey their beauteous capital. i can well remember the ruin of this palace, with its blank windows, such a pleasant frame to the charming view which they overlooked. alas! this fragment has disappeared, to make room for an ugly guest-house which the avaricious nuns have built in its place. the chapel of the nunnery, dedicated to the virgin, panagia theoskepastos, is built into the side of the cliff, its inner end being, in fact, a cave. damp has blurred the frescos; but one may still recognise the royal portraits upon the north wall. the upper portions of two kingly figures, attired in purple robes, and on their right hand, side by side, two queens with jewelled crowns, still colour the mouldy side of the cave, and are almost hidden by a row of stalls. they have been identified by inscriptions which, i presume, have become effaced, as alexius iii. and his queen theodora; as andronicus and eirene, mother respectively and son of the first-named prince. nor should the traveller omit a visit to the church of st. eugenius (no. 19), although he may not have time to visit the grottoes in the face of boz tepe, and to protract the excursion beyond the embouchure of the pyxitis to the site of xenophon's camp. that famous church is situated in the opposite direction, and has been already mentioned in the description of the upper fortress. it stands on the margin of the eastern ravine, almost opposite to the great polygonal tower. the site is separated from the slopes of boz tepe by a second and smaller ravine, which shows remains, on the western bank, of walls and towers. houses cluster round the building, their horizontal outlines topped by its gables and crowned by its polygonal, drum-shaped dome. st. eugenius dates from the period of the grand-comneni; but the frescos on the western wall, which some travellers have noticed, are now nothing more than patches of colour. it is a somewhat larger edifice than hagia sophia, which, although less graceful, it resembles in some respects. the dome rests upon two fluted columns on the west side, while, on the east, it is supported by piers. a flood of light fills the interior, which is plain and bare, the church having been converted to the service of islam by the ottoman conqueror. it was here that mohammed ii. is said to have worshipped on the first friday after the capture of the city by his troops. the event is commemorated by the name of new friday (yeni juma) under which the mosque is known. one is fortunate if it be possible to spend the later afternoons of days devoted to the study of the town among the restful surroundings of the pleasant country-side, upon the slopes of the adjacent hills. such was my privilege in 1898. our tents were pitched on the lofty plateau north-west of the city, the view ranging on the one side to the rocky cliffs of boz tepe, and, on the other, to the distant promontory of the sacred mountain. the crowded impressions of the day would take proportion and perspective. one saw a city which, in spite of the modern aspect of certain quarters, has lost little of the romance of the middle age. the earlier imprint upon its buildings is that of the era of justinian; [5] their actual appearance is due to the grand-comneni; a great sleep has bridged the interval to the present time. yet the life of the place, such as it is, pursues the old channels, and the throng in the streets is to-day not less heterogeneous than it was four centuries ago. the french, the austrians, and the russians conduct the carrying trade with europe, reviving the function of the genoese. the wares they bring are largely of british origin, and are largely imported by british merchants trading in persia. strings of bactrian camels may be seen in the streets, about to start on the long stages which separate the seaport from erzerum and tabriz. the various peoples of asia and of europe still meet in the bazars. [6] but the romance of the city can never have equalled the romance of her surroundings, nature being the subtlest weaver of mysteries, the mother with unending fables in whom the romantic spirit finds the only wholesome refuge from the dull realities of daily life. the most permanent memory which the traveller may take away from his visit may be the fruit of those half-hours between daylight and night which he spends in his encampment above the town. when once the sun has set there ensues a period of twilight, in which the glow of the south appears to be blended with the gorgeous effects of northern latitudes. indeed, the view over the sea by day recalls the colouring on our english coasts; and the little silken union jack which fluttered over the tent of my companion, who was acting as consul, would often seem to wave on a field of its native blue. but in the evening there is produced a combination of elements, at once much softer and much sterner than the setting of our english scenes. the spirit of scythia, of the frozen north, meets the languid mediterranean spirit, and spreads a robe of fire and paleness over the sea. only the cypresses and the luxuriant foliage preserve the identity of the sinuous bays; and the succession of meridional ridges which feature the coast towards cape ieros are clothed with a forest of trees, fretting the splendour of the western sky. supplementary note for the topography and antiquities of trebizond i would refer the student who may be desirous of going more closely into the subject to the following works:--ritter, erdkunde von asien, vol. xviii. pp. 852 seq.; and in particular to the following authorities, cited by ritter, viz. travels of evliya, translated by von hammer, london 1850, vol. ii. pp. 41 seq.; tournefort, voyage du levant, paris 1717, vol. ii. pp. 233 seq.; hamilton, researches in asia minor, etc., london 1842, vol. ii. appendix v. p. 409 (inscription no. 49, over the gateway); fallmerayer, j. p., fragmente aus dem orient, 2nd edition, stuttgart 1877, with which should be read the original-fragmente of the same author, published in the abhandlungen of the academy of munich (hist. classe), vols. iii. and iv., 1843-44. fallmerayer was the first to investigate the subject in an adequate manner; his descriptions are charmingly written; and, while i have availed myself freely in composing a part of this chapter of the results of his researches, i must also acknowledge having come under the spell of his personality (for a slight biography of the historian see mitterrutzner, fragmente aus dem leben des fragmentisten, brixen 1887). among those who have advanced our knowledge of the place since ritter wrote i would cite the following:--texier, 1839, description de l'arménie, etc., paris 1842, two vols. folio, with plates (see also the magnificent work by texier and pullan, l'architecture byzantine, london 1864); pfaffenhoffen, essai sur les aspres comnénats ou blancs d'argent de trébizonde, paris 1847; finlay, mediæval greece and the empire of trebizond (vol. iv. of history of greece, revised edition, oxford 1877); tozer, turkish armenia, london 1881, pp. 450 seq. i have also had access to a book in armenian which was shown to me at trebizond, and which is entitled: history of pontus, by the rev. father minas bejeshkean (mekhitarist), a native of trebizond, venice 1819. [7] the plans which accompany this chapter were made at the close of my second journey by kind permission of the turkish government, and after i had already perused the accounts of my predecessors. there is one point in connection with the topography which one would like to feel sure about, namely, upon what eminence in the neighbourhood the statue of hadrian was set up. i fancy it must have been erected on the karlik tepe, a bold peak about four miles south of the town, commanding a magnificent view. a small chapel now stands upon the summit. the history of the empire of the grand-comneni of trebizond forms a most instructive episode in the immemorial struggle between the east and the west. it was fallmerayer who may be said to have given this history as a new possession to knowledge in his admirable geschichte des kaiserthums von trapezunt, munich 1827, followed by the original-fragmente, cited above. these sources have been utilised by finlay in his history of greece and trebizond; but it is to be regretted that fallmerayer himself did not rewrite his geschichte after his later discoveries of new and important material. the outline of the subject may, perhaps, be presented in the following brief notice. the further one pursues one's studies of the countries west of india, whether in the camp or in the library, the larger looms the stately fabric of the roman empire of the east, and the more is felt the need of a work dealing comprehensively with this great subject. our historians have allowed their interest to be absorbed by europe; upon asia and the rule of the cæsars over some of the fairest portions of her vast territories for a period, which, commencing with the roman republic, may be said to extend down to the suppression of the despots of trebizond by the ottoman turks in the latter half of the fifteenth century, they have scarcely bestowed more than an impatient glance. the period covers the bloom and fall of at least six great asiatic dynasties--the arsakids, sasanians, arab caliphs, seljuk turks, shahs of kharizme, tartar khans. it comes to an end among the ruins of asiatic prosperity, when the turkomans are pasturing their flocks among the débris of civilisation, and the ottoman sultans, deriving their origin from a nomad turkish tribe, are being carried to their zenith by the former subjects of the cæsars, severed in the corps of janissaries from their western culture and christian religion, and living only with the breath of their mohammedan and oriental king. this startling revolution in the political and economical condition of asia, the effects of which are operative at the present day, may be traced back to the decisive blow which was struck at the roman empire of the east by the victory of the seljuk sultan, alp arslan, over the cæsar romanus near melazkert in armenia in the year 1071. the three centuries of imperial rule in asia which succeeded this event reveal few and spasmodic interruptions to the inclined plane of western relapse. then the darkness finally closes in; constantinople falls (1453), and western commerce is expelled from the black sea. the empire of trebizond takes its place in this great tragedy of history when the end is already in view. in the same year and the same month in which the latins took constantinople and the nobility of the imperial capital fled to the cities of asia (april 1204), two youthful scions of the illustrious house of comnenus appeared at the head of a body of georgian mercenaries before the gates of trebizond. the comneni, whose name perhaps reveals an italian origin, emerge into the light of history in the latter part of the tenth century, from a private station among the greek nobility of asia, where their hereditary estate was situated near kastamuni, a town in the interior, which one may reach at the present day by a carriageable road from the port of ineboli on the black sea. manuel comnenus, the first to bring fame to the family, was prefect of all the east under the cæsar, basil the second (in 976); and his son, the scholarly isaac comnenus, was chosen by his contemporaries to occupy the imperial throne. the nephew of isaac, the emperor alexius comnenus (r. 1081-1118), is well known for the part which he played during the crusading era; and he was followed on the byzantine throne by two of the most martial figures of that age of heroes, kalo-joannes (r. 1118-43) and manuel (r. 1143-80). manuel was succeeded by his cousin andronicus comnenus (r. 1182-85), an emperor who did much to purify the corrupt provincial administration of the byzantine monarchy, and who perished in a domestic revolution, due to his severe measures against the high nobility. the murder of this prince was followed at no long interval by the latin conquest of the capital; and the two comneni who came to trebizond in 1204 were sons of manuel, son and heir to andronicus, who had also perished in the aforesaid revolution. their names were alexius and david; and they were assisted in their enterprise by their paternal aunt, thamar, the offspring of their grandfather and a georgian lady. the political condition of trebizond during the interval between the murder of andronicus and the latin conquest of the capital is not definitely known; but the greek city was probably feeling the pressure of the neighbouring kingdom of georgia at the time of the advent of the two greek princes. the prospects of relief, on the one hand, from this pressure, and, on the other, from dependence upon the rotten court of constantinople under the hopeful rule of an illustrious family, must have operated as powerful inducements to the townspeople to welcome the new régime. alexius comnenus is accepted as master of the city, and his rising fortunes attract to his victorious standard some of the noblest of the refugees from the capital, flying into asia before the latins. others range themselves round the person of theodore laskaris in bithynia; and two rival greek or roman empires are established upon asiatic soil, that of nicæa, or nice, the capital of bithynia, and the empire of trebizond. the successors of laskaris fought their way back to constantinople, which was recovered from the latin barons in 1261. a much less splendid fate was reserved for the family of alexius comnenus; yet the little empire on the black sea survived the restored byzantine empire; and a space of nearly a hundred years separates the fall of the last of the greek cities of the interior (conquest of philadelphia by the sultan bayazid in 1390) from the overthrow of the rule of the comneni at trebizond (1461). during a period of over 250 years these petty greek princes contrived to elude the storms of mussulman conquest behind the wall of mountains interposed between the interior and the coast. sometimes as vassals of the oriental dynasties, at other times in a state of independence, they ruled over the beautiful city and a narrow strip of seaboard of varying extent. their possessions even included a part of the crimea, of which the tribute was conveyed across the expanse of waters in the imperial galleys. proud of their pompous titles of grand-comneni and emperors of the romans, or lords of all anatolia, georgia, and the transmarine, they supplied their deficiencies in real power by elaborate ceremonials, and substituted the gorgeous cult of their patron saint, eugenius, for the devotional exercises of the christian religion. they might be consigned without regret to the limbo of history, were it not for the cause of which they were the late and debased representatives, but which, nevertheless, they contributed to sustain. their territory afforded a home and holding ground to commerce; and, when the land routes through asia minor fell into disuse owing to the increase of anarchy, trebizond became an emporium of the trade with the further asia, diverted to the more secure avenue of the armenian plains. this trade was conducted with great spirit by the genoese from their factories at trebizond, until grand-comneni, italian merchants, and all the apparatus of civilisation were swept away by the ottoman sultan, mohammed the second (1451-81). this type of oriental exclusiveness came marching across the mountains some years after his conquest of constantinople (1453). the citadel of trebizond was given over to the janissaries, the palace to a pasha; the last of the comneni was transported to an exile in europe, whence, not long afterwards, he was summoned to the capital and commanded to abjure the christian faith. the firmness of his refusal and the dignity of his martyrdom cast a parting ray of glory through the shadows which had already closed upon his house. his body and those of the princes who died with him were thrown to the dogs beyond the walls of constantinople. only one-third of the inhabitants of trebizond, and these the dregs of the populace, were suffered to remain in their native city. the remainder were compelled to emigrate, and their estates were confiscated. in 1475 the policy of expulsion of all western influences was crowned by the ottoman occupation of caffa and tana, the more northerly depôts of the genoese in the black sea. european ships were expelled from these waters; where trade was banished ensued barbarism; and for three centuries these shores were forgotten by the west. a new era found expression in the treaty of adrianople (1829), which secured the free navigation of this sea. the first steamer made her appearance in 1836, and since then commerce has steadily increased. it flows along the shore, to be distributed throughout the interior, until it reaches the solid barrier of the russian frontier. it is carried across asia just outside that barrier on the backs of camels and mules. on the far side of the wall is heard the whistle of the locomotive, and the rumble of a train which not a bale of the hated products of european industry is permitted to invade. let the progressive states of modern europe take heed lest their domestic rivalries result in the conversion of the black sea into a russian lake, and the re-establishment of the old and melancholy order. chapter ii ascent to armenia it had never been our intention to enter armenia by the well-beaten avenue of trebizond and erzerum. the season was advanced; our first objective was ararat; and it appeared doubtful whether, even with the utmost possible expedition, we should be able to accomplish the ascent of the mountain before the commencement of the winter snows. the attack is no doubt feasible from the side of turkey; at least on two occasions it has been successful; but the journey is long from erzerum to bayazid, and the stages must be covered by your own horses; there is no posting system to furnish you with relays. nor is it likely that you will find the same facilities at bayazid that are offered in russian territory, through the courtesy of the russian government, by the detachment of cossacks which is stationed on the northern slopes. these considerations were decisive in determining us upon the approach from georgia; but i was also anxious on other grounds to become acquainted with the russian provinces of armenia before investigating the condition of those under turkish rule. with these purposes we rejoined our steamer on the night of the 16th of august and continued the voyage to batum. august 17.--from trebizond to the russian port is a run of a hundred miles; the early morning saw us skirting the redoubts that line the shore and doubling the little promontory on which the lighthouse stands. in the bight or tiny inlet that recedes from that low headland a depth of water of some thirty fathoms may be found; yet the bay as a whole is shallow and full of silt, and it is only on this western side, close in upon the land, that such soundings are obtained. the largest vessels may be seen brought up so near to the beach that their lofty sterns almost overhang its shelving slopes. but the space is not extensive in this favoured quarter, and if this natural harbour is protected on the east by the wall of the coast range, it is exposed towards the north. the russians have endeavoured to overcome these disadvantages by constructing a long breakwater of solid masonry, which projects from the side of the mountains into the bay; for years they have been engaged in dredging operations, but they have been hampered by the continual tendency of the anchorage to fill with sandy deposit along the eastern shore. i should not trouble or divert my reader with a humble incident of travel, were it not that i am anxious to dispel the prevailing prejudices which attribute an unusual degree of severity to the service of the customs at this port. some years ago, when returning from persia to europe, i had been summoned to the fearful presence of the presiding officers and had been amiably dismissed; but on that occasion i was invested with the more innocent character of an export, whereas now it was with the savoury attributes of imports from great britain that we were walking into the lion's mouth. stories were abroad of ladies who had arrived in silken dresses and who had been seen to issue from the portals of this redoubtable custom-house in whatever garments may have escaped the confiscation from their persons of the more valuable products of european looms. it was therefore with some apprehension and not without anxiety that we awaited the arrival of the inspector and his men. their white caps and white tunics are soon in evidence on the ship's ladder; they step on deck, appear uncertain and desirous of information; then, after a cast or two, we see them settling to the line. in a remote corner of the deck, almost covered by the gigantic frame of rudolph, lies a pile of miscellaneous but extremely creditable luggage, of which the hapless owners are ourselves. when the swiss is interrogated he smiles blandly; the salute on their side is not less gracious and more effusive; then they leave the steamer and we are free. what is the incident? if you measure it by the paradoxical nature of the occurrence, it was more than an incident, it was an event. for the rest we were not slow to discover the explanation; there is not in russia a more courteous official or kinder personality than the director of customs at batum. m. de klupffell is a veteran sportsman, and, as such, a friend of englishmen; in my cousin he found an ardent votary of his own science and a companion in its pursuit; and we were linked together by a number of pleasant memories before the day of departure hurried us apart. five valuable days, of which not a minute was vacant, were consumed in completing the preparations for our journey and in procuring a supplementary supply of letters of introduction to those in authority at the centres through which we should pass. we were about to enter a country which, both for strategical and political reasons, is hedged in with scarcely visible but extremely palpable restrictions, and for the unprepared and ill-recommended traveller is almost of the nature of forbidden ground. there are wide districts in which our consul at batum is not permitted to travel; i am sure he would not venture to cross the threshold of kars. to make certain of being allowed to move about without hindrance and to enjoy the luxury of the confidence that your presence will be tolerated and that you will not suddenly be summarily expelled, it is necessary to supply yourself with a special authorisation from the proper minister at st. petersburg. but our ambassador at the russian capital refuses to put forward the application; he has made a rule which nothing will induce him to break through. at constantinople our embassy is of course completely helpless; there remains the doubtful method of private approach. the days were swelling into weeks while we lingered on the bosphorus; it was useless to proceed without some form of pass in our pockets, but the precious months of summer were gliding away. at length we were sufficiently provided with recommendations to be warranted in trusting fortune to do the rest; we owed much to the kindness of our russian acquaintances at constantinople, and we were able to realise a fact of which we subsequently received such abundant evidence, that the highest russian officials are as a rule enlightened men of the world as well as the kindest and most hospitable of hosts. on the side of georgia there are two principal approaches to armenia, and the traveller who desires to consult his comfort may be advised to restrict his choice to these two roads. the more westerly ascends the valley of the kur river and reaches the highlands about akhaltsykh by the romantic gorge and passage of borjom; the other, further east, leaves the railway between the black sea and the caspian at the station of akstafa, some fifty miles below tiflis, and, mounting from the trough of the kur along the course of the akstafa, issues upon the open country on the west of lake sevan, near the posting-stage of delijan. [8] a bifurcation at that point leads by one branch to alexandropol and by the other to erivan. you may ride in a victoria and with relays of post-horses on either of these roads. both conduct you from the steppes at the southern foot of caucasus and from levels that are comparatively low across or aslant the grain of the peripheral ranges to the edge of the armenian tableland. those ranges are the continuation upon the east of the mountains which we have followed from the bosphorus to batum; they stand up like a wall from the flats of the rion and from the plains which border the lower course of the kur, with much the same appearance as we saw them rise with ever-increasing proportions along the floor of the black sea. beyond those lowlands a mighty neighbour, the parallel chain of caucasus, faces them on the north. only at one point do these two great systems join hands together, in the belt of mountainous country which separates the watershed of the kur from that of the rion and which the railway crosses by the pass of suram (about 3000 feet). this linking chain is known to geographers under the name of the meschic or moschic; geologists are inclined to connect it with the structure of caucasus; our senses might invest it with a separate existence, a transverse barrier as it were, thrown from range to range across the hollow which extends from sea to sea. i was disinclined for several reasons to traverse this barrier, so that we might avail ourselves of either of the main roads. erivan was our destination, the railway and the valley of the akstafa our readiest means of access; but i was already familiar with the trough of the kur between tiflis and the caspian, and i had read so many accounts of this approach to armenia that the natural features of the several stages between the georgian river and lake sevan seemed imprinted upon my mind. i was also anxious to gain some knowledge of the western portion of the tableland, of which i had only succeeded in obtaining from the literature of travel a wholly insufficient idea. to these districts the route by borjom is at once the best-known avenue and that which combines with a lavish display of magnificent scenery the comforts of a beaten track. but to worm myself up the valley of the kur to the armenian highlands was, i thought, to miss an occasion which might not subsequently be offered of realising at the outset of our long journey the essential features and characteristics of the country we had come to see. in asia so vast is the scale upon which nature has operated, so much system has she bestowed upon her works, you may follow for hundreds of miles the same manifestations, till from some favourable point of vantage you may discover unfolded before you the clue and the abiding principles of her extensive and majestic plan. what approach was better calculated to offer large views over nature and to instruct us in her designs than one which scaled the walls of the girdle ranges where they tower highest above land and sea? from batum it might be possible to penetrate the mountains of ajara, and debouch upon some of the most elevated regions of the plateau from which the upper waters and earliest affluents of the kur decline; but the lower reaches of the chorokh and its alpine tributaries intersect a most intricate and savage country, where the process of elevation has resulted in dislocation of the range, and has produced convulsions which, while they afford a most interesting field to the geologist and to the student of mountain-structure, have placed obstacles in the way of human communications which the traveller is not required to overcome. by following the bend of the chain up the coast and along the rion until it again assumes a normal course, he may avoid this knot of ridges and maze of valleys and at the same time obtain a clearer and more definite conception of the geography of these lands. we learnt that there was a road from the plain of the rion up the side and to the summit of the range; we soon decided upon the superior attractions which it promised, and took our tickets for the capital of the country on the west of the meschic barrier, the ancient city of kutais. august 22.--rain was falling as we slowly steamed away from the station; it is almost always raining at batum. the clouds cannot leap the gigantic bulwark of the mountains at this south-eastern angle of the sea; they cling to the fir-clad slopes or put out hands and scale the escarpments until they become exhausted and dissolve. the town was soon behind us as we wound along the foot of the range on the narrow respite of the shore--batum, with her grim defiance of the written law of europe, with her peaceful situation at the gate of the oil industry, of which she receives the products by the railway from the caspian to distribute them over all the world; a creation of modern russia on the familiar official pattern of spreading boulevards with fine shops and large hotels. here is the starting-point of the first train which skirts the coast of the euxine--and even this remote example of the species turns aside from the mysterious seaboard to the cities of the interior after a brief space of some twenty miles. yet within such limits we are carried through the wildest piece of country that may be found between the mouth of the river rion and the entrance to the black sea, a district endowed with extraordinary fertility, which still remains unexploited and unreclaimed. it is inhabited here and there by a few straggling settlements, which contrast to the splendour of his natural surroundings the squalor of uncivilised man. we have outreached the furthest extension of the fringe of greek elements; georgian peoples live in the valleys of the interior and are thinly scattered upon the malarious coast; while further east, where the chain has left the sea and is aligned upon the plains, lowlands as well as mountains, the skirts of the range and its innermost recesses are the home of a population of georgian race. between trebizond and the russian fortress first the lazis and then the ajars may perhaps be regarded as transitional factors to the new order which commences after you have left batum. i should not venture to pronounce upon the racial connections of the lazis; they may represent the aboriginal occupants of their country, the wild tribes who harassed the army of xenophon and were the settled plague of the byzantine governors and of the emperors of the comnenian line. the ajars would appear to be of mixed parentage; like the lazis they profess the mohammedan faith. the georgian districts which we are now entering still retain the names of the several independent principalities to which they formerly belonged, and except in the case of abkhasia, up in the north at the foot of caucasus, the christian religion almost exclusively prevails. first comes guria along the shore and the bend of the mountains; imeritia extends on either bank of the rion and as far as the pass of suram; mingrelia is the name of the country on the north of the kolchian river, and it is bounded by imeritia in the east. for a distance of some fifteen miles the landscape was monotonous; on the one hand the almost vertical bulwark of the mountains, on the other the little grey waves breaking on the stony shore. but just before we arrived at the station of kobulety the oppressive proximity of the range was relaxed, the country opened, and between low forest and maize-grown clearings the soil-charged waters of a river wound their way down towards the sea. it was the commencement of the scenery which is characteristic of guria, a tract of virgin woodland which clothes the spurs of the receding chain and the alluvial flats and marshes of the coast. rolling hills take the place of the abrupt wall of rock; they are covered with a jungle of bush and little trees, which is broken here and there by irregular patches planted with indian corn. dark streams heavy with loam descend between high banks. not a village could we see, nor any human habitation; distant prospects were obscured by a veil of mist. yet the day was fairly fine, and, if the clouds were deeply banked on the horizon, the zenith often burst to pure blue. as we proceeded, the forest increased both in grandeur and in luxuriance; clusters of magnificent trees rose from the bush and above the brushwood, until the features of hill and spur became lost beneath the lofty overgrowth and transformed to masses or ledges of tall stems and spreading branches outlined against the sky. the withered forks of lifeless trunks stood out in grim relief from this ground of shadow, or were projected in weird tracery upon the field of light--an eloquent proof that no human hand had yet disturbed the natural order of these primeval woods. the sea was lost behind leafy brakes festooned with luscious creepers, which flourish with almost tropical development in this warm climate and upon this soaking soil. not a single road did we see; the stations are mere stages, and the only sign of the presence of man was one of the long-legged dappled pigs so common in imeritia, which was trespassing on the line. such are the characteristics which broadly prevail between kobulety and lanchkhuty, a space of some twenty-four miles. but we had not yet reached the latter station, which is situated due north of the capital of guria, ozurgeti, when new features were discovered in the scene. on the left hand the view opened across an even country where the sappy stems and reed-like forms and flowers of the maize-plants alternated with stretches of unreclaimed bush; and in the distance a bold hill, only partially wooded, projected into the plain from a long, vague line of mountains which closed the horizon on the north. we felt that these must surely be the spurs of caucasus, and that the phasis would shortly be disclosed. you cross that fabled river--the modern rion--by the commonplace method of a railway bridge; it flows between high banks through the wide expanse of these surroundings on the southern margin of the plain. some distance east of these lower reaches the impetuous current that has pierced the caucasus, from which it issues at kutais, has been deflected by the mountains of the southern border, which turn it towards the west. you do not follow its tortuous course, which skirts the outworks of these mountains as they stretch inwards from the coast; the ground is flat, the railroad points more directly for the capital at the foot of the great chain on the north. mile upon mile the plain of the rion was unfolded about us, a fertile province which might be made the granary of georgia, but which would now appear to produce little else but the lowest of the cereals, an endless succession of plantations of indian corn. the land is ill-reclaimed; little labour has been expended, and the bush starts up among the canes. at the stations we remarked groups of women and young girls clad in loose cotton dresses with cotton kerchiefs on their heads. geese strutted along the line or paddled in the shallow streams, and we became familiar with the strange appearance of the imeritian pigs. but still no village! at rare intervals a wooden hut with a large verandah, and here and there among the maize one of the rude wooden stages erected to command a prospect over the fields. as we advanced, the dim and misty boundary of the caucasus took shape and colour about the lower slopes. the soft hues of vegetation, the brighter flashes of naked strata were distinguished from the uncertain background of rock and cloud; bold ridges with fantastic outlines stood up on the horizon; but here and there the white vapour was still clinging to their highest parapets and spreading fanwise to the brief circle of clear sky. above them lay a world of half-lights and banked cloud-masses, the veiled presence of the main chain. behind us rose the wooded ridges of the southern range, till they vanished in the folds of the murky canopy which they hold so firmly and love so well; but the marshes had disappeared and the lowest spurs which met the plain were almost devoid of trees. on our point of course the two great ranges appeared to mingle together and arrest our even progress towards the east. for a second time we were overlooking the stream of the rion to regain the left bank. it was flowing with a rapid current in a direct line from the caucasus, channelling the beached-up shingle of an extensive bed. in places the waters spread in shallow lakes and deposit a thick sediment of soil. this upper portion of the plain is barren and stony; it is partially covered with a low jungle of bush. it is confined on either side by the meeting flanks of the mountains; and as we made our way due north with the river serpenting beneath us, all prospect on our right hand was shut out by rising ground clothed with a forest of low oak trees. on the opposite slopes, among the deepening tints of wood and clearing, beneath the growing distinction of light and shade, we could discern the white faces of a few scattered houses and then the gardens among which they stood. two larger buildings were apparent, crowned with conical cupolas, of which the roofing was coloured a soft green. such are the outskirts of kutais; the town is hidden from the plain. towering above the scene and almost infinitely high, we might feel vaguely but could scarcely see the gigantic framework of caucasus, except where here and there a dazzling light among the clouds revealed the presence of a snowfield in the sky. we were tempted to linger in the capital of imeritia, and i can confidently recommend to the more leisurely traveller a protracted stay in this fascinating place. you will never tire of the beauty of site and grandeur of surroundings, while few street scenes are more picturesque than those which are disclosed during an afternoon ramble in the jewish quarter of kutais. it is a convenient centre for excursions into the recesses of caucasus, and you have only to follow the windings of the valley of the rion to be introduced to the inmost sanctuaries of the chain. in the ruins of the noble cathedral beyond the outskirts of the town, in the neighbouring and well-preserved monastery of gelat, with its enchanting prospect from the slopes of caucasus over the open landscape of the south, both the archæologist and the student of architecture will discover an abundant source of interest; while, if the study of nature herself be among the objects of your journey, what richer field could be offered to the geologist or the naturalist than these mountains and untouched forests and flowery hills? but we ourselves were hurried away by the exigencies of travel after a short sojourn of two and a half days, and my present purpose must be confined to the elucidation of those natural features which accompanied the early stages of our ascent to armenia, and which were unfolded to our view in an extensive panorama from the declivities about kutais. i shall therefore take my reader to some convenient standpoint in the environs, let us say to the cliffs on the right bank of the rion and the hill upon which the massive ruins of the cathedral rise on the sky-line above the leafy brakes (fig. 6, a). i can show you the position from the opposite bank of the river in a picture which was taken over a mile above the town from the road which ascends the valley and which we followed on our way to gelat (fig. 6). the rion is flowing from you into the middle distance coming from the north; kutais itself is hidden by a wooded promontory (fig. 6, d); but you see the group of buildings which compose the armenian and the catholic churches, and which crown the extreme northerly projection of the site (fig. 6, b). three bridges span the rion where it sweeps past the town confined between lofty banks, and lead from the busy streets to the peaceful heights which overlook them and command all the landscape of the plain. i cannot imagine a more charming walk than by the hill church of st. george (fig. 6, c) to the pleasant eminence which i have already described. we reach our point, and there before us expands the open landscape of which the second photograph embraces a considerable part (fig. 7). we are standing on the southern slopes of caucasus, with a wide belt of hill and ridge behind us, and, beyond and far above such familiar natural features, the white serrations and air-borne snowfields of the inmost chain. the atmosphere is fresh and crisp even at this season and with this temperature; [9] and banks of white cloud float in the sky. at our feet lies kutais, with head upon the hillside and foot upon the margin of the plain; the eye follows the winding river which has just escaped from caucasus and is flowing outwards towards the opposite range; the horizon is closed by that wall of mountain, emerging solid from a tender veil of mist. the plain itself is flat as water; it is coloured with the golden hues of the ripening maize-fields and featured by a labyrinth of vague detail. on the left hand, outside the photograph, a little north of east, you just discern high on the slopes beyond the left bank of the rion the site of the monastery of gelat; and the other day we thought we could descry from its lofty terrace, at the base of a distant promontory of caucasus the shimmer of the sea in the west. let us realise for a moment the meaning of the landscape, and allow the mind to assist the eye. the opposite mountains belong to the girdle of ranges which buttress the armenian tableland, the same which we have followed along the coast of the black sea, and which we left at our entrance upon the plain of the rion stretching eastwards away from the shore. here they constitute the barrier which separates the lowlands of imeritia from the highlands about akhaltsykh in the south; and, if you wish to examine the structure of this barrier more closely, you will find that the back or spine of the system consists of a ridge which extends in an easterly direction to about the longitude of tiflis. the caucasus, with an axis inclining south-eastwards, steps up to this latitudinal chain, and just east of kutais the two systems join hands in the belt of picturesque hill scenery which divides the watershed of the kur from that of the rion, and which we already know under the name of the meschic linking range. east of tiflis the axis of the armenian border ranges is turned towards south-east, and follows a direction parallel with that of caucasus along the trough of the kur towards the caspian sea. like the caucasus here in the north, its opposite neighbour, that southern bulwark extends from sea to sea; and some geographers have applied to it the name of little caucasus, a misleading and, if we attach importance to the phenomena of nature, a most inappropriate name. for while the northern range may be described as an isolated and independent structure--independent in appearance at least--which rises on the one side from about the same levels as those to which on the other side it declines, that on the south is in reality nothing more than a succession of steps or buttresses which lead up to and flank the armenian highlands. the first stages of our journey will conduct us up the slopes of those mountains, from a plain which does not much exceed the sea-level, across a ridge of which the pass has an altitude of about 7000 feet, to plains which range between a height of 7000 and not less than 3000 feet above the sea. august 25.--from kutais to where the southern range perceptibly commences to gather, about the village of bagdad, is a direct distance of close on fifteen miles. so even is the plain that the road makes little deviation and covers the space in seventeen miles. at half-past eight on the morning of the 25th of august our victoria, drawn by four horses abreast, made its start from the little hotel in which we had lodged; it was followed by the cart which we had engaged for the luggage and to which was harnessed a similar team. we had hired both conveyances for the whole of the journey to abastuman on the further slopes of the southern range; the regular avenue of communication with that summer watering-place is by the valley of the kur and borjom, and it is necessary to make your own arrangements if you desire to take the imeritian road. we spent five hours upon the first stage of only seventeen miles; our coachman was obliged to harbour the strength of his horses for the long ascent to the summit of the chain, and we were always halting to take photographs and to realise the interest of the magnificent scenery which forms the distant setting of these lowlands. we were crossing the uppermost portion of the plain of the rion, where it rises to the belt of hill and mountain which links the northern with the southern range; long stretches of woodland with an undergrowth of wild rhododendron had taken the place of the expanse of golden maize-fields, broken by little trees and intervals of bush. to emerge from the shady avenue upon a tract of open country was to feast our eyes upon a landscape of no ordinary character. on the one hand the airy pinnacles and gleaming snowfields of caucasus, on the other the forest-clad walls of the armenian border chain; in the west the varied detail that covers the floor of the plain as with a carpet, and behind us the spurs meeting in the east. we were impressed by the hush of life over the plain and in the woodlands, by the sparseness of human habitations, and by the absence of traffic along the road. such are the certain signs in the east of economical stagnation, when man is idle and the earth sleeps. it was therefore with pleasure that about one o'clock we came upon a tiny village and lingered beneath a spreading tree. not very far from this little settlement we crossed a stream at the base of the mountains, and at half-past one we came to a halt in the street of the village of bagdad, after a short but perceptible rise. we noticed some vineyards during the course of our upward progress; the elevation of bagdad, according to the single reading of my barometer, is 922 feet. [10] it is at bagdad that you begin the ascent of the mountains of the southern border. so broad is the range, the pass so lofty and the road so tortuous, that it would be no easy matter to cross them in a single day. the direct distance measured on a map from the village to the pass is no less than seventeen miles, and along the road you cover some thirty-one miles. there is a hut at about half-way which is a convenient night's quarter, and we resolved to make it the goal of our second stage. we left bagdad at three o'clock, with the valleys still open about us, with the wooded slopes rising on every side. after we had passed to the right branch of the stream which we had crossed below the village, the gradients commenced to make themselves felt, and here and there among the foliage the first fir trees started, the delicate blue firs. we followed the course of the running water up the spacious valley, through the forest which clothes the range from foot to summit and stands up along the ridges against the sky. the saturated atmosphere and warm climate of the seaboard were still with us; the one feeds, the other stimulates this luxuriant growth. even on this fine day the clouds still lingered in the uppermost hollows, and when at four o'clock we opened up a beautiful side valley, all the landscape of wooded fork and winding torrent reflected the silvery hues of a crown of captive vapour clinging to the recesses at the head of the glen. verst after verst we might count our progress on the white milestones, but we rarely observed a sign of the presence of man. a georgian wayfarer, staff in hand, a peasant's cottage with its wide verandah, were the infrequent incidents in a scene which still belonged to nature, and with which such figures and such objects harmonised. at last at the side of the road where the forest was thickest we came upon a solitary little cabin, a neat wooden structure, which we at once recognised as our shelter for the night. it was a quarter-past seven o'clock and we had reached an altitude of 1900 feet. [11] during the space of some fourteen miles from our mid-day station, the valley to which we had throughout been faithful had narrowed to a deep trough; and an hour before our arrival at the hut of zikari the read was taken for a short space along the left bank of the stream, in order to avoid a projecting buttress of its eastern wall. august 26.--some distance below the hut the stream which we had followed is joined by a tributary coming from the east; the two branches of the fork collect a number of smaller affluents which have their sources near the summit of the chain. in continuing our course next morning up the more westerly of these branches, we were rapidly transported to the more open landscapes of the higher slopes, and made our way almost in a direct line for the pass, circling the outworks of the principal ridge. filmy white clouds were suspended from the pine woods above us, when at a quarter-past seven we again took to the road; but for five hours the forest trees remained with us and increased rather than diminished in size. in one place it was a lime of unusual proportions rearing a maze of branches from a quadruple trunk; at another we stood in wonder before a gigantic beech which measured 17 feet 6 inches round the base. the undergrowth was supplied by laurel and holly, and cascades leapt from the rocks. the reader may see our road as it wound through this sylvan scenery (fig. 8), but he must allow his imagination to supply the inherent deficiencies of photographic methods. the rare inhabitants of these solitudes are of georgian race and wear the dress of georgia (fig. 9), but their straggling tenements are few and far between. above the forest the groves of fir, higher still the grassy slopes and naked crags--such is the familiar order of mountain scenery as you slowly rise to the spine of a range. the two last features became apparent at the sixty-sixth verst-stone, or some twelve and a half miles from the hut. a profusion of wild raspberries were growing on the mossy banks and provided us with a delicious meal. we remarked the sharpness of the summits of the ridge above us and read the number of the seventy-second verst. the pass is just above this lofty standpoint, and we left the carriage to reach it by a short cut. we arrived there after a brief climb to find a fresh breeze blowing and all the wide belt of mountain at our feet. i doubt whether there exists in the nearer asia a standpoint which commands a prospect at once so grand and so instructive as that which is unfolded from the summit of the zikar pass (zikarski perival; altitude by my hicks mountain aneroid, 7164 feet; russian survey, 7104 feet). with its double front towards north and south and the contrasting features of the dual landscape, it may be said to overlook two worlds. on the north the view ranges across the broad belt of wooded mountains, which culminate in this ridge, to the gigantic barrier of the caucasus of which the peaks are distant some ninety to a hundred miles (fig. 10). invisible in the hollow lies the plain of the rion; the crests before you, boldly vaulted and clad with forest to the very summits, sweep away to a dim horizon of grey mist; above that uncertain background the snows and glaciers of caucasus appear suspended in the air among the clouds. dense vapour shrouds the scene, and above the flashes of the snow a long bank of white cloud spreads fanwise up the sky. but turn to the south--the forms and texture of the earth's surface, the lights and shadows falling through a rarer atmosphere from lightly floating filaments of cloud, are those of a new world (fig. 11). the pine wood still struggles down the hillside, and gathers from the blighted trunks around you to clothe the first valleys of the southern watershed. but the view will no longer close with successive walls of mountain; the road ceases winding up the slopes of successive outworks; every vertical line, each deep vaulting relaxes and disappears. the highest plains of the tableland attain about the same elevation as the pass upon which you stand; all the outlines in the distance are horizontal, all the shapes shallow-vaulted and convex. if you follow the long-drawn profiles of the loftier masses, it is the form of a cone that breaks the sky-line, and never that of a peak. the colours are lightly washed ochres and madders; the surface of the volcanic soil is bare of all vegetation; the shadows lie transparent and thin. such was our first view of armenia and such the impression which our later travel confirmed. chapter iii to akhaltsykh where else except in london will you see clever driving? is not england the only country where you can trust your coachman to shave his corners and keep his team in hand? with four horses abreast the process is perhaps not easy, especially down a fairly steep incline. we were pursued by a landau which contained some russian officers who had been spectators of our photographic and hypsometrical operations on the summit of the pass; our driver became inspired with the spirit of rivalry, and within a few minutes the trot had developed into a canter, the canter into a headlong career. on the left hand a deep abyss, on the right a mossy bank, and the post of danger occupied by our plump little dragoman who sat on the left-hand box seat! the carriage grazed the bank and, before we had time to pull the armenian to us, struck and overturned. no damage to the horses or to the rest of the company, but the unfortunate dragoman, moaning and sobbing on the road! happily his contusions were not serious, and a draught of brandy almost restored him to the possession of himself. assisted by our kind acquaintances, who were the unwitting cause of the disaster and who had hurried to the scene, we conveyed him down the slope to where a gay picnic party were regaling themselves with cakes and tea and a variety of strong liqueurs. at once the ladies busied themselves with the bruised and dust-covered youth, whose numbed senses quickly revived under their care. but the incident delayed us, and it was night before we arrived at the outskirts of abastuman, situated in the pine woods some ten miles south of the pass, at an elevation of 4278 feet. we were tempted to pitch our tents above the village, on the banks of a pleasant stream; but the darkness as well as the lateness of the hour decided us to have recourse to a crowded hotel. we were again in the midst of wealth and luxury--an oasis strangely incongruous with the solemn character with which these vast and lonely landscapes are impressed. the strains of music floated on the air; a dance was proceeding, to which after a hurried meal my cousin and myself repaired. all that was most brilliant in the official world of the caucasus was gathered in the bright ball-room; and as we made our way there through the garden we met a group of returning guests gathered about a slender and youthful figure, to whom all appeared to defer. it was the grand duke george of russia, since tsarevich, who was residing in this lofty station alike in winter as in summer for the benefit of his health. in the afternoon of the following day, which was devoted to work and to preparations, came a message from his imperial highness inviting us to mid-day dinner; so we deferred our start from early morning to a later hour. his villa was situated just above the street of pleasure-houses among the fir trees which clothe the valley from trough to ridge; and on the opposite side of the road the slope had been converted into a park, which contained living specimens of the big game of the caucasian wilds. the dinner was al fresco in the garden of the villa; the grand duke welcomed us in perfect english and placed my cousin on his right and myself on his left hand. opposite me and on my cousin's right sat the duke of oldenburg, a practised sportsman and a charming personality, whose lively humour made the talk flow. on my left i had a graver but extremely well-informed gentleman whose conversation impressed me, but whose name i forgot to record. m. asbeleff of the suite of his highness was also of the party, and most kindly provided us with introductions which were of great service to us at a later stage of our journey. quite a respectable number of guests were gathered round the circular table, the majority clad in the white cotton tunics which are the summer uniform of the official class. a purée or thick soup was served, which i thought delicious, but which brought a twinkle from the playful eye of the duke. as each successive dish of this dinner à la russe made its appearance a smile came from across the table, or "isn't it nasty?" or some even less mildly deprecating words. i ventured to demur to his good-humoured criticism and to submit that, if the french alone possessed the art of cooking, the russians succeeded, where the english failed signally, in making things taste nice. the champagne came in for a particular share of attention, having been produced by the duke from his vineyards at kutais. my cousin let out the secret that we had already made its acquaintance: that we had visited his cellars and had been greatly interested in his enterprise, especially on the evening at the hut of zikari, when we had regaled ourselves with a bottle of his sparkling wine. he now insisted on our taking a little case with us, and promised it should be dry to suit what he said he knew to be our taste. my companion on the left discussed the objects of our journey, and was of opinion that we might succeed in reaching the slopes of ararat before the first snows commenced. i told him that we were also anxious to study the condition of the country, and the conversation turned upon the limitations which he said were imposed in india upon foreigners travelling with similar aims. can there be anything more fatuous than such restrictions? we both agreed that it was perfectly possible to guard against political intriguers and at the same time to leave bona-fide travellers free. the grand duke spoke english like an englishman, and you could not have a more amiable host. we remarked that his features resembled those of his cousin, the duke of york, of whom a portrait was placed on his writing-table together with the photographs of other members of our royal house. two four-horsed posting carriages had been prepared for the drive to akhaltsykh, distant 16 1/2 miles. by four o'clock we had rejoined the rest of our party and were leaving behind us the pleasant station of abastuman. we followed the tripping stream down the narrow valley, the rocky and beetling sides studded with firs from foot to summit; and from among them a ruined castle, ascribed as usual to queen thamar, frowned out upon the passage which it controls. but we had not gone far before a complete change came over the landscape; the valley opened, distant prospects were disclosed. before us lay the scenery which is typical of armenia and upon which our eyes had rested from the summit of the zikar pass. nature is seldom abrupt in her processes; a transitional character invests the first slopes of the southern watershed; the narrow belt of pine-clad ridges interrupts the contrast between the luscious forests which cover the range on the side of the black sea littoral and the barren highlands through which the upper waters of the kur descend. we had issued from those recesses, and around us in a wide circle were unfolded the armenian plains. the view ranged over an open country, for the most part bare of vegetation, and featured by a succession of convexities in the friable surface, from the foreground of hummock and hill to the sweeping outlines of the higher masses, changing colour and complexion with every change in the sky. the ground was crumbling with excessive dryness; the soil is rich, and would no doubt yield crops of great value were it cultivated on a liberal scale. yet all the cultivation we could see was of the nature of little patches of yellow stubble or lightly ploughed land. it was evident that the primitive methods of the east had not been superseded, and that agriculture still partook of the precarious character which is the outcome of centuries of political disturbance--the peasant uncertain of reaping what he has sown. stony tracts interrupted these plots of reclamation, but in general the surface was apt for the plough. the springs of life had been exhausted by the drought of an eastern summer; the fertile earth was bare as water, and transparent tints of pink and ochre invested the landscape far and wide. a spirit of vastness and loneliness breathed over the scene; the air was clear and crisp and recalled the bracing climate of the persian tablelands. such characteristics were strange to some among our party, for only my cousin and myself knew the interior of asia and recognised in the note which was now for the first time sounded the commencement of a familiar theme. we pursued our way in silence, each absorbed by his own reflections and all responsive to the same spell. through the bleak landscape wound the little river and stretched the white line of the road. here and there on the margin of the water or beyond the irregular border of the pebble-strewn bed a little orchard or a patch of garden planted with potatoes, formed a spot of verdure contrasting with the hues around. [12] where were the villages? for it seemed that there must be inhabitants who had gathered this scanty harvest and ploughed the surface of the darker soil. they select the slope of a hill or the rise of an undulation; the door and front of their dwellings are alone visible, the back is caverned into the shelving ground; you must pass close to such a settlement and by daylight to notice the incidence of a human element in the scene. we came upon four villages of this pattern before the mid-way station was reached. they were peopled by tartars, who were occupied in threshing and winnowing the season's corn. the husks were flying in the air and the bright cottons of men and women fluttered in the breeze. benara, the posting-house which supplied us with fresh horses, is situated close to the bank of the stream, at no great distance above the point where it joins the koblian chai, a river which collects the drainage of the extreme north-western angle of the tableland. a little below this junction the united waters receive a further affluent, known as the poskhov chai, which gathers the streams from south-west and south-east. even at this season the three combined form a river of fair size, flowing through the plain on an easterly course in a bed of many channels, and joining the kur after passing through the town of akhaltsykh. this river is usually called the akhaltsykh chai. our road followed its course, taking an abrupt bend eastwards and still faithful to the left bank. some hillocks closed the view on the north for a short space; then they flattened, and in that direction the great plain rolled around us, bounded in the distance by hummock hills. at intervals we caught a glimpse of the pine-clad ridges of the border range, standing up on the horizon in the east. behind us the long-drawn outlines and bare slopes of the mountains of the tableland, and towards the south the ground rising from the right bank of the river to the summit-line of a mountain mass of this character which has the hummock formation throughout. massed battalions of russian soldiers, it seemed a whole army corps, were drawn up on the plain. we were passing a permanent camp with pavilions and stationary cannon, and for some distance the ground was dotted with white tents. a review was proceeding, and the dark uniforms of the troops gave their columns the appearance of a series of black blocks. a hymn was being sung; the stately music swelled over the hushed scene. what a contrast between the landscape and such accidental incidents, the russian road, the russian camp! on the road little piles of stones heaped at regular intervals; but the country without a fence, without boundaries or divisions, a mere expanse of rolling soil. the first town or larger village that we saw was suflis, rising among orchards from the right bank. it is backed by the bleak mountain mass which the river skirts; the flat roofs, ranged in tiers, were scarcely distinguishable from the shelving ground, but the vertical lines of several minarets were seen from afar. could you be shown a more typical example of a tumble-down eastern township? yet you are on the threshold of an important fortress and provincial centre where modern appliances are in vogue.... suflis passed, we approached more closely to the river; the mass on our right broke off in cliffs to the margin of the water, while on our left hand a low ridge, which had the appearance of an outcrop of volcanic rock, stepped up to the border of the stream. the road followed down the defile, skirting huge boulders and overtowered by bold crags; until the heights on our left were crowned with masonry, partly ruinous; and before us, across the river, where the gorge opened, the cherry-coloured roofing of the modern town of akhaltsykh was outspread among gardens on the level ground. a little further down we crossed a substantial bridge, and, without entering the town, pitched our tents on the sand of the river-bed. it was nearly seven o'clock, and night had fallen before our camping operations were complete. from the olympian eminence of the grand duke's circle at abastuman and from the steps of the imperial throne, we came near to being hurled forth at akhaltsykh into the abyss of a russian prison. the gods must surely weep at the sorry manner in which their human ministers interpret their laws. day broke without any shadow of presentiment--a fresh and breezy morning, the river rippling before us, and on the opposite bank the ancient fortress edging the steep crags and outlined on the luminous sky. the delicious sleep beneath a tent was followed by an early bathe; the town was silent, but, as we made our way up the margin of the current, a little village was discovered, of which the feminine occupants were already descending the slope with their many-shaped water-jars and divesting themselves of their loose cottons to splash on the brink of the stream. a little later we passed their hovels and recognised them as armenians, and admired the beauty of one among them, now busy with the routine of her household, who with her arched eyebrows, aquiline nose, massive forehead, and coal-black tresses reminded us of biblical heroines. the fascination of travel consists in its many-coloured contrasts; nothing ruffled the composure of our mood of detachment as we left this peaceful scene to explore a fresh hive of human beings with the easy confidence of men to whom the land belongs. our first visit was as usual to the civil governor; he was to conduct us to the hive, remark upon the peculiar qualities of the honey, and deferentially withdraw while we pursued our own investigations into the mysteries of insect life. if our attitude could be convicted of any element of such fatuous vanity, the illusion was quickly and rudely dispelled. we were taken to a mean structure on the southern outskirts of the town, which resembled wooden boxes placed one above another, with broad wooden verandahs running round. these balconies were indeed the distinguishing feature; and, when we observed the groups of ill-miened loafers who loitered within them, it was hard to believe that we were anywhere else but in turkey visiting a pasha at the serai. after some palaver with the menials, who were not disposed to excessive courtesy, it transpired that the governor had left that very morning on a visit to abastuman. we asked to see his deputy, and were ushered into the presence of a broad-shouldered official whose little eyes and cast of face were essentially russian, and who did not receive us with any excessive show of warmth. such is the manner of deputies all the world over--but our disappointment turned to surprise when who should enter the apartment but wesson, closely escorted by a formidable individual whom we at once recognised as a commissary of police! may i introduce the reader to ivan kuyumjibashoff, a personality no less alarming than his name (fig. 12), and may i take this early opportunity to place him on his guard against the fallacy that the armenians are not a martial race? for this man was a pure armenian, in spite of the russian termination of -off instead of -ean. erzerum was his native city; his family had emigrated to russia, and during the last war against the turks ivan had gained the cross of honour for personal bravery in the field. at his side hung a sword of which the scabbard and hilt were adorned with chased silver; the blade was his special pride, being of ancient khorasan workmanship, a trophy from the kurds. his features inspired fear; his skin of leather was the result of exposure; but we had not yet learnt that, like all true warriors who are not barbarians, the lion's fierceness was tempered by the meekness of the lamb. a cloud settled over the face of the deputy as the massive fist turned the handle of the door and the heavy tread fell on the bare boards. arrived at his side, ivan whispered something in his ear, and i ventured to ask what might be the business of this man. the official replied that he was the emissary of captain taranoffsky, the chief of the so-called gendarmerie, and that he had been sent to conduct us to the presence of his superior, who would personally explain the purport of his summons. i enquired whether colonel alander was not the governor of akhaltsykh, and his office the seat of supreme power; i was answered that there was another and separate jurisdiction which the governor did not control. the deputy added with an agreeable humour that, should we be thrown into prison, he would be powerless to take us out. nothing therefore to be done but to follow ivan; and would that his master had been as capable as himself! in these armenian provinces of russia the machinery of administration is conducted by a handful of russian officials through armenians, who are employed even in the higher grades. the armenian is a man of ancient culture and high natural capacity; neither the instinct nor the quality would be claimed by his russian superior, who is the instrument of a system of government rather than a born ruler, and who in general is lacking in those attributes of pliancy and individual initiative which it is the tendency of rigid bureaucracies to destroy. moreover the russian official gives the impression of being overwhelmed by his system, like a child to whom his lessons are new; and, when you see him at work among such a people as the armenians, you ask yourself how it has happened that a race with all the aptitudes are governed by such wooden figures as these. there are of course notable exceptions to this general statement, which resumes one's experience of the subordinate officers rather than of those who are highest placed. taranoffsky was about as bad a specimen of his class as it has been my misfortune to meet. a short man of portly figure, fat red face, and little eyes, he had all the self-assertion which so often accompanies small stature, all the unfriendliness which seems the almost necessary outcome of a lack of physical grace. i at once perceived all the elements of an unpleasant situation; nor were my apprehensions disproved by the result. we were taken to a hotel, deprived of our papers and letters, and placed under close police surveillance pending a decision as to our future fate. the warmest pass of arms was that which took place over our photographic negatives, which our persecutor peremptorily required. i represented that many of the films were as yet undeveloped, and was absolute in my refusal to give them up. on the other hand i expressed myself anxious that he should see them developed in his presence, for which purpose i begged him to prepare a dark room. i forget whether he accepted this tempting proposal; the negatives remained intact. permission was given us to drive under escort to the monastery of safar, and the arrival that night or the following morning of colonel alander appeared to alleviate the disfavour with which we were viewed. not that these two imperia work harmoniously together! how can it be expected that they should? the political police are particularly active in fortress towns such as kars or akhaltsykh; but i understood from ivan that they are pretty widely distributed over the country, and that their functions extend to tracking down socialists and nihilists, and in general to the diffusion of alarm and annoyance far and wide. "how ugly is man!" has exclaimed a french novelist; indeed how ugly at such moments he appears. if the morning was consumed by these unforeseen complications, the afternoon held in store for the harried travellers a further contrast and a rich reward. the monastery of safar is situated a few miles [13] south-east of akhaltsykh on the lofty slopes of a volcanic ridge; the drive thither displays the landscape of the town and surrounding country, and the goal is a group of buildings, of which the principal church is a gem of architecture, instinct with the graces that adorn and elevate life. for awhile we followed down the right bank of the river along the road toward akhalkalaki and the east; then, almost reversing direction, turned up a side track on the right hand, which conducted us, always rising, across the bleak undulations at the back of the modern town. here and there the soil had been sown and was yellow with stubble, or lay exposed in patches of plough; but cultivation was only partial, and for many a mile not a village could be discerned. far and near, the surface of the earth was of a hummocky nature, like sands modelled by children's spades. after jolting along this track for some distance, we again struck a metalled road. it winds along the side of the ridge upon which safar is situated, and overlooks a deep ravine. the slope of the ridge is clothed in places by a scanty growth of bush and dotted by low trees; but the ravine and opposite hillside are bare and stony, and the landscape is bleak and wild in the extreme. the only signs of life and movement proceeded from a village of which the tenements were built into that opposite slope. the peasants in their gay cottons were threshing the season's harvest, and, as we returned, we saw them transporting it in little carts, drawn by eight oxen apiece, from the fields, where it had been left since the end of june in convenient places, up to the village threshing-floors. we were surprised at the evident prosperity of the occupants of this georgian settlement; what could be more quaint than women with white gloves and parasols who dwelt in such hovels as those? we met several such groups on the road and about the monastery, which was the goal of their afternoon's walk; several families also, who had come from afar, were encamped at safar, at once a pilgrimage and a pleasant residence during the summer months. a similar practice no doubt prevailed with the powerful governors of upper georgia, of that remote and extensive province of semo-karthli which comprised the uppermost valleys of the kur and chorokh and the mountains of ajara to the kolchian coast. known under the title of atabegs, they flourished in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, became independent of the kings of georgia, and were only suppressed at a late date by the ottoman turks. [14] here was their seat of predilection during the heats of summer, and, except for the arid soil and crops of stones that cover the valleys, one cannot but approve their choice. you are at a height of some 1000 feet above the town of akhaltsykh; deep below you flows the kur, the river of ardahan as they call it, on its way to pierce the barrier of the border ranges by the passage of borjom. on the side of the ridge a narrow site, whence the ground declines abruptly to the abyss below, is filled by a cluster of little chapels, backed, at the extreme end, by an imposing church. i wish i could offer my reader an ampler description; but just at this point i am trusting entirely to my memory and bewailing the loss of a portion of the day's notes. counting the chapels, they would tell you that the monastery contained twelve churches, while according to our notions it possesses only one. that one is st. saba, of which i offer two illustrations, one to present the ensemble of the building with the adjacent belfry (fig. 13), the other to exhibit the charming detail of the porch on the west (fig. 14). in a treeless country, devoid of the rich bewilderment of a luxuriant nature, and moulded on a scale which would mock the more ambitious creations of human effort and is everywhere present to the eye, such a jewel in stone as st. saba and many another armenian temple are seen at an advantage which they would scarcely possess in western landscapes. planted on the rough hillsides, overlooking vast expanses of plain and mountain, winding river and lonely lake, they offer at once a contrast to the bleakness of nature and a quiet epitome of her startling forms. take this church as an example of the most finished workmanship; what a pleasure to turn from the endless crop of chaotic boulders to the even surface of these walls of faced masonry which the dry climate preserves ever fresh, to the sharply chiselled stone-work of the elaborate mouldings and bands of arabesques! or, if you extend the vision to comprise the distant scene about you, it will often happen that the mountain masses tower one above another like the roofs and gables by your side, and culminate in the shape of a dome with a conical summit which repeats these outlines, like a reflection, against the sky. st. saba, although created through the munificence of a georgian atabeg, is probably the work of an armenian architect, and may certainly be counted as an example of the armenian style. if we may trust a mutilated inscription in the interior, which has been in part deciphered by brosset, the present church was built by the atabeg sargis, the son of beka, who flourished between 1306 and 1334; and, if we could only be certain of the signification of the four numeral letters which are plainly seen on the face of the wall at one side of the window of the western porch, we should perhaps be able to fix the exact date. dubois, indeed, supposes that it was constructed by manuchar, brother of the last of the atabegs, kuarkuareh, who fought with such valour against the turks. but dubois is relying upon what he terms "constant tradition," and brosset cautions us against accepting anything that he has written about safar. one would certainly not have thought that such a well-instructed traveller, as was dubois, could have mistaken a monument of the fourteenth century for a production of the later years of the sixteenth; and personally i should be inclined to attribute the edifice to a period at least as early as the fourteenth century. [15] august 30.--the tartar who had accompanied us on the excursion to safar had fired my cousin with an account of some stag and big game shooting which was to be found some four hours' journey from the town. according to arrangement he made his appearance in the early morning, and found my cousin already prepared. i had resolved to devote the day to the town and outskirts, should our persecutors leave me free. but i had no sooner reached the bridge from our encampment on the bed of the river, in order to see my cousin on his way, than the plans of both of us were arrested by the advent of ivan the terrible, who rose from the cushions of a landau and summoned us to be seated at his side. i need not devote space to a repetition of fresh annoyances, since they had already almost reached their term. was the departure of colonel alander connected with our arrival, and had he gone to satisfy himself about us at abastuman? when at length we were able to see him he greeted us kindly, and furnished me with all the information of which i was in want. let me therefore at once introduce the reader to the town of akhaltsykh and to the people who dwell therein. the view of the place which i offer (fig. 15) was taken on the road to akhalkalaki from the right bank of the river, some distance below the bridge. within the precincts of the town the camera was strictly interdicted, although, since our tents were pitched just opposite the fortress, we might well have sketched that old-fashioned stronghold from memory when the canvas was closed for the night. the river is flowing towards you through grassy meadows, which are verdant even at this season, and which are being browsed by flocks of sheep and goats. on the right bank, on the left of the picture, and stretching across the middle distance to a promontory which is washed by the stream, lies the modern town with its gardens and substantial houses (fig. 15, a); on the opposite shore, following the cliff from the extreme right of the illustration, you have first the old town (b), then the fortress (c), and last the gorge (d). the inhabitants of akhaltsykh are censused at 15,000--at the time of our visit the registered figure was 15,120, although the latest tabulated statistics which colonel alander was able to show me gave a total of 15,914 for 1891. this total was divided in the following manner, according to religion and race: gregorian armenians, 9620; catholic armenians, 2875; georgians and russians, excluding the garrison, 782; roman catholics, 97; and 2540 jews. i cannot help thinking that the proportion of armenians is excessive, and that the governor has included among those of the catholic persuasion a considerable number of armenian catholics who are of georgian race. at kutais i had been informed by a roman catholic priest that i should find among the communion of the armenian catholics at akhaltsykh many georgians whose ancestors had been devout catholics and had become united to the armenian catholics, as the nearest catholic church, when the georgian church followed the greek in cutting off relations with rome. the georgian kings forbade them to hold their services in georgian, which had been their practice previously. these men were no doubt the converts of the old roman catholic missions; it is known that at the commencement of the thirteenth century the kings of georgia were in correspondence with the popes, and that these communications and the despatch of missionaries to georgia were continued in the following century. [16] the published statistics of 1886 give the number of georgians as 2730 souls, and evidently include the large majority of them among the roman catholics. it is therefore probable that both lists fall into error, and that of the two the published table is the more reliable in all that concerns distinction of race. i append it in a footnote, [17] and have only to add in this connection that in both lists the number of males exceeds that of females, and that for this reason the totals are in general too small. in colonel alander's list the male population amounts to 8335, in the published list to 8480 souls. the women must be at least as numerous as the men, although, owing to eastern prejudices, they are much more difficult to count. in several senses the town of akhaltsykh has undergone a revolution during the course of the present century. at the commencement of this period we are introduced to a flourishing city of the ottoman empire, the capital of a pashalik, which was composed of six sanjaks or administrative divisions, [18] in close communication with the neighbouring cities of kars and erzerum and the emporium of an extensive traffic in georgian slaves. [19] at this time it is said to have contained some 40,000 inhabitants, of whom the greater portion were mussulmans. [20] the site of the city was the same as that of the old town of the present day, but the houses extended to the immediate confines of the citadel. the whole was defended by moats and a double row of walls with battlements and flanking towers. the right bank of the river was embellished by numerous gardens, but there does not appear to have been anything like a town upon this side. the citadel was remarkable for its beautiful mosque, with an imposing minaret more than 130 feet high. this minaret, like the mosque, was built of blocks of hewn stone; and, so solid was its structure, that it suffered little damage during the russian bombardment, although hit by no less than seven cannon balls. such was akhaltsykh prior to its conquest by the russians under paskevich in 1828. [21] the conquerors introduced far-reaching changes, of which the evidence remains to the present time. they razed a portion of the town in the vicinity of the fortress, which had furnished cover to the turks in the desperate attempt which they subsequently made to recapture their old stronghold. the outer walls of the city were either demolished or fell into ruin and disappeared. the mosque of the citadel was converted into a russian church and shorn of its minaret. [22] a new town was founded on the right bank of the river and assigned to armenian colonists. the mussulman population emigrated into turkey; and akhaltsykh, which received a large body of armenian immigrants from kars and erzerum, became practically a christian town. the native inhabitants who were christians erected belfries near their churches and heard with joy the sound of christian bells. but it would seem that no great measure of prosperity attended this new birth. the immigrants were bent on doing business and opening shops; only those among them who were agriculturists did well. commerce declined owing to the inclusion of the town within the frontier line of the russian customs and the consequent interruption of relations with the neighbouring cities in the south. the traffic in slaves was, of course, abolished, and no considerable industry took its place. akhaltsykh was shut up in her corner of asia; for the impracticable barrier of the border ranges walls her off from the sea. still the fact that the place was a frontier fortress of the russian empire must have been productive of at least a local trade. in 1833 the population appears to have numbered only 11,000 souls; [23] but it probably increased from that date, year by year. when kars came into the permanent possession of the russians, the newly-acquired fortress in part supplanted akhaltsykh; and the progressive decline of the turkish empire has further contributed to relieve the government of the necessity of providing the last-named stronghold with modern fortifications. at the time of my visit it was evident that the town was declining and losing importance year by year. i questioned several of the better-informed among the inhabitants as to the cause of this unhappy state of things. "you have long enjoyed the blessings of security," i observed, "both for property and life; yet in place of a steadily increasing prosperity i see nothing but signs of impoverishment and falling-off." as usual in the east, i received several answers; but all were unanimous in declaring that the principal reason was the depopulation of the surrounding country, owing to the persistent emigration of the mussulmans and the want of colonists to take their place. another cause, they said, was the decline in military importance to which i have already referred. the modern town on the right bank was nearest to our encampment; may i therefore commence the account of what we saw at akhaltsykh with a stroll through its garden-lined streets? the houses are nice little one-storeyed dwellings, some built of brick, others of stone. a feature were the quaint little spouts to carry off the rain-water, shaped at the ends to resemble dragons' heads. i have already spoken of the "cherry-coloured roofing"--an effect which we discovered was due to no more interesting process than a coat of paint applied to corrugated iron. in a similar manner the roof of a church would be tinted a cool green, and the combination of these hues with the rich foliage was extremely pleasing to the eye. where the scattered tenements collect together and you reach the business quarter, here and there a modern shop may be seen; but the handicrafts for which akhaltsykh is in some degree famous are still carried on in those brick-built booths with their shadowed recesses which constitute the little world of the eastern artificer, at once his workshop and the mart for his wares. we examined some of the productions of the workers in silver without being tempted to buy. we were made aware of the existence of a silk industry for which the raw material is brought from georgia. we visited the schools and conversed with the masters; but the scholars were making holiday. akhaltsykh possesses two important schools, the one belonging to the armenian community, the other a russian state school. that of the armenians provides education to some 300 boys and youths, and to a still larger number of girls. both the gregorian armenians and the catholics attend this establishment; religious instruction is imparted to the members of either communion by teachers of their own persuasion in separate classes. we were told that the yearly income amounted to 14,000 roubles (£1400), exclusive of what was received from the girls; and that this sum included the receipts of the theatre which is attached to this enterprising school. the russian institution boasts of 300 scholars, of whom 75 per cent are armenians; it does not possess a branch for girls. on the other hand, it indulges in the modern fashion of technical instruction, a side which does not appear to be cultivated in the armenian school. its staff consists of fifteen teachers; a fee of twelve roubles (£1:4s.) a year is levied, but many poor pupils are admitted free. a few boarders are received, whose parents live at a distance; and i may here remark that, except in cases which i shall endeavour to specify, all the schools of which i shall make mention in the following pages are practically day-schools. we were taken to see the churches--commonplace edifices--of which the armenians, with so many examples of noble architecture about them, ought really to be ashamed. the largest of them is called the cathedral, and belongs to the gregorians; there is also, not far from it, an armenian catholic church. west of the cathedral on the hillside--it appears in my illustration--we were shown a second church belonging to the gregorian community; but i do not remember its name. it was at akhaltsykh that we were first impressed by the custom of the armenians to kiss the ground when they face the altar in prayer. such abject prostration in the dust we had never before witnessed in any christian church. it was oriental; it was pathetic--the gesture of a poor raya at the feet of his savage lord.... last of all we were shown the court of justice, where a resident magistrate and visiting judges from tiflis dispense the law behind a barrier of baize-covered tables beneath a life-size portrait of the tsar. and that is what we saw of the modern town of akhaltsykh; i doubt whether there is much more to be seen. the old town on the left bank presents a striking contrast to its young rival across the water. you gain the bridge and pause for a moment to follow the many-channelled river threading the banks of yellow pebbles in its bed; flowing through a landscape of wild and bare hills, which streams with the garish daylight of the east. the road mounts the slope of the opposite cliff or convexity, which, a little further west, joins the more abrupt ridge of crag and precipice crowned by the battlements of the fortress. in this cliff, with its swelling shapes, soft soil and irregular hummocks, the armenians have discovered a burrowing-ground exactly suited to their requirements; the gaping apertures of chimneys and windows threaten to engulf the guileless traveller who walks, unwitting, between the houses up the hillside. no vegetation relieves the monotony of the constant hues of ochre, and the tiers of clay and stone which represent the larger tenements mingle naturally with the stone-strewn surface of the friable earth. we saw two churches; one is administered by the armenian catholics, the other, which is situated a little above the first, is a russian orthodox church. besides these larger buildings there are two chapels or prayer-houses, which scarcely attain the dignity of a church. these belong to the gregorians, and we were told that the roman catholics have a small chapel within the precincts of the old town. but what interested us most was the jewish quarter with its two spacious synagogues. we admired the simplicity of these airy chambers--in the middle the pulpit, the benches disposed around; and we pictured to ourselves the eager faces of the congregation, upturned from those benches to the grave preacher and mobile to every turn of his discourse. the jew is a rare creature upon the tableland of armenia; he finds it difficult to exist by the side of the armenian, who is his rival in his own peculiar sphere. [24] there is a saying that in cleverness a jew is equal to two greeks, a single armenian to two jews. the community gathered round us and almost filled the synagogue, in which we sat and rested for a considerable space. two distinct types of physiognomy were represented; on the one hand the fat, florid cheeks and thick lips which are so characteristic of the coarser strain of jew, on the other the cavernous features, wrinkled skin, aquiline nose and penetrating eyes which are the monument of the ancient refinement of the jewish race. when we contrasted the destitution and even the misery of this quarter with the air of prosperity which the synagogue displayed, it was evident that the community were undergoing a period of adversity, and we enquired the reasons of this decline. they attributed their fallen state to the competition of the armenians; the armenians, they said, were good workers and a great people, the jews few in numbers and isolated. there was nothing left for the poor jew but to tramp round the villages, carrying his goods upon his back. they must emigrate, they were emigrating.... alas! we thought, to what distant land across the mountains, across the sea, shall the poor jew wander out? how shall he escape the dangers of the way, with the hand of the government against him, with hatred and contempt dogging his weary steps? and the christianity by our side appeared detestable to us, doubly odious by its want of every christian virtue and by the mummery of its gaudy symbols and vulgar shows. the jew carries with him the vastness of asia, the sublimity of the worship of a single god; may the nations be fertilised by the powerful intellect and their religions elevated by the high conceptions of the hebrew race! the fortress, with which the old town naturally communicates, was to us strictly forbidden ground. although i urged its worthlessness as a reason why we should be permitted to visit it, captain taranoffsky would on no account give way. the mosque, the present church, to which i have already alluded, was of course all that we wanted to see. it stands on the northern side of the fortress enclosure; the base of the minaret still remains and is crowned by a little cupola to which is affixed a cross. an inscription on the gate by which the court is entered gives as the date of construction the year of the hegira 1166 (a.d. 1752-53). [25] dubois informs us that the architect was an italian; [26] but brosset, who says that it was built upon the model of st. sophia, is silent upon this point. for the character of the interior as it existed before the russian occupation i may refer the reader to dubois. the fountain in the centre of the court is supplied by an underground aqueduct which conveys the waters of a limpid spring, some seven miles off. [27] from the old town we slowly made our way back to the encampment, enjoying the scene, observing the passers-by. here and there we would meet a group of russian soldiers in their white tunics, taking their evening stroll. their large frames, fair hair, shaven faces and coarse features contrasted with the neatness of the oriental type. their little eyes, deeply set behind the flat nose, were answered on every side by the glances that proceeded from the large and lustrous eyes of the armenian race. the sheep and cattle were winding into the town from the meadows, each animal finding its stable for itself. chapter iv to akhalkalaki the distance by road between akhaltsykh and akhalkalaki is 66 versts, or nearly 44 miles. the post divides the journey into four stages, of which the shortest is 9, the longest 12 miles. the charges, which, i think, were uniform, whenever we were able to avail ourselves of posting facilities, were three kopeks or farthings per verst for each horse supplied, and twelve kopeks for the carriage between each two stations, said to be a charge for greasing the wheels. in addition, a tax of ten kopeks for the whole journey is levied upon each horse, the proceeds of which are due to government by the contractors who supply the teams. a victoria may be procured in the larger centres, and for this luxury there is, i believe, no extra charge. four horses will usually be harnessed to it abreast, and an equal number to the luggage cart. august 31.--at ten o'clock we left akhaltsykh on our journey southwards and followed the tripping river on the right bank. it was the same road we had taken for a short distance on our way to safar, the same aspect of the picturesque site of the town (fig. 15). between us and the stream lay the stretch of meadow where the sheep and cattle of the townspeople browse--a grassy plain set in the barren landscape, a rare incident in an eastern scene. beyond the water the ground rose in gentle undulations of bank and hummock and hill, the parched and friable surface yellow with stubble or with the exhausted growth of weeds. in the background, some five miles distant, stretched the spurs of the border ranges, scantily wooded along the summits and upon the slopes. on our other hand, towards the south, all prospect was excluded by barren hummocks of crumbling soil. we had covered about 2 1/2 miles, when before us lay the junction of the rivers, of the river of akhaltsykh with the kur or ardahan river, for it is known under both names. from their nearer margins to our road extended a stretch of alluvial ground, filling the angle between the two streams. their further banks are high, and are bordered by hummock hills, a feature most pronounced on the bank of the kur. the united waters break through the soft hummocks and become engulfed in the rocky barrier of the border ranges--a bold and lofty wall of mountain, partially covered with wood. in the hollow is situated a village with trees and pleasant verdure, an oasis in the sterile landscape around. we were told that its name was tsinis and that it was inhabited by mussulmans; beyond it, through the glasses, we discerned the road to tiflis entering the jaws of the gorge. skirting the barren convexities which closed the view on our right hand, and upon slightly higher ground, we gained the left bank of the kur and proceeded along it for a short space up stream. leaving on our right a small armenian village, we then descended to the river-bed; strips of vegetables had been planted along the water, which is here crossed by a strong wooden bridge. the stream was flowing towards us, newly escaped from the narrows, where it is confined by rocky cliffs of forbidding aspect, harbouring a scanty growth of stunted bush. a few poplars lined its immediate margin, and a slender fringe of green. it had a width of some 30 yards at the mouth of the passage, a rapid current, charged with soil and tawny, which divides into several channels and forms a broad and pebbly bed as it issues upon the open plain. after crossing the bridge to the right bank, we passed a mussulman village where the women were sifting the season's grain. our course for the rest of the day lay on this bank of the river; the road leaves the plain and dives into the narrows, where walls of rock enclose the swirling stream. the kur is following the base of the border ranges, piercing the spurs where they meet the outskirts of the dochus punar. in places it has a width of some 50 yards or more, and the eye cannot penetrate the dull depths; but more often it is a narrow and shallow torrent, wreathing and foaming over the rocks. on the left bank, as we passed a break in the mountains, it is joined by the clearer waters of a little tributary, the uravel, which wound below us at safar. the weather was delightful; a cool air, a brilliant sun, a few white clouds floating in the blue. eagles, a small species, circled against the heaven or alighted on grisly crags. the sides of these low mountains are composed of a lava, dry and barren, which in places is disposed in layers of conglomerate, like the masonry of a cyclopean wall. we passed the seventh verst-stone from akhaltsykh, having covered over 4 1/2 miles. a short space further and we were opposite a georgian village, placed on the hillside of the left bank. between the thirteenth and sixteenth verst-stones (8 1/2 and 10 1/2 miles) the range opens, and is seen, beyond a plain of about half a mile in width, pursuing a direction from south-east towards north-west on the right bank. on our left hand we passed a few miserable houses which, we ascertained, were inhabited by kurds. we entered a country of bleak hummocks, where barren and yellow hills closed the view. among such surroundings lies the posting station of rustav, 18 versts or 12 miles along our road. by half-past twelve o'clock we had changed horses, having arrived a quarter of an hour before. the characteristics of the landscape between rustav and khertvis may be summarised in a few words. for awhile the bare, low mountains again border the river on either side, at no great distance from the shore. but they tend to circle in amphitheatres and to leave a respite of even ground. little rills descend from the heights above the valleys and give birth to verdure and shade. the further we proceed, these oases increase in extent, enhancing the contrast between sterile, lonely walls of rock, and luscious gardens where bright birds flit through the scene. thus on the left bank, shortly after leaving rustav, the eye was greeted by such welcome relief. a high ridge of grey rock descended to the river, but rich verdure clothed its base. the lower slopes were terraced with plantations of indian corn, and among the stubble herds of heifers grazed the sweet herbs. rivulets started from the very summit, where a grove of trees was outlined on the sky. the falling water was diffused into a network of tiny channels, which fed the fertile earth. such were the outskirts of a mussulman village, of which the name is gobet. the foreground, on our side of the river, was strewn with boulders of volcanic rock. large lizards darted from cranny to cranny, and brilliant birds with blue breasts and yellow collars took wing at our approach. the note, thus early sounded, attained increasing volume in the valleys of akhashen, of aspinja and of khertvis. the first is situated some five miles from rustav, and takes its name from a mussulman village on the left bank. [28] akhashen is a characteristic eastern village; the tenements are built in terraces up the slope, scarcely distinguished from the soil. we admired the bold site and pleasant setting of garden; at our feet, in the fuller light of this open circus, the kur sent flashes of blue, reflecting the bright zenith, from the transparent surface of its yellow stream. on our left hand we recognised the familiar outline of the border ranges stretching away from south to north. next, aspinja lay before us, an open valley, a bower of trees, water trickling from the hillside and collected in little channels which seamed the floor of fertile earth. [29] we were skirting the gardens of two mussulman villages, and some of the inhabitants happened to pass by. they looked unhappy; we spoke to one of their number and elicited the usual quantity of doubtful truths. it is certain that all the mussulmans of the kur valley are discontented; and these two communities were preparing to emigrate. mention was made to us of a recent ordinance of the russian government under which they would be required to serve in the russian army, and perhaps to fight against the forces of islam. [30] aspinja, which we soon reached, is also inhabited by mussulmans. the slopes above the village are planted with orchards, and every corner of the little plain is cultivated. indian corn, tobacco and the stubble of cereals were on all sides present to the eye. it is some distance beyond the oasis to the posting station, a stage of 16 versts (10 1/2 miles) from rustav. it was nearly three o'clock when we arrived at this station; luscious water-melons grew in the little garden and relieved the dulness of our mid-day meal. but the smiling landscape lay behind us, long out-distanced; and we were again in the fork of a barren gorge. low ridges break off to the river in rocky cliffs, which descend to a narrow margin of level ground. from the valley of aspinja these uninteresting walls are continued to the outskirts of khertvis. such was the monotonous scene through which the russian road wound during the course of our afternoon's drive. beside us raced the river; we faced the current; at short intervals large, loose stones were disposed in the shape of circles in the shallows at no great distance from the shore. we were told that in winter fish are caught within these circles by means of traps placed at opposite sides. in summer the georgian fisherman trusts to his casting-net, a laborious process which was being pursued by one of the fraternity for the reward of a few small fish. on the opposite bank we were impressed by the proportions of a cliff of lava, of which the face was disposed throughout in spheroidal blocks rising immediately from the water's edge. at last the landscape opened, the most extensive of these oases, the fertile valley of khertvis. it is heralded from afar by a line of orchards and by gardens terraced up the slope. a well-planned and elaborate system of aqueducts and channels dispense water on every side. then the road rises up a hillside and commands a startling scene. below you, crowning a crag at the confluence of two rivers, a well-preserved example of a mediæval castle on a large scale lifts its towers against a background of lofty cliffs (fig. 16). a village cowers at the foot of the fortress, almost hidden by dense trees. such is the castle and township of khertvis, situated at the junction of the river of akhalkalaki with the kur. the road follows the right bank of the first of these streams, and the station is some distance from the town. we were obliged to leave the carriage and entrust our effects to the villagers, who carried them down the steep sides of the high cliff. it was six o'clock; we crossed the river of akhalkalaki by a little footbridge, and pitched our tents on the floor of a shady garden, not far from the margin of the kur. a motley group of people collected about us; of what race, of what faith? mussulmans! we expected and received the answer, although there was little except our knowledge of the checkered history of these valleys to indicate their adhesion to islam. the owner of the garden bore the name of bin ali bey vishnadzi, and was of mixed georgian and turkish blood; he stands in the centre of my illustration, in cossack dress, with his cap on one side (fig. 17). his cast of countenance is georgian, and the hair is somewhat fair; yet his uncle, hasan bey, has the turkish type. his mixed ancestry is no exception among the villagers, and they all call themselves turks. their number was given to me as 1500, with 200 houses; the russian census, which classes them as georgians, bears out these figures as approximately correct. [31] among them are a handful of armenian christians; the old man with a staff, seated in the foreground of my picture, was our guide from the road to our pleasant camping-ground, and belonged to the armenian race. if reliance can be placed on the figure given by dubois, the population of khertvis has almost doubled since 1833. [32] however this may be, the township is now in full decline; misery was written in the faces of a great part of the inhabitants, of whom many were preparing to leave russian soil. as we passed through the streets, between the tumble-down houses, we observed that some of the shops had been permanently closed. is it their unfitness to flourish under systematic government? or the policy of the russian government to discourage mussulmans, with their turkish sympathies, or some special causes which we were unable to ascertain? our stay was too short to sift fact from fable; and a rigid reticence was observed by the leading people, who were evidently under the influence of fear. [33] the river of akhalkalaki, or the toporovan river, as it is sometimes called, enters the valley from a little north of east. it appeared to us to contain as much water as the kur, into which it swirled. [34] the united streams for a short space pursue a westerly direction until they settle to a normal course towards the north. the affluent washes the northern side of the castled rock, which protects a tongue of alluvial ground at its southern base. on this land is situated the little township, embowered in leafy groves. the castle dates from a remote period; and even the present structure is ancient, although it belongs to different epochs. the citadel with the little chapel, occupying the summit of the perpendicular rock, is a work of the middle of the fourteenth century, when the georgian atabegs were the lords of the land; the remaining portion, with its several towers, is more modern. [35] we ourselves were unable to visit the edifice, which we were never tired of admiring from the river-bed. behind it soar the walls of volcanic material, where the younger have been forced through the older lavas and have produced fantastic contortions of the rocks. [36] september 1.--from khertvis we made an excursion up the valley of the kur to the crypts of vardzia, situated on the left bank, some nine miles above the confluence with the toporovan. for the greater part of the journey, which is performed on ponies, you follow the right bank of the river, along a path which in many places becomes a mere track. we had soon left the shady groves behind us, our clever little ponies often obliged to pick their footsteps, where an outcrop of rock or blocks of fallen stone obstructed the margin of level ground. on either bank, beyond this margin, high hills enclose the narrow valley; here and there with naked crags, more generally with stone-strewn slopes, harbouring a scanty growth of parched grass. no oasis, not a sign of a human being, no visible animal life. the landscape streaming with light, and the brawling kur breaking over the boulders which encumber its bed. but the climate was delicious, and the blue zenith was flaked with luminous cloud. after over an hour's ride in this confined valley, we reached the ruins of a fort, or small castle, and issued upon more open ground. the valley expands on the right bank of the river in an irregular series of hill and dale. we passed the rush-grown banks of a little lake, so blue and clear that it lay like a jewel on the waste. it is called sülük, or lake of leeches; and hasan bey, our guide, told us that leeches abound. in a hollow on the further side of this lake we came upon the gardens of the mussulman village of margistan. beyond this oasis, and beyond the open ground about us, we could see the valley contracting, the river flowing through a gorge, overhung by perpendicular cliffs; and we were shown our path climbing the side of the cliff and entering the jaws of the gorge. we had crossed or skirted the volcanic circus, with the lake in the extinct crater, of which dubois has furnished us with a learned account. [37] before us lay the defile through the gigantic dam of volcanic mountain which has opened, as if by miracle, to the puny stream. soon we are winding along that path, about at mid-height of the cliffs, the river brawling far beneath us, a tortuous thread of foam. it is a remarkable scene, a freak of nature on a large scale, of which none of us, at least, has seen the like. the volcanic layers have been split by vertical fissures, and huge masses of conglomerate rock tower high above us, almost separated from the mountain side. their masonry of cemented blocks gives them the appearance of castles, the work of a more than human hand; they threaten to tumble headlong into the valley, a fate to which some have already succumbed. they remind me of the devil's city of montpellier-le-vieux, in the cevennes country--a mere sprite's village by their side. the dark colour of the rocks, the gloom of the passage, the height of the cliffs, soaring from the twilight in the hollow to jagged summits some 500 to 600 feet above the gulf, all contribute to enhance the impression of mystery and to suggest the presence of a prince of fiends. opposite us, on the left bank, the bold outline of the fish-backed ridge is crowned with the ruinous remains of masonry, barely distinguished from the rock. a long line of crumbling edifices marks the site of a considerable fortress; in the depths beneath, at the foot of the perpendicular mountain, a wall descends the last slope to the margin of the water and cuts off access to the valley from the river-bed. a few miserable huts are seen in the hollow: who could inhabit such a weird and lonely spot? kurds, they say, as though they were no human beings--a lingering remnant of turkish times. the ruins are the relics of zeda tmogvi, a stronghold famous in the history of these lands. [38] beyond this gorge the valley opens and resumes the more normal character of a torrent bordered by lofty hillsides. the further you proceed, the floor of the hollow is covered by richer verdure, while a grove of fruit trees spreads shade. are they wild or were they planted? the extreme loneliness of the scene was scarcely broken by a sign of human life. we forded the kur, and, after winding through these orchards of the river margin, doubled a projecting spur of the valley wall. we were at the foot of a perpendicular cliff which displayed irregular rows of gaping caves at a considerable height above the river-bed. these grottoes have been cut in the face of a layer of volcanic rock of extraordinary smoothness and of flesh-coloured hue. the layer does not extend to the summit of the cliff, which is composed of a conglomerate with greyish tints (fig. 18). it was vardzia, a troglodyte city of a remote antiquity, which the georgians and armenians believe to have been founded in the twelfth century by the father of queen thamar, and to have been completed by that princess. they say it was a favourite residence of thamar; you are shown the cave in which she resided during winter, the terrace where she spent the summer days, the chapel where her brilliant court assembled, even, it is affirmed, the tomb where her remains were placed. this last object had evidently escaped the knowledge of the resident priest, although dubois has sought to establish its identity with a curious structure which he found in the little sacristy on the inner side of the church. [39] vardzia is, in fact, the city of thamar, just as every castle in georgia is the castle of thamar and every antiquity a relic of the great queen. we picked our way among the boulders up the steep side of the cliff until it became a perpendicular wall. there commence the irregular horizontal rows of caves, stretching eastwards, where the escarpments are most abrupt. a narrow path ends at a polygonal structure of which the roof has fallen off. this edifice is either modern or has been extensively restored; it forms a gateway and seals the approach to the caves. the gate passed, you stand on a level footway, partly hollowed in the rock and partly supported by rude masonry, which takes advantage of the inequalities of the cliff-side. in the steepest places this footway is tunnelled through the rock, and it can, of course, be barricaded at any point. thus it would appear that vardzia is inaccessible to siege, at least by any of the usual means. but one remembers that timur employed an ingenious contrivance to reduce the georgians, when they fled to their caves. from the heights above he suspended wooden stages, from which his warriors leapt into the crowded grottoes or scattered fire among the panic-stricken foe. vardzia itself is said to have been taken by this conqueror, by what methods i do not know. we were met by an old archimandrite and his deacon, the only inhabitants of this long-deserted place (fig. 19). they are supported by the occasional contributions of pilgrims, who visit the church in great numbers at certain times. both were sunk to an equal degree in abysmal ignorance, and the deacon was so shy in manner and movement, he seemed a half-tamed creature of the rocks. i asked them the meaning of the name vardzia, which, according to dubois, signifies, both in georgian and armenian, the fortress of the roses. they derived it from zia, which means uncle, and vard, i am here. they stoutly maintained this extraordinary derivation, in face of the doubt which we displayed. we passed along the footway for some distance, with grottoes above us and beneath. then we came to an imposing vaulted balcony, of which the inner side and roof are hollowed in the rock, and the other parts are built up with masonry. the footway forms the floor of this balcony, which looks important when seen from below. the vaulted ceiling is adorned with old frescos, which are in a state of advanced decay. a doorway opens from the inner wall to a spacious cave--an oblong area with an arched roof, disposed in the familiar shape of a simple nave and apse. this church has a length of 46 feet 3 inches and a breadth of 27 feet. for decoration it depends upon richly-coloured frescos, some of which may still be seen. in the apse are depicted mary and the infant christ; on the virgin's right is placed a female aureoled figure, clad in white and with embroidered bands. on a pilaster, left of the apse, you discern the features of a woman whose dark complexion impresses the eye. it seems an egyptian type; she has been honoured with an aureole; the old priest declared the portrait to be queen thamar's, but he was almost certainly in error. in the panel of the arch, which lies beyond, a king and queen are represented, aureoled, their hands extended towards a stage upon which are seated the virgin and child. an angel is flying towards the virgin, bearing an object the nature of which we were unable to ascertain. a passage leads from the church to an adjoining chamber, in which the articles of value are preserved. dubois informs us that above this church, and as it were a second storey, a second temple has been hewn of equal size. a subterranean passage connects it with the sacristy; and this same passage tunnels the cliff and debouches at the caves where the wine of the city was made and stored, and which are situated in an adjoining gorge. dubois, who discovered this passage, found it blocked with débris and in disuse; its existence was not mentioned to ourselves. beyond the church we were taken to the apartments of queen thamar, which are situated further to the east. on our way we were shown a cave which must have served as a bath-chamber; an oblong well has been sunk into the floor. in the recess behind, a broad drain is visible, said to be the receptacle of the water-vessels. we also noticed a grotto which displayed a number of hewn pigeon-holes, and which had probably served the requirements of a chemist's shop. the queen's grotto is a spacious vaulted chamber, 32 feet 4 inches in length, 20 feet 1 inch in breadth, and some 14 feet in height. a doorway gives access to this interior, and there is a small aperture or window on either side. on the opposite wall, and towards its right corner, you see a communicating apartment of much smaller dimensions; and to the left of this recess has been hewn an arched niche with a depth of over 4 feet. several smaller niches adorn the chamber, of which a feature is a low divan, cut at the foot of each wall, a continuous ledge only 13 inches broad. on the right of the entrance, in the wall which runs at right angles, is situated another small apartment, lit by an aperture on its outer side. it may be that these smaller chambers served as sleeping-places; the ingenious dubois boldly assumes that the first was a wardrobe and the second a kind of boudoir. in the floor are several hollow spaces, as usual in these caves. above the grotto is situated the so-called summer apartment--an open cave issuing upon a terrace from which a fine view is obtained. but what impressed us more than the caves and their associations was the solitude of the place, the sense of extreme remoteness--some pulseless corner, as it seemed, of the living world. a torrent winding between grave cliffs, covered with a scanty growth of parched herbage; no runnel diffusing life, and by our side the precious water collected in a cistern with a floor of cement. where are the vineyards which must once have clothed the lower slopes, protected by the walls of the volcanic valley against the rigorous climate of a region over 4000 feet above the sea? nature had blighted the scene with layers of lava and cinders; man reclaimed the spot with laborious patience, until the work perished under the curse of his fellow-man. but what enemy would penetrate to this hidden valley, concealed behind the most inaccessible zone of the border mountains, defended by the devil's gorge? perhaps the appearance of the opposite cliff affords a clue to this mystery. it is higher than the summit which towers immediately above you; the outline is horizontal and the edge flat. it is in fact an exposed rim of the great tableland, broken here by the cañon of the kur. a series of plains extend hence to the furthest skirts of persia, vague divisions of a single elevated stage. [40] the afternoon was far advanced as we retraced our steps to our encampment, and night already rested in the gorge. we were disappointed of a photograph of its solemn horrors, and made our way in silence beneath the twilight, following the murmuring stream. on the following day we proceeded to akhalkalaki up the valley of the toporovan. the posting station of abazbek, 14 versts from aspinja, is situated some distance up the valley, and the stage between it and akhalkalaki is one of 18 versts or 12 miles. it was between these points that we travelled for the first time in a brichka, or springless posting cart. the drive occupied about three hours, and the road, which was well constructed, mounted continuously, following and fronting the swirling current of the toporovan. the gardens of khertvis extend for some distance beyond the castle, and a portion of the township lies upon this side. then the margin of the river contracts to the verge of disappearance, and stony cliffs, with an elevation of about 200 feet, border the water on either bank. it is in fact a deep crack in the surface of the plateau, upon which the town of akhalkalaki stands. not a village did we pass, or any oasis among the rocks; it was indeed a bleak scene. but the sky, flaked in places with wandering white clouds, was intensely clear and blue, and the foaming river refreshed the scene. after passing the low edifice of the castle of akhalkalaki, which lines the edge of the cliff on the left bank, we crossed to that bank by a wooden bridge and wound slowly up the hillside. it was evident that we had arrived almost at the head of the formation, the point where the watercourse descends from the surface of the plateau and eats deeply into the volcanic soil. it was almost night when we reached the level summit of the cliff and breathed the crisper air. a place was found for our tents in an open space of the little town, which is situated at an elevation of 5545 feet above the sea. chapter v at akhalkalaki at akhalkalaki we had reached a country which is peopled in large preponderance by the armenian race. the town is the centre of an administrative division (ouezde), which is dependent upon the government of tiflis. this division is partitioned into two administrative districts, of which the most northerly takes its name from the village of baralet, on the way to lake tabizkhuro; while the more southerly is called the district of bogdanovka, a russian settlement on the road to alexandropol. the population of the division amounts to a total, according to the published statistics, of 59,500 souls; or, according to the figures which were kindly communicated to me by the governor, of 66,000 souls. the numbers of the armenians are given in the first of these lists as over 42,000, a proportion of seven-tenths of the whole; while in the governor's list, which, i presume, is the most recent, they are censused at 58,000, a proportion of seven-eighths. i am inclined to place more reliance on the total furnished by the governor than upon his subdivision according to race; and i shall conclude that the georgians contribute a sixth of the inhabitants and the russian settlers something less than a tenth. these figures do not comprise the town of akhalkalaki, which, out of a total population of something over 4000, contains 4000 armenian inhabitants. [41] be they immigrants or aboriginal, the character of their surroundings is in harmony with the instincts of their race. a vast and elevated plain upon which the snow lies in winter and a southern sun shines. a fertile volcanic soil, abounding in springs and favourable to cereals of every kind. measured from north-east to south-west, the plain of akhalkalaki has a length of nearly forty miles; [42] its latitudinal extension may be gauged by the course of the kur on the west, and, on the east, by that of the stream which issues from lake madatapa and skirts the outworks of the eastern meridional range. the plain is situated at an altitude which ranges between 5500 and 7000 feet. the soil, when exposed by the plough, is black in colour, or, perhaps, dark chocolate, and reveals the influence of the lavas below. the extreme evenness of the surface is due to the fluid nature of these lavas, which streamed, at a comparatively recent period, from fissures at the southern base of the trialethian mountains and from vents at other points of the mountain girdle which encircles the flat expanse. on the floor of the plain itself the effects of volcanic action are visible in the forms of hummock and rounded hill. volcanic emissions have produced the lap-like enclosures which are the reservoirs of the lonely lakes. their waters are fed by springs from beneath the surface, and by copious rains from the clouds of the pontic region, which fly the topmost bulwarks of the tableland and distil on the western slopes of the meridional volcanic barrier, the limit on the east of the even ground. from agrikar to karakach is the section of this barrier along which this process of condensation is most pronounced; the mountains are known by the natives under the collective name of mokri gori, the wet mountains. the principal stream, besides the kur, is that which issues from lake toporovan, and, descending south, flows through lake tuman. after emerging on the southern shore, it receives an affluent from lake madatapa, and pursues a northerly course. where we arrived upon its margin, half an hour south of akhalkalaki, it was a nice flash of water, flowing slowly over the surface of the plateau. below the town it is joined on the left bank by a stream which has descended from the northern slopes of the chaldir hills; and further west, on the right bank, by the river of samsar, which brings the drainage of the north-easterly arm of the plain and flows in a deeply eroded bed. [43] at akhalkalaki the toporovan is bordered by lofty cliffs, a cañon or trough which has the appearance of a sinuous crack in the surface of the plain. gaining the summit of either cliff, you stand on level ground, with a flat or undulating country sweeping around you to the distant limits of the mountain chains. you breathe a keener air when you emerge from the narrow valley; the town is placed at a little distance from the edge of the cliff which rises along the left bank. but how present my reader with a picture of a settlement which is nothing more than an agglomeration of one-storeyed, flat-roofed houses, placed, as it were at random, on the floor of the plain? it seemed ridiculous to focus the camera at such an insignificant object--the flat roofs, with their covering of withered turf, repeating and lifting the texture and colour of the ground. moreover akhalkalaki is a fortress; the camera is interdicted--a happy thought in this particular case. fortress-spying would be a poor amusement in this country; like the fleet of spain, they are so extremely difficult to detect. the old castle above the river has been restored and converted into a barrack; a similar purpose is served by some stone buildings in the environs of the town. i do not know that the god of war is otherwise represented; but greater honour has been paid to the demigods of justice, and the governor remarked to me--what was indeed sufficiently evident--that the prison on the outskirts was the only two-storeyed edifice in the place. just a house or two, including that of the governor, had been provided with a roofing of metal sheets, painted a pleasant red. but all the tenements appeared well built, of solid stone masonry; and the street or two which the place contains were certainly spacious, although ill-maintained and deep in dust. when we arrived, we were greeted by a chorus of the pariah dogs, as though we were entering a purely eastern town. still there are a few modern shops, notably a large drapery establishment, where the necessaries of civilised life may be procured. a feature were the wooden hoods on the tops of the houses, a feature not uncommon in the towns of armenia; they serve as screens to the apertures of the chimneys, and appear a dangerous contrivance to european eyes. such was our impression of the aspect and character of akhalkalaki, the new fortress. vague tracks lead away into the surrounding country, which is bare and bleak in the immediate neighbourhood of the settlement. in addition to the principal avenue of outside communication by way of akhaltsykh and the passage of borjom, the town is connected with georgia by a road which crosses the trialethian mountains and debouches by a short cut at the last-named place. we were shown this road, where it mounts the cliff on the right bank of the river, as we crossed to the left bank. leaving lake tabizkhuro on the right, it mounts to the spine of the system, which it crosses by a pass of about 8000 feet. [44] tiflis may no doubt be reached by the valley of the khram, but i have no information upon the nature of the route. metalled roads are scarce in these distant provinces; it may surprise the reader to learn that the road we travelled over from akhaltsykh was only completed in 1892. during all those previous years of russian occupation the post was carried from the important centre of alexandropol to foreign countries along a stony track in the valley of the toporovan. akhalkalaki has belonged to russia since the campaign of 1828, when it was taken under marshal paskevich by assault. it was not the first time that russian troops had entered the fortress; it had fallen in 1812 to the arms of general kutlerusky, who marched from gori and took the garrison by surprise. in the time of paskevich the defenders were a determined body of men, recruited from among the most warlike of the inhabitants of these countries, and serving in their own land and under their own chiefs. flushed by the fall of kars, the general appeared before the place and summoned the turkish commander to submit. his emissaries received the reply that the women and children had been removed, and that the men were determined to die at their posts. they numbered 1000, with fourteen cannon; and they reminded the russians of the proverb that one soldier of the province of akhaltsykh was equal to two of kars and three from erivan. red standards were displayed on the walls, and, during the progress of the siege, the garrison was heard making the responses to the mollah, who led their prayers from the gallery of the minaret and who had himself sworn to share their fate. a cossack officer stepped forth and endeavoured to parley with them; he fell, pierced by a number of bullets. no opposition was offered to the establishment of the batteries; no attempt appears to have been made to outwit the foe. the russian cannon beat down the walls, their rifle fire decimated the defenders, following them from wall to wall. paskevich then gave the order to cease firing, and called upon them afresh to submit. the old answer was returned; the assault was sounded; nor were the cossacks appeased and the honour of the defenders satisfied until six hundred of the men of akhaltsykh had eaten the dust. [45] at the time of our visit colonel tarasoff was civil governor of the town and administrative division; he received us with the utmost courtesy. we would leave our tent to join his hospitable family circle, to discuss the many interesting features of the country and to drink endless glasses of delicious tea. we learnt that the road to akhaltsykh had been made under his directions; greek workmen performed the blasting and stone-cutting, while for the levelling forced labour was employed. the road is the property of the russian government, and horses are provided by contractors to carry the post. the administration is conducted on a primitive but common-sense principle: a head man in every village, responsible to a head of a group of villages, who is again answerable to the governor himself. besides police--among whom the armenians are prominent, their fierce faces belying the reputed meekness of the race--colonel tarasoff has a force of cossacks at his disposal; and it is of course open to him to send for the troops of the district, should any special emergency arise. in addition to the governor, there is in each larger town a resident judicial officer, who dispenses justice ex contractu as well as ex delicto, and whose judgments are subject to revision at assize. as usual in the armenian provinces, the need of elementary education is supplied from a double source. foremost in the field are the armenians, with a separate organisation; the russian state school is not so well attended, and, in this province, is probably not so well served. yet the russian principal impressed me as a capable and, certainly, as a most amiable individual; he was a georgian, speaking georgian as his native language; his wife and family affected the georgian dress. his pupils consisted of 150 boys and youths, all, or almost all, armenians. the school supplies a kind of secondary education as well as the elementary course. of this privilege to its rival, the armenian school was justly jealous; it is only allowed the two primary classes, which the scholars complete in their twelfth year. the roll consisted of 250 boys and no less than 300 girls. a reading-room and library were attached to the institution, and it was evident that the teachers were men of greater attainments than are required by the kind of instruction they are supposed to dispense. i sat with colonel tarasoff in his court, a well-ordered building, in which he is wont to reverse the procedure of his classical prototypes. enter to us an old turbaned mohammedan; status, mollah of doubtful fame. he has come to akhalkalaki with the object of collecting money wherewith to purchase sacred books. but only the chief mollah has the right to take subscriptions for this purpose; and where is the written authorisation in favour of this mendicant, bearing the seal of the most holy man? enough, that he cannot produce it; he must desist from his collection. he must be silent: the next case is called. enter a roughly-clad georgian peasant, a lean figure, a dejected mien. he has been staying overnight at a village in the district, and has been robbed of three cows. the governor has given orders that they must immediately be restored to him; two have been returned, he cannot recover the third. decided that the village itself must pay the full equivalent; a look of delighted surprise lights the poor man's eyes. enter a georgian of the middle class who impresses us as a stupid fellow; but he brings a highly original plaint. it appears that he has fallen out with his brother, and that they both occupy the same house. they have separated their goods and do not speak to one another. complainant applies to the governor to order his brother to open a separate door. i can scarcely refrain from betraying my host by a peal of laughter; he knits his brows and dismisses the case with a volley of hard words. enter a young man, one of two brothers who live together and share a common employ. it so happens that both have been summoned to perform military service; may one of them be exempt? supporters of families are excused, and the conscription in transcaucasia is as yet conducted on a very small scale. still the colonel upholds the summons; the service covers a short period, and will do both brothers good. chapter vi prospect from abul east of the town of akhalkalaki, which almost touches the long train of the western slope, a bold mass of mountain features the landscape, square-seated on the floor of the plateau (fig. 20). it rises to a height of nearly 11,000 feet; but this imposing altitude is shorn of half its grandeur by the lofty levels of the adjacent plain (5500-6000 feet). still the mountain overpowers all the surrounding outlines; the summit overlooks the neighbouring heights. when we had issued from the chasm of the toporovan river and gained the surface of the plateau, our first thought was to ascend this elevated viewing-stage, and command the flat expanse, bordered by dim and distant ranges, which was now unfolded before us on every side. horses were impressed on the morning after our arrival to take us to the foot of the higher slopes. we were informed that it was necessary to make the half-circuit of the mountain and to start climbing on the eastern side. but why reject the tempting gradients of the nearer western slope, sweeping towards you with a succession of harmonious curves? yet where obtain a satisfactory answer to this question? the actual experiment might involve the loss of a day. so we bowed to the decision of our native conductor, and became reconciled to the long ride. mile after mile the great plain stretched to the westward, a solid sea, patched in places with fallow and stubble, but treeless, without a hedge, without a boundary of any kind. we were approaching the stony confines of the mountainous zone which borders the plateau on the east. the wretched village of abul rears its stacks of cow-dung fuel among a waste of stones. seen from the side of akhalkalaki, the mountain presents the appearance of a composite mass. a long trough mounts to the summit region, dividing the fabric into two halves. each half is crowned by a well-defined summit; that on the south is single of form and considerably lower, its loftier neighbour on the north appears to possess two peaks. in reality this double peak conceals a third fang, which is prominent on the eastern side. the three-fanged summit communicates with its less elevated neighbour by a lofty col, the uppermost edge of the trough. the slopes of abul display the volcanic origin of the mountain, and descend in long-drawn outlines to the plain. the lengthiest declines westwards from the more northerly summit, and has the shape of a long back or ridge. the steepest is the slope just beneath this summit, facing north; it is inclined at an angle of 30 degrees. the village of abul is situated to the south of the western slope, and would present a convenient starting-point from which its easy gradients might be scaled. our guide, however, assured us, i cannot conceive upon what foundation, that the ascent would occupy two days. so we left the village to skirt the base of the southern half of the mountain, of which the sides have a gradient of 18 degrees. rounding the mass, we were able to reach on horseback some grassy uplands of the further slopes. this favourable nature of the ground extends to a considerable elevation, and had probably been the inducement which had influenced our leader to bring us such a long way. from these pastures it was a climb of one and a half hours over the rocks to the pinnacles of the loftiest and most northerly mass. we sent the horses back, with directions to meet us on the further side, since we had decided to descend by the western ridge. throughout the length and breadth of the armenian highlands, themselves the loftiest section of the bridge of asia between india and the mediterranean sea, there is perhaps no summit, with the possible exception of that of ararat, which possesses a prospect at once so distant, so extensive and so full of interest as that which expands on every side from the triple peak of abul. [46] you stand on a stage which commands the fabric of the nearer asia, without dwarfing the proportions of the majestic structure, without confusing the varied members of the vast design. the tableland with its open landscapes is unfolded before you, swelling and falling from plain to hummock, from hummock to rounded ridge, from vaulted ridge to the soaring arcs of an alagöz and an ararat, crowned with perpetual snow. the troubled outlines of the border ranges encircle the mysterious scene; and, far away, from a gloomy background to this full sunlight and radiant atmosphere, lurid flashes are reflected through layers of murky vapour by the snows of caucasus, infinitely high. the detail of the landscape engages the mind with the same engrossing fascination as the panorama impresses the sense. from west right round to south, vast tracts of level ground are outspread at your feet. here and there the plain is broken by barren convexities, of which the outlines mingle with the outlines of the surrounding chains. no wood or leafy hedgerows dull the mobile surface, which is responsive to every mood of the sky. but a large area is checkered with black and yellow patches--alternate fallow and stubble-field and standing corn. the reclamation extends to the slopes and recesses of the neighbouring mountains, struggling upwards to the verge of the rock. yet this human note is lost in the immensity of the scene, which displays no other sign of the presence of man. lonely lakes lie lapped in the hollows of these mountains and upon the floor of the plain. a deep crack in the solid earth features the distance from west to south, and is drawn towards you almost at right angles through the plain. it is formed by the sinuous clefts of the kur and the toporovan, and it is almost the limit of the level ground upon the west and north. beyond this cañon of the kur, which is distant some twenty miles, ridge upon ridge of lofty and barren mountains are massed upon the horizon from south-west. they belong to the dochus-punar volcanic system, and they overpower all the ranges about us, with the exception of the dim caucasian chain. from those slopes, as from these slopes upon which we are standing, lavas have streamed over the surface of the intermediate country and levelled the inequalities of the ground. that eruptive action is long extinct; the fires are dormant; no wreath of smoke crowns the familiar volcanic forms. the system is seen to sink to the cañon upon the north, where a gap in the outlines gives a passage to the kur. on the northern side the heights are resumed by a long, serrated ridge, which belongs to the northern border mountains, and which extends from west by south to east by north. a little west of north lies lake tabizkhuro, with the dome of samsar rising from its shores. the foreground towards the north is filled with mountain masses, with vaulted summits and rounded slopes. our guide was unable to name them to us, and i therefore busied myself with an outline sketch. a long ridge sweeps away from abul on the north-eastern side in a hemicycle concave to the west. it mingles with the forms of the nearer masses, of which the most prominent may, i suppose, be identified with kör ogly and godorebi, members of the abul-samsar eruptive group. the long bulwark of the trialethian chain is either hidden by these nearer mountains, or only disclosed through brief vistas to a sea of outlines beyond. the northern horizon is closed by the snowy peaks of caucasus, over a hundred miles away. towards the east we were not impressed by any commanding features in the mountain landscape, although we were overlooking the eastern wing of the meridional eruptive system, flanked by the somkethian ridges on the further side. between us and those vague shapes was lapped an extensive lake, lake toporovan, broken by the outline of the eastern fang of abul. but what are those gleaming snows, just protruding above the horizon from a snowless vaulted ridge in the south-east? the flat horizontal outline is broken towards the centre by a low serration of snow-clad peaks. it is alagöz, seventy miles distant in a straight line; it is even said that from here the dome of ararat is visible, when it is not concealed by its faithful wreath of cloud. compared to these, the nearer heights in the south are thrown into insignificance; the eye completes the circle to the point from which it started, the lofty ridges in the south-west. slowly we made our way over the piled-up boulders, down the back of the long ridge which descends to the westward, along the northern side of the deep trough. before us, on the plain, we followed the fissure in the even surface which marks the course of the hidden river of akhalkalaki, until it was lost in the radiance of the setting sun. regaining our horses, we paused for awhile on the margin of a little marsh which is situated about at the foot of the mountain, some 4000 feet below the topmost peak. the mournful chorus of frogs broke the intense silence, and contributed to the impression of the loneliness of nature which inspired the mood of our homeward ride. chapter vii gorelovka and queen lukeria discussing the projects of our future travel, i was reminded by colonel tarasoff that we must not fail to make a stay in one of the villages of russian peasants which were situated upon the route of our journey south. the governor had so often sung the praises of these villagers that we were all anxious to comply with his advice. if only this fertile country could be inhabited by such a peasantry; what crops it would bear, what riches it would produce! he added: "be sure to visit gorelovka; there you will see what russian colonists can bring to pass." russian colonists! but, of course, russia is not yet in a position to colonise, however much these distant provinces of her asiatic empire may be in need of new methods, of new blood. indeed, the rulers of russia early recognised the expediency of introducing into their lawless possessions beyond caucasus a leaven of orderly and strenuous elements from the west; and in the dearth at home of such material, which might be available for the purpose, they invited or encouraged settlements from abroad. it is possible that they were shown the way by the finger of providence; it is at least certain that, when once the favourable opportunity arose, they did not suffer it to pass them by. in the earlier years of the present century the kingdom of würtemberg was the scene of a struggle among the protestant community, of which the origin was no less curious than the results were strange. it had been solemnly announced by several popular pastors that the second coming of christ was near at hand. such was the confidence of the reverend teachers in their prophetical powers, that they had already fixed the date when the sun and moon should be darkened, the celestial bodies should reel, the ocean roar, and men expire from fright before the crowning event had been accomplished--the son of man appearing with glory in the clouds. these signs and stupendous portents should be revealed to a distracted world in 1836. greater credence was attached by the people to these terrible predictions by reason of what was passing in their little world. their clergy were divided on a religious question well calculated to touch to the quick the popular mind. the predominant party succeeded in effecting an alteration in the prayers and hymns of their beloved church. passions became inflamed which appeared to herald persecution, which rallied the faithful in defence of the old forms. were not the days of tribulation already upon them; and in what asylum among the mountains should these christians of a larger judæa find the refuge which had been promised by the word of christ? the same teachers assured them that such an asylum would not be wanting, and might be found in the neighbourhood of the caspian sea. the fearful nature of the divine warning, the conviction that it would be early realised, the aversion which the new-fangled forms of worship inspired in many earnest souls--all contributed to steel the old protestant courage; to induce a large body of human beings to leave home and native land behind them, and, without superfluous forethought, to embark on the perilous journey to that distant land where they might await in peace and spiritual contentment the glorious coming of the redeemer of the human race. their ranks were swelled--such is the irony of our complex society--by many who were in search of change and adventure; they left würtemberg 1500 families strong. two-thirds of these are said to have perished before reaching odessa, where the remnant was reinforced by a further body of their countrymen, to the number of 100 families. in the emperor alexander i. they found a friend who extended to them extensive privileges upon their arrival in georgia in 1817. they were settled in several colonies in the governments of tiflis and elizabetpol, which have endured to the present day. they have been tried by afflictions and internal dissensions; some have perished by wild beasts, some were carried into captivity during the course of the persian war. still their numbers have increased, their standards of life have been maintained, and the traveller rests with pleasure within their villages. but neither the paramount object of their migration nor the wider purpose of alexander has been fulfilled up to the present time. the jealousy of the russian church-state has deprived them of much of their potential usefulness; and mankind are still groping beneath dark clouds of error, faintly silvered with the precious promise of perfect light. [47] the fate or fortune of these german settlements was recalled to me at akhalkalaki not only by the mention of the russian colonial experiment, but also through our intercourse with a forlorn individual, whose history linked him with the early history of that courageous company. what use to conceal his name, since i cannot hide his identity, since i am only dealing with the current facts of provincial life? it was the mission of sembat baghdasareantz to sow abroad the seeds of the gospel, carrying his liberty and even his life in his hand. an armenian by birth, he had pursued his studies in europe, where he had resided among the methodists of frankfurt, although not a member of that persuasion himself. a protestant, he disclaimed allegiance to any particular denomination; he belonged to the society of evangelical preachers which had been founded some seventy years ago in shusha, the capital of the province of karabagh, by missionaries from basle. zaremba is the name of the teacher whom his successors most closely associate with the origin and early struggles of their brotherhood; his memory is joined with that of his colleague dittrich, who shared his labours from the first. these missionaries represented a society whose devout zeal had been directed to the mohammedans of distant persia; prudence dictated the choice of a base within the territory of russia; yet the russian church was a formidable enemy on russian soil. she claimed the right of baptizing and holding within her own communion all converts to the christian faith. but an exception had been made in favour of those communities of heterodox christians which were tolerated by the russian state; it was permissible for a mohammedan to become converted to their tenets and to be enrolled as a member of their sect. the society of basle were therefore encouraged to attempt the expedient of a protected colony, which should receive a special charter from the russian government and be invested with the character of a tolerated sect. an example of such a colony was already before them; their scotch brethren were engaged in preaching to the mountaineers of caucasus from an adopted home at karass. in the pursuit of this purpose, zaremba and dittrich were sent to st. petersburg in 1821. they were received by the same alexander who had favoured the germans, and in a spirit which partook of their own zeal. liberal provisions were attached to the charter of their prospective colony, among which the right of baptizing converts was included. they were further authorised to establish a printing press, to found elementary schools, and to organise a seminary in which the higher learning should be dispensed. in the meanwhile they were invited to travel in transcaucasia with the view of selecting a locality for their future home. when the missionaries arrived in georgia in the spring of 1823, their interest was aroused by the condition of the german colonists--their co-religionists, almost their countrymen, settled in this remote country without spiritual direction, without the elements of ecclesiastical order. could there exist a prior claim upon their own activities than was furnished by the spectacle of this flock without shepherds, severed from the homestead and wandering where it might? their first summer was devoted to the charge of these brethren, among whom the slow blight of purely worldly preoccupations had already sapped the vigour of early zeal. the success of their efforts appears to have awakened the lutheran consistory of st. petersburg, to whom the spiritual interests of their co-religionists in russia are entrusted by russian law. the consistory sent a pastor, duly commissioned; and the colonists were resigned into his hands. but the hardy germans had not quarrelled with ecclesiastical authority in their native country in order to subject themselves to similar tyranny in their new seats; they disclaimed any connection with the consistory, and refused to accept its nominee. the dispute was referred to alexander, and was by him decided with his usual good sense. he consented that the society of basle should supply them with pastors, and he went so far as to endow their churches himself. when the missionaries next turned their attention to the pursuit of their original purpose, they were confronted by difficulties of a different kind. to their surprise they were informed by the governor-general of transcaucasia that the government possessed no land on the persian frontier which could be spared for the settlement they had in view. the mission itself would be allotted a building in any town which they might select; and, although the privilege of receiving converts would not be legally attachable, the governor himself would exert his influence to protect them in its exercise should their efforts be blessed with fruit. shusha was their choice for the establishment of their mission; schools were opened and a printing press set up. but in the countries west of india the conversion of mohammedans has at all times been an arduous and ungrateful task. our own missionaries, established in persia, are roused to extreme enthusiasm should a stray moslem embrace their faith. i remember travelling across persia with one of these pampered individuals, who appeared to me to be admirably equipped for early perdition among the surroundings in which his walk in life lay. the experiment was boldly made by the missionaries of shusha, although the conquests of russia, a few years after their installation, provided them with an ample field for conducting their operations without crossing into persian soil. zaremba followed in the track of the armies of paskevich, distributing the scriptures, duly translated into turkish, and arguing the eternal truth of christianity and the errors of islam. but his books were torn in pieces by a population among whom contempt for christians is engendered through their mother's milk; and i do not know that the bread which he cast upon the waters has been found up to the present day. better results might be expected from their labours among the armenians, whose clergy they discovered sunk in the depths of ignorance, where the beginning of the twentieth century finds them still. but they had not anticipated the existence of this sphere for their activities; and in the absence of special powers it was not permissible to them to receive converts from a christian church. it was open to the proselyte to enter the orthodox church of russia; but, if he desired to be baptized by a minister of the tolerated sects, his own clergy could claim him back. it was inevitable that, with the progress of their schools and religious teaching, such a case should soon arise. it is, no doubt, the lofty virtue and the traditional practice of the armenian church to respect the religious tenets of other christian churches, and to inculcate a large tolerance among their congregation of the doctrines held by their brothers of a varying creed. in this respect the reverend traveller, to whose work i am indebted for this little history, might have learnt but failed to learn a valuable lesson from a clergy whose general standards he justly condemns. [48] but the attitude of these militant missionaries, no less than the success of their efforts, touched the vanity of the armenian hierarchy to the quick. two deacons of their persuasion had become allied to the swiss teachers, without formally renouncing their own church. they were accused of influencing the people against their old religious practices, and, according to a time-honoured usage, it was ordered by the katholikos that they should be bound and sent to edgmiatsin. the missionaries appealed to the governor-general, who, in the spirit of a roman proconsul, inquired for what reason they were interfering in the concerns of the armenian church. let the germans remain germans and the armenians remain armenians--a ruling which was modified by the imperial government, to whom this high functionary referred the case. it was decided, much to the dismay of the religious communities, that if a man were determined to leave the bosom of the armenian church, it was not permitted to the clergy to retain him by force. but this favourable disposition on the part of the central government was in advance of russian methods. the victory of the missionaries was not of long duration; the multitude of their enemies overbore the power of their few friends. their printing press is long since silent; they have no successors, except a few armenian preachers, faithful to the old traditions, of whom our friend at akhalkalaki was one. he himself was confined by government within the limits of this remote fortress; two years he had already passed in this manner of imprisonment; for three more years he was sentenced to remain. he earned his own subsistence as clerk and assistant in the large draper's shop. in shusha itself, if i may trust the official statistics, the members of the armenian protestant community did not exceed twenty-six souls in 1886. [49] russian policy of the present day abhors missionary effort; it has been justly remarked by a recent clerical traveller that if a priest wishes to travel in the russian provinces he must divest himself of his clerical character and clerical garb. [50] i myself can testify to the extreme difficulty with which the protestant missionaries in turkey obtain permission to cross russian soil. such is the jealousy of that orthodox church, the object of british episcopal blandishments, to whose mercies it is announced that the archbishop of canterbury is about to transfer his long-cherished pupils, the chaldæan or assyrian christians of kurdistan. [51] to sembat the russian colonists were an object of peculiar interest, not indeed in the same capacity in which they appealed to the governor, but by reason of the kind of religion which they professed. here was a people who, like himself, were exiles for the sake of religion, who resembled, in their aversion to the trammels of ecclesiasticism, the congregations in whose bosom he had himself been reared. the history of the dukhobortsy or dukhoborians--i became familiar with the latter termination, and such is the name of the sect to which these settlers belong--composes a chapter which is neither the least remarkable nor the most creditable in the history of the russian church-state. their origin would appear to be wrapt in some mystery; according to one account a discharged soldier first disseminated the teaching in the government of kharkov and in the year 1740. [52] count tolstoy adopts the view, which would appear the more probable, that it was a foreigner, a quaker, immigrant to russia, who spread the seeds of their belief. [53] neither their opinions, nor the temper which was the outcome of their convictions, were calculated to promote the smoothness of their early course. in a country where church interests permeate every act of policy, they denied the necessity, even the expediency of a church. among a people attached with devotion to their temples, images and eikons, they professed the uselessness of all such external aids to religious life. the crusty formulas cracked under their merciless logic; and the grim earnestness with which these spiritual combatants grappled with themselves and with society wore out the patience or aroused the apathy of the state. already in the eighteenth century they suffered persecution; and so bitter grew the feeling against them, that in the early years of the nineteenth century the emperor alexander i. settled them in the tauric province, in the neighbourhood of the sea of azov. but alexander was not the man to become the instrument of their enemies, whose hostile instances provoked an imperial rebuke. it had been proposed that a further migration of the sect should be required; the ukase of 1816 enacted that no such migration should take place. the same edict recited the favourable testimony to their character which had been received from the official in whose district they lived, dwelt on the proved futility of the measures previously taken against them, and proclaimed that, far from meditating the repetition of any such measures, it was the imperial will that every unnecessary restriction should be removed and that all annoyance of the sectaries should cease. the humane, the wise policy of this enlightened ruler has not been followed by his successors on the throne. nicholas the first expelled them to the transcaucasian provinces, and they are being persecuted at the present day. the principal emigrations took place between 1841 and 1845. they were allotted seats in the bleak country on the south of akhalkalaki, whence they have spread into the government of elizabetpol and into the more recently acquired province of kars. according to the census of 1886 their numbers in their adopted country amounted to 12,500 souls at that date. [54] in the eyes of a philosopher the dukhobortsy may appear to practise pure religion, and to observe the spirit of the teaching of christ. yet in the view of the majority of christians their doctrines would be deemed heretical and their religious usages would be condemned. such an attitude is the fruitful parent of misrepresentation and calumny; and the account of them which we received from our itinerant preacher was not untinctured by these defects. in justice to him one must remember that his own services would be repudiated by these fellow-offenders with him against the majesty of the orthodox church; that neither a zaremba nor an eli smith would be welcomed by these simple peasants and solicited to direct and elevate their spiritual life. the imagination of the oriental may have been coloured by the prejudice of the christian teacher; yet i cannot doubt that the tales which he told us about them were widely current in the gossip of the countryside. according to sembat, considerable mystery surrounded the religion of these peasants, which he himself had not sufficient knowledge to dispel. pagan practices were freely imputed to them; and they were said to worship images of birds and beasts. whether they worshipped them, or only regarded them as symbols, it was at least certain that they were in the habit of making such images, and we could judge for ourselves what purpose they served. and then he related to us a portion of the story of lukeria--half-goddess and half-queen. september 5.--in the east mankind is usually a monotonous animal, which you would scarcely notice, such is the majesty of his natural surroundings, were it not for the needs which you share in common with him, and which he most indifferently supplies. it was therefore with expectations of no ordinary character that we set out from akhalkalaki to visit the russian colonies on the southern margin of the great plain. the direct distance between the town and gorelovka, the principal settlement, is seventeen miles. the road, although it constitutes the avenue of communication with alexandropol, is little better than a track. in places the carriage is jolted in a merciless manner by protruding boulders, embedded in the soil. we started at half-past two, on a course a little east of south; the vastness of the expanse and the billowing surface of the naked soil suggested the appearance of the sea. but the horizon was outlined by the forms of lofty ranges, encircling the floor of the plain. banks of white and grey cloud were suspended about their summits, while the zenith was blue and the air crisp, yet full of sun. at three o'clock we gained the margin of the toporovan river, a flash of water slowly flowing over the surface of the plain. on the further bank a small armenian village; a little tartar settlement on this shore. we paused awhile, that we might realise the features of the landscape, the same we had commanded from the summit of abul. on our left hand we were skirting some stony hummocks, which flank the mass of abul. that broad-based mountain rose beyond them, closing the landscape in the east. on our point of course, some eight miles distant, a range of gentle vaulting stretched from east by south to west by north. it may be identified with the outer framework of the mountains which encircle lake chaldir. in the south-west we discerned a break in the ranges, the distant passage of the kur. on our right the level plain; and beyond it, at a long interval, the lofty ridges which border the kur on the left bank. behind us, from a second cleft or opening in the mountains, a long serrated ridge, which belongs to the northern border ranges, and which formed a striking feature in the prospect from abul. this chain and that in the west appeared to be the highest, except for the nearer outline of abul. in another half-hour we had passed the track which leads to manzara, and were crossing the richest portion of the plain. the deepness of the furrows in the black earth argued careful cultivation; the crops had already been gathered in. we were now pursuing a rather more easterly direction, and could see a gap in the outlines on our point of course. the hummocks still followed us, at an interval of a couple of miles, and, beyond them, the meridional range to which abul belongs. but, on our right hand, we now lost the open prospects; low, rocky hills advanced from the region of lake chaldir. it seemed a neck of the plain; for, further south, the view again opens, and the plain expands anew, in the form of a gulf-like extension, towards the water-parting between the araxes and the kur. it was evident that we were reaching considerably higher levels, for the crops were still standing, although ripe. the reapers were busy, gaily clad armenians, the women helping in the work. in the distance, at the base of the eastern mountains, we saw a village, which was inhabited by armenian catholics. the cereals consisted of oats, from which they make bread, and a species of bearded wheat. at half-past four we arrived at the first considerable village, which, indeed, proved to consist of two villages, both of which adjoin the road. the first is called khojabek, and is inhabited by armenians; it contains fifty houses, and possesses a church but no school. the second, bogdanovka, is a russian settlement with eighty houses, the first of those settlements which we were so anxious to see. [55] at this double village we crossed a stream which was said to issue from lake chonchal, and which bears the same name as the lake. bogdanovka is not a favourable specimen of its species. i did not notice any appreciable contrast between the russian and the armenian village; it is indeed possible that they may have mutually affected one another, not to the advantage of the russian settlement--in both cases rambling, stone-built tenements, and flat roofs, topped with turf. dirty little lanes, of uneven surface, debouch upon the principal street. but the gait, the physiognomy of the two races--what a remarkable contrast in this respect! large, lustrous, coal-black eyes: little, colourless pupils; shapely features, animate with expression: formless protuberances from a massive, heavy skull. the ugliness of the women especially appalled us, and we were impressed with the deliberate slouch of the men's walk. we had come a distance of 18 versts (12 miles). after changing horses, we gained some rising ground on the further side. from here we could see lake chonchal, with a village at the foot of the rising ground on its opposite shore. in half an hour we were at the tiny lake and village of orlovka--a ragged-looking place, of which a striking feature was the stacks of tezek or dried manure. this was the second russian village; we were disappointed. gorelovka, the goal of our journey, was to come next. the range on our left still continued; but on our right the hills had receded, and were replaced by gently rising ground. patches of arable land mounted the slopes about us, suggesting that the rising tide of reclamation was flowing into these remote solitudes. we noticed that the soil had become more turf-like and fibrous in character; we thought it well adapted to potato culture, but not a field of potatoes could we see. these uplands provide good pasture during summer and sweet hay for the long winter months. it was a landscape of open downs at a great elevation; we had reached a height of some 7000 feet. such are the bleak surroundings of gorelovka. we were chilled to the bones when we arrived at half-past six. the impression which we had received at the two smaller villages was quickly dispelled by our new surroundings. great was our pleasure when we recognised that the high opinion of colonel tarasoff was amply justified by those to whom it applied. it is true that these sectaries are the flower of the peasantry in russia; but that peasantry is none the less honoured by what they have achieved. gorelovka is the largest village in the district; it contains 150 houses and a population of some 1500 souls. the inhabitants said it was fifty-two years since they came hither from russia, and were allotted lands. each house pays fifteen roubles (about thirty shillings) annually to the state for the rent of their lands. snow lies on the ground for about eight months in the year, and, like the armenians, they heat their houses with tezek fuel, or cakes of dried manure. i admired their ploughs and spacious waggons; they are their own handiwork. you do not see such ploughs and waggons among their neighbours--armenians, tartars and turks. on the other hand, they have not improved upon the usual threshing implements--the flat beams encrusted with sharp stones. they said they had found this method in use in the country, and that it satisfied their needs. their markets are alexandropol and akhalkalaki. cereals struggle for existence at this altitude; yet the patches of plough and stubble, spread upon the hillsides, climb higher every year. [56] it is pleasant to watch the waggons, loaded with hay, winding homewards over the springy turf. a dukhobortsy village is not built into the earth, like the burrows of the armenians and the kurds. the russians cheat the climate by the additional thickness which they put into their solid stone walls. their dwellings are low, one-storeyed houses; the masonry is covered over with plaster, which receives several coats of whitewash. a long street traverses the village--straight, broad and well maintained; the houses are aligned upon it at intervals. the roofs are almost flat, and consist of stout beams, supporting a superstructure of earth and sods of turf. the chimneys are mere apertures in the roof, protected by little wooden hoods. we found the interiors clean and comfortable; the wooden ceilings are neatly mitred, and the walls are distempered white. the deep embrasures of the windows testify to the thickness of the walls. in some of the russian settlements, through which we passed later, the people had adorned their homes with gay shutters and combings of fretwork design; in gorelovka no work of fancy adorns the dwellings of the peasants, and they have lavished all their skill in wood-carving upon the residence of their queen. the inhabitants are tall and powerfully built, and, although they are bronzed in complexion almost beyond recognition, the fair hair bears witness to their northern origin. their limbs are loosely put together, so that, apart from the difference of their dress and demeanour, they present a strong contrast to the neatly-made natives of the country, by reason of their lofty stature and the unbuckled slouch of their walk. the features are irregular, the eyes small, and the countenance is wanting in animation, in the case of both women and men. the dress of the men consists of dark blue trousers and jacket and a peaked military cap; this costume gives them the appearance of old soldiers, and all seem to shave the beard. the women wear very clean cotton dresses of showy patterns and bright hues. next morning, according to arrangement, we were to visit, in company with our host, alexei zupkoff, the venerable starshina, or head of the village, the residence and garden of the queen. the brother of the queen joined our party--michael vasilievich ghubanoff, the same of whom count tolstoy speaks. we passed down the long, straight street of the village, the spacious intervals between the white houses opening to the breezy downs. entering an enclosure, we found ourselves in a delightful flower-garden, among trees and thick rose-bushes, allowed to spread in freedom, and only saved from rankness and riot by the loving hand of man. how strange, after our wanderings among peoples whose material standards hover on the extreme margin where life is just possible and no more, appeared to us the sight of these garden flowers and the scent of the double rose. a low one-storeyed building faces the garden on two sides; the one wing contains the chapel and reception room, the other the private apartments in which the queen used to live. passing within the doorway, we stood in a little hall from which rooms opened, one on either side. both apartments are spacious, and their size was enhanced by the complete absence of furniture. large stone stoves are built into the rooms, and form the most prominent feature in them; these stoves are usual in all the houses, but in this house they are decorated with a scroll of stone carving, which is not the case elsewhere. the ceilings are low, and the walls are so thick that the windows have the appearance of fortress embrasures, with their deep cavernous sills. the two large rooms on either side of the hall were formerly devoted, the one to prayer meetings and the other to social gatherings; but it was evident that they were not in use at the time of my visit, and i was told that assemblies in this house had been interdicted by government, on account of the fresh outbreak of fanaticism which was apprehended should the people come together beneath the roof of their former queen. the general arrangement and appearance of the chapel or apartment in which they used to meet for prayer is this--the low ceiling is composed of narrow pine planks, the surface being relieved by delicate wood beadings along the seams where plank meets plank. the large pier of the stove projects boldly into it from the side of the door. the walls of such rooms are in general covered with a neat paper of common russian pattern, and the floors are either painted a reddish colour, or the boards are left natural, and stopped, and scrubbed daily, like the deck of a yacht. round this particular apartment there runs a low bench; this is the only sitting-place. large pots of flowers, carefully pruned and tended, bloomed in the deep embrasures of the windows, and broke the light, diffused about the sober apartment in a warm and regular glow. in that part of the building where the queen used to live, the rooms, although smaller, presented a similar appearance; they were maintained in the same state of scrupulous cleanliness as though she inhabited them still. the furniture had all been removed from them; but, in addition to the pots of beautiful flowers, there was in each a dish of easter eggs. in the centre of the garden among the rose-bushes stands the summer pavilion of the queen (fig. 21). the kernel of the structure may be described as consisting of two square boxes, placed one above the other, and serving as living rooms. each side of the upper room is broken by a large window; so that the view from within embraces the whole settlement and all the landscape around. the lower room contains a bed and a row of pegs, on which, behind a light covering, hang the dresses of the queen; that above is bare of all furniture, and was always used as a sitting-room. a broad wooden balcony with staircase runs round this inner kernel, supported on pillars of wood. they have lavished all their skill upon the decoration of this balcony, enriching it with delicate fretwork traceries and with figures placed at the angles of the roof. at each corner sits a dove with wings outspread, while on the summit of the roof a dove is just alighting, the wings just closing, the legs outstretched. in front of the pavilion, on the side of the house, there is a large standard lantern, a work of curious design and fancy, surmounted by an image of st. george and the dragon, carved with much life and vigour in wood. by my side stood the man who had made these images, and i asked him whether they had any religious meaning, peculiar to their creed. i was loath to put the question, so obvious was their purpose, so universal the symbolism they implied. he answered good-humouredly that they were pure ornaments, and that he was flattered by my appreciation of his skill. in a room, removed from the part of the village in which the queen lived, they showed us her furniture and effects, her personal ornaments, and every detail of her attire. everything that belonged to her had been carefully kept and cherished, like the relics of a saint. her possessions had been those of a simple peasant woman, verging on the middle class--a velvet chair or two, some statuettes in plaster, a few chromo-lithographs. many trays of coloured easter eggs were here collected--the offerings, i suppose, of many happy easters, when she had led their congregations of prayer. seven years had elapsed, at the time of our visit, since they had lost their beloved lukeria vasilievna, their leader both in spiritual and in temporal matters; they honoured and obeyed her like a queen. [57] her influence was supreme among the settlers on these highlands; and it appears to have extended to all the colonists in transcaucasia of the dukhobortsy sect. the traveller radde, who visited gorelovka in 1875, was privileged to meet her in her home. he describes her as a widow in the thirties, strong, tall, of full but still shapely forms. her features wore the imprint of beauty. he testifies to the veneration in which she was held. that lukeria was nothing more to them than the contemporary holder of an office which had been the outcome of their religious and social needs, would, i think, be no less fallacious to suppose than to credit the rumours current in the country that it had been in the character of a divine personage that her people had submitted themselves to her will. a childlike nature, at once the product of the religious temperament and its peculiar pride, may find it difficult to discriminate between the emotions of worship and of love. when i questioned them, they strongly disclaimed for lukeria any pretension to supernatural gifts, and they rejected as a fable the imputation that they had paid her divine honours. they had loved and revered in her a good and noble woman, who raised their lives, relieved their sorrows, and led their aspirations towards the higher life. the evidence of her work and example is written in the appearance of this model village, and in the demeanour of its inhabitants. all were well clothed and clean and well nourished; it was a pleasure to see them go about their business in their quiet, earnest way. i saw no poor people in gorelovka, not a sign of the habitual squalor of the east. provision had been made for the orphans and the destitute, and i understood that all the colonists of the neighbourhood contribute to the funds. but what impressed me most, beside the evidence of their affection in these dwellings and this enclosure maintained in neatest order, as though in spirit she inhabited them still, was the love of flowers which the queen appears to have developed in her people and brought them to share with her. in the decline of wealth and of the arts, the sight of garden flowers becomes more and more rare in the east; and, at best, they are there little more than the ornament of luxury and the setting of sensual delights. at gorelovka one cannot doubt that these geraniums and roses are cultivated for their own sake alone. the religion of the dukhobortsy resembles that of our own extreme protestants; it is the government fans their zeal into destroying flames. that they are christians there can, i think, be scarcely any doubt; they told me positively that they acknowledged and worshipped christ as god. [58] but god is a spirit, and they that worship god must worship him in spirit and in truth. the spirit of god dwells in the souls of his servants, who themselves are sons of god. how therefore can a church, an image or an eikon claim reverence as a holy thing? in these there dwells no spirit, no effluence of godhood; the church of god is the human soul. reasoning thus, the dukhobortsy bow to one another after prayer, saluting the divinity that resides in man. scripture they accept; but the book of god must be a living book, a book to which there is never any end. hence their religious conceptions float about in the mouths of the people, in the form of psalms. new psalms may be sung; but the old psalms never perish--the word of god, old yet ever new. they reject priests and all the apparatus of official religion, and themselves conduct whatever simple ceremonies may be necessary upon birth, at marriage and after death. the moral ideas of the dukhobortsy are such as might be expected from a people who hold this lofty view of the nature of man. man, being the receptacle of the divinity, must not injure, must not kill his fellow-man. hence they do not see the necessity of judicial tribunals; for they do not wish to wrong any man. nor do they consider that one man should exercise authority over another; each one must do his duty, because it is his duty, and no compulsion can be necessary from outside. that from such peaceful surroundings there should issue fierce dissensions, that a people trained to mutual love and forbearance should be inflamed by the worst passions of an opposite nature, and turn the hand which they had been unwilling to lift against their fellow-men upon the brothers of their own creed, is a melancholy example of the failure of purely emotional methods to elevate permanently the nature of man. it seems there are no short cuts to virtue; the standards attained under the impulse of religious enthusiasm have but an ephemeral life. with the death of lukeria was removed the personality and visible example for which simple natures crave; and the exaggeration of sentiment, of which she had been the object, brought with it its own revenge. although cut off at the early age of forty-three years, the queen was already a widow when she died. her marriage had been childless, and, even had she possessed a natural successor, the place which she occupied in the imagination of her people would perhaps have been impossible to fill. yet scarcely a year had elapsed from the time of her death when a pretended successor arose--a boy, who, i believe, claimed relationship with her, and who presumed to be worthy to wear the mantle which had hitherto descended on none. the inhabitants of gorelovka, whose version of the story i am giving, were emphatic in their statement that this youth was an impostor. "he told lies," was the expression which they used. his authority had never been acknowledged by them, and he had stirred up their own brethren against them. i gathered that they had not stopped short of actual violence in the ardour of religious and partisan zeal. gorelovka, it appears, had been solid against the usurper; but opinions had been divided in the neighbouring villages and throughout the community settled in transcaucasia of the dukhobortsy sect. the russian government, as was natural, surveyed the situation from the standpoint of hard-headed prudence; they were not anxious to see installed a successor to lukeria and a revival of the old religious flame. the weight of their authority was thrown in the scale against the pretender; he was suppressed without delay and banished from the country to a remote exile in the north. at the time of our visit the feud was slumbering; count tolstoy informs us how it broke out anew. it would appear that the pretender--his name was peter veriguin--was supported by the large majority of the dukhobortsy, who were incensed at the action of the authorities in making over to the brother of lukeria, our friend ghubanoff, the succession to the communal funds. from his place of exile veriguin corresponded with his disaffected brethren; government, apprised of the fact, removed him to siberia during the winter of 1894-5. while he was in moscow on his way to the land of forgetfulness, he was visited by his relations and by some of his spiritual allies. them he charged to convey a proposal to the brethren: that they should abstain from participation in the violent acts of government, should refuse to serve in the capacity of soldiers, and should destroy all their arms. this proposal was accepted by the whole of the larger party; and they prepared to translate it into action without delay. in the government of elizabetpol, on the first day of the festival of easter, eleven dukhobortsy, who were performing military service with a reserve battalion, refused to parade, and formally signified that they intended to serve no more. at their head was an individual who, in spite of his legal disability as a sectarian, had been promoted to the rank of a non-commissioned officer for his high qualities and the exceptional nature of his deserts. their example was followed in other provinces, in akhalkalaki, in kars. no pains were spared by the authorities to save them from their rashness; when persuasion failed, fear was tried. five recalcitrants in akhalkalaki were taken into the prison yard and placed in line. a firing party of cossacks was called in and ordered to load with ball; the prisoners asked and received permission to pray. the command "make ready" was next issued, and a few minutes passed. the former soldiers quietly awaited the word to fire. it was not given; the muzzles were lowered, and they were conducted to their cells. in other places cossacks charged the prisoners and made pretence to cut them down. when the sectarians still persisted in their decision, they were beaten with the lash. asked how they justified their action, they answered that they were christians, endeavouring to observe the precepts of christ. nor was their refusal to serve in the army the only issue with government into which they were carried by their aversion to violence in human affairs. it so happened that a certain prisoner, in course of transportation, was brought to one of their villages. it was the duty of the elder of the village to provide for his further escort and to hand him over to a sure man. this charge had fallen by turn upon the brother of the sergeant who had renounced service on the first day of easter. the man informed the elder that he could not escort the prisoner because he would be unable to use force. he asked him to report his refusal to the authorities; but the elder answered that he was not prepared to turn traitor; he should bring the prisoner to the house of his temporary warder, who would act as he thought best. the man returned to his house; the elder brought the prisoner, and went away. the warder treated his charge as though he were a pilgrim, warmed him, gave him to eat and drink, gave him a bed. next morning, observing that the prisoner was a poor man, he supplied him with money and offered to direct him on his way. when they had arrived outside the village, he showed him two roads, of which he gave him the choice. he told him that the one led to his destination as prisoner and the other to liberty. the prisoner preferred the first road, and came to the place of his destination. in this case no evil consequences ensued. in 1895 the prison of elizabetpol contained no less than 120 members of the dukhobortsy sect. all had been sentenced for offences of the nature already described; but the crown of the people's offence was not yet come. in a country where the holding of arms is regarded in the light of a civil duty, they determined to burn every weapon in their possession of which the purpose was to kill men. the night of the 28th of june, the eve of the feast of peter and paul, was chosen for the simultaneous execution of this resolve. in kars and in elizabetpol the event passed off without serious trouble; but the case was different in the province of akhalkalaki. about three versts from the village of orlovka there is an excavation in the rock, which the people call "the cave." in this spot it was their habit to hold their large prayer meetings; it was now chosen as the tryst for the burning of arms. on the appointed night about 2000 people were there collected; a pile was made, fuel and petroleum added, and the whole ignited in due course. in the morning, when the flames were exhausted, the assembly offered up prayer, and each man returned to his home. the day passed quietly; they returned in the evening, and collected together the metal parts which had escaped the fire. these they melted into a mass, in the presence of a still larger concourse, among whom were many women and young children. in gorelovka, which was on the side of government, the restless symptoms among the opposite party, and the fact that they were collecting arms, had not passed unobserved. anticipating attack, the villagers had denounced their co-religionists and had received a garrison of cossacks and regular troops. on the 30th of june an order came to all the settlements that the governor was about to arrive in bogdanovka from gorelovka and that he required all the settlers to repair to that place. those who were at home obeyed the summons; their absent kinsmen, although apprised of the order, remained where they were and engaged in prayer. a messenger arrived and repeated the injunction. the old men answered that they were praying, that their prayers would continue, and that, if the governor wished to see them, it was his part to come to them, they being many and he one. a second messenger was sent with no better fortune. then the watchers ran in with the news that the cossacks were close at hand. no sooner had the assemblage closed together than the horsemen were upon them. an officer rode at their head and cried "oura!" the crowd was ridden down and mercilessly beaten with the sharp lashes which the cossacks use. a man was seen to brandish his whip in the air for shame of striking. the officer approached him, shouted to him that he was deceiving the tsar, and struck him in the face with his lash. bruised and covered with blood, the people were taken to the governor; the women followed, although the cossacks tried to whip them away. approaching bogdanovka, they met the carriage of the high official, and the officer shouted "hats off!" the old men answered him that they would know how to do their duty when the governor passed and saluted them. again "whips, oura!" and a second pitiless beating, until the grass was red with blood. the governor stopped the whipping and proceeded to bogdanovka, where he collected the brethren who had remained behind. when he began to upbraid them, a man stepped forward with a military certificate in his hand. this document he handed in to the governor, announcing that in future he refused to serve. the governor lost command of his temper and beat him with a stick. then the people declared that they would no longer obey government or comply with any of its demands. the governor retaliated by ordering them to be whipped, and even threatened to shoot them down. the next measure was to quarter cossacks in their villages, who lived at free quarters and violated the women. four hundred and sixty-four families were expelled from the district and sent to starve in georgian villages. these became labourers to the georgians and continued to maintain their high character. [59] reflecting upon this story after reading these accounts, the mind travels back to the dawn of christianity and to the annals of the early church. the famous letter of pliny appears fresh and modern, while the grave language of the london times in the leading article which it publishes mingles naturally with the spirit of a pre-christian age: "the first principles of their creed lead straight to social anarchy, tempered only by the whims of the 'sons of god.' they are doubtless sincere fanatics, and as such must be looked upon with a measure of pity and respect." it is interesting to place by the side of this paragraph in a modern newspaper the words of the great historian of the roman world: "the christians were not less averse to the business than to the pleasures of this world. the defence of our persons and property they knew not how to reconcile with the patient doctrine which enjoined an unlimited forgiveness of past injuries and commanded them to invite the repetition of fresh insults. their simplicity was offended by the use of oaths, by the pomp of magistracy, and by the active contention of public life; nor could their humane ignorance be convinced that it was lawful on any occasion to shed the blood of our fellow-creatures, either by the sword of justice or by that of war, even though their criminal or hostile attempts should threaten the peace and safety of the whole community;... while they inculcated the maxims of passive obedience, they refused to take any active part in the civil administration or the military defence of the empire.... this indolent, or even criminal disregard to the public welfare exposed them to the contempt and reproaches of the pagans, who very frequently asked, what must be the fate of the empire, attacked on every side by the barbarians, if all mankind should adopt the pusillanimous sentiments of the new sect?" have the christians of the present day become pagans, or did the pagans only change their name? chapter viii to alexandropol to-night we are to sleep on the banks of the arpa, by the waters which swell the flood of the araxes and sweep the base of ararat! this was the reflection which lightened the mood of sorrowful meditation that our visit to gorelovka had inspired. our grave hosts, for whom one felt a vivid sympathy, a warm affection, conducted us in their spacious waggons to the posting station of efremovka, a few versts' distance along our road. it is a russian settlement with some ninety houses and a population of 860 souls, besides a collection of huge and formidable dogs. the station is a stage of 16 versts (10 1/2 miles) from bogdanovka, and of 21 versts (14 miles) from the succeeding post house of shishtapa, which was our destination for the afternoon. at efremovka we took leave of our companions, and, at the same time, of the solid villages of this russian zone. a country of elevated uplands, a natural carpet of springy turf, broken here and there by patches of cultivation which struggle upwards from the plainer levels to the hillsides. grey lights descending from a grey heaven upon a surface swelling and falling like the sea. in the east the near reliefs of the mountains of the meridional border, their base checkered with plots of fallow and stubble, their summits veiled with cloud. at their foot the lake and marsh of madatapa, with the russian village of troitskoy upon its shore. in the west the vague downs, rising to a distant horizon of loftier shapes, similar to themselves. such were the opening phases of the scene through which we passed to the scarcely perceptible water-parting between the araxes and the kur. after less than an hour's drive from efremovka we could see the village of korakhbur (armenian catholic) on the hillside, about a mile away on our left hand; on our right was an armenian hamlet, which was named to us jaila; both are situated in the southern watershed. the height of the parting between the basins, at the point where we crossed it, is placed by the russian map at 6777 feet, a figure which, if it errs, is below the truth. and now for the first time were disclosed the gleaming peaks which we had seen from abul--beyond a line of hummock hills the group of snowy teeth which break the horizontal outline of alagöz. tazaken, a turkish settlement; khancharli, a large village of armenian catholics, were rapidly left behind. the landscape opened to a lofty range of swelling shapes and rounded outlines on the western margin of the plain. they were the mountains about lake chaldir; the declining sun was about to touch them from behind a shroud of mist. sheets of light were thrown upon those distant opaline masses as upon the coast of a hazy sea. at a quarter to six--we had left efremovka at 4.20--we were winding between the two shishtapas, on our right the turkish shishtapa, washed by the young stream of the arpa; the armenian shishtapa further away on our left. at six o'clock we crossed a bridge which spans a tributary of the arpa, coming from the east. the confluence takes place some hundred yards below the bridge, and the name of the tributary was given to us as kizil-goch (the red lamb). it is a solid stone bridge with a curious stone ornament; on the further side you rise to an eminence which overlooks the arpa, and upon which the lonely post station of shishtapa is built. the doors were heavily barred; when at length they yielded, after many grumblings, a wizened figure in official uniform stepped forth. it was the postmaster--it seemed the embodiment of some immense and ideal sorrow of which all human griefs are but the mirrored images. how cross the threshold upon which he stood, how enlist his sympathy with our puny wants, who himself was the incarnation of want? but the keenness of the air overcame our hesitation; a night in tents and without blankets was the alternative course. so with a greeting, which was coldly returned, we led the way to the interior, followed by our dismal host. it appeared to consist of a single room, a spacious apartment with bare floor and white-washed walls. a few chairs and a large table were the only furniture; the only ornaments the usual coloured oleograph of the reigning emperor, and, perhaps, the almanac and the posting map, which were suspended on the walls. yet the postmaster was not the only occupant of the building; children appeared, and with them a young and beautiful girl. a polish maiden? one could not doubt of the answer, as one admired the slender form, the swelling bust, the full lips and the pale face with its animated eyes. ah! the pitiful story eloquently told by this unambiguous presence--the mother already a victim to the prolonged atrophy of these cheerless surroundings, the father a sapless tree in an alien soil. who sent them to such cold solitudes, these warm natures and passionate temperaments? find a wilderness and it will be tenanted by a pole.... the practical question arose: how accommodate ourselves and the family within the four white walls? the father protested that it was completely impossible; the girl came to our assistance, and revealed the existence of an adjoining closet, which she offered to share with the children for the night. after partaking of a frugal meal, after several futile attempts at sustained conversation, our strange party disposed itself for the night. for myself, i could not sleep, for all the comfort of my camp bed, and memories of sound slumbers which it evoked. was it the grave faces of the russian peasants and the strange irony of their history and circumstances that haunted and kept the mind strung? or were the senses fluttering under the presence of the fair woman whose soft breathing one could almost hear? god residing in those frames of steel, god incarnate in her voluptuousness!--yet their god was not the god of the pantheist, but a stern, a militant god.... and thought wandered out into the stony by-paths, the home of the sprites that mock thought. the ingenious wickedness of man with his churches and his heretics, and all the cowering crowd of jews, armenians, poles! a faint light was already diffused over the cheerless apartment as i passed down the row of heavy sleepers and gained the door and the open air. day had broken--a morning of perfect stillness, the vapours lingering on the saturated grass. a cold, grey world of bleak uplands and mist-veiled mountains, a chill atmosphere which sent one pacing to and fro. but when the sun rose above the haze into the clear vault of heaven, the colours started, the chill softened into delicious freshness, and the peculiar beauty of the scene was revealed. one looked in vain for the snowy fangs of alagöz; they had been lost to view behind the amphitheatre of nearer outlines which composed the closing phases of our stage of yesterday. but within the limits of those gentler shapes was outspread an ideal landscape, typical of the most elevated areas of the tableland (fig. 22). the plainer levels were invested with the character of swelling downs, and down and hillside were carpeted with turf. over the green and fibrous surface flowed the arpa and its tributary, flashes of white and luminous blue. here and there brief patches of cultivation checkered the soil, especially towards north-west and west. in the middle distance one could discern two villages of moderate size--the two shishtapas, barely distinguished from the waste. beyond the turkish shishtapa, obscuring all but the first line of the settlement, lay a captive cloud, an opaque opaline mass. the illustration shows the rivers descending towards you and uniting at your feet. the hills which line the distance circle round and mass behind you, closing the prospect towards the south. in that direction the united waters bid farewell to the grassy uplands, and enter the stony tracts which slope to the plain of alexandropol between the outworks of the chaldir system and those of the meridional border range. september 7.--by half-past eight we were following the course of the arpa and taking leave of the green meadows and blue streams. we were soon involved among the hummock ridges which confine the amphitheatre of the shishtapas, and through which the river winds in a stony valley, at some little distance to the west of the track. progress was retarded by the steepness of the inclines as we crossed this elevated ground. once again in possession of a prospect, we were skirting the bases of successive promontories, which projected, on our left hand, from the mountains of the meridional border into the broken surface of a volcanic plateau. this plateau extends for many miles to the westward, and is bounded by lofty mountains on that side. the arpa was running off into the easier levels in the west, while the road hugged the rocky eastern shore. the waters of the river were not visible after leaving shishtapa; they are buried in a cañon, of which you trace the sinuous edges through the bleak and boulder-strewn waste. ala-kilisa, a village of armenian-speaking greeks; amasia, a turkish settlement; karachanta and kara mehemet, the first inhabited by turks, the second by armenians, were successively left behind. at half-past ten we arrived at the station of jellap, a stage of twenty versts (thirteen miles). the post house is situated at some little distance from the village--an armenian settlement which is exposed to view after you have left the station, high-seated among the rocks above the road. it is a gloomy habitation, standing in a stony valley by the banks of a stream which descends to the trough of the arpa from the rocky hummocks to which the road adheres. starting at a few minutes after eleven, we commenced by crossing a projecting promontory, mounting the slopes of the puny ridges by steep gradients, and never regaining the prospect which had been lost before reaching jellap. at length, at half-past eleven, the valleys opened; and we overlooked the landscape of the plain of alexandropol. a vast plain lay before us, level as water, to the floor of which the ground declines on every side. a single mountain, which has the appearance of a gigantic bank of soil, is drawn in a long horizontal outline along its southern verge. this outline is the dominant feature in the scene, extending from north of east to south of west (fig. 23). the heart and highest points of the volcanic elevation are situated in the easterly portion of the mass; they are represented by the jagged profile of the broken outer side of a crater, and they gleam with perpetual snow. some conception of the stupendous proportions of the mountain may be derived from a rough measurement of its protraction in a latitudinal sense. on the east the volcanic emissions have been arrested by the barrier of the border ranges; on the west they have descended from the central or subordinate points of eruption to the valley of the arpa chai. from that valley, in the neighbourhood of ani, to the road which passes between the volcano and the meeting slopes of the border chain is a distance of over 40 miles. throughout this space the bulk of the giant is thrown across the landscape, his head and body resting against the framework of the border ranges, his feet extended to the margin of the historic stream. such a prospect is the rich reward of the traveller; we paused to admire and to realise the scene. it was difficult to believe that those snowy peaks were over 30 miles distant; yet a glance at the map brought home to us this fact. the floor of the plain has an elevation of some 5000 feet, while those peaks are 13,000 feet high. between us and the base of the mountain no meaner object disturbed the view, which ranged uninterrupted across dim tracts of earth and stone, tinted with shades of ochre in the burnt grass and scanty stubble, but treeless, without verdure of any kind. in the east the limit of the plain is the outline of the border ranges, of which we were touching the skirts; they describe a wide curve, concave towards the expanse, and appear to pass over into a meridional direction before the point of intersection with the volcanic mass. their sides are bare of vegetation, as are those of the volcano, and they are much broken into hummock forms. from north-west descend the slopes of the chaldir system, of which the base is inclined towards the plain. in the west the eye is unable to discern a boundary to the misty distance of flat or undulating ground. a little to the right of the white summits in the south your attention is directed to a slender line of grey--a low relief upon the surface of the plain. it is alexandropol; such is the first view of the site of the city, backed by alagöz. we made rapid progress across the level interval and arrived in the town at a quarter before one. chapter ix at alexandropol the city and district of alexandropol are included in the administrative division of the government of erivan. yet they are separated from the capital and territory of that name by a natural barrier of vast extent. the mass of alagöz, which one may compare to a gigantic shield with a central boss, interrupts communication with the valley of the araxes. it must be turned and cannot be crossed. in a geographical sense the province of alexandropol unites more naturally with that of kars; while, if we measure its importance by the populousness of its principal town, it deserves to enjoy a position of primacy in the government of which it may form part. the city has double the number of inhabitants as compared to erivan, if i can trust the figure given me by the governor and corroborated by the leading notables--a round total of 30,000 souls. [60] its extreme youth and the fact that it is almost exclusively peopled by armenians are the most remarkable features about alexandropol. at the commencement of the nineteenth century the site was partly vacant and partly tenanted by an insignificant village called gümri. the district formed part of the outlying province of shuragel, [61] which belonged to the georgian kingdom at the time of the annexation of georgia by russia in 1801. the cossacks who came to take over this important piece of territory appear to have established a camp in the vicinity of gümri; the place was early developed into a frontier station on the side of turkey, and in 1817, when it was visited by an english traveller, was already occupied by a considerable russian garrison. [62] in the war between russia and turkey, which broke out in the spring of 1828, this partially fortified position served the russians as an advanced base. it was on the line of advance or defence on the side of gümri that the russian military authorities placed the greatest store. there the russian possessions were most open to attack; but, on the other hand, it was through gümri that they could take the offensive with the greatest advantage, since it enabled them to cut off akhaltsykh and the northern provinces from erzerum and those upon the west. how turkey could have permitted her powerful neighbour to acquire this strip without an appeal to arms can probably best be explained on the ground of oriental fatalism. when marshal paskevich had taken erivan and concluded the war with persia by the peace of turkomanchai (february 1828), his hands were free to cut large slices from the ottoman empire; and it was at gümri, overlooking the arpa chai, the boundary against turkey, that he effected the concentration of his troops. from gümri he set out in person at the head of his army on the 26th of june 1828. the outcome of this war was the capture of kars and erzerum, and the permanent acquisition by russia of akhaltsykh and the northern districts under the treaty of adrianople (1829). the restoration to the sultan of the two first-named strongholds increased the strategical value of the station on the arpa chai. gümri was slowly but persistently converted into a first-rate fortress, the necessary timber for the constructions being supplied to his hereditary enemies by the pasha of kars from the forests of the soghanlu dagh. in 1836 the place was visited by the emperor nicholas i. in person, who inspected the works, which, however, were only in an inchoate state. [63] the inhabitants date the prosperity of their town from the imperial visit, which at once inaugurated an era of rapid expansion and transformed the village of gümri into the city of alexandropol. since russia has become possessed of kars, the fortress on the arpa has somewhat declined in importance; but it is still occupied by a considerable garrison, and the strength of its defences should enable it to give a good account of itself in time of war. our experiences at akhaltsykh had warned me to proceed with caution in endeavouring to realise the topography of the site. it was not often or in public that i could have recourse to my compass; yet i contrived to collect sufficient particulars of an innocent nature to supply my own wants and those of my lay readers. conceive in the first place a fordable river flowing on a southerly course through a plain of vast extent and slightly basin-like surface. on the left or eastern bank beyond a strip of quite level ground rises a ridge of insignificant elevation, roughly parallel to the stream. of no great breadth upon the summit, it tends to circle inwards on the north of the town, which it screens from the river. south of the site it dies away into the plain. the north-west angle of this ridge is occupied by the citadel, and consists of a spacious table surface, with plenty of room for barracks and magazines. the entire formation is strongly fortified with earthworks and with massive structures in brick or stone. such is the principal or, at least, the most conspicuous feature in the defences of alexandropol. but it is by no means the only advantage which they derive from nature. just inside and, therefore, east of this longitudinal ridge a second back of nearly equal height and of similar direction rises beyond a ravine which is threaded by a brook, and which widens as it extends from the citadel towards the south. it forms the standpoint from which i took my photograph of the town (fig. 24), extending eastwards at its skirts. the tombs seen in the foreground belong to a straggling armenian cemetery. from this position on the inner ridge i estimated the distance across the ravine at about five hundred yards, and our distance from the river at about three-quarters of a mile. as the valley narrows towards the citadel, it is filled with the trees of a little park, whither the citizens repair to escape the dazzling light of summer and to enjoy the contrast of deep shade and murmuring waters. it forms a welcome patch of verdure in the treeless expanse. on this same ridge, but further south, are seen the graves of officers and men who fell in the last russo-turkish war. they are grouped about a monument to loris melikoff; but i believe that great general of armenian origin is buried at tiflis. in the manner i have tried to describe, alexandropol is screened on the west at first by the river, and then by two long ridges, with a valley between which may be compared to a gigantic moat. i am not aware that the inner crest is strengthened by fortifications; but it offers an admirable second line of defence. the curious feature about the site is that the ridging formation is not yet exhausted; three minor and roughly parallel elevations are covered with the houses of the town. they cause the streets to go up and down, and make them none too pleasant walking. as a fortress, i should be inclined to conclude that the place is weak upon the east and south; while the nature of the ground beyond the river, rising as it does from the right bank to a height almost equal to that of the outer ridge, exposes it to a bombardment from that side. it must not be supposed that these characteristics of the topography are prominent in the landscape. they are lost in the folds of the plain and overpowered by the scale of their surroundings. look where you will, you have around you the floor of a sea-like expanse, bounded at immense intervals by mountainous coasts. in the east it is the indented outline of the range on the side of georgia, curving round from a south-easterly into a due meridional direction as it approaches the point of intersection with alagöz. from that point the great volcano composes a side of the frame, inclining a little south of an east-west line. it forms a magnificent object as seen from alexandropol, high in the sky, yet with scarcely perceptible gradient in the profile on either side of the core of precipitous peaks. you follow its train declining into the vague spaces of the west, where the bulging convexities become broken into hummock forms. the greatest breadth of the plain, as it appears to the eye, would be measured from the wall of the range which intersects with alagöz to a distant mass of mountain in the south-west. that vague boundary probably belongs to one of the elevations on the plateau which extends between kars and the araxes. between it and the skirts of the volcano there is a broad depression in the outlines, giving passage to the arpa chai. the misty prospects on the west and north-west did not reveal during the course of our stay the limits of the level surface in those directions. let us see now what these latter-day armenians have made of their city; for the public and private edifices are creations of their own. it is evident that they have inherited the love of building which distinguished their forefathers, and that the craft of that excellent masonry which we admire in their ancient monuments has not become extinct. on the other hand, they share to the full in the tastelessness of the modern peoples in the decorative arts. their churches are at once pretentious and commonplace both in design and in ornamentation. of those exquisite mouldings with their lace-work chisellings which adorn the exteriors of their mediæval counterparts there is, indeed, scarcely a trace on these ambitious structures. but even the standard of the seventeenth century, of which many a specimen has been preserved elsewhere, notably in the porches of much older churches, has not been maintained into our times. size and a certain effect, rather than elegance of proportion and a loving care for detail, are the characteristics of the new style. the cathedral, dedicated to the trinity, is a spacious building, which is held up to your admiration, as blending the features of the old models. it is difficult to understand how such an assertion and such a comparison can be forthcoming from people who have at their doors in the neighbouring cloister of marmashen an example of the art of their ancestors. i need only say of the cathedral that it is built of black volcanic stone, relieved by courses of the same material but with a ruddy hue. i was informed that it was commenced in 1859 and completed in 1874. besides this temple the gregorian armenians have three churches, of which the most considerable is a large structure in grey stone, named after the virgin mary. the armenian catholics are possessed of a single but roomy church. the greek chapel of st. george is of some interest because of its connection with the greek colony of erzerum, who, like so many of the ancestors of the armenian inhabitants of alexandropol, followed the armies of marshal paskevich upon his evacuation of turkish territory. it contains a picture of st. george and the dragon (fig. 25) which is of considerable merit, and is said to contain the date of 1327. but those figures, as they now appear, are due to a recent restoration. the father of a m. mergoroff, whom i met during my stay, was principally concerned in its transportation at the time of the exodus. i understand that it was brought to gümri, whence it migrated to a village called zalga, only returning after the lapse of seven years. m. mergoroff writes a curious hand, partly composed of greek letters and partly based upon the russian alphabet. this characteristic may correspond to the present culture of his countrymen at alexandropol, numbering some four hundred souls. this flourishing town is badly supplied in respect of education, the armenian schools being restricted by government to a purely elementary course, and having the rank only of schools of two classes. [64] they are three in number and are attended by 700 boys, besides two institutions which dispense instruction to 500 girls. the russian state school is said to be limited in accommodation, and is attended by no more than 140 youths, principally armenians. the inhabitants have been agitating for a russian gymnasium or high school, such as has been vouchsafed to their less numerous compatriots at erivan. they attribute their ill-success and the greater advantages enjoyed by akhaltsykh to the fact that the latter town belongs to the government of tiflis while they are dependent upon erivan. at alexandropol i heard little of the much-vexed school question, which i shall treat in a subsequent chapter. but the inhabitants were loud in their complaints that, while forbidden to raise the standard of their own schools, they were not provided with adequate education by government. such a situation is typical of the application of russian methods, and would be humorous if its results were less grave. i must have spent much of my time in attending the various ceremonies attendant upon the wedding of a m. ter mikelean. i think i may have come near to getting married myself, the lady being none other than his intended bride. for on one occasion, when we were all assembled in a lower apartment, and, the bride's father being dead, her nearest male relation was conducting her sale by formal auction, my own bid seemed for some time to hold its own against all rivals, amounting, so far as i remember, to twenty pounds. i was relieved at discovering that there was a want of reality about the proceedings, and that it had been arranged beforehand that the damsel should be knocked down to the chosen bridegroom. when we were taken upstairs, and, among a throng of women, were permitted to gaze upon the girl's features, my apprehensions were almost converted into regret. such a sweetly pretty face, recalling the favourites of andrea del sarto, with their fresh simplicity and candid eyes! i was in part rewarded by her consenting to form the centre of a wedding group, and thus to enable me to perpetuate her youthful beauty (fig. 26). the lady with the head-dress, standing behind her, is her amiable mother, a type of giovanni bellini; while the gentleman with his back to the wall is m. vahan barsamiantz, engaged in an export business of the fruits of the castor-oil plant, which is cultivated in the valley of the araxes. the musicians in the foreground were the most lively and strenuous performers i have ever met, being rarely silent and never tired. every member of the group was an armenian. when night came there were dances in the open air to the light of streaming torches. the strains were not yet hushed as we regained our encampment, which we had placed in a shabby garden of the suburbs. i must not omit a notice of an excursion which we made to the neighbouring cloister of marmashen. it is a monument of the period of the mediæval kings of armenia, and is of the same order of architecture as those at ani. it is situated about five miles north of alexandropol, on the rocky banks of the arpa chai. as we drove over the plain, we remarked that ploughing had not yet commenced, and that the stubble still stood in the somewhat stony soil. not a fence or other boundary, and not a single tree diversified the expanse of ground. sowing takes place in april, rains fall in may and june, and the harvest is gathered during july and august. the surroundings of the monastery are bleak and unrelieved by vegetation; the church and chapels are falling into ruin, and rise from among piles of débris. my illustration (fig. 27) displays the principal edifice from the south-west and the chapel which adjoins it on the south. a companion but larger chapel on the north is hidden from view, [65] and a third structure of the same order, but more distant on that further side, is beyond the range of the picture. the visitor cannot fail to admire the simplicity of the design of the church and the absence of any excrescences. the device of the niche has been used to lighten the wall on the east, where the plan of the interior requires an apse and two side chapels. each of the two recesses upon that side has a depth of 3 feet 8 inches; while the similar features on the north and south sides have probably been added for the sake of uniformity. the wall spaces have been diversified with elegant false arcades, and the window on the west is framed in a band of exquisite chiselling. all these features will be familiar to my reader when he has read my account of ani, and i need not, therefore, dwell upon them in this place. he will also become acquainted with the personages who erected these edifices, and whose names figure in the long inscriptions on the walls of the church. from these we learn that it was built by none other than the great prince vahram, the hero of the resistance offered by the inhabitants of ani to the occupation of their city by the byzantine cæsar. it was commenced in the year a.d. 988, and does not appear to have been completed until 1029. [66] on the other hand, a memorial tablet, inserted into the wall on the west, contains a well-preserved inscription which we copied, giving the date of 470 of the armenian era, or a.d. 1021. presumably the building would have been in use at that time. according to an inscription on the north wall it was extensively restored in a.d. 1225 by descendants of vahram. [67] the wife of that prince and perhaps, too, his own remains were buried at marmashen. the interior, a nave and two narrow aisles, has a length of 61 feet, measured to the head of the apse, and a breadth of 34 feet. the daïs of the apse is not less than 4 feet in height, the face of the daïs being decorated with a sculptured frieze of intricate design. in other respects the masonry is free of ornament, and the walls have been left bare. the name of the cloister is said to be a corruption of marmarashen, which would signify the marble edifice. yet the material used is a pink volcanic stone, and i did not observe any marble about the church. a porch extended at one time the whole breadth of the façade, and must have had a length of nearly 37 feet. a prominent feature of this approach were four octagonal pillars, of which the remains still exist. they have a circumference of 7 feet 10 inches in the shaft. i cannot say that i admire the dome, and it is, perhaps, due in its present form to the restoration of the thirteenth century. chapter x to erivan during our stay at alexandropol it had required no small effort to detach our minds from the paramount object with which they were filled. every day, every hour, which separated us from ararat diminished the prospects of a successful ascent. we were impatient, and anxious to leap the intervening stages, like pilgrims almost in sight of their long-sought shrine. it was, therefore, with a sense of relief that, at one o'clock, on the 12th of september, we set out from the city in the direction of alagöz. we were to make for the passage between the volcano and the border mountains, and to rest in that valley for the night. the road is a mere track, yet we were able to engage a private carriage to take us to erivan. one is astounded in the east at the performances of a victoria, should the necessities of a european or the ostentation of an oriental have summoned such an object of luxury to their wilds. our luggage accompanied us in a springless waggon, which, like the carriage, was privately horsed. the post road to erivan makes the long deviation down the valleys of the border ranges to the junction with the road from tiflis at the station of delijan. the great plain lay around us, level and devoid of objects, like the bosom of a sea. before us stretched the mountain, the unwieldy bulk of a colossus, a formidable barrier to the country on the south. in such an expanse the human note is overwhelmed by nature; one hardly notices the signs of the presence of ubiquitous man. there are villages which you scarcely see until you have passed within their precincts; such were tapa dolak, through which we drove at a quarter before one, and golgat, which we reached at four o'clock. both are inhabited by armenians; neither possesses a school or school-house, but the second owns and the first was building a church. after obtaining a view, on our right hand, of two considerable armenian villages, we arrived at norashen, where we were to rest the horses, at half-past four o'clock. it is an armenian settlement with ninety-five tenements and a population of 900 souls, and it was in process of erecting a school. let the reader picture to himself rude structures of stone and wood and earth, which, at one end, issue upon irregular little lanes, and, at the other, are buried into a slope of the ground. through such entrances you pass to subterraneous chambers which serve as stables and as living rooms. in the midst of these sordid surroundings four stone walls are a prominent object; they belong to a little chapel, which has a roof of sods and a bare interior; the bells are hung in a wooden structure at the side. men with tanned complexions, deep wrinkles, and bent knees issue from the tenements and slouch along the lanes. children crowd about you, their little stomachs unduly swollen and barely covered by a single cotton shirt. nobody can read or write; we questioned several. such is the description which, with variations, applies to most of these villages, and is true of norashen. with what emotion one turned to the contemplation of the magnificent landscape which was outspread at our feet! the squalor of man, the grandeur of his natural environment--the reflection recurs and recurs in the east. we were standing on the lower slopes of the mountain, some 1500 feet above the floor of the plain. a gentle incline, of which the surface was checkered with alternate patches of fallow and stubble, stretched away from a foreground of loose stones and garnered corn-land to the dim lights and opaline mists of a vast amphitheatre, where the expanse of level land was confined and choked by a wide girdle of mountains--long volcanic outlines and fantastic shapes of cone and peak mingling with the gloom of the distance and the gloom of the sky. but the zenith was intensely blue, and we breathed a strong, yet sunlit air. behind us, in the opposite segment of the heaven, white, luminous clouds touched and concealed the snowy region where alagöz sits enthroned; yet we were able to observe that the snow lies in drifts within that region, for many of the flatter places were free of snow. a prominent feature, to which i have already alluded, is the manner in which the heart, or central rock mass of the volcano, is seen to rise beyond the edge of a rounded bank of softer texture, which follows the inner ridge at a respectful interval, and appears to be separated from it by a deep ravine. one cannot fail to observe the contrast between the roundness and softness of the outwork and the steep sides and black rocks of the inner ridge. in fact, as you skirt the slopes of the volcano, you never touch the sides which mount immediately to the snows. you follow along the direction of gently vaulted banks of soil, parallel to the upstanding core of the mass. their surface is patched with cultivation to a height which has been estimated at 8300 feet. [68] the herbage is sweet and produces excellent crops of hay; the earth is black and rich. soon after leaving norashen--we started at about six--you turn the flank of the range which meets the volcano at right angles, and then recedes in a hollow, concave to the shield-shaped pile. you enter the passage between alagöz and the border mountains, and you arrive at the head waters of the southward-flowing streams. in this region are situated güzeldere and kerwanserai, the first an armenian village, the second a kurdish settlement. in the latter we found a station-house maintained by armenians, who provided us with a guide and a chinese lantern to take us to the guest-house, distant about two versts, which stands above the village of haji khalil. it occupied us some little time, groping our way through the thick darkness, and we did not arrive until eight o'clock. the little guest-house proved a dreary and comfortless shelter; we sighed for the comparative luxury of a persian chapar-khaneh or the cleanliness of a swiss hut. a fetid odour exuded from the peeling walls and cracked flooring, and legions of active fleas rose from beneath the boards. we slept, as we might, on the wooden takht or daïs, until, at half-past one, the door thundered with heavy knocks. after some parley the intruders were admitted to our chamber--was it a dream, or whence issued these strange shapes? one awaited the wild staccato, followed by the flowing iambic:- astrôn katoida nykterôn homêgyrin kai tous pherontas cheima kai theros brotois lamprous dynastas emprepontas aitheri [69] yet the floor, the walls, the companions were all real--everything, except those figures at the door. the flicker of a lamp was reflected upon their bearded faces and bare necks, upon the heavy folds of the brown draperies hanging about their shoulders, upon the blunt ends of their wooden staves. did they proclaim the line of bonfires?--watchmen, stationed by an unseen hand to guard us, and come to announce the break of day. the break of day? it cost us a pang to convince them of their error; we were loth to commence fresh contests with the fleas. poor watchmen, who had forestalled the stars with longing for the morning! how many times was troy taken in watchmen's dreams? september 13.--at a quarter to six we were on the road. a chill was in the air, and heavy, sleepy clouds lay on the ground. but the zenith was softly blue, and a pleasant light fell on the valley with its spacious floor and ample expanse of sky. our station was situated at a slightly higher altitude than the threshold of the pass; i should estimate our elevation, from the readings of my barometers, at about 7000 feet. after an hour's drive, our track joined a newly-made road, metalled and ditched on either side; progress was fairly rapid down the incline of the valley, parallel with the current of the abaran. this road was intended to serve as the postal avenue to erivan from alexandropol, and it bifurcates from the existing post road; but a series of misfortunes appear to have attended its construction, and it had not yet been used by the post. verst after verst we drove along it, through a landscape which changes little from the features at the entrance of the pass. on our right hand rose the huge volcano, no longer an extended horizontal outline, but a shield-shaped mass, bellying upwards to the rim of a crater, which circled from us with a wide sweep (fig. 28). the slopes of the mountain were inclined at an angle of scarcely more than eleven degrees--soft convexities, broken into gullies and little hummocks, and, here and there, strewn with a shingle of greenish hue. the peaks had gradually disappeared as we rounded the base of the pile--a transition of which the phases were frequently withdrawn from observation through the incidence of clouds. on our left, at varying but always ample interval, the outer spurs of the border mountains described a parallel half-circle with the contour of alagöz--one might almost mistake them for some outer shell of the volcano, so closely did they appear to follow the curve of its base. but, unlike their big neighbour, the slopes of these outworks were covered with brushwood, which developed into dwarf trees as we advanced. the floor of the valley revealed in most parts the hand of the reclaimer, by the side of a stretch of turf, by the margin of a rotting marsh. yet mile after mile we could see no settlement; we seldom met a wayfarer, except for some drivers with a string of donkeys, laden with grapes from the valley of the araxes, and a group of supple kurdish girls. at a quarter to eight we drew rein for a few minutes in the large armenian village of bash abaran. the inhabitants were busy getting in their corn from the open; here and there it had not yet been cut. in another hour we opened out a vista of ararat, and, at a quarter to ten, we feasted our eyes upon the whole majestic fabric, before descending into the village of ali kuchak. one may safely say of the scene which expanded before us that it is unsurpassed upon the surface of our globe. nor is it difficult to account for the strength and permanence of the impression which it produces upon the mind. nowhere has nature worked on a scale more stupendous; yet on none of her works has she bestowed greater unity of conception, a design more harmonious, surroundings more august. whatever mysteries compose the spell of the wide ocean and the open firmament, all the exquisite shades of light which temper the gloom of a northern climate, all the many-coloured radiance of the south, have been lavished upon the panorama which centres in ararat and is spread like a kingdom at his feet. seen at this distance--measured on the map it is a space of fifty-six miles to the summit--the mountain is little more than an outline upon the horizon; yet what an outline! what a soul in those soaring shapes! side by side stand two of the most beauteous forms in nature, the pyramid and the dome. both are developed on lines of almost ideal perfection, with proportions which startle the eye in spite of all their symmetry; and both are supported by a common base. the pyramid is one, and the dome is one; yet the structure is single which they combine to raise. from the dim east into the dim west you follow that long-drawn profile, rising from a distant promontory, declining to a distant promontory, centring in the roof of the dome, in the peak of the cone. the dome has an elevation of 17,000 feet, the cone of nearly 13,000 feet; and the base reclines on a plain which forms the greatest depression in the relief of armenia, and which has an altitude of scarcely more than 3000 feet above the sea. the standpoint from which we looked upon the wonders of this landscape were the basal slopes of the opposite colossus of alagöz, where they descend to that same spacious plain. it is the plain which the araxes waters; yet we could not see the river, hidden in the unseen hollow of the expanse. between us and our horizon flat tracts of naked earth stretched away from the stony ground about us to a distant region of half lights and soft mist; above those shadows rose the mountain, bathed in light and luminous vapour, to wreaths of white cloud, hanging to the snows of the dome. on our left hand, a wooded hill--the only spot of verdure in the scene--jutted out into the levels from the border ranges, which here recede from the plain. its summit outline is broken by a fantastic peak, like the comb of a cock, and it may perhaps be identified with the volcanic elevation of karniarch. below us lay the village, a cluster of stacks of tezek fuel, and driving smoke, proceeding from scarcely visible huts of mud and stone. ledges or tongues of rock and cliff projected on our right from the base of alagöz; they represent the extreme outrunners of the northern mountain and sink into the landscape, like the capes of a rock-bound coast. we were about to leave that coast behind us and to cross the floor of this sea-like plain; hues of ochre were lightly laid upon its gently undulating surface and mingled with the nearer tints of yellow and umber in the stubble and fallow of the cultivated land. all our thoughts, our whole ambition, were centred on that distant mountain; our emotions satisfied, we reflected that the spot where we were standing was the nearest point which we should reach to the summer resort of darachichak. it might be possible to hire horses and ride the distance of some twenty miles; all the official world of erivan would be assembled in that pleasant valley, and we had need of their assistance for our ascent. so, once arrived within the village, we sent for the elder; and we were glad to hear that the place was the seat of a pristav, or head of an administrative group of villages. a lean and lank armenian responded to our summons; he came with a slouching gait and with sleep in his eyes, and he was engaged in buttoning his long grey coat. the official dress of russia and the peaked cap of white canvas on such a truly oriental figure as this! however, he promised to procure us horses, and, putting faith in his official dignity, i decided to split our party into two. my cousin and myself would adventure upon the journey into the mountains; wesson, rudolph and the armenian would proceed in the victoria and with the waggon to the town of erivan. our companions started on their journey, while we with our saddles made our way to a neighbouring village in which the horses were to be found. we were accompanied by the pristav's man, a sinister-looking villain; the saddles followed on a bullock cart. but at a winding of the path, just after leaving the settlement, the wheels sank into an abysmal depth of mud. i have no doubt that this incident is of daily occurrence, and that neither village would entertain the notion of making a road. the horses were on the meadows; their owners refused to catch them, and we were obliged to essay the task ourselves. but in this open country they eluded all our efforts; we were obliged to return without attaining our end. the pristav received our maledictions with equanimity, and we were reduced to the tame expedient of two sorry ponies, which were only equal to carrying us to the nearest considerable station on the road to erivan. how poor in resources is this magnificent country! what a curse appears to lie on these fertile lands! our pristav had the charge of thirty-six villages, of which six were inhabited by persian tartars and the remainder by a population of his own race. his district extended from bash abaran to ashtarak; yet he told us that in the whole of this considerable region there did not exist a single school. baffled of our purpose, we mounted our ponies and took to the road to erivan, two solitary figures in the lonely waste. the provincial capital was over thirty-five miles distant, and it was already half-past four o'clock. the prospect over the plain, which i have just described, is so far deceptive that you under-rate the extension of these stony basal slopes. this mistaken estimate is due in part to the position of the hill of karniarch, which blocks the view towards the south-east. to gain erivan, you are obliged to round the base of that elevation; nor, in that direction, do the rocky inclines die away in the level campagna before you have reached the gardens of the town. the base of alagöz appears to mingle with the base of the volcanic masses which line the inner edges of the border range; mile after mile you cross a bleak and boulder-strewn country which sweeps into the plain. to add to our impression of the complete forlornness of this region, a violent storm arose. the immense expanse of heaven was filled with driving clouds, riven by lightning; the torrents roared, and the blast bent the stunted bushes which rise along their margin among the rocks. we were reminded of the famous night upon the brocken, as our tired ponies tottered forward into the blinding rain. shelter there was none; it was a case of struggling onwards and taking pleasure in the elemental war. and the road! was there ever outside of persia such a strange caricature of a road? it wound like a snake, avoiding every hillock; the traffic made short cuts from bend to bend. there were bridges broken in the back with a ford alongside them; there were yawning culverts and parallel tracks avoiding the horrors of the metalled way. not a soul did we meet, until, as the evening advanced, we passed through some considerable armenian villages which presented the strange spectacle of a lamp-lit street. but where was ashtarak, the goal of our journey? should we ever accomplish our self-imposed stage? when our mounts could go no further, my cousin points out a long building by the side of a large church. no door could we see or opening on to the ground, only a lofty verandah with a ladder, a feature which recalled the old lawless times. we clamoured, and were admitted after sundry explanations, and a stable was found for our weary hacks. we were received by a young armenian who spoke a little french, and who ushered us into the presence of a vardapet or monastic priest. i regret my inability to place on the page the handsome features of our host, monseigneur achote--so he transcribed his rank and name. he told us that we were welcome to the monastery of mugni, and that he himself happened to be the only priest in residence. assisted by his clerk, he busied himself about our comforts; clothed us afresh, gave us to eat and drink. monseigneur belongs to the new school of armenian ecclesiastics; he has received an excellent education, and possesses wide sympathies and broad views. his room was littered with books and papers; his talk was animated, and one could not doubt that his ardent patriotism was sincere. next morning--september 14--we visited the church of mugni, a plain but solid stone structure, quite in the grand style. an open portal, resting on four solid piers, gives access to the doorway with its richly carved mouldings, and is surmounted by a little tower in which the bells are hung. the exterior is of grey stone, varied by blocks of red volcanic rock; here and there carved slabs of such rock have been inserted, a familiar feature in armenian architecture. the interior is quite plain and the masonry uncovered; so thick are the walls that in the apse you are shown two secret chambers built into the frame of the church. access to these chambers is obtained by removing a block of stone in the ceilings of two recesses in the apse. in the old lawless times these rooms served as a refuge; they are capacious and receive the light of day. the head of st. george is preserved in a little side chapel, a treasure of considerable value to the monastery. it seemed so strange that our enlightened host should be profiting by the possession of this relic, and i thought that he answered my smile. an inscription informs us that the church was built--or may it not be restored or embellished?--by mgr. peter of argulis in the year of the armenian era 1118 or a.d. 1668, with his people's money and his own. monseigneur's windows looked out upon a wretched village, which appeared doubly miserable in the cold light. at half-past nine we mounted our ponies, and set out for ashtarak. mugni lies to the south of the hill of karniarch--a name which our native guide pronounced garnara. the surrounding country maintains the stony and inhospitable character of the waste through which we had lately passed. a short ride brought us to the descent into the little township--an oasis of verdure, a pretty church, with a cluster of roofs and gables, tall poplars, terraces of flat house-tops. but when we had passed within the precincts, this pleasant impression faded; were the crumbling walls of the houses in course of demolition, or was this rude masonry of mud and stone succumbing to the storm of yesterday? we proceeded down a narrow street which is lined with lofty trees and channelled by a swirling stream. here the owners of the ponies were lying in wait for us; a sure instinct had placed them upon our way. according to the published statistics ashtarak possesses some 3000 inhabitants, all of armenian race. by eleven o'clock we had procured horses and were again on the road to erivan. the entire region is strewn with rocks and presents the same bleak appearance, except where, here and there, a stream descends the barren slopes and sustains a slender line of green. in such places you may discern the rare site of a village, a few poplars, the grouped architecture of a church. at length, after long winding between the stony eminences, we opened out a view over the great plain. the sky had not yet cleared, and mists obscured the forms of the mountains; but the whole lap of the plain was revealed. patches of soft blue relieved the surface of the dim country--the vegetation of the rich campagna about the banks of the araxes. we rode on, always descending, over these stony uplands, until they dipped to the floor of the level ground. luxuriant gardens filled the gently-pursing hollow, intensely green after the heavy rain of the preceding day. pools of water lay on the road; the water-courses were brimming over. the orchards were clothed with fruit of ideal perfection in form and colour; we admired the size and brilliant hues of the clustering peaches, side by side with the bending branches of the apple and the pear trees, with the deep shade of the walnut and the mulberry trees. ripe grapes hung in abundance from the low vine-stocks.... such are the outskirts of erivan, a town embowered in foliage. we reached the central park at half-past one o'clock. chapter xi to ararat erivan is a town of gardens in which a network of irrigation channels preserves from early spring into late autumn the perfection of the foliage. in the heart of the business quarter is situated a little park, disposed into shady alleys and promenades for the citizens, but presenting also pathless spaces of forest land. we were tempted to pitch our tents in the secluded portion. but the storm had soaked the soil; solid walls were a preferable shelter. we encamped in the naked rooms of a building which faced the park and bore the pretentious inscription, hôtel de londres. our first care was to dispatch a mounted messenger to general frese, governor of erivan, who was residing at the summer resort of darachichak. i begged his excellency to instruct his people to assist us in our preparations, and to furnish us with a letter to the commandant of the cossacks, stationed on the slopes of ararat. on the morning of the 16th of september our courier returned and informed us that the governor had sent the necessary instructions to the nachalnik, or chief of the district police. i had already made the acquaintance of that important official, chief of police for the district of erivan, and acting chief of police for the town of erivan. a brief experience had taught me that without his active co-operation all private efforts were made in vain; the forces one set in motion returned in useless circles to the point from which they had started. but it so happened that the nachalnik was an extremely amiable person; he had helped us, he would help us again. without delay he provided us with a letter to the cossacks; nothing remained but to make a start. but in the east one can never count upon being able to proceed on one's journey before the cavalcade is already on the outward road. i had read of the difficulties which had been experienced by previous travellers in finding horses in the district neighbouring ararat to convey them to the higher slopes. i had therefore made contracts with owners in erivan to provide us with the necessary animals. when i summoned these individuals, they were no longer forthcoming, they were nowhere to be found. i then endeavoured to hire a carriage, to take us as far as aralykh, with the resolve to trust to fortune later on. i offered handsome prices to several drivers; they pleaded the badness of the road and refused to go. finally i had recourse to the posting authorities; they swore that in all their stables not a single horse remained. convinced of the futility of further steps on my own initiative, i sought out the private abode of the chief of police. the hour of the mid-day meal was already over; a fierce sun was beating upon the silent streets. i crossed the shady alleys of the little park, in which not another person moved. a few steps through the blinding glare of an adjacent side-road, deep in white dust, brought me to the enclosure which surrounds the residence of the nachalnik. i knocked at the little postern door. a drowsy servant opened to me, and, in answer to my enquiries, informed me that his master was asleep. compromising for once with the valuable principle of always addressing oneself to the supreme authority, i turned away and walked to the station of the town police. but not a single officer was in attendance at headquarters; a couple of men were dozing in the guard room, outstretched upon the wooden seats. no other course was open but to arouse the nachalnik; i returned and again knocked at the little door. it was pleasant to be offered a seat in a spacious verandah, overlooking a garden; nor was it long before the master of the house appeared. there are individuals in whom a tendency to corpulence, while it appears to dispose them favourably towards their fellow-men, has induced a provoking habit of restful satisfaction, and has built up a wall of self-possession against which nervous temperaments beat in vain. the nachalnik was not wanting in these passive qualities; and i could not doubt that they would be exercised on the present occasion as i observed the approach of his burly form. the white tunic was partially buttoned, the hair was matted on the brow, the eyes were still heavy with sleep. i quickly apprised him of the nature and extent of our troubles; how the owners of our hired horses had broken their contracts, how the various forms of transport had been successively requisitioned, with equal failure in every case. tartar pony men, molokan droshky drivers, armenian posting contractors--not a man among them could be induced to stir. our luggage, accompanied by wesson and rudolph, had left that morning in a waggon of the post; we ourselves were determined to follow them, if necessary on foot. to this petulance he replied with the utmost composure, to the effect that the people were free to make their own bargains, and that he could not compel them to go. it was the familiar story, the honourable attempt to rule the east upon western principles, the patient endeavour, rich both in humour and in pathos, to infuse the drowsy mass with the elements of vitality and make it respond to those inducements of enlightened self-interest which move the peoples of the west. in the mouth of the nachalnik the enunciation of this principle was not without a certain vein of almost tragic irony. himself the child of a race which has scarcely yet assimilated the motives and the restraints of civilised life, he had been transplanted from the frozen north to this burning valley; and the hot sun was already drying up those scanty springs of action which had so recently been set free. it was plain that the position could not be carried directly; but it occurred to me at that moment that there was a weak place on another side. this heavy man, whose languid negatives and long-drawn affirmatives were capable of almost infinite resistance, could be stirred to a fury of words and gestures by the suggestion that his authority had been slighted, or his orders left unfulfilled. he had been endowed with a talent, rare in one of his temperament, for grandiose histrionic expression; and it was not so much, i think, the matter at issue which moved him, as the favourable opportunity which was offered in such circumstances for a luxurious display of his talent to himself. i had observed in the garden the graceful figure of the young sergeant whom he had lent to me the day before. he had changed his travelling dress for the elegant skirted coat of georgia; a row of silvered cartridge-heads glittered upon his breast, and the dark moustache was carefully pencilled upon the clean-shaven cheeks. i beckoned him to me and begged him to confirm what i said. the sergeant had been obliged to use the name of the nachalnik, and in that name to threaten horse-owners and posting contractors in turn. yet not a man among them could be made to move. i added that it would seem as if, in the absence of the governor, there was an end to all authority in the town. at this speech the nachalnik rose from his chair and summoned his servants about him. he cursed the mongrel race of horse-keepers, persians or tartars, the blood of brigands all. who could tell in what holes these thieves were hiding? we should go by the post, and post horses must be found. arrived at aralykh, the cossacks would mount us on their own horses; and we should no doubt be able to impress some animals in the neighbourhood for the transport of our tents. his emissaries flew in all directions, with the result that, within the respectable space of three hours, a post cart, drawn by a pair of horses, was standing at our door. erivan is situated on the northern skirts of the valley of the middle araxes--a valley distinguished by its important geographical situation, by the great works of natural architecture which are aligned upon it, and by the high place which it holds both in legend and in history as the scene of momentous catastrophes in the fortunes of the human race. the natural avenue from east to west across the tableland of armenia, it gives easy access to the heart of asia minor from the shores of the caspian sea. the nations about and beyond the caspian have found their way along this avenue to the coasts of the black sea and the mediterranean; and, while tradition connects these scenes with the site of paradise, the bloody wars which they have witnessed have suggested to a graceful writer the appropriate recollection of the curse of the flaming sword. [70] along the line of the 40th degree of latitude a succession of plains extend across the tableland, varying in their depression below the higher levels, watered by the araxes and by the upper course of the western euphrates, and each giving access to the other by natural passages. the first is this valley of the araxes, with its more narrow continuation westwards through the district between kagyzman and khorasan; the second is the plain of pasin; the third the plain of erzerum. yet while the plains of pasin and of erzerum are situated respectively at an altitude of 5500 and 5750 feet, the valley of the araxes in the neighbourhood of erivan is only 2800 feet above the sea. both on the north and south of this considerable depression, even the plainer levels of the tableland attain the imposing altitude of 7000 feet, while its surface has been uplifted by volcanic action into long and irregular convexities of mountain and hill and hummock. on either side of the extensive plain which borders the course of the middle araxes rise mountains of astounding proportions and of large variety of form. let us dwell for a moment on the character of the northern barrier, which closes the prospect from the slopes of ararat at a distance of from 30 to 50 miles. the immense bulk of alagöz extends across the horizon from the longitude of ararat to the districts adjoining the left bank of the arpa chai. in that direction the mass occupies a space of about 40 miles, rising from the level tracts through which the araxes flows to a height of over 13,000 feet and inclined from north of east to south of west. the snowy fangs of the shattered crater are situated a little west of the longitude of the dome of ararat; from those peaks the outline of the mountain is shadowed on either side in an almost horizontal bar. on the west the streams of molten matter have met with little resistance to their onward flow; the eastern slopes have been confined by the bulwark of the border ranges, and are of comparatively insignificant extent. where the base gathers beyond the river is a distance from the slopes of ararat of about 35 miles; the two summits are nearly 60 miles apart. yet so large is the scale of this colossal mountain, and so even the surface of the intervening plain, that, seen through the clear atmosphere of an eastern climate, it fills the eye with its huge presence, sweeping the valley with massive foundations, and drawn across the sky in a long and rounded bank, broken only by the trident of shining peaks. such is the character, to a point about north of ararat, of the northern wall of this valley of the araxes--the length of a single mountain, an unbroken barrier from west to east. at that point the mass of alagöz meets the spurs of the border ranges, and its base mingles with the base of the volcanic elevations which rise along their inner edge. these elevations continue the wall of mountain eastwards, but incline it towards the south; they come forward in front of the giant volcano and narrow the plain. yet so gradual is the transition that it is scarcely perceptible; until the eye is awakened by the change in the sky-line, so even before, so restless now, fretted by the shapes of cones and little craters which, behind the soft convexities of flanking outworks, feature the chain which separates the basin of lake sevan from the waters which wash the base of ararat. on the southern side of the great plain there is a remarkable correspondence with the northern border in the constitution of the mountain masses, and an interesting difference in the manner in which they are disposed. on the north you have first a single mountain, and then a mountain system; on the south the line commences with a mountain system and ends with a single mass. on the north the mountain system steps out in advance of the mountain; on the south, by a happy reversal of the order, the mountain stands forward alone. alagöz and the belt south of lake sevan are answered by the ararat system and by the fabric of ararat. the range which i have termed the ararat system is known in the country under the name of aghri dagh, a name which is equally applied to ararat, but of which the roughness on the palate appears to express with greater felicity the rugged character of the system to which ararat belongs. from the wild and mountainous country which, about the 42nd degree of longitude, borders the right bank of the upper araxes before it enters the plain of pasin, there extends across the plateau in an easterly direction a long and comparatively narrow range, which, skirted on the one side by the course of the araxes, and on the other by the plain of alashkert, composes the spine of this central region of the tableland, and is interposed as a barrier between north and south. the appearance of the chain presents a striking contrast to the convex shapes which feature the adjacent landscapes; the sides are abrupt, the summits sharp, and the peaks rise from deep valleys to a height which reaches over 11,000 feet. where the araxes leaves the narrows near the town of kagyzman, this range is seen massed upon the right bank of the river; and after following the stream along the 40th degree of latitude, it inclines to the south-east. aided by this slight inclination in the direction of its southern barrier, the valley rapidly expands, and attains its greatest dimensions at a point just south of alagöz. it is at that point that the western slope of ararat, which has risen in advance of this satellite system from a low cape in the west, begins to gather in height and volume, concealing the rough features of these obsequious mountains behind the royal sweep of a long train. at the back of this even western slope a pass of about 7000 feet connects the fabric of ararat with the spinal system which it succeeds and resumes. ararat takes up the line of the southern border, and draws his entire length along the valley in a direction from north-west to south-east (frontispiece). there he stands, like some vast cathedral, on the floor of the open plain. the human quality of this natural structure cannot fail to impress the eye; and, although its proportions are not less gigantic than those of the opposite mass of alagöz, it contrasts with the cyclopean forms of that neighbouring mountain a subtle grace of feature and a harmonious symmetry of design. slowly the long slope rises from the western distance, a gently undulating line; and, as it rises, the base gradually widens, advancing with almost imperceptible acclivity into the expanse of plain. so it continues, always rising against the sky-ground, always gathering at the base, until at a height of 13,500 feet it reaches the zone of perpetual snow. the summit region of ararat presents the appearance of a vast dome of snow, crowning a long oval figure of which the axis is from north-west to south-east. the whole length of this roof, on its north-eastern side, is exposed to the valley of the araxes. the vaulting is less pronounced upon the west than on the east, and ascends through a succession of snowfields to the highest point of the dome. the average inclination of this north-western slope, where it rises more immediately towards the summit from the almost horizontal train, is only 18°, while its whole length has been computed by parrot at no less than 20 miles. from the massive roof, which attains a maximum elevation of nearly 17,000 feet above the sea, or 14,000 feet above the plain, the outline sinks by a steeper but still easy gradient towards the south-east; the snow-covered slope dips at an angle of about 30°, and the side of the dome, when seen from that point of the compass, presents the appearance of an almost perfect cone. the south-eastern side of ararat is encumbered below the snow-line by banks or causeways of piled-up rocks, which branch off from wedge-shaped ridges descending fanwise from the summit region, and fall into the plain. on the south-east these causeways narrow the fork of an upland valley, of which the saddle is placed at a height of 8800 feet. this valley separates the greater from the lesser ararat, and determines the extension of the south-eastern slope. the horizontal distance of the valley from the summit of the greater ararat is about 5 miles. from this saddle the outline of the fabric rises, and now more rapidly than before. the shape of a beautiful pyramid is presented; the pointed summit reaches an altitude of about 13,000 feet, and is placed at a distance from the valley of only 2 miles. the south-eastern slope of this lesser mountain at first declines with rapid gradients, which give sharpness to the graceful cone, and then is drawn through the eastern distance, a gently undulating outline, sinking to a dim promontory in the east. such is the profile and such the appearance of the majestic structure upon which eye and mind dwell. when we come to investigate the underlying principle, we find that, along a line of upheaval which has been uniform in a direction from north-west to south-east, two mountains have been reared by volcanic action, their axes following the line of upheaval and their summits 7 miles apart. the south-eastern slope of the greater mountain and the north-western side of the smaller are contiguous at an altitude of about 8000 feet; they meet, as we have seen, in a fork or valley at an elevation which ranges between 7500 and 8800 feet. in other words, this valley is the point of intersection between the bases of either mountain; and that part of the fabric which lies below it may be regarded as the common foundation of both. but the base of the smaller and more pointed mountain is merged into the base of the larger and less steep; and the forms of the lower portion of the structure continue the contours of great ararat as they sweep away to the south-east. the pyramid of little ararat rises directly from the upland valley; great ararat rises from the floor of the plain. these features lend unity to the whole fabric, and preserve an exactly proportionate relation between the shape and size of the two mountains and the protraction of their basal slopes. the base or foundation of the ararat fabric gathers immediately from the surface of the plain, advancing ever further into the even country as the weight of the upper structure grows. if the ground plan of the entire fabric may be described as a long elliptical figure of which the axis is from north-west to south-east, then the point at which the base is most developed lies north-east of the summit of great ararat, in the latitude of erivan. when already, along the axis of this figure, we have followed the long-drawn outline from the cape in the distant west to where, beyond the little ararat, it slowly falls away into the east, the eye turns naturally to the face of the mountain, and dwells with ever-increasing admiration upon the subtle structural qualities there displayed--the combination of grace with extraordinary solidity, the easy transition from the lower to the middle slopes, and of these to the uppermost seams. from the margin of the marshes which border the right bank of the araxes the ground commences to incline; yet so gradual is at first the rise that, if we measure on our base plan, we find that it is not more than about 3000 feet within a space of 10 miles. if it be permissible, in the gradual process from one gradient to another, to fix a division between the upper structure and the base, the dividing line may be drawn at an elevation of about 5800 feet, at a distance from the summit of 6 1/2 miles, and of 10 miles from the floor of the plain. beyond that line, the seams which mount to the dome of snow appear to commence their long climb; the eye follows them on their upward course until they attain the summit region and end in a long cornice of snow. the extraordinary elevation of ararat above the plain of the araxes--it may be doubted whether there exists in the world another mountain which rises immediately from a level surface to such a height--is balanced and controlled by this broad and massive base, and by the exquisite proportions of the upper structure which rises to the snowy roof. yet neither the strength nor the symmetry of this admirable fabric has been proof against decay. momentous convulsions from within have completed the work of gradual corrosion, and have opened a wide breach in the very heart of the mountain, where it faces the river and the plain. from the snow-beds of the lofty cornice to the base at the gathering of the seams the whole side of ararat has been fractured and rent asunder; the standing portion overhangs the recess with steep walls, which spread within it perpetual gloom. further east, just in advance of the saddle which divides the ararats, a grassy hill of unwieldy shape and flat summit interrupts the basal slopes, and offers an isolated contrast to the symmetry of the neighbouring forms. the chasm of akhury and the hill of takjaltu are minor features in the structure of ararat which are seen and recognised from afar. but most of all, as we realise the vision, which in the noblest shapes of natural architecture, the dome and the pyramid, fills the immense length of the southern horizon and soars above the landscape of the plain, the essential unity of the vast edifice and the correspondence of the parts between themselves are imprinted upon the mind. if little ararat, rising on the flank of the giant mountain, may recall, both in form and in position, the minaret which, beside the vault of a byzantine temple, bears witness to a conflicting creed, this contrast is softened in the natural structure by the similarity of the processes which have produced the two neighbours, and by their intimate connection with one another as constituents in a single plan. in this respect they suggest a comparison to a stately ship at sea, with all the close weaving and interdependence of hull and masts and sails. in the harmony of a common system each supplements and continues the other, and what great ararat is to the western portion of the fabric little ararat is to that on the east. the long north-western slope of the larger mountain is answered on the south-east by the train which sweeps from the side of the smaller towards the mists of the caspian sea; and there is the same correspondence between the slopes which are contiguous as between those which are most remote. the steeper side of the greater ararat is turned towards the needle form of the lesser; and, standing in the valley which divides the two mountains, it appears that the degree of inclination of either slope is in exactly inverse proportion to their size. this pleasing interplay between constancy in essential principles and diversity of form invests the long outline of the dual structure with a peculiar charm. the differing shapes repeat one another, and one base supports the whole. the plain itself, on the confines of which, and opposite to one another, these several ranges and mountain masses rise, is not unworthy of the works around it, and spreads at their feet a long perspective of open and even ground. where the valley attains its greatest extension, just west of erivan, the width of its floor, or level surface, is over twenty miles; and even when the spurs of the lake sevan system have inclined the northern boundary to the south, the space between these spurs and the extreme base of ararat is scarcely less than ten miles. but these are divisions which the mind appreciates and the eye is unable to perceive, so gradual is the transition from one level to another, from plain to mountain-side. on the north the dappled landscape of the campagna mingles with the patches of field and garden which, fed by a number of slender rivulets, clothe the first slopes of alagöz; on the south the gathering foundations of ararat are accompanied by an almost insensible inclination in the surface of the dry and sandy soil. from either side the prospect extends unbroken to the long summit lines which confront one another at an interval of nearly sixty miles. from invisible limits in the western distance issues the looping thread of the araxes, and, skirting the base of the ararat fabric, bends slowly south-eastwards and disappears. the shady walks of the little park were beginning to fill with groups of loungers when, at five o'clock in the afternoon of the 16th of september, we started from the central square of erivan. a single horseman accompanied us, a chapar or courier belonging to the country police. this was the first occasion, since we had entered russian territory, upon which an escort had been considered necessary by those responsible for our safety. we were approaching the turkish border, and along that extended mountain frontier acts of brigandage are still not unknown. yet the prince of brigands, the redoubted kerim, no longer flouts the nachalniks; and a stream of laden carts and leisurely wayfarers attests the public confidence. slowly we threaded the clay-built walls of successive orchards, the trees within them bending with fruit, until beyond this oasis of foliage and freshness opened, like an ocean at the mouth of a harbour, the free expanse of plain. the springless troika bumped heavily on the projecting slabs of massive boulders, embedded in the fairway. the road which leads through this stony region is little better than a natural track. the rocky slopes of the northern mountain border extend to the south of erivan, until they die away into the level surface of the valley a few versts from the town. the evening was advancing and we had no time to linger; we were obliged to put up with the jolting and push on. at the promise of a rouble to the driver the pace quickened; we clutched the bare sides of the little post cart, and tightened our seat on the narrow belt of chains, cushioned with a bundle of hay. at the half stage our courier took his leave and was succeeded by a fresh horseman; and so throughout the journey one horseman gave place to another with only a few minutes' delay. these chapars are young men, native to the country, who find their own mounts; they wear the drab skirted coat of georgia and the usual lambskin cap. their stations are often isolated, and are distinguished by the curious structures which adjoin them--lofty platforms, built upon piles, which serve the purpose of watch towers, and from which they command the inequalities of the ground (fig. 29). away on our right the distant chain of the ararat system was shadowed in tints of opal and indigo upon a rich ground of orange and amber hues; the sun sets behind those mountains, and it was touching with globe of red fire the fantastic peaks of the range. about us the plain lay grey and dim, and all the light and glory was in the western sky. in the south the misty fabric of ararat loomed more gigantic as night approached; ever higher, before us, in the paling vault of heaven the dome and the pyramid rose. as we neared the first station on the road to aralykh, the village of aramzalu, it seemed as if the snowy roof of the mountain were suspended in the sky above our heads, a cold and ghostly island, holding the last glimmer of day. of the forty versts (26 1/2 miles), which separate erivan from aralykh, we had covered thirteen versts (8 1/2 miles) within the space of an hour and a half. the next stage is the village of kamarlu, a distance of fifteen versts. between these two stations the road follows the course of the araxes, at an interval of two or three miles, and is lined on either side by the walls of extensive gardens, watered by a network of little channels which carry the river into the plain. the character of the soil favours the well-metalled avenue which leads within the fringe of poplars and fruit trees and forms the principal artery of this fertile and populous zone. night had fallen; the road was clear; the fresh pair of horses were less than an hour in covering the ten miles. in the post house of kamarlu, where we again changed horses, we were surprised to find our cook. he had been retained as a hostage for the way-money of the fourgon, which our people had been unable to pay. we released him, and stowed him away with difficulty in a corner of the cart. at kamarlu you leave the region of gardens, and make direct for the margin of the river, which flows between high banks through a melancholy district of waste land and cracking soil. in this yellow stream, of which the width at this point can scarcely exceed eighty yards, it is difficult to recognise with becoming emotion the haughty flood of the araxes; yet the river is still crossed by fords or ferries, and still retains, i believe, the ancient distinction that it does not brook a bridge. a standing hawser of woven wire is laid from bank to bank, and the force of the stream propels along it a wide and solid pontoon. transported without delay to the opposite bank, we made rapid progress along the roadway across low and marshy ground, and arrived just after nine at the row of trim cantonments which compose the military station of aralykh, eleven versts from kamarlu (fig. 30). we made halt before the entrance to a single-storeyed dwelling built of clay and painted white. a young russian officer in white linen tunic received us at the door. as we passed within the house, the burly figure of rudolph was seen emerging from the shades. our host had lodged the whole party in his quarters, and would not hear of our living in our tents. at aralykh there are stationed a squadron of cossacks and a detachment of regular cavalry. the regulars are employed in protecting the customs, and the cossacks in hunting the kurds. it was interesting to notice the contrast--in demeanour as well as in habits--between the polished young lieutenant of regulars and the kind but boisterous colonel of cossacks. how small are the differences between opposite nationalities when compared with such essential divisions as these! in this hospitable house the manners of europe prevailed over those of the east. as we sat in the comfortable room of the russian officer it was strange to reflect that we were at the foot of ararat, face to face with the memories of primeval simplicity among the thousand pretty nicknacks of a leisurely writing table and the various implements of a modern toilette. perhaps the link, which connects all human development, was in this case supplied by a primitive reckoning table with rows of skewered beads. chapter xii ascent of ararat next morning the sun had already risen as i let myself down through the open casement of the window and dropped into the garden among the dry brushwood encumbering its sandy floor. not a soul was stirring, and not a sound disturbed the composure of an eastern morning, the great world fulfilling its task in silence and all nature sedate and serene. a narrow strip of plantation runs at the back of aralykh, on the south, sustained by ducts from the kara su or blackwater, a stream which leads a portion of the waters of the araxes into the cotton fields and marshes which border the right bank. within this fringe of slim poplars, and just on its southern verge, there is a little mound and an open summer-house--as pleasant a place as it is possible to imagine, but which, perhaps, only differs from other summer-houses in the remarkable situation which it occupies and in the wonderful view which it commands. it is placed on the extreme foot of ararat, exactly on the line where all inclination ceases and the floor of the plain begins. it immediately faces the summit of the larger mountain, bearing about south-west (frontispiece). before you the long outline of the ararat fabric fills the southern horizon--the gentle undulations of the north-western slope, as it gathers from its lengthy train; the bold bastions of the snowfields, rising to the rounded dome; and, further east, beyond the saddle where the two mountains commingle, the needle form of the lesser ararat, free at this season from snow. yet, although aralykh lies at the flank of ararat, confronting the side which mounts most directly from the plain to the roof of snow, the distance from a perpendicular drawn through the summit is over 16 miles. throughout that space the fabric is always rising towards the snow-bank 14,000 feet above our heads, with a symmetry and, so to speak, with a rhythm of structure which holds the eye in spell. first, there is a belt of loose sand, about 2 miles in depth, beginning on the margin of marsh and irrigation, and seen from this garden, which directly adjoins it, like the sea-bed from a grove on the shore. on the ground of yellow, thus presented, rests a light tissue of green, consisting of the sparse bushes of the ever-fresh camelthorn, a plant which strikes down into beds of moisture, deep-seated beneath the surface of the soil. although it is possible, crossing this sand-zone, to detect the growing slope, yet this feature is scarcely perceptible from aralykh, whence its smooth, unbroken surface and cool relief of green suggest the appearance of an embroidered carpet, spread at the threshold of an eastern temple for the services of prayer. beyond this band or belt of sandy ground, composed no doubt of a pulverised detritus, which the piety of parrot was quick to recognise as a leaving of the flood, the broad and massive base of ararat sensibly gathers and inclines, seared by the sinuous furrows of dry watercourses, and stretching, uninterrupted by any step or obstacle, hill or terrace or bank, to the veil of thin mist which hangs at this hour along the higher seams. not a patch of verdure, not a streak of brighter colour breaks the long monotony of ochre in the burnt grass and the bleached stones. all the subtle sensations with which the living earth surrounds us--wide as are the tracts of barren desert within the limits of the plain itself--seem to cease, arrested at the fringe of this plantation, as on a magician's line. when the vapours obscuring the middle slopes of the mountain dissolve and disappear, you see the shadowed jaws of the great chasm--the whole side of the mountain burst asunder from the cornice of the snow-roof to the base, the base itself depressed and hollow throughout its width of about 10 miles. no cloud has yet climbed to the snows of the summit, shining in the brilliant blue. it was the morning of the 17th of september, a period of the year when the heats have moderated; when the early air, even in the plain of the araxes, has acquired a suggestion of crispness, and the sun still overpowers the first symptoms of winter chills. [71] the tedious arrangements of eastern travel occupied the forenoon; and it had been arranged that we should dine with our host, the lieutenant, before making the final start. six little hacks, impressed in the district and sadly wanting in flesh, were loaded with our effects; our party was mounted on cossack horses, which, by the extreme courtesy of the russian authorities, had been placed at our disposal for a week. we took leave of our new friend under a strong sentiment of gratitude and esteem; but a new and pleasurable surprise was awaiting us, as we passed down the neat square. all the cossacks at that time quartered in aralykh--the greater number were absent on the slopes of the mountain, serving the usual patrols--had been drawn up in marching order, awaiting the arrival of their colonel, who had contrived to keep the secret by expressing his willingness to accompany us a few versts of the way. my cousin and i were riding with the colonel, and the purpose of these elaborate arrangements was explained to us with a sly smile; the troop with their colonel were to escort us on our first day's journey, and to bivouac at sardar bulakh. the order was given to march in half column. it was perhaps the first time that an english officer had ridden at the head of these famous troops. we crossed the last runnel on the southern edge of the plantation and entered the silent waste. for awhile we slowly rode through the camelthorn, the deep sand sinking beneath our horses' feet. it was nearly one o'clock, and the expanse around us streamed in the full glare of noon. a spell seems to rest upon the landscape of the mountain, sealing all the springs of life. only, among the evergreen shrubs about us, a scattered group of camels cropped the spinous foliage, little lizards darted, a flock of sand-grouse took wing. our course lay slantwise across the base of ararat, towards the hill of takjaltu, a table-topped mass, overgrown with yellow herbage, which rises in advance of the saddle between the mountains, and lies just below you as you overlook the landscape from the valley of sardar bulakh. gullies of chalk and ground strewn with stones succeed the even surface of the belt of sand, and in turn give way to the covering of burnt grass which clothes the deep slope of the great sweeping base, and encircles the fabric with a continuous stretch of ochre, extending up the higher seams. mile after mile we rode at easy paces over the parched turf and the cracking soil. when we had accomplished a space of about 10 miles, and attained a height of nearly 6000 feet, the land broke about us into miniature ravines, deep gullies, strewn with stones and boulders, searing the slope about the line of the limit where the base may be said to determine and the higher seams begin. winding down the sides of these rocky hollows, one might turn in the saddle at a bend of the track, and observe the long line of horsemen defiling into the ravine (fig. 31). i noticed that by far the greater number among them--if, indeed, one might not say all--were men in the opening years of manhood--lithe, well-knit figures, and fair complexions, set round with fair hair. at a nearer view the feature which most impressed me was the smallness of their eyes. they wear the long, skirted coat of circassia, a thin and worn khaki; the faded pink on the cloth of their shoulder-straps relieves the dull drab. their little caps of circassian pattern fit closely round their heads. their horses are clumsy, long-backed creatures, wanting in all the characteristics of quality; and, as each man maintains his own animal, few among them are shod. yet i am assured that the breed is workmanlike and enduring, and i have known it to yield most satisfactory progeny when crossed with english racing blood. as we rounded the heap of grass-grown soil which is known as takjaltu, we were joined by a second detachment of cossacks, coming from akhury. together we climbed up the troughs of the ridges which sweep fanwise down the mountain side, and emerged on the floor of the upland valley which leads between the greater and the lesser ararat, and crosses the back of the ararat fabric in a direction from south-west to north-east. we were here at an elevation of 7500 feet above the sea, or nearly 5000 feet above the plain. both the stony troughs and ridges, up which we had just marched, as well as the comparatively level ground upon which we now stood, were covered with a scorched but abundant vegetation, which had served the kurds during earlier summer as pasture for their flocks, and still sheltered numerous coveys of plump partridges, in which this part of the mountain abounds. at the mouth of this valley, on the gently sloping platform which its even surface presents, we marked out the spaces of our bivouac, the pickets for the horses, and the fires. our men were acquainted with every cranny; we had halted near the site of their summer encampment, from which they had only recently descended to their winter quarters in the plain. as we dismounted we were met by a graceful figure, clad in a circassian coat of brown material let in across the breast with pink silk--a young man of most engaging appearance and manners, presented to us as the chief of the kurds on ararat who own allegiance to the tsar. in the high refinement of his features, in the bronzed complexion and soft brown eyes, the kurd made a striking contrast to the cossacks--a contrast by no means to the advantage of the cis-caucasian race. the young chief is also worthy to be remembered in respect of the remarkable name which he bears. his kurdish title of shamden agha has been developed and embroidered into the sonorous appellation of hasan bey shamshadinoff, under which he is officially known. from the edge of the platform upon which we were standing the ground falls away with some abruptness down to the base below, and lends to the valley its characteristic appearance of an elevated stage and natural viewing-place, overtowered by the summit regions of the dome and the pyramid, and commanding all the landscape of the plain. on the south-west, as it rises towards the pass between the two mountains--a pass of 8800 feet, leading into turkish and into persian territory, to bayazid or maku--the extent of even ground which composes this platform cannot much exceed a quarter of a mile. it is choked by the rocky causeways which, sweeping down the side of great ararat, tumble headlong to the bottom of the fork, and, taking the inclination of the ever-widening valley, descend on the north-western skirt of the platform in long, oblique curves of branching troughs and ridges, falling fanwise over the base. the width of the platform, at the mouth of the valley, may be about three-quarters of a mile. it is here that the kurds of the surrounding region gather, as the shades of night approach, to water their flocks at the lonely pool which is known as the sirdar's well. on the summit of the lesser ararat there is a little lake, formed of melted snows; the water permeates the mountain, and feeds the sirdar's pool. close by, at the foot of the lesser mountain, is the famous covert of birch--low bushes, the only stretch of wood upon the fabric, which is entirely devoid of trees. the wood was soon crackling upon our fires, and the water hissing in the pots; but the wretched pack-horses, upon which our tents had been loaded, were lagging several hours behind. we ourselves had reached camp at six o'clock; it was after nine before our baggage arrived. as we stretched upon the slope, the keen air of the summit region swept the valley and chilled us to the skin; the temperature sank to below freezing, and we had nothing but the things in which we stood. [72] our friends, the cossack officers, were lavish of assistance; they wrapped us in the hairy coats of the caucasus, placed vodki and partridges before us, and ranged us around their hospitable circle, beside the leaping flames. but the mind was absent from the picturesque bivouac, and the eye which ranged the deepening shadows was still dazzled by the evening lights. mind and sense alike were saturated with the beauty and the brilliance of the landscape, which, as you rise towards the edge of the platform after rounding the mass of takjaltu, opens to an ever-increasing perspective, with ever-growing clearness of essential features and mystery gathering upon all lesser forms. the sun, revolving south of the zenith, lights the mountains on the north of the plain, and fills all the valley from the slopes of ararat with the full flood of his rays--tier after tier of crinkled hummock ranges, aligned upon the opposite margin of the valley at a distance of over twenty miles, their summit outline fretted with shapes of cones and craters, their faces buttressed in sand, bare and devoid of all vegetation, yet richly clothed in lights and hues of fairyland--ochres flushed with delicate madder, amethyst, shaded opaline, while the sparse plantations about the river and the labyrinth of the plain insensibly transfigure, as you rise above them, into an impalpable web of grey. in the lap of the landscape lies the river, a thin, looping thread--flashes of white among the shadows, in the lights a bright mineral green. here and there on its banks you descry a naked mound--conjuring a vision of forgotten civilisations and the buried hives of man. it is a vast prospect over the world.... yet vaster far is the expanse you feel about you beyond the limits of sight. it is nothing but a segment of that expanse, a brief vista from north to east between two mountain sides. on the north the slopes of great ararat hide the presence of alagöz, while behind the needle form of little ararat all the barren chains and lonely valleys of persia are outspread.... the evening grows, and the sun's returning arc bends behind the dome of snow. the light falls between the two mountains, and connects the little ararat in a common harmony with the richening tints of the plain. there it stands on the further margin of the platform, the clean, sharp outline of a pyramid, clothed in hues of a tender yellow, seamed with violet veins. at its feet, where its train sweeps the floor of the river valley in long and regular folds--far away in the east, towards the mists of the caspian--the sandy ground breaks into a troubled surface, like angry waves set solid under a spell, and from range to range stretch a chain of low white hummocks, like islands across a sea. just there, in the distance, beneath the little ararat, you see a patch of shining white, so vivid that it presents the appearance of a glacier, set in the burnt waste. it is probably caused by some chemical efflorescence, resting on the dry bed of a lake. all the landscape reveals the frenzy of volcanic forces, fixed for ever in an imperishable mould; the imagination plays with the forms of distant castles and fortresses of sand. alone the slopes about you wear the solid colours, and hold you to the real world--the massive slopes of great ararat, raised high above the world. the wreath of cloud which veils the summit till the last breath of warm air dies has floated away in the calm heaven before the western lights have paled. behind the lofty piles of rocky causeways, concealing the higher seams, rises the immediate roof of ararat foreshortened in the sky--the short side or gable of the dome, a faultless cone of snow. when we drew aside the curtain of our tent next morning, full daylight was streaming over the open upland valley, and the vigorous air had already lost its edge. [73] the sun had risen high above the sevan ranges, and swept the plain below us of the lingering vapours which at morning cling like shining wool to the floor of the river valley, or float in rosy feathers against the dawn. the long-backed cossack horses had been groomed and watered and picketed in line; the men were sitting smoking in little groups or were strolling about the camp in pairs (fig. 32). a few kurds, who had come down with milk and provisions, stood listlessly looking on, the beak nose projecting from the bony cheeks, the brown chest opening from the many-coloured tatters draped about the shoulders and waist. the space of level ground between the two mountains cannot much exceed three-quarters of a mile. on the east the graceful seams of little ararat rise immediately from the slope upon our right, gathering just beyond the covert of low birchwood, and converging in the form of a pyramid towards a summit which has been broken across the point. the platform of this valley is a base for little ararat--the rib on the flank of the greater mountain from which the smaller proceeds. so sharp are the lines of the little ararat, so clean the upward slope, that the summit, when seen from this pass or saddle, seems to rise as high in the heaven above us as the dome of great ararat itself. the burnt grass struggles towards the little birch covert, but scarcely touches the higher seams. the mountain side is broken into a loose rubble; deep gullies sear it in perpendicular furrows, which contribute to the impression of height. the prevailing colour of the stones is a bleached yellow verging upon a delicate pink; but these paler strata are divided by veins of bluish andesite pointing upwards, like spear-heads, from the base (fig. 33). very different, on the side of great ararat, are the shapes which meet the eye. we are facing the south-eastern slope of the mountain, the slope which follows the direction of its axis, the short side or gable of the dome. in the descending train of the giant volcano this valley is but an incidental or lesser feature; yet it marks, and in a sense determines, an important alteration in the disposition of the surface forms. it is here that the streams of molten matter descending the mountain side have been arrested and deflected from their original direction, to fall over the massive base. the dam or obstacle which has produced this deviation is the sharp, harmonious figure of the lesser ararat, emerging from the sea of piled-up boulders, and cleaving the chaos of troughs and ridges like the lofty prow of a ship. the course of these streams of lava is signalised by these causeways of agglomerate rocks; you may follow from a point of vantage upon the mountain the numerous branches into which they have divided to several parent or larger streams. on this side of ararat they have been turned in an oblique direction, from south-east towards north-east; they skirt the western margin of the little valley, curving outwards to the river and the plain. it is just beneath the first of these walls of loose boulders that our two little tents are pitched; beyond it you see another, and yet another still higher, and above them the dome of snow. the distance from this valley of the summit of great ararat, if we measure upon the survey of the russian government along a horizontal line, is rather over 5 miles. the confused sea of boulders, of which i have just described the nature, extends, according to my own measurements, to a height of about 12,000 feet. above that zone, so arduous to traverse, lies the summit region of the mountain, robed in perpetual snow. from whatever point you regard that summit on this south-eastern side, the appearance of its height falls short of reality in a most substantial degree. not only does the curve of the upward slope lend itself to a most deceitful foreshortening when you follow it from below, but, indeed, the highest point or crown of the dome is invisible from this the gable side. if you strike a direct course from the encampment towards the roof of snow, and, crossing the grain of successive walls and depressions, emerge upon some higher ridge, the numerous ramifications of the lava system may be followed to their source, and are seen to issue from larger causeways which rise in bold relief from the snows of the summit region, and open fanwise down the higher slopes (fig. 34). in shape these causeways may be said to resemble the sharp side of a wedge; the massive base from which the bank rises narrows to a pointed spine. as the eye pursues the circle of the summit where it vanishes towards the north, these ribs of rock which radiate down the mountain diminish in volume and relief. their sharp edges commence to cut the snowy canopy about 3000 feet below the dome. it is rather on this south-eastern side of ararat, the side which follows the direction of the axis of the fabric--the line upon which the forces have acted by which the whole fabric has been reared--that a formation so characteristic of the surface of the summit region at once attains its greatest development, and is productive of a phenomenon which cannot fail to arrest the eye. at a height of about 14,000 feet, a causeway of truly gigantic proportions breaks abruptly from the snow. the head of the ridge is bold and lofty, and towers high above the snow-slope with steep and rocky sides. the ridge itself is in form a wedge or triangle, cut deep down into the side of the mountain, and marked along the spine by a canal-shaped depression which accentuates the descending curve (see fig. 34). the troughs and ridges, which you will now be crossing, have their origin in this parent ridge; you see it bending outwards, away from little ararat, and dividing into branches and systems of branches as it reaches the lower slopes. whether its want of connection with the roof of ararat, or the inherent characteristics of its uppermost end, be sufficient evidence to justify the supposition of abich that this ridge at its head marks a separate eruptive centre on the flank of ararat, i am not competent adequately to discuss. i can only observe that it is not difficult to find another explanation. it is possible that the ridge where it narrows to the summit has been fractured and swept away. this peak, or sharp end of the causeway, to whatever causes its origin may be ascribed, is a distinguishing feature on the slope of ararat, seen far and wide like a tooth or hump or shoulder on this the south-eastern side. [74] although the most direct way to the summit region leads immediately across the zone of boulders from the camp by the sirdar's pool, yet it is not that which most travellers have followed, or which the natives of the district recommend. this line of approach, which i followed for some distance a few days after our ascent, is open to the objection that it is no doubt more difficult to scale the slope of snow upon this side. the tract of uncovered rocks which breaks the snow-fields, offering ladders to the roof of the dome, is situated further to the south-east of the mountain, above the neck of the valley of the pool. whether it would not be more easy to reach these ladders by skirting slantwise from the higher slopes, is a question which is not in itself unreasonable, and which only actual experience will decide. it was in this manner, i believe, that the english traveller, my friend the rt. hon. james bryce, made an ascent which, as a feat, is, i think, the most remarkable of any of the recorded climbs. starting from the pool at one o'clock in the morning, he reached the summit, alone, at about two in the afternoon, accomplishing within a space of about six hours the last 5000 feet, and returning to the point from which he started before sunrise on the following day. we ourselves were advised to follow up the valley, keeping the causeways upon our right, and only then, when we should have reached a point about south-east of the summit, to strike across the belt of rock. at twenty minutes before two on the 18th of september our little party left camp in marching order, all in the pride of health and spirits, and eager for the attack. thin wreaths of cloud wrapped the snows of the summit--the jealous spell which baffles the bold lover even when he already grasps his prize. we had taken leave of the cossack officers and their band of light-hearted men. our friends were returning to akhury and aralykh, the one body to hunt the kurds of the frontier, the other to languish in dull inactivity until their turn should come round again. four cossacks were deputed to remain and guard our camp; we ourselves had decided to dispense with any escort and to trust to our kurdish allies. of these, ten sturdy fellows accompanied us as porters to carry our effects, their rifles slung over their many-coloured tatters beside the burden allotted to each (fig. 35). with my cousin and myself were the young swiss, rudolph taugwalder, a worthy example of his race and profession--the large limbs, the rosy cheeks, the open mien without guile--and young ernest wesson, fresh from the polytechnic in london, burning to distinguish himself. my armenian dragoman followed as best he was able until the camp at the snow was reached; his plump little figure was not well adapted to toil over the giant rocks. of our number was also an armenian from akhury, who had tendered his services as guide; he was able to indicate a place for our night's encampment, but he did not venture upon the slope of snow. a little stream trickles down the valley, but sinks exhausted at this season before reaching the sirdar's well. in the early summer it is of the volume of a torrent, which winds past the encampment, like a serpent of silver, uttering a dull, rumbling sound. [75] it is fed by the water from the snow-fields, and there is said to be a spring which contributes to support it at a height of nearly 11,000 feet. [76] after half an hour's walk over the stony surface of the platform--the ragged herbage burnt yellow by the sun--we entered the narrows of the mountain saddle, and followed the dry bed of this rivulet at the foot of rocky spurs. the tufts of sappy grass sparsely studded on the margin of the water-course gave place, as we advanced, to a continuous carpet of soft and verdant turf; here and there the eye rested on the deep green of the juniper, or the graceful fretwork of a wild rose tree quivered in the draught. the warm rays flashed in the thin atmosphere, and tempered the searching breeze. the spurs on our right descend from the shoulder of great ararat, from the causeway of which it forms the head, and are seen to diverge into two systems as they enter the narrow pass. the one group pushes forward to the little ararat and is lost in confused detail; the other and, perhaps, the larger system bends boldly along the side of the valley, sweeping outwards towards the base. at three o'clock we reached a large pool of clouded water, collected on a table surface of burnt grass; close by is an extensive bed of nettles, and a circle of loose stones. this spot is, no doubt, the site of a kurdish encampment, and appeared to have been only recently abandoned by the shepherds and their flocks. the further we progressed, the more the prospect opened over the slopes of ararat; we were approaching the level of the tops of the ridges which skirt the valley side. passing, as we now were, between the two ararats, we again remarked that the greater seemed no higher than the lesser, so completely is the eye deceived. in the hollows of the gully there were small pools of water, but the stream itself was dry. by half-past three we had left the gentle water-course, and were winding inwards, up the slope of great ararat, to cross the black and barren region, the girdle of sharp crags and slippery boulders which is drawn round the upper seams of the mountain, like a succession of chevaux de frise. we thought it must have been on some other side of ararat that the animals descended from the ark. for a space of more than three hours we laboured on over a chaos of rocks, through a labyrinth of troughs and ridges, picking a path and as often retracing it, or scrambling up the polished sides of the larger blocks which arrest the most crafty approach. the kurds, although sorely taxed by their burdens, were at an advantage compared to ourselves; they could slip, like cats, from ledge to ledge in their laced slippers of hide. in one place we passed a gigantic heap of boulders, towering several hundred feet above our heads. the rock is throughout of the same character and colour--an andesitic lava of a dark slaty hue. a little later we threaded up a ravine or gully, and, after keeping for awhile to the bottom of the depression, climbed slowly along the back of the ridge. i noticed that the grain or direction of the formation lay towards east-south-east. from the head of this ravine we turned into a second, by a natural gap or pass; loose rocks were piled along the sides of the hollow, which bristled with fantastic, but unreal, shapes. here a seated group of camels seemed to munch in silence on the line of fading sky, or the knotty forms of lifeless willows stretched a menace of uplifted arms. in the sheltered laps of this higher region, as we approached our journey's end, the snow still lay in ragged patches, which increased in volume and depth.... the surface cleared, the view opened; we emerged from the troubled sea of stone. beyond a lake of snow and a stretch of rubble rose the ghostly sheet of the summit region, holding the last glimmer of day. it was seven o'clock, and we had no sooner halted than the biting frost numbed our limbs. [77] the ground about us was not uneven, but an endless crop of pebbles filled the plainer spaces between little capes of embedded rock. at length upon the margin of the snow-lake we found a tiny tongue of turf-grown soil--just sufficient emplacement to hold the flying tent which we had brought for the purpose of this lofty bivouac near the line of continuous snow. we were five to share the modest area which the sloping canvas enclosed; yet the temperature in the tent sank below freezing before the night was done. down the slope beside us the snow water trickled beneath a thin covering of ice. the sheep-skin coats which we had brought from aralykh protected us from chill, but the hardy kurds slept in their seamy tatters upon the naked rocks around. one among them sought protection as the cold became intenser, and we wrapped him in a warm cape. it was the first time i had passed the night at so great an elevation--12,194 feet above the sea--and it is possible that the unwonted rarity of the atmosphere contributed to keep us awake. but, whether it may have arisen from the conditions which surrounded us, or from a nervous state of physical excitement inspired by our enterprise, not one among us, excepting the dragoman, succeeded in courting sleep. that plump little person had struggled on bravely to this his furthest goal, and his heavy breathing fell upon the silence of the calm, transparent night. the site of our camp below the snow-line marks a new stage, or structural division, in the fabric of ararat. of these divisions, which differ from one another not only in the characteristics presented by each among them, but also in the gradient of slope, it is natural to distinguish three. we are dealing in particular with that section of the mountain which lies between aralykh and the summit, and with the features of the south-eastern side. first, there is the massive base of the mountain, about 10 miles in depth, extending from the floor of the river valley to a height of about 6000 feet. at that point the higher seams commence to gather, and the belt of rock begins. the arduous tracts which we had just traversed, where large, loose blocks of hard, black lava are piled up like a beach, compose the upper portion of this middle region, and may be said to touch the lower margin of the continuous fields of snow. the line of contact between the extremities of the one and the other stage partakes of the nature of a transitional system, a neutral zone on the mountain side, where the rocky layers of the middle slopes have not yet shelved away, nor the immediate seams of the summit region settled to their long climb. in this sense the fields of stone about our encampment, with their patches of last year's snow, are invested with the attributes of a natural threshold at the foot of the great dome. the stage which is highest in the structure of ararat, the stage which holds the dome, has its origin in this threshold, or neutral district, at an altitude which varies between 12,000 and 13,000 feet. very different in character and in appearance from the region we were leaving behind was the slope which faced our encampment, robed in perpetual snow. you have pursued the ramifications of the lava system to the side of their parent stems; and in place of blind troughs and prospectless ledges a noble singleness of feature breaks upon the extricated view. you command the whole summit structure of ararat on the short, or gable side; and the shape which rises from the open ground about you is that of a massive cone. the regular seams which mount to the summit stretch continuous to the crown of snow, and are inclined at an angle which diverges very little from an average of 30°. the gradients from which these higher seams gather--the slopes about our camp--cannot exceed half that inclination, or an angle of 15°. such is the outline, so harmonious and simple, which a first glance reveals.... a more intimate study of the summit region, as it expands to a closer view, disclosed characteristics which were not exactly similar to those with which we had already become familiar in the neighbourhood of sardar bulakh. it was there the north-eastern hemisphere of the mountain--if the term may be applied to the oval figure which the summit region presents--displayed to the prospect upon the segment between east and south-east. our present position lay more to the southward, between the two hemispheres; we were placed near the axis of the figure, and the roof, as viewed from our encampment, bore nearly due north-west. the gigantic causeway which at sardar bulakh was seen descending on our left hand from the distant snows, now rose on our right, like a rocky headland, confronting a gleaming sea of ice. but, when the eye pursues the summit circle vanishing towards the west, you miss the sister forms of lesser causeways, radiating down the mountain side. it is true that the greater proximity of our standpoint to the foot of these highest slopes curtailed the segment of the circle which we are able to command. this circumstance is not in itself sufficient to explain the change in the physiognomy of the summit region, as we see it on this side. in place of those bold, black ribs or ridges, spread fanwise down the incline, furrowing the snows with their sharp edges, and lined along the troughs of their contiguous bases with broad streaks of sheltered nevé, it seems as if the fabric had fallen asunder, the surface slipped away--all the flank of the mountain depressed and hollow, from our camp to the roof of the dome. the canopy of snow which encircles the summit--a broad, inviolate bank, unbroken by any rift or rock projection for a depth of some 2000 feet--breaks sharply off on the verge of this depression, and leaves the shallow cavity bare. from the base of the giant causeway just above us to the gently-pursing outline of the roof you follow the edge of the great snow-field, bordering a rough and crumbling region which offers scanty foothold to the snow, where the hollow slope bristles with pointed boulders, and the bold crags pierce the ruin around them in upstanding combs or saw-shaped ridges, holding slantwise to the mountain side. on the west side of this broad and uncovered depression, near the western extremity of the cone, a long strip of snow descends from the summit, caught by some trough, or sheltering fissure, in the rough face of the cliff. beyond it, just upon the sky-line, the bare rocks reappear, and climb the slope, like a natural ladder, to a point where the roof of the dome is lowest and appears to offer the readiest access to the still invisible crown. [78] in the attenuated atmosphere surrounding the summit every foot that is gained tells. an approach which promises to ease the gradient at the time when it presses most seems to offer advantages which some future traveller may be encouraged to essay. we ourselves were influenced in the choice of a principle upon which to base our attack by the confident counsels of the armenian, which the local knowledge of the kurds confirmed. we were advised to keep to the eastern margin of the depression, by the edge of the great snow-field. you see the brown rocks still baffling the snow-drifts near the point where the deceitful slope appears to end, where on the verge of the roof it just dips a little, then stands up, like a low white wall, on the luminous ground of blue. the troubled sea of boulders flowing towards the little ararat, from which we had just emerged, still hemmed us in from any prospect over the tracts which lay below. the flush of dawn broke between the two mountains from a narrow vista of sky. the even surface of the snow slope loomed white and cold above our heads, while the night still lingered on the dark stone about us, shadowing the little laps of ice. before six o'clock we were afoot and ready; it wanted a few minutes to the hour as we set out from our camp. to the swiss was entrusted the post of leader; behind him followed in varying order my cousin and wesson and myself. slowly we passed from the shore of the snow-lake to the gathering of the higher seams, harbouring our strength for the steeper gradients as we made across the beach of boulders, stepping firmly from block to block. the broad, white sheet of the summit circle descends to the snow-lakes of the lower region in a tongue, or gulf of deep nevé; you may follow on the margin of the great depression the western edge of this gleaming surface unbroken down the side of the cone. on the east the black wall of the giant causeway borders the shining slope, invading the field of perpetual winter to a height of over 14,000 feet. the width of the snow-field between these limits varies as it descends; on a level with the shoulder, or head of the causeway, it appeared to span an interval of nearly 200 yards. [79] the depth of the bed must be considerable, and, while the surface holds the tread in places, it as often gives and lets you through. no rock-projection, or gap, or fissure breaks the slope of the white fairway; but the winds have raised the crust about the centre into a ribbon of tiny waves. our plan was to cross the stony region about us, slanting a little east, and to mount by the rocks on the western margin of the snow-field, adhering as closely as might be possible to the side of the snow. it was in the execution of this plan--so simple in its conception--that the trained instinct of the swiss availed. of those who have attempted the ascent of ararat--and their number is not large--so many have failed to reach the summit that, upon a mountain which makes few, if any, demands upon the resources of the climber's craft, their discomfiture must be attributed to other reasons: to the peculiar nature of the ground traversed, no less than to the inordinate duration of the effort; to the wearisome recurrence of the same kind of obstacles, and to the rarity of the air. now the disposition of the rocks upon the surface of the depression is by no means the same as that which we have studied in connection with the seams which lie below. the path no longer struggles across a troubled sea of ridges, or strays within the blind recesses of a succession of gigantic waves of stone. on the other hand, the gradients are as a rule steeper; and the clearings are covered with a loose rubble, which slips from under the feet. the boulders are piled one upon another in heaps as they happened to fall, and the sequence of forms is throughout arbitrary and subject to no fixed law. in one place it is a tower of this loose masonry which blocks all further approach; in another a solid barrier of sharp crags, laced together, which it is necessary to circumvent. when the limbs have been stiffened and the patience exhausted by the long and devious escalade, the tax upon the lungs is at its highest, and the strain upon the heart most severe. many of the difficulties which travellers have encountered upon this stage of the climb may be avoided, or met at a greater advantage, by adhering to the edge of the snow. but the fulfilment of this purpose is by no means so easy as might at first sight appear. you are always winding inwards to avoid the heaps of boulders, or emerging on the backs of gigantic blocks of lava towards the margin of the shining slope. in the choice of the most direct path, where many offered, the swiss was never at fault; he made up the cone without a moment's hesitation, like a hound threading a close covert, and seldom if ever foiled. at twenty minutes to seven, when the summit of little ararat was about on a level with the eye, we paused for awhile and turned towards the prospect, now opening to a wider range. the day was clear, and promised warmth; above us the snowy dome of ararat shone in a cloudless sky. the landscape on either side of the beautiful pyramid lay outspread at our feet; from north-east, the hidden shores of lake sevan, to where the invisible seas of van and urmi diffused a soft veil of opaline vapour over the long succession of lonely ranges in the south-east and south. the wild borderland of persia and turkey here for the first time expands to view. the scene, however much it may belie the conception at a first and hasty glance, bears the familiar imprint of the characteristics peculiar to the great tableland. the mountains reveal their essential nature and disclose the familiar forms--the surface of the tableland broken into long furrows, of which the ridges tend to hummock shapes. so lofty is the stage, so aloof this mighty fabric from all surrounding forms, the world lies dim and featureless about it like the setting of a dream. in the foreground are the valleys on the south of little ararat, circling round to the araxes floor; and, on the north-east, beside the thread of the looping river, is a little lake, dropped like a turquoise on the sand where the mountain sweeps the plain. in the space of another hour we had reached an elevation about equal to that of the head of the causeway on the opposite side of the snow, a point which i think we should be justified in fixing at over 14,000 feet. [80] we were now no longer threading along the shore of an inlet; alone the vague horizon of the summit circle was the limit of the broad, white sea. but on our left hand the snowless region of rock and rubble still accompanied our course, and a group of red crags stood up above our heads, just where the upward slope appeared to end. yet another two hours of continuous climbing, and, at about half-past nine, the loose boulders about us open, and we are approaching the foot of these crags. the end seems near; but the slope is deceitful, and when once we have reached the head of the formation the long white way resumes. but the blue vault about us streams with sunlight; the snow is melting in the crannies; a genial spirit lightens our toil. and now, without any sign or warning, the mysterious spell which holds the mountain begins to throw a web about us, craftily, from below. the spirits of the air come sailing through the azure with shining gossamer wings, while the heavier vapours gather around us from dense banks serried upon the slope beneath us, a thousand feet lower down. the rocks still climb the increasing gradient, but the snow is closing in. at eleven we halt to copy an inscription, which has been neatly written in russian characters on the face of a boulder stone. it records that on the third day of the eighth month of 1893 the expedition led by the russian traveller postukhoff passed the night in this place. at the foot of the stone lie several objects: a bottle filled with fluid, an empty tin of biscuits, a tin containing specimens of rock. at half-past eleven i take the angle of the snow slope, at this point 35°. about this time the swiss thinks it prudent to link us all together with his rope. the surface of the rocks is still uncovered, but their bases are embedded in deep snow. it is now, after six hours' arduous climbing, that the strain of the effort tells. the lungs are working at the extreme of their capacity, and the pressure upon the heart is severe. at noon i call a halt, and release young wesson from his place in the file of four. his pluck is still strong, but his look and gait alarm me, and i persuade him to desist. we leave him to rest in a sheltered place, and there await our return. from this time on we all three suffer, even the swiss himself. my cousin is affected with mountain sickness; as for me, i find it almost impossible to breathe and climb at the same time. we make a few steps upwards and then pause breathless, and gasp again and again. the white slope vanishing above us must end in the crown of the dome; and the boulders strewn more sparsely before us promise a fairer way. but the further we go, the goal seems little closer; and the shallow snow, resting on a crumbling rubble, makes us lose one step in every three. a strong smell of sulphur permeates the atmosphere; it proceeds from the sliding surface upon which we are treading, a detritus of pale sulphurous stones. at 1.25 we see a plate of white metal, affixed to a cranny in the rocks. it bears an inscription in russian character which dates from 1888. i neglect to copy out the unfamiliar letters; but there can be little doubt that they record the successful ascent of dr. markoff, an ascent which cost him dear. a few minutes later, at half-past one, the slope at last eases, the ground flattens, the struggling rocks sink beneath the surface of a continuous field of snow. at last we stand upon the summit of ararat--but the sun no longer pierces the white vapour; a fierce gale drives across the forbidden region, and whips the eye straining to distinguish the limits of snow and cloud. vague forms hurry past on the wings of the whirlwind; in place of the landscape of the land of promise we search dense banks of fog. disappointed perhaps, but relieved of the gradient, and elated with the success of our climb, we run in the teeth of the wind across the platform, our feet scarcely sinking in the storm-swept crust of the surface, the gently undulating roof of the dome.... along the edge of a spacious snow-field which dips towards the centre, and is longest from north-west to south-east, on the vaulted rim of the saucer which the surface resembles, four separate elevations may conveniently be distinguished as the highest points in the irregular oval figure which the whole platform appears to present. the highest among these rounded elevations bears north-west from the spot where we first touch the summit or emerge upon the roof. that spot itself marks another of these inequalities; the remaining two are situated respectively in this manner--the one about midway between the two already mentioned, but nearer to the first and on the north side; the other about south of the north-western elevation, and this seems the lowest of all. the difference in height between the north-western elevation and that upon the south-east is about 200 feet; and the length of the figure between these points--we paced only a certain portion of the distance--is about 500 yards. the width of the platform, so far as we could gauge it, may be some 300 yards. a single object testifies to the efforts of our fore-runners and to the insatiable enterprise of man--a stout stake embedded upon the north-western elevation in a little pyramid of stones. it is here that we take our observations, and make our longest halt. [81] before us lies a valley or deep depression, and on the further side rises the north-western summit, a symmetrical cone of snow. this summit connects with the bold snow buttresses beyond it, terraced upon the north-western slope. the distance down and up from where we stand to that summit may be about 400 yards; but neither the swiss nor ourselves consider it higher, and we are prevented from still further exploring the summit region by the increasing violence of the gale and by the gathering gloom of cloud. the sides and floor of the saddle between the two summits are completely covered with snow, and we see no trace of the lateral fissure which abich, no doubt under different circumstances, was able to observe. we remain forty minutes upon the summit; but the dense veil never lifts from the platform, nor does the blast cease to pierce us through. no sooner does an opening in the driving vapours reveal a vista of the world below than fresh levies fly to the unguarded interval, and the wild onset resumes. yet what if the spell had lost its power, and the mountain and the world lain bare? had the tissue of the air beamed clear as crystal, and the forms of earth and sea, embroidered beneath us, shone like the tracery of a shield? we should have gained a balloon view over nature. should we catch her voice so well?--the ancient voice heard at cool of day in the garden, or the voice that spoke in accents of thunder to a world condemned to die. "it repented the lord that he had made man, and it grieved him at his heart. the earth was filled with violence: god looked upon the earth and behold it was corrupt. in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven were opened. and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." we are standing on the spot where the ark of gopher rested, where first the patriarch alighted on the face of an earth renewed. before him lie the valleys of six hundred years of sorrow; the airiest pinnacle supports him, a boundless hope fills his eyes. the pulse of life beats strong and fresh around him; the busy swarms thrill with sweet freedom, elect of all living things. in the settling exhalations stands the bow of many colours, eternal token of god's covenant with man. the peaks which rise on the distant borderland where silence has first faltered into speech are wrapped about with the wreaths of fancy, a palpable world of cloud. do we fix our foot upon these solid landmarks to wish the vague away, to see the hard summits stark and naked, and all the floating realm of mystery flown? the truth is firm, and it is well to touch and feel it and know where the legend begins; but the legend itself is truth transfigured, as the snow distils into cloud. the reality of life speaks in every syllable of that solemn, stately tale--divine hope bursting the bounds of matter to compromise with despair. and the ancient mountain summons the spirits about him, and veils a futile frown, as the rising sun illumines the valleys of asia and the life of man lies bare. the spectres walk in naked daylight--violence and corruption and decay. the traveller finds in majestic nature consolation for these sordid scenes; while a spirit seems to whisper in his ears, "turn from him!--turn from him, that he may rest till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day." chapter xiii the heart of ararat retracing our steps down the side of the cone, we soon regained the streaming sunlight. i called a halt, and we rested on some rocks, embedded in snow. our next task was to search for wesson; but he had left his sheltered cranny, and, as the day was warm, we concluded that he had returned to camp. the swiss and myself determined to try a glissade down the snow slope; my cousin preferred to adhere to the rocks. i was aware of the danger of the glissade down ararat, and we therefore planned our course with care. we broke the descent at several points, made errors on the side of caution, and glided safely into one of the inlets about the base of the cone. it was still some distance to the encampment; we proceeded with the utmost leisure across the boulder-strewn waste. at last we beheld the lake of snow, and our tiny tent beside it, and the gaunt figures of the kurds. these also perceived us, and sent us a cry of greeting, which vibrated in the still air. wesson and the dragoman were there to meet us; my cousin arrived almost at the same time. our climb had been accomplished without a single mishap, and all except the dragoman, who pleaded that he had been half frozen in camp, were pleased with the day's work. it was twenty minutes past six o'clock; yet i thought it best to strike our tent and seek a less exposed and less elevated spot. after a toilsome walk of about half an hour we found some grass in a little valley, and there composed ourselves for the night. i had sent two kurds to collect firewood while we were sleeping; it was morning before they returned. we breakfasted beside a pleasant fire, and decided to devote the earlier hours to rest. i was able to avail myself of a convenient physical habit of being refreshed by violent exercise. the summit was clear of cloud, and i sallied forth with the camera to seek a standpoint in full view of the cone. at some little distance from our camp i found such an eminence, whence all the characteristics of the summit region were exposed (fig. 36). the peak of great ararat bore almost due north-west of this point, that of little ararat a little south of east. [82] on the left of the picture you see the hollow in the face of the cone and the rocks struggling upwards to its top; on the right is the shoulder, or head of the causeway, bordering the snow slope on the opposite side. in the afternoon we regained our standing encampment in the valley of sardar bulakh. relieved of the tension of a fixed purpose, we were able to turn with real enjoyment to the contemplation of the surroundings in which we were placed. there can scarcely exist in the world another such standpoint as the platform of the sirdar's well. you never tire of the contrasting shapes of the massive dome and the graceful pyramid; below you in the plains the silent operations of nature proceed on their daily course. morning breaks, and the floor of the plain is shrouded in white mist; the sun rises, and the opposite peaks of the sevan ranges are crowned with banks of billowing cloud. stray films wander out into the blue vault of heaven, and graze the sides of the dome. as the day grows, the warm air mounts these sides and melts the snows, which distil into a white vaporous mass. the ground of the landscape increases in definition of feature--the rich campagna, the looping river, the sites of the towns. it is the subtle quality no less than the scale of the composition which distinguishes this prospect from other views, similar in character, which are unfolded from the summit of a pass. and if you turn from the immense expanse and rest the eye on the forms about you, those forms respond to your emotions and invest them with a deeply religious cast. this vast fabric, so harmonious in design, in position so self-sufficient, touches chords in the nature of man which sound through all the religions, and die away only when they die. yet how vulgar appear their dogmas in this pure atmosphere of religion, in the courts of this great cathedral of the natural world! you feel that this mountain has been the parent of religions, whence they strayed into devious paths. to this parent you would again collect the distracted; in this atmosphere you long to bathe the populations of our great towns. our morbid dramatists, our nervous novelists need the inspiration of these surroundings--the promptings of nature in her loftiest manifestations, from which the life of man can never with impunity be divorced. in a lighter sense, to the traveller who seeks rest and enjoyment, i can confidently recommend a pilgrimage to this beautiful upland valley, and a sojourn among the marvels of this site. for the sportsman there are partridges in abundance; the botanist and the man of taste will admire the brilliancy of the flowers which nestle in the crannies of the rocks. junipers clothe the ground, and a plant with spiked foliage like the juniper, and with a lovely little flower like a star. i have taken a specimen to kew, and they call it acantholimon echinus--a peculiarly appropriate name. tiny bushes of wild rose flutter in the breezes; and, a little lower down, the earth is yellow with immortelles (helichrysum), which, as i write, recall the southern sun. the journey to erivan, by way of tiflis, can be performed in luxury; from erivan you can drive in a victoria to the foot of ararat; on the mountain you have need of nothing but a tent and a cook. the kurds are well-behaved, and will provide you with milk and mutton, of which it is a treat to taste. the old lawless times are passing into legend, thanks to the vigorous rule of the tsars. the russian officials abound in real kindness of disposition; and, if you can only succeed in patching a peace with the system, you feel that they really wish you well. we returned to aralykh on the 22nd of september after an absence of nearly six days. the cantonment of aralykh faces the jaws of the great chasm which extends from the snowy roof to the base of ararat, and lays the heart of the mountain bare (fig. 37). we were anxious to penetrate within these dark recesses, and, after a day's rest, carried our project into effect. it is a melancholy reflection that nothing is lasting--that the strength of the earth withers and the strength of the human body, that faith dies and the closest friendships dissolve. in the world of sense time is all-powerful, and nothing escapes destruction at his hands. [83] this painful lesson is written with terrible emphasis on the fabric of ararat, where it fronts the historic river and the historic plains. another earthquake, and the massive roof may tumble headlong into the abyss which now yawns beneath its cornice of snow. i have already observed that herrmann abich was able to remark a lateral fissure between the two highest elevations in the surface of the crown of the dome. he suggests that this fissure may have been caused by the convulsion of 1840, to which the present configuration of the chasm is due. [84] it would therefore appear that time has already taken a decisive step towards the overthrow of the uppermost portion of the cone. the chasm itself and the subsidence of the flank of the mountain date from an epoch beyond the range of history. tournefort, who visited ararat in 1701, presents us with such a vivid picture of the rent side of the giant, that one cannot doubt that the essential features of the chasm existed in his day. [85] the little monastery of st. jacob, which, prior to the catastrophe of 1840, stood within the recesses of the gulf, probably occupied the same site when it was first erected in the early christian times. the reader may not be acquainted with the story of the catastrophe, and may like to learn or to recall it in this place. several travellers have presented us with a description of the locality as it existed before those events. [86] some 10 miles from the banks of the kara su, on the base or pedestal of ararat, at a height of some 5600 feet above the sea, or 2900 feet above the plain, [87] was situated the armenian village of akhury or arguri--the only village, we are informed by dubois, which had hazarded a position on the side of the mountain, [88] and a place which boasted a remote antiquity. according to armenian tradition, it was there that noah built the altar, and offered up the burnt sacrifice, after his departure from the ark and safe descent of the mountain, with his family and the living creatures of every kind. it was at akhury or arguri--a name which is said to signify in the armenian language he has planted the vine [89]--that, according to the same tradition, the patriarch planted his vineyard and drank to excess of its wine. the inhabitants would point to an ancient willow of stunted growth, bent by the action of snow and ice; it stood in an isolated spot above the village, a rare object on a mountain which is almost devoid of trees. they believed that it drew its origin from a plank of the ark which had taken root; and they would not suffer any damage to be done to the sacred object, or the least of its branches to be taken away. the population amounted to about 1000 souls; [90] the houses numbered some two hundred, and were built of stone with the usual flat roofs. the settlement owed its prosperity, and even its existence, to a stream which then, as now, issued from the jaws of the chasm, fed by the melting ice and snow. it was placed at the open exit from the gorge, where the trough flattens out into the base. the church and the larger portion of the village were on the right bank of the stream; on the left, opposite the church, stood a square-shaped fortress, built of clay after the fashion of the country. a near eminence was crowned by the walls of a spacious palace, which served as a summer residence for the persian sirdars of erivan. it was indeed a delightful resort during the heats of summer. a cool draught descended from the snows of the summit region; and the little stream supported considerable vineyards and orchards, so that the traveller, on approaching akhury, could take refuge from the glare of the plain in quite a little wood of apricot trees. the church--said to have been called araxilvank (arakelotz vank?)--was reputed to have been built on the site of noah's altar. it dated from the eighth or ninth century; and to such a height had the ground about it risen since its foundation, that the two side doors had become embedded in soil up to the crossbeams. just beyond this pleasant oasis you entered the chasm, and, after proceeding for nearly two miles up its boulder-strewn hollow, you reached the little monastery of st. jacob, which stood on the edge of a natural terrace a few hundred feet above the bottom of the gulf, immediately overlooking the right bank of the stream. the chasm had at this spot a depth of some 600 to 800 feet, [91] and the elevation of the site of the monastery above sea-level was 6394 feet. [92] parrot, who established his headquarters in this lonely cloister, has handed down to us a charming illustration of the place, and a pleasant description of the chapel, with its walled enclosure and garden and orchard, the residence, at the time of his visit, of a single monk. like the church of akhury, it commemorated a religious event in the story of ararat. a monk of the name of jacob, afterwards bishop of nisibis, reputed to have been a contemporary and relative of st. gregory, was seized with the desire to convince the sceptics of the truth of the biblical narrative, and to assure himself of the presence of the ark on the summit of ararat by the evidence of his own eyes. in the pursuit of this purpose he made several attempts to scale the mountain from the north-east side. on each occasion he fell asleep, exhausted by the effort; as often as he awoke, he would find that he had been miraculously transported to the point from which he had set out. at length god looked with compassion upon his fruitless labours, and sent an angel who appeared to him in his sleep. the divine message was to the effect that the summit was unattainable by mortal man; but the angel deposited on his breast a fragment of the holy ark, as a reward for his faith and pains. [93] beyond st. jacob's, on the same or eastern side of the chasm and on the edge of the precipice, was situated a tiny shrine, built of hewn stone, at an altitude of about 1000 feet above the monastery. [94] it stood by the side of one of the rare springs which are found on ararat--a well of which the waters are still deemed to possess miraculous powers, and which still attracts numerous pilgrims from the plains. as you followed the gulf still further, the sides increased in steepness and the abyss in depth, until, at a distance of about two and a half miles from the cloister, [95] it ended in an almost perpendicular wall of rock which towered up to the snowy cornice of the dome. tournefort, whose description is in other respects fantastic, has used language to portray the aspect of the upper end of the chasm which would be true at the present day. he speaks of the terrible appearance of the ravine, one of those natural wonders which testify to the greatness of the saviour, as his armenian companion observed. he could not help trembling as he overlooked the precipices, and he asks his readers, if they would form some conception of the character of the phenomenon, to imagine one of the loftiest mountains in the world opening its bosom to a vertical cleft. from the heights above, masses of rock were continually falling into the abyss with a noise that inspired fear. [96] on the evening of the 20th of june 1840 a terrific earthquake shook the mountain, and not only the shrine and cloister, but the entire village of akhury with the sirdar's palace were destroyed and swept away. an eye-witness, who was pasturing cattle on the grassy slopes above the chasm on the side opposite to the shrine and the well, tells us that he was thrown on to his knees by a sudden reeling of the ground, and that, even in this position, he was unable to maintain himself, but was overturned by the continuing shocks. close by his side the earth cracked; a terrific rolling sound filled his ears; when he dared look up, he could see nothing but a mighty cloud of dust, which glimmered with a reddish hue above the ravine. but the quaking and cracking were renewed; he lay outstretched upon the ground, and thus awaited death. at length the sounds became fainter, and he was able to look towards the ravine. through the dust he perceived a dark mass in the hollow, but of what it was composed he could not see. the sun went down; the great cloud passed away from the valley; as he descended with his cattle in the failing light, he could see nothing within the abyss except the dark mass. another spectator has left us an account of the various phases of the phenomenon, as they were experienced from a standpoint below the village. he happened to be working in a garden a few versts from akhury, on the side of the plain. his wife and daughter were with him; two of his sons appeared towards evening and brought him a report about his cattle. two riders, returning to the village, exchanged a few words with the party, and rode on. the sun was beginning to sink behind the mountains, and he and his people were preparing to go home. in an instant the ground beneath their feet oscillated violently, and all were thrown down. at the same time loud reports and a rolling sound, as if of thunder, increased the panic into which they fell. a hurricane of wind swept towards them from the chasm and overturned every object that was not firm. in the same direction there arose an immense cloud of dust, overtopped, towards the upper portion of the ravine, by a darker cloud, as of black smoke. after a momentary pause the same phenomena were repeated; only this time a dark mass swept towards them from the direction of the village with a rolling and a rushing sound. it reached the two riders; they were engulfed and disappeared. immediately afterwards the two sons were overtaken by the same fate. the mass rolled onwards to the gardens, and broke down the walled enclosures. large stones came tumbling about the unfortunate peasants; and a great crag swept down upon the prostrate witness, and settling by his side, caught his mantle fast. extricating himself with difficulty, he succeeded in lifting his unconscious wife and daughter from the earth, and in flying with them over the quaking ground. after each shock they could hear the sound of cracking in the chasm, accompanied by sharp reports. they were joined by fugitives, escaping from the neighbouring gardens, and they endeavoured to make their way to aralykh. it was morning before they reached their goal; during the night the sounds and shocks continued, always fainter but at periodical intervals. this catastrophe was followed on the 24th of june by a second and scarcely less momentous collapse. on this occasion a mass of mud and water burst from the chasm, as though some colossal dam had given way. blocks of rock and huge pieces of ice were precipitated over the base, and the flood extended for a space of about thirteen miles. not a trace was left of the gardens and fields which it devastated, and the kara su was temporarily dammed by the viscous stream. [97] it is to the credit of the times in which we live that no such event could now occur in russian territory without exhaustive and local scientific investigation, while the results of the catastrophe were still fresh. the task of reporting to the government was entrusted to a major of engineers, who was ordered to open an enquiry on the spot. his account was to the effect that masses of rock were precipitated into the chasm from the overhanging heights; that they were accompanied in their descent by vast quantities of snow, unloosed by the sinking foundations of the uppermost seams. a river of boulders and snow and ice streamed with lightning rapidity down the gulf, buried the cloister and the village with all its inhabitants, and choked up the trough of the abyss. the earthquake was attended by the opening of fissures in the ground, from which there issued water and sand, and even flames. [98] the mention of this last phenomenon appears to have aroused the curiosity of men of learning, and to have excited in them a strong desire for further light. the site was visited in 1843 by a german man of science, dr. wagner, and in 1844 by the great geologist herrmann abich, whose researches are always careful and complete. [99] these two authorities unfortunately arrived at opposite conclusions as to the character of the convulsion. wagner begins by discrediting the account of the russian major, and suggests that he had never left the walls of erivan, having lost his travelling money at play. he considers it absurd to suppose that the mass which destroyed akhury and the fragments of rocks which were projected far and wide can be attributed to the operation of purely seismic forces, dislocating the crown and sides of the abyss. they must have been due to eruptive volcanic action, of which he thought he could see the traces at the upper end of the chasm, the site, according to his view, of one of the old craters of ararat. they were impelled through the air by steam and escaping gases from a fissure in the bottom of the ravine. we must therefore form the conception of an eruption accompanied by an earthquake, not of a landslip effected by seismic shocks. [100] that this theory is open to objection on the simple ground of probability, it does not require scientific knowledge to perceive. in the first place an eruption of ararat is unknown within the historical period; in the second, the destruction of akhury was only one of many catastrophes which were occasioned by earth movements on the same day. on that same evening the valley of the araxes was visited by a violent earthquake, and thousands of houses were overthrown. [101] it is true that wagner supposes an eruption of steam rather than of fire, and favours the hypothesis of vast reservoirs of water beneath the mountain having burst in upon the molten mass below. but this ingenious supposition is rendered unnecessary and improbable by the minute researches of the next trained worker in the same field. abich asks how it would be possible for eruptive action to have broken forth in a narrow valley--on such a scale that huge crags of 100 to 150 feet in circumference were propelled for a distance of over three miles [102]--without leaving any trace of volcanic ejectamenta on the adjoining heights and on the slopes beyond. a careful examination of the disposition and character of the débris, as they were disclosed within the trough of the chasm, as well as on the surface of the base of the mountain, established in his mind the veracity in all essentials of the official version of the russian major of engineers. he observed that the fragments of rock which are strewn over the basal slopes before the entrance to the chasm is reached, become concentrated as you proceed, and are collected into long ridges of boulders, which issue from the mouth of the gulf. yet not a single one among these fragments was found to be identical in nature with the fragments on the adjacent valley sides. how account for this striking circumstance on the hypothesis of an eruption from fissures along the base of the valley? when he came to investigate the origin of these piled-up boulders, he discovered that they exactly corresponded with the rock of the seams which are found along the upper end of the chasm, overhanging the abyss. he was even able to ascribe approximately the former position of the largest of the crags which recline upon the base to a site on the left wall of the chasm, immediately beneath and supporting the snows. from his writings we may extract the following explanation of the phenomena to which the destruction of akhury was due. the upper structure of ararat had been seriously weakened on the north-eastern side by the slow but persistent action of snow and ice, and by the corrosive tendencies of veins of sulphurate of iron. the earthquake precipitated portions of the higher seams into the chasm, together with masses of snow. a dense cloud of dust was induced by the falling rocks, and the setting sun lent to this cloud a lurid hue. immense quantities of boulders were hurried down the trough of the chasm, accompanied by a stream of mud and melting ice. the course of this composite current was directed upon the village by the configuration of the left wall of the chasm. as the sides of the valley fell in, its upper portion became obstructed at the neck or narrow which still exists about at the point where the little shrine used to overlook the abyss. a mighty dam was formed by the fallen masses, and the head of the valley became a huge morass. further lapses of rock and snow took place from the summit region, and the heats of june dissolved the frozen elements in the morass. on the 24th the dam yielded to the overpowering pressure, and the second act of the catastrophe was fulfilled. as a result of this earthquake, the ridge enclosing the uppermost end of the chasm was found to have acquired about double its former extent. the height of the precipice had also increased considerably, especially on the eastern side. the summit remained intact, but the fabric of ararat lay henceforth exposed to its innermost core. [103] we set out at a quarter-past eight in the morning, mounted on little hacks. the armenian makar, who had accompanied us on the previous expedition, was deputed to be our guide. it took us some twenty minutes to cross the belt of sand and camelthorn at a pace of about six miles an hour. then the ground commenced to rise with more perceptible acclivity, and we made our way across the massive base. the still air, and the restfulness of the stately fabric before us exercised upon us their now familiar spell. grey clouds enveloped the snows of the summit region, collected above a veil of tender mist. we were pointing towards the entrance to the chasm, and we noticed that, in that direction, there exists a considerable concavity in the surface of the base. one might almost form the conception of a flaw in the mountain, extending to the pedestal upon which it is reared. on either side of us, but more especially on our left hand, the rounded contours of the basal slopes were curving inwards to a wide depression, up the trough of which we rode. is this feature the result of landslip and of floods issuing from the chasm, or was the pedestal always weaker upon this side? i am inclined to ascribe it in part to an inherent defect in the structure, which has been enlarged and accentuated in the process of centuries. it would appear that the streams of lava which fed the base on the north-west and south-east were not directed in equal volume to these north-eastern slopes. such a distribution of the molten matter which contributed to build up the fabric would account, at least in some measure, for the subsequent subsidence of ararat on this its north-eastern flank. as we proceeded, this hollow formation became more pronounced; we were approaching the mouth of the chasm. we observed how much more copious was the flora which covers this portion of the base. in place of the burnt herbage over which we had ridden on our journey to sardar bulakh, we here admired an abundant growth of low and thorny bushes of which the tiny and delicate pink and white flowers were showered upon a ground of grey and green (atraphaxis spinosa). long streamers of sansola (kochia prostrata, schrad.) bent towards us, and gigantic yellow grasses rose like spears (calamagrostis epigejos, roth.). the stream which issues from the chasm--exhausted at this season--feeds and fertilises the sandy soil, and, perhaps, the layers of mud which were left by the flood of 1840 have not been without effect on the nature of the land. we were reminded of that catastrophe by the huge fragments of conglomerate rock which are strewn over the hollow throughout a considerable area. on our return i took a photograph of the largest of these crags, where it lay, among bouquets of spangled atraphaxis, outlined against the sky (fig. 38). abich informs us that the fragment which lies immediately in front of it was incorporated with it at the time of his first visit in 1844; the mass then measured at the base 285 feet in circumference, with a height of 45 feet. [104] i have already said that this careful investigator was able to trace its origin to a site at the upper end of the chasm, overhanging the abyss. according to his theory, it must have fallen in after the first act of the catastrophe, and been transported in the course of the second act to its present place. it was pushed down the trough of the ravine and over the gentle incline of these basal slopes by the action of the viscous stream, until that action lost its force when the stream was freed from the compression of the gorge and radiated outwards over the pedestal. [105] to us plain people the position of these crags was a source of amazement, and the greeks would have made the chasm the residence of a cyclops who hurled such missiles at adventuresome men. at half-past ten we halted at a small kurdish village, situated at the mouth of the chasm. these kurds have erected hovels of loose stones with roofs of mud, and they can boast or deplore, in the person of a starshina, a direct official connection with the russian government. it was amusing to see a kurd in the dress of a russian dignitary stepping out to meet his european visitors. he wore a dark blue coat; a large brass badge of office hung upon his breast. ever since the great convulsion the kurds have haunted the site of akhury, rummaging for anything valuable in the buried ruins. makar explained to us that we were now standing where once stood the prosperous township, with its ancient church and pleasant gardens. the woods of apricot, the rich vineyards have disappeared entirely; it would be difficult to discover a single tree. just west of the miserable hamlet you still remark the deep watercourse which is the principal vent for the drainage of the ravine. the channel is dry at this season, and is overhung by steep banks some 100 to 150 feet high. we observed that these banks are composed of a sandy soil, inlaid with rocks. yet the valley, even in autumn, is not entirely devoid of water; here and there we were refreshed by the sight of growing grass, and by the sound of little runnels. the trough of the ravine has at this point an elevation above sea-level of about 5570 feet, while its sides, which are formed by the cleft in the base of outer sheath of the mountain, are as yet scarcely more than 200 feet high. it extends almost in a straight line, and in a south-westerly direction, to the very heart of ararat. the flanking cliffs rise and the valley narrows, until the formation assumes the proportions of a gulf many thousands of feet in depth, overhung by the snows of the summit region. imagine a gigantic cutting, with a length of several miles, at the uppermost end of which an almost perpendicular precipice supports the snowy roof of ararat! even from this standpoint we could perceive the vertical seams at the head of the chasm, shadowed walls of grey rock with veins of orange hue, the higher ledges sprinkled with the first snows of autumn and half concealed by light, dissolving mist. we mounted to the top of the cliff on the right or eastern side of the ravine, in order to obtain a view on either hand. towards the east stretched the contours of the upper portion of the base, clothed with withered grass and strewn with stones. abich tells us that these fragments are different in origin and character from the boulders and stones in the trough of the ravine; and, as we have seen, he uses the fact as a powerful weapon against the eruptive theory which wagner propounds. looking across the valley, our eyes rested on a little settlement on its opposite or western flank. it occupies a higher site than that of the kurdish village, and may have been about a mile distant from where we stood. it interested us as well by its lonely and dangerous position as by an adjacent and isolated group of trees. it is called new akhury, and, according to the official statistics, contains a population of some 400 tartar inhabitants. it is the seat of a cossack station, and bids fair to increase in size before the next earthquake shall sweep it away. makar directed our attention to some fallen gravestones, not many yards distant from where we stood. they are the remains of the cemetery of the old akhury, and among them we admired several crosses with rich chasing in the old armenian style. we found them overgrown with a thick, orange-hued lichen, resembling the appearance of rust. he told us that many of his relations had been buried in this graveyard, and he pointed out in particular a group of seven stones. he said that they marked the graves of seven brothers who had been killed in the gardens of the vanished township by the attacks of a single snake. after regaling ourselves with delicious milk and eating an egg or two, we started at noon on our excursion up the ravine. we made our way along the eastern side of the chasm, sometimes picking our course as we might among the boulders, at others following a beaten path on higher ground. not far beyond the hamlet we noticed a little spring, of which the water was trickling over. the next object to excite our interest was the peculiar formation of the floor of a side valley, in which we found ourselves at half-past twelve. throughout an area of some 350 by 200 yards the ground was perfectly level, like a billiard table, with a smooth surface of sand and little pebbles. the length of this round ellipse followed the direction of the main ravine, which lay at some considerable depth beneath it, and from which the basin of this valley was separated by a low bulwark of rock and soil. we were impressed by the sharp distinction between the bottom of this flat area and the banks which, on the one side, were formed by this bulwark and, on the other, by towering cliffs, overgrown with grass. the basin has an entrance and an exit gully, through which the waters collect and escape. not a single pool lingered within it at this season, and it was difficult to realise that this warm and sunny recess probably owes its most distinctive features to the erosive action of ice. we mounted ever higher up the slopes which flank the ravine. in the trough of the gulf we noticed another flat space, similar in character but less pronounced than that which i have described. bushes of wild rose luxuriate on these cliff-sides, and from this foreground of rich tints and red berries we looked across to the dark and perpendicular precipices which encircle the head of the chasm. at every lift in the restless vapours we feasted our eyes on the snows of the summit, and we remarked the great length and horizontal profile of the summit-outline, seen between the opening arms of the abyss. muffled women's figures, astride of their horses, came winding down the path. they were armenian ladies, returning from a pilgrimage to st. jacob's well; foot-attendants held their bridles and picked their way. at two o'clock we arrived at the famous rose bush and the holy well. the path has been worn by the feet of pilgrims, who journey hither from the plains. the water issues from a recess in the side of the mountain which has been levelled with a masonry of hewn stone. the overflow nourishes the rose-tree, on the twigs of which are attached countless little ribbons of rag, shreds from the garments of the devout. just beyond these sacred objects you are shown a level site, overhanging the ravine. rows of stones are interlaced upon its surface, a sign for pious wayfarers. here was placed the little shrine which during the great earthquake must have tumbled headlong into the chasm. the pilgrims insert tiny sticks into the ground with the same little ribbons of rag. the holy water is a talisman against all kinds of calamities, and it is supposed to attract the birds which destroy the locusts when they desolate the country-side. it is a fine standpoint from which to command the upper end of the chasm, which has here a width of some 500 yards. my illustration (fig. 39) was taken from a spot close to the well and the site of the shrine, but perhaps a little lower down. the site itself has an elevation above sea-level of about 7500 feet. [106] the camera has belittled the natural features, and i must ask my reader to interpret my picture with the help of the reflection that the snows which overhang these perpendicular precipices are nearly 17,000 feet high. we penetrated further up the romantic valley, along the bed of a dry watercourse. skirting the buttresses of the eastern wall, we observed that they were composed of a compact grey andesite with something of the appearance of slate. seams of a rock similar in character, but which have turned red in weathering, lend variety to the surface of these bold bastions; while the dark face of the wall which mounts to the summit region is scored by extensive veins of that decomposed and orange-hued lava which spells destruction wherever it appears. the bottom of the ravine is covered by a deep beach of boulders, worn by the action of ice and water. animal life is represented by a flock of crows or jackdaws, which croak and circle round you as you advance. behind the lofty wall of rock which is seen on the left of my illustration, in jagged outline against the snows, a glacier descends from the summit region which is probably the only true glacier on ararat, and which i should judge to be gradually decreasing in extent. according to abich, the long ridges which have the appearance of piles of boulders, and which are seen in his illustration descending the trough of the chasm to a point some distance below st. jacob's well, were composed in 1874 of compact and dirty glacier ice, covered over with stones and débris. he informs us that in 1844 there was a direct but deeply buried connection between this ice and the ice in the circus at the lower end of the glacier; and that in 1874 this connection had been severed, and the ice-hills themselves had decreased about one-third in height. [107] on the top of these ridges he discovered a series of marshes and little lakes, of which the largest was several hundred paces in circumference. i cannot testify myself to the present condition of these ice-hills; i cannot even say that they exist. i did not see any ice in the trough of the chasm, although it was evident that its present condition was largely due to ice action, and although we admired a little lake of glacier water, set like a turquoise in the waste of mud and stones. it is computed that the actual glacier descends as low as a level of about 8000 feet--a notable fact when we consider that the line of perpetual snow on this side of ararat is as high as 14,000 feet. we lingered for some little space in the ravine beyond st. jacob's well, waiting for the clouds to lift. but they hung jealously about the upper slopes of the precipices, whence a mist descended upon us like rain. the mountain thundered; from time to time the mist was gently parted, and gave passage to the sun. if we were disappointed of a clear view of the higher regions, we were at least able to appreciate to the full the vista down the weird chasm to the fair landscape of the plain. the comparative straightness of the gulf renders such a prospect possible, even from its uppermost end. no projecting spur or interposed eminence obstructs the continuous stretch of the hollow outlines to the distant campagna of the river-side. on the horizon were the crinkled mountains in the direction of lake sevan, flushed with tints of delicate yellow and amethyst, lightly shaded with opal hues. deep gloom lay upon the floor of the abyss, and only the pools of blue glacier water caught the brilliance of day. on the open base beyond these shadows the sinuous lines of dry watercourses led the eye into the expanse of the plain; and we could still see the recumbent blocks which once hung in pinnacles above the spot upon which we stood. evening was drawing in when we again reached the entrance to the chasm. we skirt the kurdish village, we pass a pool of water and a group of barefooted kurdish girls. away on our left are the mud houses of the tartar settlement, and the green clump of trees. to these succeed the bouquets of pink and white atraphaxis, and the scattered crags of conglomerate rock. a flora of great variety starts from the sand and among the stone. while we are crossing this upper region of the base, the sun disappears behind the still, grey clouds; the blue zenith pales and fades. a full moon rises from the grey clouds, wreathing the landscape with soft lights. heavy quiet reigns over the vast and lonely scene, and the only sound is the cicada's hum. the low, dark outline of the trees of aralykh is a mere shadow on the plain. nature touches the chords of that stately and solemn movement which issues in and faintly accompanies the life of man. supplementary note the identification of mount ararat with the mountain upon which the ark rested is at least as early as the adoption of christianity by the armenians, and may have been originally made by jewish prisoners of war. but there does not appear to have existed in the neighbourhood of ararat an independent local tradition of the flood; and the mountain is still locally known not as ararat, but as masis to the armenians, and as aghri dagh to the tartars. it is, however, called ararat in armenian literature as early as faustus of byzantium, who uses the name in relating the story of st. jacob of nisibis (faustus, iii. 10. the name appears to have been wrongly spelt sararat by the copyists). the ararat of scripture is the assyrian urardhu; and the "mountains of ararat" of genesis viii. 4 must be sought within the country of urardhu. dr. belck has quite recently examined, in the light of his remarkable researches into the lore of the vannic texts, the question of the original geographical application of the term urardhu (zeitschrift für ethnologie, berlin, 1899, pp. 113 seq.); it appears to have spread from a district in kurdistan, south-west of lake urmi, to the country about lake van. it would, therefore, seem that the tendency of the term has been to travel north; for the urardhu or ararat of the historical period is the province about mount ararat, one of the great divisions in the kingdom of the arsakid monarchs of armenia, and well known under the name of ararat to agathangelus and the earliest armenian writers. mount ararat could scarcely have been known to the peoples of the lowlands, among whom the biblical legend of the flood originated. various aspects of the subject are well discussed by suess (das antlitz der erde, leipzic, 1885, vol. i. pp. 25-92; die sintfluth), bryce (transcaucasia and ararat, edition of 1896, pp. 211 seq.), and sayce (dictionary of the bible, london, 1898, sub voce ararat). the fabric of ararat composes an elliptical figure with an axis from north-west to south-east. the base plan measures about 28 miles in length, and about 23 miles in width. the fabric is built up by two mountains: great ararat (16,916 feet above the sea) and little ararat (12,840 feet). their bases are contiguous at a level of 8800 feet, and their summits are 7 miles apart. both are due to eruptive volcanic action; but no eruption of ararat is known to have occurred during the historical period, and the summit of the greater mountain presents all the appearance of a very ancient and much worn-down volcano with a central chimney or vent, long since filled in. i have already described the summit region of great ararat. the estimates or measurements of my predecessors are at variance with one another in detail; but one may assert that it consists of two separate elevations, divided one from the other by a depression some 100 to 150 feet in depth. the more easterly is much the larger, having the character of a spacious platform of saucer-like form. the more westerly presents the shape of a symmetrical cone, when seen from the platform; and is in connection with the snow-laden and almost horizontal bastions at the head of the north-western slope. both elevations have about the same height; but, if anything, the more westerly is the higher. [108] the reader will be able to distinguish them in my photograph (fig. 37), as well as to observe how they mingle together as mere crinkles in the crown of the dome. parrot was inclined to think that the ark came to rest in the depression between these two elevations. yielding in height to the most lofty peaks of the caucasus in the north (elburz, 18,525 feet), which are visible from the summit, and to demavend (over 18,000 feet) in the belt of mountains which rise along the southern shore of the caspian sea, ararat is by far the loftiest of the mountains of armenia, and is over 1000 feet more elevated than the highest peak in europe, mont blanc (15,780 feet). moreover, elburz and kazbek, mont blanc, and even demavend, all rise among a sea of mountains, of which they are little more than the highest crests. the isolation of ararat is not its least interesting feature--a feature which i would fain hope is already imprinted upon my reader's mind. the plains which it overlooks belong to three empires; the frontiers of persia, turkey, and russia meet upon its slopes. it has been estimated that as late as the month of may the colossal mountain is covered with snow to a level of 9000 feet below the summit; and the appearance of this immense white sheet from the blooming campagna of the valley of the araxes is one of the fine sights in the world. but by the month of september the snowy canopy will be confined to the dome of great ararat; and the limit of perpetual snow on the side facing the plain on the north is not less elevated than from 13,500 to 14,000 feet above the sea. the extensive depression through which the araxes flows collects the heats of summer; and the warm air from this reservoir ascends the northern slopes of the mountain, melting the snow to a height which is greater than might be expected in this latitude. [109] the best season for an ascent is the latter half of september. during october there is more chance of obtaining a view from the summit, which is usually most free from clouds in that month. but the days are, of course, shorter, and the fresh snow commences to lie. i should recommend the traveller with time upon his hands who may be anxious to extend our knowledge of the mountain to adopt the following programme:--(1) ascend little ararat from sardar bulakh. (good accounts are furnished by parrot, op. cit. pp. 219 seq.; stuart, proceedings r.g.s. 1877, vol. xxi. pp. 77-92; kovaleffsky, voyage au mont ararat, moscow, 1899 [in russian]; artsruni, verhand. gesell. erdkunde berlin, vol. xxii. 1895, pp. 606 seq.; ebeling, verhand. gesell. erdkunde berlin, vol. xxv. 1898, pp. 130-132.) (2) extend the journey to the southern slopes of great ararat, and thoroughly explore that side of the mountain. (3) ascend great ararat, perhaps from a point a little further south than that indicated in my account; and (4) investigate the condition of the glacier in the chasm of akhury. an interesting excursion may also be made to the little crater lake known as kip göl on the north-western slopes (see the accounts of monsieur and of madame chantre in their writings already cited). i append a list of the successful ascents of great ararat up to and including our own, so far as i have been able to ascertain them [110]:- 1. f. parrot, 1829. started from the monastery of st. jacob (chasm of akhury) and made the ascent by the north-western slope. 2. k. spasky-avtonomoff, 1834. from akhury. 3. herrmann abich, 1845. from sardar bulakh. 4. h. d. seymour, 1845. (from new akhury?). 5. j. khodzko, n. v. khanikoff, and others, 1850. from sardar bulakh. 6. r. stuart and others, 1856. from bayazid. 7. j. bryce, 1876. from sardar bulakh. 8. g. p. baker, 1878. from sardar bulakh. 9. sivoloboff, 1882. 10. e. markoff, 1888. from sardar bulakh. 11. semenoff, 1888 (?). 12. raphalovich and others, 1889. from sardar bulakh. 13. t. g. allen and w. l. sachtleben (1892?). from bayazid. 14. postukhoff, 1893. from sardar bulakh. 15. h. b. lynch, h. f. b. lynch, and rudolph taugwalder, 1893. from sardar bulakh. chapter xiv return to erivan september 25.--we passed the morning upon the mound, in the little open summer-house, face to face with the airy snowfields which we had scaled to their topmost vaulting, with the cavernous recesses which we had penetrated to their inmost core. such is the silence of nature at the foot of this solemn mountain that the faintest sound reaches the ear. i was therefore startled by a clamour of voices in the direction of the cantonment, and i hurried down towards the noise. a booted figure in drab uniform, covered with dust from head to foot, was gesticulating under the influence of extreme excitement to a little group of russian military in their white tunics, accompanied by some languid orientals at a respectful interval. it was the officer of cossacks who had joined our party near takjaltu, and who had left us at sardar bulakh. suiting his gestures to his words, he was narrating a thrilling story of a night encounter with the kurds. his little eyes were bloodshot and distended with emotion; his legs were parted and his feet planted firm. his detachment had fallen in with a band of marauders, who had carried off some cattle from over beyond akhury, and made away towards the turkish frontier. they had fired on the kurds, who had returned their fire; they had recovered the cattle and chased the kurds away. i enquired what bag he had made of these human vultures, and he replied, with a sigh, that they had carried off their dead. on the further side of the araxes, opposite aralykh, is situated the celebrated monastery of khor virap, which marks the spot where, according to armenian tradition, saint gregory, the founder of christianity in armenia, was imprisoned for thirteen years in a deep pit. the country about and behind the cloister is extremely rich in historical and archæological interest, and i would recommend the traveller to prolong his excursion up the romantic valley of the garni, whence he can return across the mountains to erivan. he will examine the sites of artaxata and dvin, and, proceeding up the river, will reach the gorge with the basaltic columns, and the platform where once stood the temple of king tiridates--a beautiful greek shrine given to these solitudes, like the temple of segesta to the lonely sicilian hills. hard by this platform above the river are found the relics of the city of garni; and, near the sources of the stream, at a distance of some five miles from garni, the caves and monastery of surb geghard, reputed to have been founded by st. gregory, respond to the spirit of a landscape which for grandeur and severity is unsurpassed among these wilds. i was anxious to make the acquaintance of some at least among these antiquities; we therefore despatched our luggage with the swiss and the cook to erivan, and, availing ourselves of the offer of a victoria as far as khor virap, resolved to trust to fortune for the remainder of the way. [111] had we been able to procure riding-horses, we might probably have ridden from the ferry over the araxes direct to the cloister across the plain. in a carriage we were obliged to retrace our steps as far as kamarlu, where the road which runs parallel to the course of the river crosses the road to erivan. the stage which we had made after nightfall between that village and aralykh was now performed in the light of day. the alluvial flats between the araxes and the base of ararat are channelled by a network of irrigation runnels, which diffuse the stream of the kara su. from the fields and marshes rise luxuriant cotton and castor oil plants, the one with yellow single blossoms, like a wild rose, and drooping fruit, resembling flakes of snow; the other, higher than these, raising a tender, juicy stem to shining, palm-shaped leaves. here and there, where the water fails, bushes of hardy camelthorn spring up, like weeds, upon the fallow land. the oppressive climate of aralykh, no less than the plague of insects which infest it, are due to the sand upon the pedestal of the mountain, and to these swamps with their effluvia and mosquito swarms. even at this season the sun beats fiercely upon the plain; and, when we reached the ferry, a herd of buffaloes and bullocks, awaiting transport, were rolling parched tongues and casting longing eyes at the river from the bank of crumbling mud. a double pontoon, staged across with planks, received our carriage, and was swiftly impelled along the hawser by the force of the stream. from the opposite margin a dreary tract of baked alluvial soil extends to the zone of gardens and orchards which commences at kamarlu. i have already alluded to the excellence of the road within that zone; but by day you will be loth to hasten along it, such is the charm and so great the interest of the scene. the traffic from the lower araxes, from persia and distant mesopotamia, finds its way along this chaussée to erivan. the district is inhabited by well-to-do people, who can afford the richness of their national dress. beneath the foliage of the needle poplars, between the well-maintained mud walls--over which you look to the vineyards and to the vegetable gardens, where the tomato and the chili abound--a stream of wayfarers, some on horseback, fill the pleasant avenue, chatting and smiling under the expansive influence of ease and shade. at intervals you pass a house or cluster of houses, where groups of armenian women in their holiday attire are gathered before the open doors. they are clad in their gayest cottons, and wear their picturesque head-dress and veils of white gauze. some among them nurse their babes at the open bosom, the little infant cleaving to the full breasts. tartars, with their black lambskin hats and dark blue or black garments, compose an element which a cynic would be loth to dispense with in such a scene of piping peace; yet it would be difficult to detect a trace on their clean-shaven faces of passions which have, perhaps, been blunted by time. laden waggons pass, and numerous bullock-carts, with their heavy, creaking wheels. we were amused by the appearance of a curious pair of riders who, to judge from the deference which was bestowed upon them, were evidently of exalted rank. the man wore a flowing beard and was dressed in oriental apparel; but he held in his hand a parasol of european pattern, and his locks were surmounted by an english billycock hat. his wife was by his side, astride of her arab; but the graceful animal was almost invisible beneath her, his withers overtowered by the huge bulk of her stomach, and his back enveloped in the folds of her robes. it was an assyrian bishop, journeying from mosul. kamarlu is perhaps a type of these villages of the campagna, in which the population is composed of armenians and tartars, of lambs and lions living side by side. it can boast a russian schoolhouse, a necessary institution in the case of the tartars, to judge by the barbarous and hideous frescos which enliven the façade of their little mosque. the armenians have their school, and there are two gregorian churches in which they satisfy their spiritual needs. the houses are built of sun-baked bricks and mud; wooden stages rise to some height above the flat roofs, and provide airy sleeping-places for the inhabitants during the summer heats. after regaling ourselves with the delicious white grapes of the district, we turned aside from the road to erivan. crossing the outskirts of the village, we remarked the huge clay wine jars which were strewn about in the courtyards. beyond a few fields, planted with cotton, we again entered the open desert, and pursued our way over the crumbling mud. a rude and winding track leads towards the river through patches of dusty desert shrubs. ararat fills the landscape, and is rarely seen to greater advantage than from such tracts of naked land. on our left hand rose a buttress of the sevan mountains which had been a landmark from the slopes of ararat. it is composed of a sandy rock of various hues, which has weathered into fanciful shapes. in the delicate evening lights it is invested with the appearance of some castle in fairyland. from time to time we passed strings of three or four large waggons, drawn by teams of oxen. whole families of armenians were gathered within them, well dressed and well-to-do. they were returning to their dwellings within the zone of gardens from a pilgrimage to khor virap. the men were emptying their little glasses, which they would replenish from wine-skins, and feasting on water melons. we arrived at the mound which rises from the flats about the river and can be clearly seen from ararat. according to dubois, [112] it consists of a mass of dolomite, isolated on the surface of the plain. the church and cloister have been built on the side of the eminence; the monastic dwellings screened the church from our view. st. gregory's dungeon is situated within the precincts; and it would appear that the place was famous in the saint's lifetime for a much-frequented temple of the fire-worshippers. we were scarcely beneath the walls when the figure of a horseman springs forward from some recess into the road. throwing his white arab on to his haunches at a few yards before our carriage, he challenges and constrains us to pull up dead. this proceeding on his part, no less than his forbidding countenance, throws me completely off my guard. on russian soil one is obliged to smother the irritation which is always threatening to burst forth from a british breast. i shout to him to move aside, or we will whip the horses and drive through him; to this he answers by drawing his revolver and threatening to shoot. i ask him by what right he dared to obstruct the roadway; he replies by enquiring by what credentials we presume to pass. it flashes through me that the game is in the hands of this ruffian--we had been spoilt by the attentions of the high officials, and to such an extent that we had forgotten to bring even our passports, which had gone in our despatch box to erivan. it was useless to urge that one could not be obliged to show a passport in order to be allowed to visit a church. he paid no heed to any of our arguments, and compelled us to return with him to kamarlu. he even added the insult of requiring us to suit our pace to his, and to follow at a walk or amble by his side. this we flatly refused to do, and, taking the reins from the trembling coachman, proceeded at a brisk trot. simon ter-harutiunoff--such was the name of this ferocious person--is linked in our memory with the companion picture of ivan the terrible, our stern custodian during the akhaltsykh days. both are armenians, and either might be taken as a model for the embodiment of the fighting instincts in man. tartars and cossacks are amenable creatures besides them; and of the two, we were inclined to bestow the palm upon simon. his face was black with exposure to the sun; the eyes were yellow round the dark iris and shot with red veins. his features were large and pronounced, but of singular deformity; the massive head was placed upon broad shoulders above a frame of great bulk and iron strength. he wore two medals, won during the war with turkey through personal bravery. his function in time of peace was to police the persian frontier in the district of khor virap. these particulars we learnt in the office of the pristav, upon our return under such escort to kamarlu. we claimed and were permitted to proceed to erivan; but the chapars were instructed to prevent us from diverging, and to hand us over to the nachalnik at the provincial capital. in this manner we were foiled in our antiquarian researches among these ancient sites. at khor virap we saw nothing but some slight convexities in the surface of the ground, which may be caused by buried remains. beyond the mound we observed a natural wall of rock, rising like a gigantic ruin above the plain. evening had approached as we left the village, and proceeded through the gardens, and crossed to the barren zone beyond. from the rising ground we looked back over the forest of poplars to the sun setting behind the peaks of the ararat chain. the satellite range wore the same tints of deep, opaque opaline which fretted the horizon during our outward journey. it was shadowed upon the same ground of orange and amber; and the opal hues of the land forms extended round the circle and included the huge, horizontal outline of alagöz. but the sevan mountains, in the opposite segment, were touched with pink and luminous yellows; the higher summits were white with fresh snow. in the south-east the landscape was dim and vaporous; nor could the eye distinguish among the gathering shadows the basal slopes of ararat. the snow-fields of the dome shone with a cold light in the sky, above vague banks of cloud. it was after eight o'clock when we reached the pleasant town garden, and discussed our adventures with the nachalnik over a cigar. chapter xv at erivan oriental cities--and erivan is still essentially oriental--may perhaps be said to be built upon two planes. there is the plane of the street, and there is the plane of the flat roofs, all at about the same level. where the climate during summer renders the rooms of the house untenantable after the walls have been heated through by the sun, the daily life of the inhabitants undergoes a corresponding division into the life of the street and the life of the roof. about an hour before sunset the entire population mounts from the lower apartments, or even from the cellars, to the open platforms, floored with mud and sometimes protected by a low balustrade, which receive the freshness of the evening breeze. it is there that the last and first meals of the day are served, and the quilts spread upon which sleep is enjoyed beneath the stars. a strange scene it is when the faint light of morning has broken, and when the recumbent forms commence to stir. the divisions made by the narrow streets are scarcely perceptible; your own roof appears to join the roofs of your neighbours, and these to compose a single and elevated stage above the landscape of dim earth and flashing stream. figures, erect from the waist, are revealed in every posture; and it may happen that the cotton drapery has dropped from a woman's shoulders as she stretches her arms in the fancied seclusion of some partial screen. such scenes are the daily accompaniment of a summer sojourn in the towns upon the lowlands through which the euphrates and the tigris flow. in armenia, with a mean level of several thousand feet above the sea, the practice of sleeping in the open is confined to the depression of this plain of the araxes; and even here it is only partially indulged. the better-to-do among the inhabitants take refuge in the adjacent mountains when their dwellings have become little better than furnaces. the traveller is advised to swelter within four walls rather than tempt fever from the expanse of irrigated land by exposing himself to the night air. yet the twofold division of the city into an upper and a lower region is nowhere more productive of startling contrast than in this town of gardens which is erivan. in the streets, lined as they are with the rude stone walls of the enclosures, surmounted by a crumbling ridge of clay, the vistas are confined by inexorable foliage to the space of a stone's throw. the central park, with its wide spaces, enjoys no further landscape than that which is limited by the zones of the adjacent buildings or by its own lofty forest trees. where you are not threading the narrow alleys of the more thickly inhabited quarters, you will be winding by irregular ways, deep in white dust, by the side of swirling water or within hearing of its murmur beyond the bulwark which screens the orchard from the lane. but from the standpoint of the roof the horizon expands to boundaries which are so remote that they are scarcely conceivable by a european mind. the foliage or the hollow of the site eliminates the middle distance; and the opposite piles of great ararat in the south (fig. 40) and of alagöz in the north (fig. 41) rise immediately from the soft foreground of the embowered houses. the landscape from the high ground on the north, as you approach erivan by the road from tiflis, is difficult to forget (fig. 42). the whole fabric of ararat is exposed from base to summits; but so tall are the poplars and luxuriant the countless varieties of fruit trees, that they almost conceal the domes of the mosques and the cupolas of the churches, spread over the straggling township at your feet. all this verdure is mainly due to the river zanga, the hrazdan of the armenians, which collects the drainage of a section of the southern slopes of the border range, and which is fed by the waters of lake sevan, called also gökcheh, from its sky-blue colour, and by armenian writers the lake of gegham. this beautiful alpine sea is surrounded by lofty mountains and has an area 2 1/2 times as large as that of geneva. it produces salmon trout of delicious flavour which are seldom absent from the bill of fare in the provincial capital. it finds an outlet through the zanga into the araxes at a difference in the level of 3600 feet. the brawling zanga, already weakened by the canals which diffuse its waters, pursues a devious course at the foot of high and rocky banks on the western outskirts of the town. further eastwards the irrigation is supplied by the kirk bulakh, a stream of which the name signifies forty springs, and which has its sources at no great distance from erivan. such abundance of running water should secure to this growing city a large measure of prosperity under settled government. as the centre of the most populous of the armenian provinces of the russian empire, to which it gives its name, it is already a place of some pretensions. but the inhabitants do not at present number more than 15,000, of whom half are tartars and half armenians. this total also comprises about 300 russians, whose most conspicuous units are the drivers of the carriages on hire, belonging, i believe, exclusively to the molokan sect. [113] erivan does not possess any monuments of first-rate merit or of great antiquity. her origin is obscure. noah may quite well have lived here before the deluge, as one of the earliest of modern european visitors was informed by his armenian friends. [114] the popular derivation of the name is from the armenian verb erevel, and it is said to signify appearing. the place would, indeed, be about the first locality in the plain region to appear to the eyes of the patriarch of old. [115] hither may have been directed his steps and those of his family when the waters had receded from a world renewed. this may be the site of the original city of noah, perhaps preserved beneath the soil upon which is built the present town. the more learned are inclined to a much later foundation, but do not yield in point of philological plausibility to the champions of the identification with noah's city. they say that the name has been shortened from erovantavan, which they render the place where erovant was defeated. erovant or ervand was an armenian monarch of the first century who was vanquished in this region by the lawful heir to the throne of the arsakids at the head of a persian army. the event and the survival of the name erovantavan are attested by moses of khorene. [116] the mohammedan derivation from revan kul, a prince of the reign of shah ismail (1502-1524), [117] who is said to have fortified the place by his master's order, cannot be reconciled with the fact that erivan was already in existence certainly in the eleventh and probably in the seventh century. [118] but it played no prominent part whether in ancient or mediæval history until the advent of the ottoman empire. from the sixteenth century into modern times it was continually disputed between the sultans and their powerful neighbours on the east, the persian shahs. the enumeration of the sieges it sustained at the hands of turks and persians would be a tax upon my reader's patience which i am not disposed to levy. when the russians appeared on the scene it was in persian possession; and an unsuccessful attempt on their part to capture the fortress in 1804 supplied the ground for the firm belief in its impregnability which was cherished by its persian governors. this confidence was rudely shattered by paskevich in october 1827. his shells wrought fearful havoc in the unsubstantial town, and one is said to have pierced the dome of the mosque in the citadel, whither thousands of the wretched inhabitants had fled for protection against the hail of the cannon. the russian army entered the place without encountering any serious obstacle, and the russian flag has waved there ever since. [119] one might expect to find some mosques of considerable age in a city which flourished under its mohammedan masters. one must, however, recollect that the ottoman turks are sunnis and the persians shiahs; what the one may erect the other loves to destroy. we are expressly told that when shah safi took the place in a.d. 1635 all the mosques built by the turks were razed to the ground. [120] about the same time the position of the town, or perhaps only of the fortress, underwent a change, being removed some eight hundred paces to its present site on the rocky cliffs at the foot of which the zanga flows. [121] the persians do not appear to have enriched it at that period with any remarkable buildings; and it was recovered by the turks in 1724. [122] some ten years later it again fell into the hands of the persians as one of the conquests of nadir shah. the principal mosque is said to date from the reign of this monarch. the curious old tower which was seen by chardin as well as by tournefort, and of which the lineaments have been handed down to us by the former of these travellers, has long since disappeared. still the buildings which at present exist are well worth a visit; and i propose to invite my reader to accompany me in a leisurely ramble through the alleys of erivan. the more populous quarters are divided into a western and an eastern half, at first by the broad, metalled road which comes from tiflis, and, further south, by the central park. speaking generally, the eastern half is inhabited by the tartars and the western by the armenians. in the one you will discover the mosques, in the other the churches. but the churches are either small and quite insignificant stone structures, or have been restored beyond recognition in comparatively recent and tasteless times. i counted no less than six, including the russian church at the southern extremity of the town. of these the oldest foundation would appear to be that of surb katholike, which stands in a pleasant walled garden, adjoining the great road, in the upper or northern quarter. an ancient elm dwarfs the humble oblong edifice, which is entered from a portal on the south side, added in 1861. the interior, which is very low, is disposed in a nave and aisles, an apse and two side apses or chapels. chardin attributes a church of this name to the latest kings of armenia, and the priests assured me that it was indeed the earliest in date at erivan. it was here that in persian times the katholikos would officiate, while residing in the provincial capital. a little lower down the road we pass paulos petros (paul and peter), the largest and the least pleasing of the town churches. but once we have left the wide avenue to become involved in the network of gardens on the north and north-west, any mediocrity in the buildings we visit is amply compensated by the charm of the enclosures in which they stand. such verdure of every shade and constant hum of flowing water! to surb joannes we come first--four walls and a metal roof, to which is attached a wooden belfry, painted green. you see the zanga issuing from a cleft in the barren hills, of which the hardness contrasts with the foliage at their base. the little portal of joannes is quite a pretty feature, and i was informed that the church dates from the latter part of the seventeenth century. a more ambitious structure is surb zoravar, situated some little distance in an easterly direction, but still within the zone of these high slopes on the north. it is surrounded by old gardens and overshadowed by walnut trees. the body of the church is quite plain, four walls and a roof of low pitch; but an elaborate portal, surmounted by a belfry and supported by four massive piers, extends the whole length of the west front. two piers in the centre are panelled and richly carved by the most delicate of chisels. there is a very old doorway on the south side with spiral mouldings, and the frescos over the principal entrance--a rare feature--are well drawn and show good feeling for colour. i understand that the present church has supplanted an older building; but i will not vouch for the statement that the portal is due to moses katholikos (a.d. 1629-1632), as i was informed by the aged and ignorant priest. he came at last, after many peals from the belfry, his tottering frame supported by a lay companion. the clergy of erivan are not more enlightened than the most backward of their profession in remote districts of the turkish provinces. on the other hand the greater material well-being of the laity is made manifest by the air of comparative comfort presented by the interiors of their places of worship. of course one misses the pews of our english churches, or the serried lines of chairs which furnish the temples of the continent. but the floors are well carpeted and the bare walls kept in repair. from surb zoravar one may readily regain the tiflis road and pass in a southerly direction along the central park. thence it is no great distance to the principal mosque of the city, the gök jami or mosque of heaven. this edifice is situated in the western half of erivan, and is surrounded by dwellings of tartars in considerable number, overlapping into the armenian quarters. it is approached from the narrow streets of a bazar consisting of booths, and is entered by a handsome doorway at the side of an imposing minaret, of which the surface is diversified by designs in polychrome tiles (fig. 43). you pass through a vaulted passage into the great court (fig. 44). it is a vast place, shady and serene. lofty elms of great age shadow the basin of overflowing water which bubbles in the centre of the paved spaces. upon its margin are gathered figures in long robes and turbans, or attired in the persian fashion and wearing the persian lambskin hat. these are busy with their ablutions; while elsewhere, beneath the shade, mollahs are instructing groups of their younger pupils, seated on mats spread upon the flags. beds of single dahlias refresh and please the eye. of life and movement there is no lack; people are coming and going; there in the distance a train of shapeless forms in deep blue draperies makes its way to the women's mosque. but the absence of the least suspicion of haste spreads an atmosphere of delightful repose. it requires no small fortitude--they would call it diseased curiosity--to pace from side to side and ascertain that this quadrangle measures 87 paces by 58. the latter is the dimension of the side on the south, upon which is built the temple itself (fig. 45). beneath the spacious dome men and women are gathered indiscriminately, the women veiled in persian fashion. there is nothing very remarkable in the architecture of the mosque; but the floral paintings which adorn the ceiling of a companion and smaller edifice on the north side of the court are of very high merit. the remainder of the quadrangle is taken up by rows of low buildings, containing chambers in which the older scholars pursue their studies. one wonders what they may be learning. a mollah of importance informs us that the gök jami was built in the time of nadir shah (a.d. 17361747) by the sirdar, hoseyn ali khan. with the exception of the mosque in the fortress, the religious edifices of the mohammedans are extremely well maintained. i counted three mosques in the tartar quarters. that of haji nusrallah bey and the shehr jami (town mosque) are almost exactly similar in design. the former is evidently a replica of the latter, which displays a turkish inscription on the outer door with a date which we read as 1098 (a.d. 1687). but it must have been restored since that time. although much smaller than gök jami, it bears some resemblance to that building; and the walled court with its fountain and beds of long-stalked dahlias is as pleasant a refuge from dusty alleys as man could desire. but perhaps the most interesting monument is the kiosque of the sirdars, in the extreme southern angle of the town. we may approach it from the west, and take surb sargis on the way. that church and pleasant terrace on the high land above the zanga commands an extensive view over the southern quarters and across the plain to ararat. the deeply-bedded river is flowing on an easterly course towards the fortress and the gardens of the sirdars outside its walls. after skirting those parapets it will turn abruptly in the reverse direction, and pursue a more tranquil career to the araxes. the fortress to which we proceed is still some distance off, and the walls of mud and rubble which line the cliffs on the left bank of the zanga are rapidly falling into total ruin. while they are flanked by the swirling stream they may once have possessed some power of resistance; but after the river has deserted the site beyond the abrupt bend, the town is exposed immediately to the plain. the sirdar's palace composes the kernel of the fortified area, and its windows overlook the river. but the extensive buildings of his wellstocked harem, the magazines of his garrison and the abodes of his courtiers have either disappeared altogether or are rapidly crumbling away. from among a heap of ruins rises intact a single edifice, which is kept in repair by the russians. it is the pavilion in which the sirdar was wont to beguile his leisure. from the window in the alcove of this elaborate interior (fig. 46) he would feast his eyes on the landscape--the river at his feet, his own shady garden in the plain, the dim spaces backed by the fabric of ararat. here he exercised his skill as a marksman upon the donkeys of the unfortunate peasants, sending a ball through them as they wound along the road on the right bank of the zanga towards the bridge with its two pointed arches. [123] this bridge is placed just below the pavilion, and is still the only avenue of communication between erivan and the country beyond the river. what consummation of oriental felicity to sit on cushions in this glittering apartment and watch the caravans which fill your coffers defiling below! from time to time there may come an embassy to your overlord of persia, and there will be a report to dictate upon the size and splendour of the cavalcade. the beauties of georgia and circassia luxuriate in the adjoining halls, and water flows in abundance everywhere. the governor of erivan was quite a little king in the country, and, when he travelled, the inhabitants of the villages along his route would immolate an ox in his honour. [124] the incrustation which my reader may admire upon the vaulting of the alcove is composed of pieces of mirror which shine like the facets of a jewel. an encrusted cornice of the same material surmounts the walls of the pavilion below a ceiling profusely adorned with floral designs, conspicuous being the iris and the rose. eight paintings on canvas, applied to shallow recesses, are distributed around the room. i believe they are copies, made since the russian occupation, of originals which had fallen into decay. the two which are comprised by my illustration, one on either side of the alcove, represent on the left hand the figure of hoseyn khan sirdar, and, on the right, the persian hero feramez. of the remainder, three are portraits--fath ali, shah of persia (1797-1834), his son abbas mirza and hasan khan, brother to the sirdar hoseyn; while an equal number are indifferent renderings of heroic personages--the warriors sherab and rustem, and a persian amazon. one of my predecessors has recorded that at the time of his visit in 1834 the panels in the alcove were adorned with four pictures setting forth subjects which were well conceived to amuse the fancy of an old debauchee. a mussulman was receiving wine from a fair georgian in the presence of the monks of edgmiatsin, whose arguments had been less potent to effect his conversion than the fleshly charms of the christian girl. a persian beauty in loose trousers and diaphanous upper garment was making her obeisance to the shah. here a prince of the blood royal in costume of the chase dallied with a maiden while her aged father lay asleep; there the beautiful features of joseph spread havoc among the assembled ladies at the house of the wife of potiphar. [125] these various incitements to delight no longer grace the forlorn kiosque, and perhaps their disappearance is no great loss to the world of art. the original decoration, which is quite intact, upon the walls and ceiling enables us to judge how great had been the artistic decadence of persia since her painters displayed their skill upon the walls of the chehel situn, the noble pavilion on the banks of the zenda rud. from this kiosque we may make our way to the adjoining mosque of the fortress, which is now no longer frequented by the faithful. it stands a little east of the old palace; the interior beneath the spacious dome is decorated with much skill by means of little bricks of many colours. the great court is already ruinous. an old hennastained attendant informed us that it was erected in the reign of fath ali shah and that it was known as the abbas mirza jami. walls and palace and mosque are, i conclude, already doomed. hard by their crumbling remains are seen the barracks of the russian garrison and the metal roof of a russian church. the last of the sirdars is already long since dead, he whose portrait hangs on the wall of the pavilion. he died in a miserable stable, bereft of everything but the squalid garment which clothed his aged body. yet his memory is pleasantly associated with one of the favourite episodes of persian romance. it is related that a young georgian travelled to this fortress above the zanga to catch a glimpse of his betrothed in the sirdar's harem. the girl, espying her lover, precipitated herself towards him from the window, and was saved from certain death by a willow which broke her fall. the pair were captured; but the incident touched the heart of her jealous owner, who pardoned them both and let them go. his generous speech has been preserved: "hearts so closely united let no man endeavour to part." [126] perhaps the best introduction to the population of a city consists in a visit to the schools. erivan is better supplied in respect both of elementary and secondary education than any other town in the armenian provinces of the russian empire. but, before recording my personal impressions of what i saw during a brief inspection, i should like to review the conditions which govern the schools. when russia became mistress of a large portion of armenia, her rulers found that their armenian subjects were already in possession of a school system of which, with their customary tenacity, they were extremely jealous, and which probably dated from the invention of the armenian alphabet as early as the fifth century. the church has been for long ages the pillar of armenian nationality; and the schools were affiliated to the church. there were not therefore wanting all the elements of a bitter quarrel; and if any question more than another has envenomed the relations between the armenians and their russian rulers it is this question of the schools. when the constitution of the armenian church and its relations to the government were embodied in a state document, a chapter was inserted by virtue of which the tsar of russia formally recognised the church schools. [127] they were stated to have as their object the religious and moral education of the children, and to be under the guidance and supervision of the bishops. it was provided that their rules and curricula should be submitted to the synod at edgmiatsin, and that this body should in turn transmit them for acceptance to the minister of the interior. a rider was added to the effect that it was a matter of importance that the clergy should become acquainted with the russian language, and with the history and geography of the russian empire. it is only fair to the government to remark, by way of parenthesis, that although a period of over half a century has elapsed since the promulgation of this document, few teachers and still fewer pupils have yet displayed even moderate proficiency in the speaking and writing of russian. with the growth of material prosperity, which was the outcome of the russian occupation, the armenian schools prospered and their standards rose. the teachers, who were laymen, were taken from good families; and one may safely assert that at the present day the armenian youth are instructed by the best educated and best informed among their countrymen. many of them have studied in europe, principally in germany, and are men of far higher attainments in the field of knowledge than such as might be required by the teaching which they are permitted to dispense. the first step taken by government to cut the wings of the national schools was the limitation of the standard of instruction. the class is in russia the measure of this standard, the first class standing at the bottom of the scale. schools of five classes were frequently attached to the churches; and the scholars who desired to pursue their studies still further passed to the so-called seminary of the diocese in which they lived. in this manner it was possible for a youth to receive all but the highest university education in his native language and through his native institutions. it is true that the minister of the interior had a right of censorship; but in view of the gravity of the fancied danger this safeguard was only partial. so the government drew the pen through the third, fourth, and fifth classes and left the armenians nothing more than the elementary course. such action was thought to be arbitrary in view of the fact that these schools are supported by purely voluntary contributions. empire! what insidious wickedness, surpassing the horrors of war, is committed in the name of empire! surely it is a right as elementary as that of security for life and property to supervise the education of your children. one might sympathise with the russian government had they merely required that the standard of instruction should not fall below the standard of schools in russia. nor should we be inclined to withhold our sympathy if they had only renewed their insistence upon the necessity of a knowledge of russian. that was the wise as well as the humane policy. the ukase of 1884 was conceived in a very different spirit, and may be branded as an infamous document. it provided that church schools with more than two classes should be placed upon the same basis as private schools in russia, that is to say that the whole of the instruction should be conducted in the russian language. this was tantamount to closing such schools. the supreme control of the elementary schools was transferred from the ministry of the interior to the department of education. the seminaries were suffered to exist upon the basis of the decree of 1836, but their object was defined to be the preparation of clergymen to meet the requirements of the armenian church. the synod at edgmiatsin, although already placed in leading strings by government, did not see their way to accept this decree. they urged that, since it had been issued during a vacancy of the chair, its consideration should be postponed until the election of a new katholikos. government retaliated by closing the schools. nor were they again opened until in 1886 the pontiff makar signified his consent to the provisions of the ukase, subject to some small concession as to the scope of the curricula in schools of two classes. the higher classes remained closed. such was the situation at the time of my visit. it had, however, been further enacted that after the lapse of a prescribed period every teacher in an armenian school should be required to possess a certificate from the russian department of education. in order to obtain this certificate the candidate must pass an examination conducted in the russian language. the term of grace was coming to an end in a few months, and i gathered that few teachers had acquired the necessary linguistic proficiency. [128] education is not a department of human activity which can be properly conducted upon military principles. the only discipline healthy for the mind is that which is derived from the unfettered exercise of the faculties with which it has been endowed. in erivan i had occasion to remark the contrast in intellectual atmosphere between the russian and the armenian school. here were offered two typical examples of these diverse species, still existing side by side. as the capital of a diocese, the church has still the right to possess a seminary in the town of erivan. the seminary embraces the standards which we may call secondary education, and has no less than six classes. it has contrived to evade the restrictions which are in the spirit of the ukase of 1884 in respect of the character of its pupils. it was quite obvious that very few were destined to take orders, although perhaps the majority of the 360 scholars were included in the elementary classes. there was no trace of any clerical bias in the choice of treatises; and the teachers in secular subjects were, i believe, all laymen. one at least was a young man of exceptional ability, trained in europe at his own expense. it would be difficult to find among the staff of our secondary schools a master better equipped for his task. the pupils, whose age extended from ten to twenty years, did not appear to acquire knowledge by rote. the principal spoke the german language fluently and was in touch with the thought of the west. yet even this privileged institution has been clipped of much of its usefulness by being placed at an unfair advantage as compared to the russian school. it is interdicted the seventh and eighth classes, although there can be no doubt in respect of the competency of its staff. it is perhaps for this reason that it is not as a rule attended by sons of the richest citizens. its income of £1800 a year is principally subscribed by armenians of means. only about a sixth of the sum comes from the pupils. the majority receive their education free of charge. the subjects taught in the highest class are theology and psychology, mathematics, physics, logic, modern history and modern languages. in the latter category they are restricted by order to russian and french. the instruction is conducted in armenian except in the case of russian language and literature, when the russian tongue is used. their text-book in psychology was a russian translation of alexander bain and in logic of w. s. jevons. besides this seminary, which is attached to the church of surb sargis, there is a school for girls with 200 pupils. the russian school is mainly supported by the state out of revenues derived from taxation. it has the rank and is known by the name of a gymnasium in the german acceptation of that term. its subvention produces a yearly income of £4500, which is supplemented by the fees paid by nine-tenths of the scholars, amounting to about £4 a head. out of 260 boys and youths some 26 were boarders and the rest day pupils. the boarders sleep in a long dormitory, kept scrupulously clean and neat. the majority pay for their maintenance £25 a year; the poorer can only afford £15. the school is housed in a commodious building in the centre of the town and exhibits every sign of prosperity. it has large and well-furnished reception rooms for days of fête. the class rooms, with their rows of forms and large black-boards, inspire a salutary awe. the library is well stocked and does the russian director great credit, as does the general organisation of the institution. but the spirit of the place is that of the camp; the methods are purely military, and one almost expects the sound of a bugle to announce which lesson shall be rehearsed. since human memory is of brief span and the recollection of facts is of no great value, it is not so much this faculty that requires cultivation as the habit of study and the power to collate facts. the education dispensed by this school will not produce scholars or thinkers; indeed the pen is here the servant of the sword. but at least it serves to sharpen the wits, and to induce a nimbleness of mind which can scarcely fail to be of use to its mohammedan members. all who can afford to buy a uniform appear in trousers and tunic of blue cloth, enlivened with brass buttons. a dress of similar material is worn by the ushers. the pupils are drilled and put through simple military exercises; they may be seen marching with music at their head. yet this is a civil institution. it is the only gymnasium or high school in the russian provinces of the armenian plateau. at the time of my visit the school list contained the names of 159 armenians, 67 russians, 9 georgians, 7 poles and 18 tartars. only the last belonged to the mohammedan religion. when it is remembered that the tartars compose one-half of the inhabitants and are numerous in the districts about erivan, the poor show which they make among the inmates of this important school is a very significant fact. as a body, they shut themselves off from western education; and for this reason they appear destined to be edged out by the armenians, as a species unable to adapt itself to the new environment. they are still in possession of some of the richest land in the province, and many among them are wealthy men of leisure. these khans occasionally send a son to the school. but the director informed me that youths of this class were rarely successful; they were indolent and left at an early age. those who belonged to the middle class stayed longer and were much more hopeful. although i passed through every room while the students were pursuing their tasks, i only counted six tartars, all told. the method of procedure was extremely entertaining. accompanied by the amiable director, i was introduced to the presiding usher, who would descend from his daïs and extend his hand. some fifty to a hundred bright black eyes were focussed upon us; all were standing, not a muscle moved and not a sound was heard. then some such little comedy as this would be gone through:-the director (addressing myself in german). "this is the latin class. permit me to present you to m. ----off". (in russian) pupils, you may sit down (a single clap and shuffle--perfect silence). you, sir, will please address the professor in the latin tongue." myself (after a long and embarrassed pause). "gratias ago; clementiam, benigne rector, reposco. consuetudinem linguæ latinæ parum conservo. verum versus video in nigra ista tabula inscriptos, mihi valde familiares: 'o utinam tunc quum lacedæmona classe petebat, obrutus insanis esset adulter aquis.' vellem interrogare discipulos quisnam ille fuerit adulter." the usher (a forlorn and crushed individual. at first listless; but he encounters the flashing eyes of the little director, and stammers). "sv ... svit ... niet, niet ..." (and he proceeds in russian). the director. "my colleague desires me to state that he quite understands what you said. you wished to express admiration of our new blackboards. i thank you in his and my name. is there any question you would like to put?" myself. "there appear to be about thirty boys in this class. i wonder what proportion tartars bear to armenians among them." the director. "russians, stand up!" (some four or five fair-haired and closely-cropped youths rise in their places. their faces show intelligence, and one likes them)--"armenians, stand up!" (the first batch sit down; practically the whole class springs to its feet)--"tartars, stand up!" (one little boy at the extreme end of the class confronts his seated schoolmates). one feature of this institution seemed specially well conceived; it was the manner in which the religious difficulty was solved. two different religions--the mohammedan and the christian--and three distinct professions of the latter--the gregorian armenian, roman catholic (poles), and so-called russian orthodox--were represented among the pupils and were expounded to their several votaries by as many diverse types of the holders of sacerdotal office. separate rooms were set aside in which the mollah taught islam, and the papa or padre or vardapet explained the new testament. in this manner each youth received instruction in the faith of his fathers at the hands of one of its official exponents; while the rub and wear of continual intercourse in the secular classes accustomed mohammedan and christian, russian orthodox and gregorian armenian to respect their classmates and to tolerate each other's faith. the extension of such a system over the whole of these provinces would be likely to work incalculable good; and, side by side with glaring defects in the methods of secular instruction, it is a real pleasure to be able to congratulate the state schools upon such a salutary feature and cordially to wish them success. the tartars of erivan are for the most part of turkish descent, and of kindred race to the bulk of the inhabitants of the neighbouring persian province of azerbaijan. but some of the number included under this name in the statistics may more properly be designated as persians. all profess the shiah tenets. i had expected to find them extremely fanatical, judging by my experience of their co-religionists in persia, and by an account given of them by a french traveller. [129] but not only are christians permitted to enter their mosques; they are even received with cordiality by the groups assembled in the outer courts. i do not know whether this altered demeanour may be due to a policy of no nonsense pursued by the russian government. if such be the case it is a significant fact. how often have i stood before the door of a mosque in persia, casting eager glances at the vista of priceless treasures within! on each occasion i have in vain appealed to the governor, who would urge that he could not be responsible for my safety, and beg me not to attempt to enter. at erivan i was invited to penetrate into every part, and to stand by the side of the faithful while they prayed. i have already stated that the tartar inhabitants include many men of means, who live on the proceeds of their extensive gardens. but a good proportion of the large shop-keepers belong to this race, and are well-mannered and fairly well-educated men. i fancy, however, that they would scarcely be able to compete with the armenians, were it not for the support of patrons of their own blood. for the rest, the small hucksters and the sellers of fruit are in a very large proportion tartar. so, almost exclusively, are the workers in mud after their various kinds: plasterers, embankers, makers of ducts to water the gardens. the gardeners and drivers of carts largely belong to this nation; but there is scarcely a carpenter or a skilled mason who is not an armenian. while the tartars are reputed to hoard, the armenians are excessively lavish, and spend large sums in building themselves fine houses. many an ornate villa in italian style may be seen emerging from the foliage of the gardens. here and there quite a little palace faces the street. yet, with all their comparative wealth, they have not yet emerged from the material stage, and i searched in vain for a bookseller. indeed, in spite of many signs of progress and of her favourable geographical position, erivan can scarcely yet be said to be connected with the pulse of the great world. here is a city not so far from europe, and needing capital for her development; yet scarcely any capital has found its way in. teheran, although much more distant, has a numerous european colony; and there is not an enterprise, from banks to electric lighting and tramways, which a number of candidates are not contending with each other to supply. you will not meet a single foreign industrialist in erivan, nor be able to purchase any but russian newspapers. even the armenians are not encouraged to develop the resources of the country. the following question which i addressed to a prominent armenian capitalist may exhibit, together with the answer, the magnitude of those resources and the reasons assigned for the fact that they are not exploited. q. "can you explain to me why so little use is made of your natural advantages--the immense extent of idle soil and the abundance of water? in the north you have the vast reservoir of lake sevan; in the south the araxes, running in full stream to the caspian sea. cultivation might surely be increased to many times its present area without any great expense." a. "the waste lands are for the most part in the hands of the russian government, and they are not inclined to sell or lease them to armenians. they are believed to be keeping them for russians, but the russians do not come. a successful piece of reclamation has been made by general cheremetieff in the neighbourhood of ararat. we have made repeated proposals to take lands and irrigate them, but we have never been able to obtain permission." perhaps, if these lines come to the eyes of m. witte, he will give the matter the attention which it deserves. the same exclusive economical policy, as manifested in protective duties, has deflected commerce from the natural avenue of the valley of the araxes, and caused it to pursue more lengthy and less convenient routes. there is scarcely any transit trade with persia. the prosperity of the place is therefore dependent on native industries, which comprise the cultivation and export of cotton, wine and rice. cotton to the value of about £400,000 is annually despatched by waggon or camel to the station of akstafa on the tiflis railway, and thence, viâ batum and the black sea or baku and the caspian, to the manufacturing centres of russia. three large russian firms are locally represented by offices and factories, where the cotton is purchased and cleaned and pressed. the presses, which are of english make, are driven by horse power. while this industry is in the hands of russians the trade in wine is conducted by armenians; and very excellent wine have they succeeded in producing. the value of the yearly export, which goes exclusively to russia, is as yet only £20,000. but the enterprise of m. karapet afrikean, who has closely studied his subject in germany, has already effected a marked improvement in the quality of the wine, and is likely to lead to a great increase in the demand. rice is also exported and in considerable quantities to erzerum and the turkish provinces. the fruits of erivan are almost unrivalled in the world; but i do not know that they are preserved and sent away. such is the city which, with its vast and populous province, absorbs all the time and all the energies of its russian governor, sitting at his green baize table overlooking the park. general frese has a real affection for that table, which he has shaped to fit his figure. from early morning to late night his erect and military form is condemned to that inactive but rigid posture. he never indulges in the relaxation of an arm-chair. while you puff your cigarette among his hospitable cushions, he will discourse upon the mighty rivers and forests of siberia from across the field of green baize. dinner is served in a room displaying all the skill of persian artists, and overlooking, through a window composed of tiny panes of glass, a miniature garden disposed as for the stage of a theatre. i need hardly say that this work of fancy was not created by the order of the present occupant of government house. still the fare at his table is worthy of the most refined palate; such excellent trout and tender chickens and the pick of the native wine! immediately after the meal he resumes his seat in the adjoining room behind the green baize. he attributes the backwardness of the country to excessive centralisation at st. petersburg, a process which has been tending to assume increasing proportions now that the caucasus is no longer administered by a grand duke. chapter xvi edgmiatsin and the armenian church at five o'clock in the afternoon of the 4th of october we set out for edgmiatsin. it is a drive of about thirteen miles across the plain. our luggage was consigned to a waggon of the post, and we ourselves enjoyed the luxury of a light victoria, drawn by four horses abreast. they covered the distance in an hour and forty minutes, although the road is in many places a mere track. what a drive! it is so well within reach of europe that it ought to be included, like the journey to italy, in the programme of a liberal education. the railway will before long arrive at erivan, and then the pilgrimage will be still easier to undertake. not all the tourists in the world will disturb the harmony of this landscape; the screeching trains, the loud hotels, the babel of tongues will be lost, like a flight of starlings, in this expanse. it is here that the spirit of asia is most intensely present--an inner sanctuary to those outer courts through which the traveller may have wandered and never crossed the threshold of this plain. and it is a spirit and an influence which arouse deep chords within us and send them sounding through our lives. the landscape at once combines and accentuates the salient features of the asiatic highlands. there is the plain which was once the bed of an inland sea. it stretches west and east without visible limits; and this evening it has all the appearance of water. in the west it is mirage which produces this effect. the long north-western slope of the ararat fabric assumes the character of a dark and narrow promontory rising on an opposite shore. from the east, beyond the train of the little ararat, a cold mist--may it be from the caspian?--is slowly wafted over the steppe, and the illusion is complete. into those liquid spaces sweep the basal vaultings of alagöz--the boulder-strewn declivities which we keep on our right hand, and which seem to embody on a typical scale that quality of hopeless sterility which is characteristic of vast portions of the continent. but the same vague distance receives the zanga, diffused into many channels, and lost beneath luxuriant foliage. for over a quarter of an hour after leaving erivan we pass at a rapid trot between the walls of orchards; and in places the water gushes from the conduits across the road. once outside this intricate zone the track wanders over the idle soil, skirting the stony slopes in the north. in the opposite direction the plain blooms with fields of cotton and rice, sustained by a small canal which pursues a westerly course before it falls into the araxes, if indeed it flow so far. and there are the mountains of asia--the volcanoes with their vaulted summits, as well as those long ridges with their serrated outline which represent the operation of less impetuous forces through longer spaces of time. to this second category belongs the fine chain on the west of ararat which gains in definition as we proceed. it stands a little back and behind the fabric of ararat, and volcanoes too have built themselves up upon this wall. but its rugged and tumbled appearance is the feature which predominates, in striking contrast to the symmetry of the mountain of the ark. that giant overpowers the lesser ararat and appropriates their common base. one stands in wonder at the force which could have rent that massive pedestal and opened the yawning chasm which fronts the plain. night creeps into those recesses, where the blaze of a kurdish camp-fire calls attention to the extraordinary transparence of the air. the snow-fields, bare and cold above the amber of the sunset, are already free of their coronal of cloud. one full-puffed vapour still floats behind the uppermost pinnacle; another clings to the bastion on the north-west. while we admire this stately scene, made more impressive by the heavy silence, a grove of trees rises from the steppe on our point of course. two little conical shapes just emerge above their outline, and are recognised as the domes of edgmiatsin. we pass through the thin plantation, sustained by runnels derived from alagöz, and come to a halt before the doorway of a lofty mud wall with round towers at intervals. it might belong to a persian fortress; but it is the outer wall which surrounds the cloister with the cathedral of st. gregory. the massive gate is closed, and we thump and thump for some time in vain. the parapet with its crumbling surface betrays no sign of the life within. but there is just sufficient light to reveal the surroundings of the fortified enclosure--a straggling village of above-ground houses, outlying churches, poplars, dust. [130] at last the hinges creak and the porter appears. we are ushered into a court, like that of a college at cambridge, adjoining the great gate which is in the south wall. it is known as the pilgrims' court (fig. 47). low buildings, rudely built, with a continuous wooden verandah, compose the quadrangle. the windows are all lit up behind a line of young trees of which the foliage rustles in the night air. several figures may be discerned on the steps of a basin of water in the centre of the court. the place is all bustle and stir. every room, so we are told, in the whole monastery is occupied by as many people as it will hold. quarters have been reserved for us in the principal court; but we are not expected until to-morrow. sooner than disturb the peace of evening we retire to a room in the village where we erect our camp beds. it is quite a dormitory. my immediate neighbour speaks english and is a correspondent of the daily news. he is an armenian gentleman who has come all the way from tabriz, partly in the capacity of delegate of his countrymen in the persian city, and partly as the representative of the london newspaper. he talks incessantly; his companions do the same. the great event of the coming days will form an epoch in their lives, and every incident will be indelibly imprinted upon their memories. a thrilling and detailed narrative will be despatched to london, where it will filter through the brain of the sub-editor and issue in the form of a paragraph in small type. but the newspaper will be to blame; for it is an event, this consecration of the latest pontiff of the armenian church. it is an event both by reason of the personality of the new katholikos and because within recent years the fact has slowly dawned upon europe that the politics of western asia must react upon the western peoples, and that in those politics the armenians are destined to play a part. the church is at the present day the only native institution which has been preserved to that people. all their aspirations as human beings desirous to live as human beings are focussed by that single organisation. the broad democratic basis upon which reposes the election of the patriarch invests him with a representative character. moreover he is not chosen by a section of his countrymen but by the nation as a whole. the armenians of turkey and of persia as well as those within russian territory contribute their suffrages. it is therefore only natural that, in the absence of secular institutions, the head of the church should be much more than a merely spiritual ruler, and should reflect and in no small measure be expected to instruct the temporal hopes and fears of his flock. the russian government have not been slow in recognising this fact; nor does the anxiety with which it is regarded in official circles date from the contemporary prominence of the armenian question. in the heyday of their relations with this christian nation which hailed them as liberators, and which was placed in the very centre of the mussulman peoples over which they were slowly establishing their sway, the russians lavished favours upon edgmiatsin; [131] and rightly or wrongly they are now accused by their armenian allies, become their subjects, of having excited hopes which, when they had served the ends of russian policy, were rudely and almost brutally suppressed. it is certain that the armenian inhabitants of the provinces which now belong to russia favoured the russians in their campaigns against persia and turkey at the risk of reprisals on the part of their mussulman masters. they smoothed the way for the extension of the russian empire from the valley of the kur to that of the araxes. the first great step in this direction was effected at the commencement of the present century, when the kingdom of georgia was organised into a russian province. the acquisition of georgia afforded the russians a foothold upon the tableland, and brought them into direct contact with the persians and with the turks. their first battle against the persians was fought on the 20th of june 1804, and resulted in the repulse of the shah's forces, which were led by his son, the famous abbas mirza. this action took place in the immediate neighbourhood of edgmiatsin, and on the same day upon which was celebrated the annual festival of st. ripsime, one of the saints who are the special glory of the cloister. the armenians did not disguise the direction of their sympathies, and attributed, the russian victory to the intervention of their saint. [132] ten years later, when the monastery was visited by morier, the patriarch was wearing a high russian order, of which the star glittered on his purple robe. [133] in 1828 edgmiatsin was annexed to russia after the capture of erivan from the persians and as a result of the treaty of turkomanchai. throughout the wars which ensued with turkey the armenians espoused the russian cause; and one cannot doubt that their assistance was of considerable benefit both to paskevich during the campaigns of 1828-29, and to loris melikoff, himself of armenian origin, in that of 1877. [134] little by little a certain bitterness becomes appreciable in these honeymoon relations. the origin or perhaps the reflection of this new feeling may be found in the provisions of the important statute which defines the status of the armenian church in russia and regulates the constitution of edgmiatsin. this statute, which is generally known as the polojenye, is headed by the signature of the tsar nicholas and bears the date of march 1836. it was translated for me by one of the monks. in some respects it deals most liberally with the national church. her congregations are accorded full liberty of worship, and her clergy are relieved from all civil burdens. the principle of the election of the katholikos by the whole armenian people professing the national religion is expressly recognised. the method of his election is minutely prescribed. the national delegates assemble in the church of st. gregory, and submit two names to the emperor, who makes the appointment. [135] on the other hand, in true russian fashion, what is given with one hand is taken away with the other. the synod of edgmiatsin is an ancient institution which, according to armenian traditions, advises the katholikos, and may even resist him should he desire to effect changes in matters intimately affecting the national faith. [136] the polojenye emphasises and develops the constitutional importance of this body, and places it under the titular presidency of the emperor. the decrees of the synod are headed "by order of the emperor of russia"; and they are submitted to a russian procurator, resident at edgmiatsin, who examines into their validity. in matters of a purely spiritual nature the katholikos takes counsel with the synod, but need not necessarily accept its recommendations. but in all the general business of the church, as well as of the cloister, it is the synod which has jurisdiction subject to the approval of the minister of the interior. in the synod, which consists of eight priests resident at edgmiatsin, the katholikos has no more than a casting vote. it is true that he might act by bull. but such action, were it contrary to the resolutions of the synod, would, as matters now stand, be revolutionary. in this manner the katholikos is put into leading strings, of which the ends are held by the officials on the banks of the neva, duly instructed by a professed and resident spy. nor are the remaining provisions of this double-faced instrument calculated to shed balm over the wounded dignity of the head of the church. it is the emperor who appoints the members of the synod, although the katholikos is entrusted with the important function of submitting two names for the imperial choice. it is not legal for the pontiff to punish a member of the synod without the imperial consent. the same authority is necessary should he desire to suspend a bishop. he may not leave the cloister for more than four months except with the sanction of the tsar. when a bishopric falls vacant he submits names to the emperor, with whom the appointment rests. should the bishop desire to go abroad for more than four months, application must be made to the same high quarter. but perhaps the most serious because the most insidious weapon against the independence of the national church is the provision which enacts that a year shall elapse between the death of a katholikos and the election of his successor. this clause was accepted with singular want of foresight at a time when travelling was even slower than it is at the present day, and when it was difficult to collect the delegates from turkey and persia within a lesser period. in practice it is not easy for the new katholikos to take up his duties until some time subsequent to his election; and, should further delay be of advantage to the government, the tsar can always defer confirming the choice of the representatives. thus a vacancy in the chair is always accompanied by a long interregnum, during which the government plays off one party against the other, and succeeds in obtaining whatever concessions may have been resisted during the preceding pontificate. an english traveller who visited edgmiatsin the year after the conclusion of this enactment found the synod with its russian procurator in full swing. the katholikos was at once reduced to a position of president of the synod, and the synod to one of subservience to russian policy. [137] von haxthausen speaks of the procurator as a russian and quite an autocrat; this was in 1843. [138] at that time the pontiff nerses was in occupation of the chair, and his conspicuous abilities were regarded with suspicion by the russian authorities. his schemes for the higher education of the armenians had come to nothing owing to russian opposition. but the hardest blow was reserved for the year 1885, when the katholikos makar was appointed by the emperor in defiance of the expressed sentiments of the delegates of the nation. it was then realised that the independence of the church was at an end. the ukase of investiture confirmed this pessimist view. instead of the usual wording "upon the recommendation of the armenian people," the appointment was based "upon the recommendation of the clergy." instead of the pictures from armenian history which adorned the ukase of the pontiff george, russian insignia and coats of arms enlivened the scroll. the constitutional phrase has been restored to the ukase confirming the present pontiff, but not the patriotic pictures! [139] still, in spite of the fetters which have been imposed upon the actions of the katholikos, as much by the manner in which the polojenye is worked by the russian bureaucracy as by the provisions which that statute contains, the average armenian and especially the lower classes are immensely interested in the event of the coming days. at batum, at kutais, at alexandropol, at erivan--wherever we have been in the society of armenians, talk has centred upon the triumphal journey and the approaching consecration of his holiness mekertich khrimean. it is not only the ancient ceremony, and it is not merely the assembling of delegates from all parts of the armenian world that appeals to the heart of the nation. it is the personality and reputation of the man. the people forgets, but it does not change. the imagination of the race still sees in the holder of the pontifical office not alone or so much an archbishop or katholikos--the keystone of the edifice of the church--as a high priest in the old biblical sense. khrimean is the ideal of a high priest. he is a figure which steps straight out from the old testament with all the fire and all the poetry. at the ceremony of his consecration it seemed as if at the foot of ararat the ancient spirit were still alive, and that the holy oil which descended upon that venerable head from the beak of the golden dove anointed a law-giver to the people who announced the divine word. this impression was in part derived from the semitic cast of his features. the large brown eyes and aquiline nose above a long and full beard, are characteristics which we associate with the jewish nation, but which are not uncommon among the armenians. what is more rare among this people is the spirituality and refinement which is written in every line of this handsome face (fig. 48). but the whole character of the man would seem to have been moulded upon a biblical model rather than upon that of the christian hierarchy. he is the tried statesman to whom the people look for guidance in the abeyance of the kingly office. with him religion and patriotism are almost interchangeable terms; and the strong reality which he has given to the old armenian history may be illustrated by an act which those who lack sympathy with such a character might almost regard as childish. in the cloister of varag near van, over which he has presided for many years, are buried the remains of senekerim, king of the van country, who abdicated his kingdom in favour of the byzantine emperor, basil ii., and retired to the town of sivas in asia minor, which he received in exchange. over his tomb a wooden canopy had been erected and decorated in a manner befitting royal rank. but such honours, paid to so unworthy a monarch, shocked the keen sense of the patriot in khrimean; he stripped the frame of its trappings and ornaments, and the structure stands bare to this day. the simple surroundings among which his life has been passed recall the setting of a bible story. at a later stage of our journey, when we arrived in the town of van, i was shown the house where he had resided and which he has now devoted to a school for girls. as i alighted to visit the school a man with the appearance and dress of a peasant stepped forward to hold the reins of my horse. yet this individual was none other than the nephew of the katholikos, and the brother of khoren khrimean, who has accompanied his uncle to edgmiatsin, and who does the honours of the patriarchal household with so much dignity and natural grace. during our stay in van, his native province, we were afforded an instance of the magnetic influence which through a long life mekertich khrimean has exercised upon his countrymen, and which takes the form of superstitious veneration among the humble and the poor. as we were winding up the slopes of mount varag on our way to the ancient monastery where he lived so long, teaching in the school which he had founded within its walls, and often taking this very path from the cloister to preach in the little church of hankusner, on the outskirts of the gardens of van, our attention was called to a spot where an assassin had lain in wait for him, deputed by his enemies to kill him as he rode unaccompanied towards the town. the story is told that when the man perceived him and raised his rifle to his shoulder, a sudden fear seized his limbs, his arm shook like a wand; and he fell upon his knees before his victim, whose look he had been unable to bear. as a writer khrimean has expressed through the vehicle of a prose which is full of poetry and emotion conceptions of scripture and thoughts upon the troubles of his time which might have sprung from the warm imagination of the early christians in the east. he has often suffered for the fire of his sermons, and he possesses both the style of the consummate orator and the personal charm which keeps an audience under a spell. he has for many years been in the forefront of the armenian movement; and it was he who pleaded the armenian cause at the congress of berlin. a people whose spirit has been crushed and whose manhood has been degraded gather new life from such a teacher and learn to become men. but perhaps the most striking quality in a character which is at once complex and clear as the light of day is the ever-welling kindness and open-armed sympathy with which he shares the troubles of his fellow-men. as the throng press round him, the holder of their highest office, and endeavour to kiss his hand or gain a glimpse of his face, the mind travels back to that solemn scene in which the greek king receives his stricken and distracted people: "o my poor children, known to me, not unknown is the subject of your prayer; well am i aware that you are sore afflicted all; yet, though you suffer, there is not one among you who suffers even as i. for the grief you bear comes to each one alone--himself for himself he suffers--and to none other else; but my soul mourns for the state and for myself and you." [140] side by side with personal relations of greater freedom than i had anticipated towards this remarkable man, there grew up at edgmiatsin and during the course of subsequent travel a fairly intimate acquaintance with the events of his life. he was born on the 5th of april 1820; and it is therefore in his seventy-fourth year that he ascends the throne of st. thaddeus and of st. gregory. his father and uncle were well-to-do citizens of van, who had come to be known under the name of khrimean because of a trade which they had conducted with the crimea. the young mekertich had a single brother and no sisters; and he appears to have been educated with some care by his uncle. his youth and early manhood were devoted to secular pursuits. for five or six years he acted in the capacity of an overseer in a weaving business. but already in 1841 he had become a traveller and a thinker; in that year he made a journey in the province of ararat and visited edgmiatsin. at the age of twenty-five he married and in due course became a father; but his wife died after giving birth to a daughter who only lived to be six or seven years old. to a layman of intellectual tastes among the armenians of turkey there is scarcely any other profession open than the honourable but ill-paid calling of a teacher. shortly after his marriage khrimean proceeded to the capital and earned his living by private tuition. his first book appeared in 1850, and consisted of a description in poetry of his travels in ararat. the period of his residence in constantinople was diversified by further journeys; to jerusalem and the holy land, of which he published an account; and to cilicia, the seat of the latest armenian dynasty, where he remained some time as a teacher in the convent of sis. in 1854 he returned to his native city, and in the following year took orders and became a vardapet or monastic priest. it is at this date that the more conspicuous portion of his life may be said to have commenced. the pulpit gave full scope to his natural eloquence; while the qualities of the student and writer, which he had carefully cultivated, were displayed in the columns of a journal which he founded about 1856 and named the eagle of vaspurakan, or of the province of van. the proceeds of the sale of this periodical, which was at first printed at constantinople, whither he had returned in 1855, enabled him to purchase an instrument of great rareness in turkey, which the armenians prize with the same childish affection and reverence as the persian highlanders value a rifle or sporting gun. khrimean re-entered van with the title of abbot of the famous monastery which overlooks the landscape of the city and the rock and the waters from the slopes of mount varag. he came the proud possessor of a printing press, with which to conquer the sloth of the faint-hearted among the laymen and edify the crass ignorance of the priests. in the good old times in turkey one might read or write what books one liked, and the freedom which was enjoyed by the average individual might have excited the envy of the citizens of some of the european states. when the abbot of varag cast his stone into the stagnant waters, the report woke little echo beyond the borders of his native province and the ranks of his countrymen. but the waves which he set in motion have never yet subsided; and who can tell upon what shore of promise or disappointment they are destined to break and disappear? if ever there was a good cause, such was the cause which he championed, and no advocate could be more pure-minded than himself. his avowed object and real aim was the elevation of the armenians and their preparation for the new era which he foresaw. that era he conceived as one of national activity in the rapid decline of the mussulman peoples and the approach of new influences from the west. if we tax him with having resuscitated a realised and played-out ideal--that national ideal which is still the bane of our modern europe, but which, except perhaps in the case of some paradoxical german professors, has lost its hold upon educated minds, he might reply that it is the only talisman with which to touch the armenians, the most obstinate nationalists which the world has ever seen. he might further point to the almost hopeless condition of the ottoman empire, and under his breath he might suggest that the methods of russian despotism were not such as to excite the enthusiasm of a strongly individual people capable of assimilating western culture at first hand. lastly, he might dwell upon the fact that the armenians have a long history, and that their progress, to be solid and permanent, must be based on a revival of consciousness in the dignity of their past. but the inculcation of such doctrines in the minds of his countrymen was sure to produce a ferment among a people who have been regarded as the inferiors and almost as the slaves of the mussulmans for upwards of eight hundred years. it was imputed to him that he was working to revive the old armenian kingdom--a consummation which a sensible turk should regard with equanimity, since the time necessary to attain this end would far exceed all possible limits which he might assign to his solicitude for posterity. but sensible people are a minority of the inhabitants of this globe, and they are not numerous in the governing circles of the ottoman empire. the great activity of the abbot of varag, who trained his youths in the school of the cloister to conduct unaided the redoubtable magazine, slowly aroused the suspicion of the authorities. his own party in the church supported him with much zeal, and another monastery, still more famous, that of surb karapet above mush plain, was added to his spiritual administration. no sooner was he installed than a second printing press was set up and another school founded. the armenians of the plain of mush were edified by a new local journal, the little eagle of taron. in 1869 he was elected patriarch of constantinople, a dignity which he only held for four years. the turkish government had become alive to his great and growing popularity, and it was found expedient that he should resign. then came the tribulations of the russo-turkish war, during which the new movement among the armenians cost them several little massacres and untoward events. when the congress met at berlin the ex-patriarch, who had been busy with literature, undertook, in concert with an archiepiscopal colleague, a mission on behalf of his nation to the german capital. this was his first visit to the west, and he extended his journey to italy, france and england. the result of his efforts and of those of nerses, patriarch of constantinople, was the insertion of the well-known clause in the treaty of berlin pledging europe to supervise the execution of reforms in the asiatic provinces of turkey inhabited by armenians. khrimean returned to his native country the object of the resentment of the ottoman authorities; much of this portion of his life was spent in van. but armenian discontent was spreading; the alarm of government was increasing; and in 1889 the eloquent preacher was sent to jerusalem in honorary exile. in the month of may 1892 he was elected to the primacy of the armenian church. the russian bureaucracy perhaps reflected that their safeguards at edgmiatsin were quite sufficient to bridle the vigour of a septuagenarian. these shrewd diplomats therefore humoured the armenians in the matter, and the election was allowed to stand. the sultan raised difficulties about releasing the exiled prelate from his ottoman nationality and oath of allegiance. when this objection had been overcome his consent was qualified by the condition that the katholikos-elect should not pass through constantinople. a year elapsed in these parleyings. for two years the armenian church had been without a head. during that period it had been ruled by the russian procurator. now in the autumn the elect of the nation is at length presented to the delegates who have assembled from all parts of the armenian world. and he comes from russia, from the north, released from exile in turkey at the pressing instance of the tsar. one must admire the extraordinary cleverness of these russian bureaucrats! the sun was already high when we sallied forth from our lodging, having with great difficulty prepared our breakfast in the crowded room. we passed down the long and dusty street of the village, which is dignified by the historical name of vagharshapat. nothing remains of the capital of king tiridates, which was built upon this site or in the immediate neighbourhood. you are shown the remains of an old bridge which spanned the kasagh, or river of vagharshapat, some little distance north-west of the present settlement. the river has changed its course since it was erected. but the character of the masonry is rather that which was prevalent in the middle ages--conglomerate piles, faced with carefully hewn and jointed blocks of stone. several shops bestow a modern appearance upon the street, having windows and being disposed as in europe. a commonplace edifice with many windows and standing in private grounds recalls an institute in one of our provincial towns. it is the academy or seminary. we entered the cloister from a door on the north, through which we issued into an open space on the west of the great court. a covered way conducted us to the quadrangle, in the centre of which rises the cathedral (fig. 49, taken from south-west). imagine the old court of trinity college at cambridge without the gateway, the hall and chapel, and with a church of some size placed in the centre where the fountain stands. all four sides of the figure are defined by low buildings, resembling the dwellings which constitute two sides of the cambridge court. i had always understood that our quadrangle at trinity was the largest in the world; although i believe some american university was building one a few inches bigger not so very long ago. but the great court of edgmiatsin perhaps already makes the record; it has a length, from west to east, of 349 feet 6 inches, and a breadth of 335 feet 2 inches. these measurements i took myself, much to the astonishment of the crowd which assembled; they were at a loss to find a theory which might explain so strange an act. the length will be very much increased in a short while, when the condemned east side has disappeared. a fine row of stone buildings is in course of erection, which will enlarge that dimension by many yards. our cousins across the atlantic must bestir themselves. the western side of the court on the south of the covered way is devoted to the residence of the katholikos, while the block on the north of the same passage is occupied by the bishops. there is no style or pomp about the pontifical dwelling; and it would bear the same relation to the master's lodge at trinity as a four-roomed cottage to a mansion. at the back is a little garden. the north side consists of the rooms inhabited by the monks, and a terrace, raised on pointed arches, extends from end to end. the building on the east is in process of demolition, and, like its fellows on the two sides which have already been described, is composed of comparatively fragile material. i was given to understand that it had once housed the seminary and printing press; a little bakery still occupies the junction with the buildings on the south. these are constructed of stone, and, although very plain, lend an air of solidity to the entire quadrangle. beginning on the west of this block we have first a long refectory on the ground floor. its dimensions are a length of 155 feet, and a breadth of 16 feet 6 inches. but it is a very humble place when compared to the magnificent dining halls at cambridge, and it is not more than 14 feet in height. the ceiling is vaulted, and like the walls is whitewashed over; the apartment is well lit and is cool in summer. two rows of narrow tables extend down it, and on the west side is the throne and the canopy of the katholikos, both in carved wood. should he join the monks at dinner, his table is spread beneath the canopy. parallel with this refectory and facing the outhouses on the south is placed a similar chamber for the servants, a part of the space upon the east being occupied by the kitchen. the storey above the refectories is tenanted by the library, while the eastern portion of the buildings is taken up by granaries and store rooms both on the ground and upper floors. except for the pilgrims' court, with adjacent structures, and the garden of the katholikos--the one on the southern, the other on the south-western side--the space between the outer wall and the great court is for the most part vacant ground. what edifices there have been raised within it are of an unsubstantial character, and may have been allowed to fall into ruin. the fine sites which are thus forthcoming are being rapidly utilised, and i have already referred to the row of buildings which will extend the great court upon the east and which at the time of our visit were approaching completion. in a line with this new block, in which red and grey stones diversify the masonry, is situated further south the house which lodges the printing press, a solid stone structure. the transformation of edgmiatsin from a residence of ignorant monks into a seat of education, the home of cultured men, is proceeding year by year; and it is even possible that the bricks and mortar, or, to speak more correctly, the excellent masonry is in advance of the needs which it is intended to supply. wealthy armenians are fond of endowing the famous cloister, for which they do not need the incitement of meetings at some devonshire house. but the form of gift dearest to them is the erection of a building, which stands there so that all may see. this preference for the concrete and visible is deeply ingrained in them, and they are able to gratify it owing to the great skill of the armenian masons. plans were shown me which provided a palace for the katholikos and the rebuilding of the north side of the quadrangle. these, i believe, have already been decided upon, one of our party at the private table of the katholikos having provided the greater part of the funds. i was also invited to look at some very elaborate drawings for the enlargement and adornment of the church. no sooner had they been handed round than one of the guests of his holiness expressed his readiness to defray the cost. speaking as one who came fresh to edgmiatsin, i did my best to dissuade the acceptance of this last project. to enlarge the church would be to dwarf the fine proportions of the court; indeed the contrary course would be well-advised. one would not very much regret the abolition of the portal, while the excrescence on the east, containing the treasury and room of relics, should certainly be pulled down. his holiness favoured the idea of erecting a new church outside the walls, to supplement the space available in the present building. we were assigned a room in the condemned block on the east of the quadrangle, wherein we spread our rugs and erected our camp beds. it was 26 feet square, with a lofty wooden ceiling, supported by two pillars of the same material. the adjoining apartment was in process of demolition, but, although without a roof, it served admirably as a kitchen, while the flooring provided fuel for our fire. when all was in order we should not have exchanged the results of our improvisation even for the creations of the cambridge upholsterer, mellowed in the hands of the cambridge bedmaker; while, as for living, was it not preferable to possess the whole of our scapegrace cook than to share the services of the most virtuous of gyps? each day as we mounted our staircase, which exactly recalled its sad cambridge counterparts, i was struck by the resemblance of my new surroundings to those among which i had grown up in the old court of trinity, with the sky and the fountain and the adjacent cloister, where the glory of the foliage and lawn and river is spread in mystery beyond the trellis screens. even beneath this tropical sun the mind of man has surpassed his difficulties; and just as the cam has been converted from a melancholy ditch into a brimming waterway, threading a landscape of lawn and forest, so the kasagh has been impressed into the service of an artificial lake, bordered by shady avenues. extremely pleasant is the stroll round this spacious basin, which is due to the refinement of nerses v. (1761-1857). it is situated just outside and south of the cloister; and while from one side the view discloses the dome and a cupola of the cathedral (fig. 50), on the other it is the vault of ararat and the pyramid of the lesser ararat that are outlined above the soft foreground of water and trees (fig. 51). it was a pleasure to instance this work to general frese and my russian acquaintances as bearing testimony to the sense of security inspired by russian rule. the cloister and even the bazar are surrounded by walls worthy of a fortress, a relic from the old persian times. the russians appear on the scene, and the imprisoned monks disport in the open, which they make to bloom with luscious groves. on the morning following a restful day which introduced us to our new environment i was invited to visit his holiness. he had arrived within the walls of the cloister during our sojourn on ararat, and it appeared that he had scarcely been able to leave his apartments owing to the enthusiasm of the humbler among his admirers, who could not be restrained from pressing round him whenever he walked abroad. this enforced seclusion had developed a tendency to asthma; but with this exception i found him in excellent health. even the garden had been invaded by the peasants, who would wait hour after hour to catch a glimpse of their hayrik--a term of endearment, signifying little father, under which khrimean is very generally known. two footmen in scarlet robes with blue sashes stood upon the flight of steps or busied themselves with errands. i was ushered into a long apartment, modestly furnished in european style, where i was received by an armenian gentleman, of the handsome aquiline type of face, who addressed me in fluent english. he had been interpreter to the delegates to the berlin congress, and more recently had been much in the society of the katholikos, residing at jaffa (jerusalem). baron serapion murad--the first name is the equivalent of mr.--holds a position of the first importance in the counsels of his holiness at this juncture in his career. he is the shrewd man of the world, who weighs you in the balance with a single glance of his intelligent eyes. i appear to have emerged on the right side of the scale; for his formidable scrutiny rapidly relaxed into an amiable smile. we passed from this outer room into a chamber with a daïs at the further side; and presently the katholikos entered and mounted the daïs, begging us be seated on two chairs which were placed on the floor below, but quite close to his own arm-chair. i do not remember having ever seen a more handsome and engaging face; and i experienced a thrill of pleasure at the mere fact of sitting beside him and seeing the smile, which was evidently habitual to those features, play around the limpid brown eyes. the voice too is one of great sweetness, and the manner a quiet dignity with strength behind. the footmen and the daïs and the antechamber were soon forgotten in this presence--forms necessary to little men and perhaps useful to their superiors, though they are always kicking them off when they are not stumbling among their folds. happily the temperament of his holiness is averse to all baubles; the cross of diamonds was absent from his conical cowl, and his black silk robe, upon which fell a beard which was not yet white, was unrelieved by the star of his russian order. these ornaments are strangely out of place on such a figure, and their formulas out of keeping with this character. i was closely questioned upon all the incidents of our climb on ararat; nor was it doubted that we had reached the summit. in the old days such a pretension would have been met with a smile. then we passed to his sojourn in england, and i asked his opinion of mr. gladstone, with whom he had enjoyed some intercourse. he had been impressed, like so many others, with the theological cast of that supple mind. the face contracted when we came to speak of his life in the turkish provinces; and he laid stress upon the terrible reality of the sufferings of the armenian inhabitants. all the struggles and hopes and anguish of his strenuous days and sleepless nights seemed to rise in the mind and choke the voice. then he sank back, with a sigh which seemed to regret them. "i have come," he said, "to the land of forgetfulness."--and from the quadrangle came the sound of a slowly-moving russian anthem, and the measured step of a detachment of russian soldiers. his holiness invited me to take my meals in his private dining-room, and expressed his regret that he would not be present himself. it happened to be a fast day, and nothing was offered but lentils and peas. but on the day following quite a banquet was spread before us--salmon trout from lake sevan, delicious dolmas of minced meat and rice bound together by tender cabbage leaves, and the usual not very tasty chickens. at the head of the table sat the vicar or substitute of the katholikos, with m. pribil on a special mission representing the emperor on his right hand, and general frese on his left. one or two armenian notables were of the party, which, however, consisted for the most part of bishops resident at edgmiatsin. all wore their black silk cowls during the meal. as one looked down the line of clerics the aquiline type of face predominated--fine human animals they seemed, with their pronounced features and limpid eyes and the long beards which keep their colour and speak of a mind at ease. one of the monks present spoke french fluently; but he had been imported from the crimea by the present katholikos. his name was khoren stephaneh. many a pleasant talk i had with him, but not during dinner; they have too much respect in the east for their food and cook to divert the tongue at such a time from its proper function. what little ripples of conversation diversified the natural sounds of the meal were due to that restless spirit of the west, which is always asking questions and living several hours in advance of the actually present time. i do not know that either of the high russian functionaries were much troubled by this particular product of western culture; but, if they were, they must have suffered from the inability of their hosts to comprehend their language. the wine of the cloister flowed freely, and was supplemented by european liqueurs. then the restless spirit broke bounds, attacking first the taciturnity of the governor of erivan. the formula i had heard so often was the first to take wing; and "how long are you staying here?" came across the table in a somewhat loud voice. it was not the least unkindly meant. next the same little sprite perched upon m. pribil, and extracted several questions, which it let fly. when we rose from table he engaged me in a discursive conversation which ranged freely over the armenian question. he affirmed that the armenians did not compose more than one-fifth of the population of the russian provinces south of caucasus. the apartment was soon empty, every one retiring to their siesta; but i strolled out and made my way to the humble monastic buildings which adjoin the lonely church of saint gaiane. there i found a new friend whom i had learnt to value, a young monk recently ordained. mesrop ter-mosesean belongs to the new school of clerics who will before long remove that stigma of crass ignorance which still attaches to the bulk of the armenian priesthood. men like khrimean have long perceived that in matters of education germany occupies the first position among the nations of the world. with greater insight than the turks, who send their young men to paris--the very worst school for the full-blooded oriental--they encourage their promising scholars to study in germany, and find the necessary funds. the monk of gaiane had just returned from the german university, and he does credit to the solid attainments which it supplies. he is a splendid physical example of his race. tall, with the bold features of the handsome type which i have described, with a massive forehead and teeth white as snow, he combines with these outward advantages a manner which is most winning and a simple, straightforward character. hours i spent in his little sitting-room during my sojourn, and i was always sorry to come away. he occupies the post of librarian at edgmiatsin, and he is now busy with the compilation of a new and comprehensive catalogue. [141] on this occasion we walked across to the library, and found it full of people. it is entered from the side of the katholikos' garden. i was shocked by the spectacle of valuable manuscripts lying open on a long table, and being fingered by a promiscuous crowd. such was the license of this national festival. i noticed among them a new testament of the tenth century, bound in richly carved ivory sides. the type and pose of the christ in the centre of the one panel recalled that of a roman emperor. [142] beautiful manuscripts of the thirteenth century and a minutely illuminated missal of the seventeenth figured among the treasures which any hand was allowed to soil. evensong was at hand, and my companion and myself entered the dimly-lit church. the katholikos was already seated in the throne with the canopy, attired in a rich white satin robe. the cross of diamonds flashed from his cowl. bishops and monks composed two rows, extending to the daïs of the apse; they wore robes of yellow silk, embroidered with coloured garlands of flowers. the congregation was very numerous, but clustered in groups about the katholikos; there was no order or assignment of places, as with us. they sat or knelt upon the floor. on either side of the lines of clerics were gathered the choir, in gorgeous dresses, holding large and cumbrous books of armenian music. the priests conducting the service stood upon the pavement of the church with their backs to the daïs. above them rose the shapes of crosses and gorgeous eikons, held aloft by their attendants. incense was scattered at intervals. i noticed that his holiness twice changed raiment, although i was at a loss to discover when and where the transformation had taken place. the strongly nasal chants hurt my unaccustomed ear, and i found it impossible to educate my sympathy into communion with this show. an hour or two later symbols and eikons and tight little formulas were all blissfully asleep; and the great court flooded over with good, healthy human spirits, released from the restraints of the day. bonfires were lit within it, from which the leaping flames shot into the shadows of the church of the illuminator and revealed the circles of the dancers. from many a brightly-lit room, given over to the pilgrims, came the shrill sounds of the flute and the beats of the small drum. hai-this and hai-that--the refrain and burden of every song celebrated the glories of the sons of hayk. in the street of vagharshapat our friends the musicians from alexandropol were reaping a golden harvest. was there ever collected together a more motley crowd? they must have come great distances. there were ladies from akhaltsykh, with the pretty fillets across the brow; there were frock-coats and uniforms. the bright calicoes of peasant women enlivened the scene; some of the men, the poorest class, wore their rough sheepskin hats, while the better-to-do had donned low caps with a peak, like that of a naval officer. long before midnight quiet had settled upon the great quadrangle, and nothing was heard but the plash of the fountain. but sombre patches marked the spots where whole families were encamped; while the steps all around the church and every niche and doorway were black with the forms of serried human beings in every attitude of slumber. next morning, the 8th of october, popular excitement was at its highest, the central event which they had come to celebrate being imminent. from the earliest dawn throngs of sheepskins and peak hats and coloured calicoes had been busy reconnoitring the most suitable positions; and, when the hour approached, all the roofs which commanded a view of the portal, and a good part of the quadrangle enjoying the same advantage, were densely packed with spectators. rows of russian soldiers kept clear the approaches to the western or principal entrance of the church. they wore dark green uniforms with shoulder-straps of a faded pink, and peaked caps of white canvas. wesson and i made our way with difficulty to the residence of the katholikos, where, in the private room of baron murad, we set up the camera right in face of the scene of the approaching ceremony. it had been decided to perform the rite of consecration upon a daïs in front of the portal. this improvised wooden structure was covered with carpets and costly embroideries. over the doorway of the portal were emblazoned large armenian letters upon a ground of cloth or canvas. the inscription reminded us that we were assembled upon the actual site where jesus christ is believed to have descended from heaven. the name of the cloister and cathedral is said to signify "the only-begotten has descended"; and the text over the doorway may be translated "the only-begotten has descended from the father, and the light of glorification with him." upon a higher plane, from the tower of the belfry, was suspended a banner, embroidered with the device of the katholikos and with the eagle of vaspurakan (van). the device consisted of a mitre, surmounting the figures of two angels, one carrying a cross and the other a pastoral staff. these emblems crossed one another, and at the intersection was placed an ornament of diamond shape peculiar to the katholikos. the eagle with the wings outspread was purely personal to khrimean, recalling the many links which attach him to van. the scroll was to the following effect:--"o god, the knower of hearts, protect for long years our chief of shepherds (hovapet) mekertich hayrik." left and right of the daïs, in niches of the façade of the portal, were exhibited two eikons, or religious pictures, richly framed, of which that on the left--a virgin and child--was a painting of very high merit, said to be of byzantine origin. at a quarter to nine the procession is formed, and proceeds from the pontifical residence down the avenue of soldiers to the church door. the service which is held within the cathedral of the illuminator lasts for over an hour. the party assembled in our upper chamber spend the time with conversation and in gazing down upon the multitude. it consists of a nun from tiflis, a frock-coated teacher in a school of that city, and a pretty woman of the rich armenian bourgeoisie of tiflis, attired in a dress of parisian model. the nun is a charming woman, and we make great friends. she informs me that she is almost an unique specimen of her order; the convent at tiflis is perhaps a solecism. nunneries are not popular with the armenians. i think my reader may appreciate the magnificent robes which belong to her office, and of which, by her kindness, i am able to supply an illustration (fig. 52). i notice that among the women assembled in the quadrangle the armenian national dress is not often seen. the georgian head-dress--a band of black velvet, embroidered with beads or jewels, across the temples, and a white silk kerchief over the head--appears to predominate. this fact would show that the greater number of those present have come from tiflis and the northern districts. just as we are getting a little bored with the finicking architecture of the portal there is a movement and a rustle, and the procession issues from the church. first to appear are the high russian officials in court dress--m. pribil, general frese and the rest. they take up position on the floor of the quadrangle in front of the crowd, and face the still vacant daïs. between them and this central object room is left for the choir and deacons, who are presently introduced. hats are doffed in spite of the fierce sun. a brief, intense pause, and the twelve bishops [143] in gorgeous attire mount the daïs from behind. they escort the venerable form of the katholikos, over whose head two attendants support a canopy of crimson material, embroidered with gold lace. for a short space the aged patriarch fronts the multitude in a standing posture; then sinks on the carpet with his feet beneath his body in eastern fashion. erect beside him, a bishop reads from a heavy volume. from time to time you detect a movement of the deeply-bowed head of the seated figure, as a particular passage is recited. next a bishop advances, bearing in his hands the image of a dove, wrought in gold. it is the receptacle of the holy oil. in the southern apse of the cathedral stands a chest containing a vase, in which is preserved oil blessed by st. gregory. it is nothing, they say, but a mass of dry material. of this substance they take a pinch and mix it with consecrated oil, specially prepared and scented with essence of flowers. such is the liquid which is allowed to flow from the beak of the dove upon the head of the father of the nation. the bishops gather round, and each with his thumb spreads the oil over the scalp, making the figure of a cross at the same time (fig. 53). then a mass of wool is applied to the crown of the head, in the folds of a muslin veil which is adjusted to fall over the face. the katholikos rises after a brief interval, places his feet in his embroidered slippers and with the bishops re-enters the church. the ceremony has occupied a quarter of an hour. some little time elapses, and the same procession leaves the building, accompanying the anointed pontiff to his residence. the choir sing from their great books the old armenian chants [144] with their loud lamentations and long shakes. the band of the russian regiment play a slow and solemn music, of which the sweetness puts to shame the nasal choristers. they are mostly armenians in this band. these strains bring the rite to a conclusion, and we all disperse to our various amusements or occupations. the dinner "in hall" upon this festival of the consecration was a very interesting incident. we were all to dine in the refectory. when i entered, the long apartment was crammed. the scholars of the academy partook of the meal in the parallel chamber. the bishops, the monks, the delegates composed a sombre assembly, stretching in rows of long perspective down the tables. a single exception to this dark apparel was furnished by a delegate from karabagh, who was seated next myself. he wore his national dress--a spare black tunic, fastened at the neck, displaying the front and sleeves of a light blue silken vest. his face was large and expressive of great resolution, especially the chin, which, like the cheeks, was shaved. the bronze complexion heightened the whiteness of the bold moustache. one was reminded of the best type of peasant proprietors in europe; and, indeed, a view of the faces round one confirmed that favourable impression which one receives from the society of armenians in their native country. there is depicted a striking union of force of character with intelligence. in the midst of these reflections the katholikos enters the building, and we all rise from our seats. he sits on his throne beneath the canopy, and a monk ministers to his needs. on either side stands a scarlet footman with a blue sash; the choir are drawn up behind. after the first course his holiness rises, wearing his cowl and the glittering cross, and proposes the toast of the emperor. it is a delight to hear him speak. he has all the personal fascination of mr. gladstone. dinner proceeds as the catalogue of toasts is gone through, and between each toast european melodies are sung by the choir, and songs by an armenian tenor of repute. the health of the emperor is received with cries of oura; but the remaining toasts without exception with the armenian cheer of ketsze! the equivalent of the french vive! in proposing the health of m. pribil his holiness recites the various occasions upon which that functionary has come to edgmiatsin to attend the consecration or the funeral of a katholikos. turning to his guest with a winning smile, he begs him to defer his next ceremonial visit until after the lapse of a moderate interval. in the evening the whole quadrangle was illuminated with strings of coloured glasses containing candles. they made a very pretty show. at intervals huge firebrands threw a lurid light upon the buildings. the numerous choir of the academy was marshalled in the court, including many ladies. the programme comprised several cantatas and some concerted music, and the standard was fairly high. but it appears difficult to eliminate the nasal pronunciation. the music-master was a great swell with his inspired look and flowing hair. the band discoursed the waltzes of the immortal strauss. before eleven all sound was hushed save the plash of the fountain, and darkness unrelieved had settled upon the scene. i made my way to the rooms of his holiness and ascertained that he would receive me in spite of the lateness of the hour. i found him reclining on a wooden couch in a bare white-washed apartment; a single rug was suspended upon the wall beside the couch. such is the bed and such the furniture natural to the object of all this pomp, which i do not doubt is profoundly distasteful to such a character. he took my hand in his, and we sat together for some time, the office of interpreter being, i think, performed by dr. arshak ter mikelean. our talk ranged over many subjects; but i should have preferred to sit still, look in those eyes and hear that voice. i think we both felt that we were very near each other; and religion is a subtler thing than can be defined in creeds and dogmas or embodied in what the world calls "views." on the following days the state of tension was gradually relaxed; the cloister settled down to ordinary life, and it was possible to examine the churches at one's ease. these are actually four in number, although in mohammedan times the district was known under the name of uch kilisa, or three churches. [145] their origin is bound up with a legend which plays such a considerable part in the history of the armenian church that, before passing to a description of them, it may not be inappropriate to instruct or amuse my readers with this curious story. [146] towards the close of the third century, while tiridates was on the throne of armenia, the emperor diocletian (284-305), [147] in search of a beauteous spouse, sent artists into all parts of his empire to depict the charms of suitable candidates for the imperial embrace. now there happened to be in rome a convent of nuns of austere life, of which the superior was called gaiane. under her charge was a virgin of surpassing beauty and of royal lineage, whose name was ripsime. the artists entered her retreat by force, committed her lineaments to their tablets, and sent the portrait with several others to their master. the emperor had no sooner gazed upon the image of the high-born virgin than he fell violently in love. no pains were spared to hurry forward the preparations for the marriage, and the wretched bride was in despair. her vow of chastity and the hatred she felt for the persecutor of her sect encouraged her to adopt the counsels of despair. she took to flight, attended by gaiane and a numerous company of the nuns; and after many wanderings the band arrived upon the banks of the distant araxes, in the outskirts of the armenian capital of vagharshapat. there they discovered a secluded retreat in a place which served as a store for vats, the city possessing extensive vineyards. one of their number was versed in the art of the manufacture of glass objects; she made glass pearls, and their price defrayed the cost of their daily sustenance. meanwhile the emperor had despatched messengers in every direction, and a roman ambassador arrived at the court of the armenian king. he was the bearer of a letter to that monarch from his master, who related how the empire was suffering from the misdeeds of the christians, and in particular how a beautiful virgin whom he himself had desired to marry had been abstracted by her infatuated co-sectaries and taken into the territory of his armenian ally. the emperor begged his beloved colleague to track the party out, and, with the exception of the wondrous virgin, to put them all to death. as for the lovely fugitive, it would only be necessary to send her back; but the missive added, with an amiability truly worthy of an emperor, that the king might keep her if overcome by her charms. as might be expected, no time was lost on the part of tiridates to institute and elaborate the search. the band was found; the beauty of ripsime needed no identification; and the fame of it attracted a multitude of all ranks--princes and nobles, shoulder to shoulder with the common people, closing round her under the sting of licentious desire. the nuns raised their hands to heaven and drew their veils about their faces; and perhaps this display of modesty averted their ruin. early on the following morning there arrived from the palace magnificent litters and costly robes, the design of the king being to take to wife the christian maiden and make her queen of the armenians. but at this juncture a peal of thunder carried terror into all hearts, and a voice was heard descending from the sky. it was the voice of the saviour, adjuring the nuns to take courage and remain firm for the glorification of his name among the peoples of the north. "thou ripsime," it proceeded, "hast been cast out (exerriphthês) with gaiane and thy companions from the realm of death into that of eternal life." meanwhile the thunder had caused a panic among the assembled people, and the king's officers hastened to the royal presence, bringing a written report of all they had heard. but the monarch hardened his heart, and, since she refused the pomp he offered, gave orders that the maiden should be taken by force and brought to the royal apartments. these directions were executed, but not without difficulty; the pious virgin was of stalwart frame, and the soldiers were obliged to drag her along the ground, or carry her struggling in their arms. when they had placed her in the king's chamber, and it was announced that the king had entered, the people outside the palace feasted and danced and sang. but their rejoicings were premature; for the intrepid roman maiden was more than a match even for the powers of so redoubtable an antagonist. tiridates was widely famed for physical strength and deeds of prowess; yet, although he persisted in his suit for not less than seven hours, he was at last compelled through sheer exhaustion to give in. the offices of gaiane were invoked; she consented to speak, but her counsels were addressed to confirming the courage of her companion. her latin speech was understood by some among those present; they took stones and tore her face and broke her teeth. after a brief repose the king returned, and again endeavoured to overcome the girl's obstinacy; but after a long struggle the inspired amazon was a second time victorious; she threw the king (erripsen), destroyed his diadem, and dismissed him from the chamber, fainting and gathering around him his tattered robes. a tender respect for the honour of women is a virtue of christian origin, which the romance of western chivalry converted into a cult of the fair sex. but the king of armenia was an oriental, a heathen and a barbarian; nor had he been instructed in the code which precludes the sentiment of humiliation in the vanquished where the victor is possessed of a female form. his passion as a lover was overcome by his fury as a thwarted despot; the virgin had fled from the palace, but his savage emissaries were soon on her track. the unfortunate maiden directed her steps to the retreat where the vats were stored, and gave the alarm to her companions. all those present, excepting one who was stricken with illness, accompanied her flight. but when they had reached some rising ground near the road which led to artaxata, they were overtaken, bound with cords and put to death with great cruelty. with ripsime there perished thirty-two of her attendants, while the poor nun who had been left behind presently met the same fate. the martyrdom of gaiane and of two companions took place on the following day and was attended with tortures which i should shudder to commit to paper. not many days after this tragedy its author was visited by the vengeance of heaven; a demon entered his body, and, like his prototype of babylon, the king of armenia was turned into an animal eating grass. in the form of a wild boar he resisted all attempts to confine him; and similar punishments overtook the royal family and attendants. at length the sister of the king, by name khosrovidukht, beheld in the watches of night a vision. a man with a radiant face appeared and addressed her, to the effect that the only remedy was to send to the town of artaxata and summon thence a prisoner named gregory. when she related the vision people shook their heads, and attributed it to the incipient madness of the princess. for gregory, who was once an honoured servant of king tiridates, had been cast by the tyrant into a deep pit, on account of his profession of christianity, not less than fifteen years ago. would even his bones be forthcoming from such a place? but when several times the vision had been repeated, and the princess renewed her insistence, a great noble was despatched to the place where the pit was situated, near the town of artaxata. a rope was let down into the cavern; and, to the astonishment of all, there emerged a human form, blackened to the colour of coal. it was none other than st. gregory. the saint was met by the king and nobles, foaming and devouring their flesh, as he approached the city along the road from artaxata. sinking on his knees, he obtained from heaven the restoration of their reason, although not of their human forms. his next care was the burial of the martyrs; he found their bodies, lying where they fell, and still untouched by corruption after the lapse of nine days. no dog or beast or bird had approached the remains. st. gregory took them with him to the place where the vats were stored; and for sixty-six days he sojourned in that place, instructing the king and nobles. after the lapse of that period he related to them a vision which he had beheld during the middle watches of the night. the royal party had come at sunrise to prostrate themselves before the holy man. during his vigil, while his mind was revolving the recent acts of divine grace, a violent peal of thunder, followed by a terrible rumbling sound, had fallen upon his startled sense. the firmament opened as a tent opens, and from the heaven descended the form of a man, radiant with celestial light. the name of gregory was pronounced; the saint looked upon the face of the man, and fell trembling to the ground. enjoined to raise his eyes, he beheld the waters above the firmament cloven and parcelled apart like hills and valleys, extending beyond the range of sight. streams of light poured down from on high upon the earth, and, with the light, innumerable cohorts of shining human figures with wings of living flame. at their head was one of terrible face whom all followed as the supreme ruler of the host; he bore in his hand a golden mallet, and, alighting on the ground in the centre of the city, struck with his mallet the crust of the broad earth. the report of the blow penetrated into the abysses below the earth; far and near all inequalities of the surface were smoothed out, and the land became a uniform plain. and the saint perceived in the middle of the city, near the palace of the king, a circular pedestal made of gold and of the size of a large plateau, upon which was reared an immensely lofty column of fire with a cloud for capital, surmounted by a flaming cross. as he gazed he became aware of three other pedestals. one rose from the spot where the holy gaiane suffered martyrdom; a second from the site of the massacre of ripsime and her companions; and the third from the position occupied by the magazine of vats. these pedestals were of the colour of blood; the columns were of cloud, and the capitals of fire. the crosses resembled the cross of the saviour, and might be likened to pure light. the three columns were equal in height one with another, but a little lower than that which rose near the royal palace. upon the summits of all four were suspended arcs of wondrous appearance; and above the intersection of the arcs was displayed an edifice with a dome, the substance being cloud. on the arcs stood the thirty-seven martyrs, figures of ineffable beauty attired in white robes; while the crown of the figure above the edifice was a throne of divine fashioning surmounted by the cross of christ. the light of the throne mingled with the light of the cross and descended to the bases of the columns. when gregory had related this vision he bade all present gird up their loins and lose no time in erecting chapels to the martyred virgins, where their remains might be deposited. thus the saints might intercede for the afflicted king and people and assist them to become healed. forthwith the multitude set to work, collected stones and bricks and cedar-wood; and, under the guidance of the saint, constructed three chapels after a prescribed design. one was placed towards the north and on the east of the city, on the spot where ripsime and her companions met their death. the site of the second was further south, where the superior gaiane was massacred; while that of the third was close to the magazine of vats. these they built and adorned with lamps of gold and silver, with candelabra of which the flames were never quenched. coffins were made for the remains of the martyrs; but no man was suffered to touch these relics, for none had been baptized. the saint himself and in solitude consigned the bodies to their receptacles. and when this was done he fell on his knees and prayed for the healing of the king, that haply the king might share in the work. the prayer was granted, and the horn fell from the royal hands and feet. to the monarch was assigned the task of digging tombs in the chapels to receive the coffins of the martyrs; and his consort, the queen ashkhen, together with his sister khosrovidukht, were associated with him in the work. the return of his vigour was signalised on the part of the king by a labour worthy of the patriarch hayk. he made a journey to the summit of ararat, which the compiler rightly observes would occupy seven days. [148] when he had completed this feat, he was seen bearing upon his shoulders eight blocks of stone of gigantic size which he had taken from the crest of the mountain. these he placed before the threshold of the chapel of the martyred ripsime in expiation of the unholy battle which he had waged. [149] in this manner all was accomplished according to the vision of st. gregory; while, as for the locality where had stood the column of fire on the golden pedestal, it was surrounded by the saint with a high wall and heavy gates; the sign of the cross was erected within it, that the pilgrims might there worship the all-powerful god. upon his return from cæsarea, and after the baptism of king and people, st. gregory completed his task by building the cathedral upon this site. such is the legend which, with variations, has supplied the patent of the famous monastery, and invested the pilgrimage to the church of christ descended and to the chapels of the martyrs with the character at once of a religious and of a patriotic act. the first of these edifices stands in the centre of the great quadrangle of the cloister, and, as we have seen, is believed to have been originally raised by st. gregory the illuminator, to whom the armenians attribute their conversion to christianity. the spot where the saviour alighted and struck the broad earth with the mallet is situated about the middle of the building; and in the old days was indicated by a slab of hewn stone, 3 feet square and 5 feet in thickness. [150] this stone was said to have been substituted for the original marble slab which was reputed to have been due to st. gregory himself and to have been carried off by shah abbas. [151] in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, during the pontificate of astvatsadur, an elaborate altar was placed upon this hallowed site, and still stands there beneath the dome. it is surmounted by a canopy supported by four pillars of tabriz marble, and is well seen in my illustration of the interior (fig. 55). it appears to have replaced one of simpler design erected by the katholikos eleazar. i cannot invite my reader to admire the architecture of this cathedral, although the interior, with its spacious body, central dome and four apses, one at each point of the compass, is sufficiently remarkable. much the same design is seen in the church of st. ripsime; but in that building it underlies important developments which probably argue a later date. the original form of the exterior is rather difficult to unravel owing to the excrescences, of which i may safely say that none are improvements, that have been added at various times. but let me briefly undertake the work of demolition, addressing myself to the illustration, which was taken from the south-west (fig. 49). the portal on the left of the picture is a work of the seventeenth century; it was commenced by the katholikos philip and completed by his successor jacob in 1658. it is probably due to the mania for portals prevalent in armenia at that period and not to a feature of the earlier plan. just east of and adjoining the balcony of this structure is seen a window with a richly carved column in the centre, surmounted by a cross and supporting two ornamental arches. this window and the upper portion of the building to which it belongs are in subservience to the portal, with which they are in architectural harmony, and which they link with the main edifice. the lower part, including the frieze or quasi-classical moulding, which runs right round the church, is in a different style and of a different form of masonry, being indeed an integral member of the body of the church. you have only to remove the window and pointed roof, build up the wall above the cornice and cover it with a flat roof, and you obtain precisely the same projection which the picture shows on the south side and which is necessitated by the south apse. we have now obtained the figure of a body with four projecting members, each of which represents an apse. the roof would appear to have been always built at a very low angle; it is, as usual, of stone. but we have yet to disencumber the apse on the east, which is completely hidden by the stupid building which contains the treasury and room of relics--an annexe which from outside lengthens and perverts the original edifice. we owe this feature to the katholikos george iv., who died in 1882. this apse had a lesser projection than its fellows from the wall of the church, owing to the incidence of the two indispensable side chapels, which were small and merely entailed a slight advance of the rectangular walls. over each apse it has been customary to have a belfry; when the portal was added this feature of the apse on the west was transferred to that structure. the open cupolas with belfries which are at present seen over the three apses were built in the year 1682 by the katholikos eleazar. they are of bright red stone, of which the hue contrasts in a displeasing manner with the dull grey of the body of the church. the central dome, which is supported on piers in the interior, consists of a polygonal drum with a window in each face surmounted by a conical roof. a false arcade with slender columns and pointed arches enriches, together with a carved cornice, the simplicity of the design. this dome is believed to date from the seventh century, and to be the work which the katholikos komitas (617-625) erected in place of an earlier structure in wood. if this be the case we have an example of this form of dome in armenia a hundred years before the time when it is supposed by fergusson to have been developed. [152] it is a pity that some vandal has daubed it over with plaster and paint, which invests it with a grotesque appearance. above each window is a medallion containing the head of a saint, and i saw traces of spiral carving on the columns. an almost flat-roofed building with this dome in the centre, with four projecting apses, one at each point of the compass and each surmounted by a little belfry--such would appear to have been the original exterior of the edifice which we see at the present day. an ingenious traveller, whose judgment was influenced by the cornice of the building, and perhaps too by certain stone slabs with greek inscriptions which are inserted in the walls, has conjectured that this exterior, with the exception of the dome and belfries, dates at least in part from the reign of king tiridates (end of the third and commencement of the fourth century). [153] he has gone so far as to present us with an illustration, showing what he conceives to have been the original form. [154] we know from moses of khorene that this monarch erected at garni in the district of erivan a building of surpassing beauty to his sister khosrovidukht; and it is almost certain that the remains of a purely classical building which have been seen by modern travellers upon that site belong to this monument or to one of the same period. [155] the presumption of dubois is therefore justified that a building of the reign of tiridates would be likely to display classical features and ornaments. but his conjecture as regards this particular church must at present be considered to belong to the realm of hypothesis. the presence of the slabs with the greek inscriptions would prove nothing; they may have been taken from an earlier building, or they may quite well be later in date than the invention and use of the armenian alphabet in the fifth century. dubois indeed is inclined to ascribe them to a period earlier than the conversion of tiridates, and to see in them memorials of a christianity practised in armenia prior to the preaching of st. gregory. this conjecture, which is adopted with complacency by ritter, is probably quite baseless. the inscriptions have quite recently been subjected to the critical scrutiny of a scholar in byzantine lore. i may refer my reader to his work. they are incised upon two slabs inserted in the wall, rather high up and a little east of the northern apse. the slabs are close together. i was unable to decipher the writing with the aid of my glasses, as the stone has been much worn. the slab with the figures of paulos and thekla is attributed by this scholar to the fifth or the sixth century, and its companion to about the same date. his opinion is based upon internal evidence. [156] it would take too long to pursue a study relying on this kind of testimony into the approximate date of the cathedral. it must suffice to have placed my reader in possession of the leading facts. as regards the evidence of literature as to restorations and additions it is summarised in the accompanying note. [157] if the essential features of the present building be due to the restoration of vahan mamikonean (a.d. 483), it will be a work anterior to justinian. at that time the armenian architect would not have enjoyed the advantage of studying the designs of the several churches which, according to procopius, that emperor erected in western armenia. [158] it would appear preferable to ascribe these features to the restoration under komitas (618), if we were obliged to choose between the two. but this and kindred questions respecting the origin of the church and monastery are wrapped in obscurity. at what date did edgmiatsin become the residence of the katholikos? this cardinal question still remains without a certain answer. we know that he transferred his seat from vagharshapat to dvin in the year 452, and that he did not return until 1441. we also know that the seventh century was a period of building activity; after komitas we have the katholikos nerses iii. (640-661), surnamed the builder, who erected a magnificent church in close vicinity to the churches of edgmiatsin and buried the relics of st. gregory beneath its four colossal pillars. [159] there is no reason to doubt that the four byzantine capitals which are preserved in the academy belonged to this edifice. [160] the independence of the national church, so jealously guarded by the armenians, was intimately bound up with the edgmiatsin legend; and the pontiffs appear to have spared no pains during the earlier centuries to maintain the holy places and prevent them sharing the fate of the temporal capital, vagharshapat. the entrance from the portal to the church is through a rather low doorway, conducting you into the apse-formed projection on the west. the stone panels about and above this doorway are richly carved and show traces of gilding (fig. 54). in the south wall of the building you are shown an old door, long walled up, which is supposed to date from a hoar antiquity and is called the door of tiridates. lastly you will probably be taken to the belfry above the portal and be shown the famous tibetan bell. it bears the thrice repeated legend ôm a hum, the mystic formula of the buddhists. [161] before the portal are several tombstones, commemorating deceased pontiffs, and among them that of the enlightened nerses v. one in marble is raised over the remains of sir john macdonald, british envoy to the court of persia. the bald inscription contrasts with the eloquence of the situation under the shadow of this st. peter's of distant armenia and among the graves of the highest dignitaries of her national church. [162] passing now to the interior (fig. 55 and plan), it is the form which is impressive--the quadruple apse with a canopy altar in each of these recesses, except that on the west. in the centre, beneath the dome, stands the altar which i have already described; there are therefore four altars in this church. in front of the apse on the east rises the parapet of the daïs, as usual; but the higher level of the floor in those on the north and south is approached by steps which extend from wall to wall. the lateral chapels on the east, which are so constant a feature in armenian churches, are scarcely noticeable in this building, being, i think, incorporated in the additions which were made by george iv. at the back of the church. the space on the floor of the edifice is railed off in two places from north to south. there is of course no pulpit, and there are no pews. the light falls from twelve little windows in the spacious dome upon a scene which is rendered dim by the darkness of the mural paintings, and which serves to enhance the flashing ornaments on the central altar. i am told that there are in all no less than thirty-five windows; but they are small and insignificant. their distribution is not subordinate to any plan. the paintings on the walls are of no merit; they represent biblical subjects, and while some are in fresco, others are on canvas applied to the stone. they must have been added at a comparatively recent date; for we are expressly told by chardin that in his time the interior was quite bare. the dome has been pleasantly decorated in the persian style with coloured arabesques. these and the various frescos are attributed to an armenian artist who lived during the reign of nadir shah (1736-47). [163] the church is large if compared to other ancient armenian temples, but small if judged by a western standard. the area enclosed must be rather less than in the case of the cathedral at ani, although the dimensions are about the same when the four projections are included. the measurements of the interior, which i took myself, give an extreme length of 108 feet 4 inches, and an extreme breadth of just over 98 feet. each apse has a depth of about 15 feet 3 inches--a dimension which i have included in my totals. [164] in the south apse stands the chest containing the vessel with the holy oil, and beside it a little lamp which flickers night and day. the recess of its opposite counterpart is adorned with mural paintings representing eight full-length portraits of the pillars of the armenian church. they are identified as st. gregory, with his sons aristakes and verthanes, and his grandson grigor; as yusik, nerses the first, sahak and mesrop. the ceremony of ordination of bishops takes place in this northern apse. a cistern has been sunk below the floor in front of the recess to serve in time of siege. two thrones are conspicuous in the body of the church, both of which may be discerned in my illustration. the first, which adjoins the central altar, is inscribed with the name of petros katholikos (peter ii. 1748) and is said to have been a present from the pope. [165] the second, situated further east, is that which was occupied by the katholikos during the service which i attended. it is the gift of armenians during the pontificate of astvatsadur (1715-25). the treasury and room of relics contain many interesting objects. to these chambers is allotted the building on the east of the church. both are entered from the interior and through doors in the east wall, that on the north of the apse communicating with the treasury, and that on the south with the apartment containing the relics. among the treasures are several objects which deserve the attention of the student of art, examples of mediæval armenian craft being, i imagine, none too frequent. i observed a crystal cross, said to belong to the bagratid period, and some other crosses reputed to have come from ani. a gold crown, inlaid with jewels, is ascribed to king tiridates, and, whatever its origin, is a very interesting object. the same may be said of a silver saucer with repoussé figures dating from the pontificate of nerses iv. (1166-73). there are a quantity of jewelled mitres and embroidered stoles and ornaments for the church. there are seals of the pontiffs and coins of the rupenian (cilician) dynasty. some store is set upon a head of dionysus which is believed to be of egyptian origin. the monastery has become possessed of a most curious object in the shape of a huge caldron, standing on three legs, and having as handles four tigers in the act of climbing. it was found not many years ago in a cloister near tiflis; buried within it was a bell. an inscription round the rim gives the date of the armenian era 781 or a.d. 1331. in the chamber of relics are preserved a fine collection of episcopal staves surmounted by a cross above a knot of hissing serpents' heads (fig. 56, nos. 1 and 2). many are of exquisite workmanship. the principal relics are the hand and arm of st. gregory, preserved in a silver gilt case; the head of the holy spear, reputed to possess the power of staying epidemics; [166] a fragment of the ark, to which is attached a jewelled cross; the head and arm of st. thaddeus, the apostle; the hand and arm of st. jacob of nisibis; a panel carved with a crucified christ, said to be the work of st. john the apostle and to have been procured by ashot patricius; finally a box containing relics of st. ripsime. the chapels of the martyrs, which are churches rather than chapels, are situated within short walks from the monastery. thus st. gaiane is not more than about a quarter of a mile distant in a southerly direction. st. ripsime is a little further, say three-quarters of a mile; it is placed to the east of edgmiatsin and is the first building which you see as you drive from erivan, on the very outskirts of the trees and greenery. shoghakath is a near neighbour of ripsime on the side of the great cloister. of these the largest and certainly the most interesting is that which commemorates the brave deeds of the beautiful virgin from rome. in designing the church of the holy ripsime the architect has been faithful to the essential features of that of edgmiatsin--the quadruple apse and the central dome. but the problem before him was how to eliminate the unsightly projections of the apsidal arms, and how to rear the whole fabric by successive stages to the crown of the dome. his solution of the problem, if somewhat rudimentary and fantastic, is certainly successful from the point of view of looks (fig. 57 and plan). my reader will of course eliminate the portal and belfry in appreciating this piece of architecture. they were added, the portal in 1653 by the katholikos philippos, and the belfry in 1790. he will observe that the outer walls compose a rectangular figure; and a moment's reflection will show him that such a figure could only be presented by a stupendous thickening of the wall on either side of each apse. this difficulty has been in part surmounted by the introduction of niches, two for each apsidal recess. these external niches are nearly six feet deep on the north and south sides, a little shallower on the west and east. the treatment of this feature is quite inchoate; but we shall see it in perfection at ani. at the same time it is evident that provision had to be made for a side chapel on either side of the apse on the east. these have been supplied according to a design which i have not seen elsewhere, although it appears to be repeated in the church of sion in the valley of the tana, a tributary of the kur, erected at the end of the tenth century. [167] between the four apsidal recesses of the interior are inserted the narrow openings of four circular and much smaller cavities, communicating by doors which are almost imperceptible with rectangular chambers or chapels. of these chambers the two on the east provide the requirements of the church, while those on the west were probably added for uniformity. [168] the effect of the eight recesses, crowned by a dome of unusual diameter for the size of the structure, [169] is extremely pleasing to the eye; and st. ripsime is the most impressive ecclesiastical edifice which i have yet presented to my reader. the drum of the dome has sixteen sides; besides the windows which it contains, light is admitted through bold apertures in each of the apsidal recesses. standing beneath the dome, one admires the great height of the building. the interior measurements are a length of 74 feet 1 inch and a breadth of 58 feet 4 inches. the question of the date of ripsime is again not free from difficulty. we know that the katholikos komitas rebuilt the church in a.d. 618; [170] nor, so far as i have been able to ascertain, do we possess records of any subsequent change in the plan. students of architecture may be inclined to assign it to a later period. the tomb of the martyr is placed in a grotto beneath the apse on the east. [171] just west of the portal there is a low building, serving as a residence for monks, and, adjoining it, an enclosure for cows. church and cloister are surrounded by a high mud wall, with round towers at the angles. st. gaiane is an edifice of much humbler architectural pretensions, which is said to date from the pontificate of ezra (a.d. 628-640) (fig. 58 and plan). [172] the porch was added, as we learn from an inscription, in the year 1687 by the katholikos eleazar. it serves as a place of burial for the pontiffs and contains many alabaster slabs. on the north side have been inserted in the archway of a wide aperture two old armenian crosses, framed within an ornamental trophy. entering the building from this portal we are impressed with its simplicity; and this feeling is enhanced by the absence of all decoration, the beautiful masonry being left without any covering of lime. the architect has wisely dispensed with the quadruple apse, and has contented himself with one. but he has retained the rectangular form of the side chapels, and he has separated them by a wall from the body of the building. four detached piers support a dome which is much smaller than that of ripsime, but resembles it in the sense of great height which it lends to the interior. the length of the building is 70 feet 2 inches, and the breadth 47 feet. the vault, containing the grave of gaiane, is approached from one of the side chapels, and is covered by a simple stone with a little carpet, upon which devotees offer coins. the adjacent cloister consists of a humble building on the south-west. the church is surrounded by tombs. lying against the north wall are some interesting old stones, one of which is exquisitely sculptured (fig. 59). it probably constituted a boundary-stone, and may have been brought hither as an offering to the saint. the two figures which are seen in my illustration of the building represent opposite types among the inhabitants of edgmiatsin. the white-headed abbot on the left belongs to the old school, with habits and standards which are not agreeable or exalted. that on the right is the figure of dr. arshak ter-mikelean, fresh from the atmosphere of a german university. the third and smallest of the churches marks the site of the wine-press, where the holy martyrs sojourned and where st. gregory resided after his release from the pit at artaxata. it is situated to the north-east of edgmiatsin and to the west of st. ripsime. it bears the name of shoghakath, or effusion of light. i was informed that the attendants of saints ripsime and gaiane were buried in a vault on the south side of the apse. [173] in disposition the building resembles st. gaiane; but it is much longer (58 feet 2 inches) in comparison with its breadth (24 feet 8 inches). we learn from an inscription over the door of the church that the portal was added by the katholikos nahapet in a.d. 1693. the belfry is due to the same pontiff; [174] his grave is conspicuous within the portal (fig. 60 and plan). the dome rests on four massive piers attached to the wall. the joints of the pink and grey stone are visible in the interior, as in the case of the two buildings described; and so admirably are they fitted that one would regret the introduction of any internal decoration. a scrutiny of the exterior reveals the fact that the church has been most carefully restored, stones having been removed here and there and replaced. brosset informs us that mention is made in certain records of armenian councils of the construction by nerses iii. (a.d. 640-649) in the town of vagharshapat of a church of shoghakath; but he supposes--it would appear upon inconclusive evidence--that this name is intended to designate the cathedral, edgmiatsin. [175] if it be taken to refer to the wine-press chapel, then all three edifices will have been rebuilt in the seventh century by the testimony of records. i may add that according to an inscription in the monastery of uch kilisa, near diadin, that cloister was also restored in the seventh century. [176] if the buildings as we now see them were erected in that century, the framework at least of edgmiatsin must be attributed to an earlier date. i return from this detailed description of the cathedral and the chapels of the martyrs to the more general tenour of the contents of this chapter. edgmiatsin is rapidly developing into a home of the higher education, and it enjoys the proud privilege of possessing an institution which is unique in all armenia for the comparatively exalted standard of the course of study which it provides. the academy at once dispenses the usual curriculum of a seminary and supplies a higher course, extending over three years. such an excessive disporting in the realms of dangerous knowledge was only sanctioned by the russian government on the understanding that the privilege should be confined to candidates for the priesthood. the nature of their profession may have appeared a sufficient guarantee that the learning imparted would be strictly subordinated to "views." besides, there was always the safeguard that the curriculum must be submitted to the russian bureaucracy, and approved in due course by these aureoled arbiters, enthroned above the shifting mists and slippery quagmires among which poor knowledge often faints and sometimes sinks. her youngest and hardiest offspring, pertinacious natural science, has been excluded from these intellectual preserves; and i was assured that the mere mention of the name of this arch-enemy in a prospectus would produce the same effect among the august censors as a challenge from the prince of devils among the blessed. the course is confined to theology, history and literature, foreign as well as armenian. to these subjects is added a study which the germans have developed under the name of pädagogik. within this formula, i was given to understand, are included at edgmiatsin, besides the art of the teacher, a certain general knowledge of philosophy and psychology. the students are obliged to pass a certain standard by examination at the end of each year. the idea of founding such an institution was conceived by nerses v. (d. 1857), whose liberal mind sought to satisfy by this project the needs of his countrymen both in secular and religious education. [177] his proposal was rejected by the russian government, and he was himself sent into honorary exile. better fortune attended the instances of george iv.; and the academy was actually founded during his pontificate in 1873 or 1874. an inscription over the door records that the principal aim of the founder was the encouragement of the study of armenian theology and literature. it is interesting to note that the bulk of the scholars do not in fact become enrolled in the priesthood. as a rule there are about 150 to 200 students in the various grades of the seminary and the academy; but i was informed that during the last ten years only about 15 had taken orders. the rest have become teachers in the armenian schools, or migrated to universities in russia, or adopted professional or commercial pursuits. i enquired as to the nature of the instruction in theology, and learnt that until the year 1892 that pompous term had been applied to a simple course of religious instruction. in that year a promising scholar who had been sent to germany for education appeared upon the scene. i have already mentioned the name of dr. arshak ter-mikelean; he took his degree in the university of jena, and now presides over the theological course. at the time of my visit two young armenians were studying theology at leipzic at the expense of the armenian church. at the same date the students in the academical course numbered about forty. my reader is aware that in russian armenia the word seminarist does not necessarily apply exclusively to candidates for the priesthood. the seminary is nothing more than the highest grade in the armenian school system, with the single exception of the more exalted course provided by this academy. the great majority of the pupils are maintained out of the revenues of the cloister; but those who are able pay what they can. a youth enters the seminary when about thirteen or fourteen years old, and the academy at about nineteen or twenty. both institutions are housed in the same building. each diocese is invited to make a certain number of presentations; and boys and young men are encouraged to come from the turkish provinces. as a matter of fact few are able to avail themselves of the offer. the scholars reside within the building, one dormitory being allotted to the academy and another to the seminary. these dormitories are kept scrupulously neat and clean. there is a fine music room with a grand piano, and there is also a nice library with casts of the immortal works of greek sculpture illuminating the shadows above the shelves. how strange they seem in this distant land, where the study of the classics is not included even in the higher education! the effect which is being produced upon the character of the monastic priests by the wise solicitude for education which has characterised the armenian movement is almost incalculable. in old days the monks were chosen by the bishops from among their attendants; and this custom obtained even after the development of seminarial instruction within the cloister. but in 1892 the synod issued a decree enjoining that, except in very special circumstances, no person should be ordained monk who had not passed through a seminary. he is nominated by the bishop, but must be approved by the synod. it is a pity that hitherto no steps have been taken to raise the standard of the ordinary clergy. but we must admit that it would not be easy to effect such a reform from above. for all practical purposes we may count three grades in the hierarchy of the armenian church. in the first figure the bishops, the second comprises the monks and parish priests, and the third includes the deacons. over all three is exalted the authority of the katholikos, the keystone of the dome of the edifice. celibacy is imposed upon the bishops and monks, while marriage is rendered obligatory upon the parish priests. thus a sharp division exists between the two orders of clergy, arising out of a complete difference in mode of life. moreover the ordinary clergy are elected by the laity--a custom to which the people jealously cling. the inhabitants of a town or village select their future pastor from among their own number. of course the bishop might refuse to ordain. but such a course would only be warranted in very special circumstances; the same being predicated of the right of the bishop to depose a priest. thus the parish clergy occupy a special and somewhat independent position. in the rural districts the spread of education has not yet commenced to touch them; nor will they emerge from their present deplorable debasement until a general quickening of public opinion shall take place. the monks or celibate priests are, i believe, always connected with convents; they are known under the style of vardapet, or doctor, which is attached to their individual names. they are governed according to the rule of st. basil of cæsarea, the contemporary and monitor of the armenian pontiff, nerses the great (a.d. 340-374). they do not practise the tonsure, and they wear their beards. they are attired in long black robes with conical cowls. their numbers must have considerably diminished since 1700, at which date we are informed this convent alone contained over a hundred monks. [178] at present there are in all not more than some fifty vardapets within the wide limits of the russian provinces. of these about half reside at edgmiatsin. as members of the synod or as bursars, as overseers of the printing press or as editors of the official journal, ararat, their profession is no sinecure. all monks in russian territory are ordained at edgmiatsin, and it is the custom for all bishops, whether in russian armenia or abroad, to be consecrated in the church of the illuminator. the revenues dispensed by the katholikos are derived from several sources. there is the property of the monastery, consisting of lands and villages in the valley of the araxes and elsewhere, to which, in the absence of statutes of mortmain, additions are constantly being made. the income from this source and from offerings and contributions of various kinds amounts, i believe, to about £8000 a year. the general property of the church is also administered from edgmiatsin, the synod being specially invested with this important function. donations in lands or money are frequently forthcoming, and are devoted to the support of the various institutions. the accounts of the monasteries and bishoprics in russia are audited and passed by the synod. but the clergy are supported by their own flocks; and, beyond submitting their accounts to the proper authority, the parishes are practically autonomous. there can be little doubt that the overseeing by the katholikos and synod of the administration of the funds of the church in russia has already effected a salutary change. should russia become possessed of the turkish provinces, and should her counsels incline to the sounder policy of encouraging the armenians to work out their salvation in their own way, this concentration is likely to promote a general reform of the armenian clergy. the authority of the katholikos at the present day extends to practically all armenians professing the national religion. that authority suffered division during the troubled period of long duration which followed the overthrow of the bagratid dynasty (a.d. 1045) and the gradual dispersal of the armenian people. but the katholikos of sis has quite recently professed his spiritual allegiance to edgmiatsin; [179] and the recluse of akhtamar, that beauteous island in the lake of van, alone continues pretence to the title and station of a supreme pontiff. his jurisdiction is confined to his rock and a few villages on the mainland. the patriarchate of constantinople is an institution which is the result of political exigencies, and which in no way derogates from the spiritual supremacy of the successor of st. gregory, enthroned in the cloister near the banks of the araxes. my reader has perhaps divined from a perusal of the foregoing paragraphs that an interesting feature of the armenian church is the power enjoyed by the laity, which indeed may be described as predominant. with them rests the choice of the ordinary clergy, and in practice their voice prevails in the selection of a katholikos. that church is indeed a compromise, so far as her ministers are concerned, between opposite principles in the organisation of christianity. the monastic priests represent the principle of elevating a hierarchy into a position of lofty independence. from among their ranks are taken the bishops. but the great body of the clergy are strictly the ministers of the people, supported by their voluntary contributions. from these conclusions, derived from a study of contemporary conditions, i pass to a brief examination of the edgmiatsin legend, and of the history and character of that interesting ecclesiastical edifice which rises in the background of all that i have written in the present chapter. the armenians boast that the gospel was preached to their ancestors by the first apostles, and that they were the first people to adopt christianity as the religion of the state. they separate these two events by a respectable interval, for they attribute the conversion of king and people to a miracle performed by st. gregory towards the close of the third century. we have seen that the current version of that miracle comprises a vision by which jesus christ becomes in effect the founder of their cathedral church. the inference is perhaps legitimate that they hold their own church, as an organisation, to have been established by christ himself; and its independence of all hierarchies, whether of the east or of the west, to be based upon the same supreme sanction. [180] we are carried back by a discussion of these claims to the very dawn of the christian religion; and it will be wise to keep them before us as prominent landmarks to control the discursiveness of an enquiry which must also be brief. i. the apostles mentioned by armenian writers as having carried the gospel into armenia are st. bartholomew, st. thaddeus--the son or brother of st. james--st. simon and st. jude. [181] of these the two first named are alone in general repute. but the fame of st. thaddeus reposes upon no less a title than that of having executed a commission from jesus christ himself to the court of an arsakid king of lower armenia or mesopotamia, whom the armenians claim as one of their own royal line. king abgar of edessa is said to have corresponded with the saviour and to have begged him to come to his capital and heal him of a malady. the letter is preserved which purports to contain the reply of jesus, to the effect that after his ascension he would despatch one of the disciples. with this epistle came a portrait of the features of the redeemer, which in subsequent times was the peculiar pride of edessa. in due course the disciple arrived in the person of st. thaddeus, and the king was restored to health. monarch and people embraced the christian faith. after the death of abgar, which appears to have taken place at no long interval, his dominions were divided between his son and nephew. the former returned at once to the religion of his ancestors and reopened the temples of the gods. the latter, who seems to have reigned over a portion of armenia proper, and who bore the name of sanatruk, was visited by the apostle and embraced the faith. but fear of the armenian nobles compelled the ruler to apostatise; the disciple was overwhelmed by the storm which he had himself aroused, and perished in the border province of armenia on the side of persia, in the country which receives the eastern slopes of ararat. [182] the legend of abgar and his correspondence has provoked the attack of modern criticism and has perished in the unequal affray. [183] but the preaching and martyrdom of st. thaddeus at the hands of king sanatruk are well known to one of the earliest and most reliable of armenian historians; and the same authority of the fourth century speaks of the throne of the armenian pontiffs as the chair of st. thaddeus. [184] in the absence of conclusive evidence that this saint did not preach in armenia i shall prefer to suppose that he did. the name of st. bartholomew is often mentioned in connection with that of st. thaddeus; he is said to have been active in the mountainous region to the south of lake van, and to have been flayed alive by the same monarch who put his colleague to death. [185] these stories were perhaps invented at a comparatively late period. we are on surer ground when we surmise that christianity was professed in armenia long anterior to the miraculous cure of king tiridates and his conversion by st. gregory. indeed it would be strange if such had failed to be the case. the interposition of one vast desert between the holy land and armenia is a comparatively modern geographical fact. it is due entirely to bad government. in the first century the two countries were united by a long string of cities, the populous capitals of the low-lying districts. from such centres as edessa and nisibis the religion was carried into the border ranges, and over the passes to the plains of the tableland. there the first regions designated by nature to receive the new culture were situated in the fertile country about the shores of lake van, and further east around the margin of lake urmi. as early as the middle of the third century we hear of an armenian bishop, whose name, that of merujan, would naturally connect him with the great artsruni family, which possessed extensive territories in the neighbourhood of van and subsequently furnished to that country a line of mediæval kings. [186] it is also probable that the archelaus, in whose mouth is placed a disputation with mani towards the close of the same century (c. a.d. 275-277), was bishop of a see not far removed from van. [187] these early ecclesiastics would almost certainly have made use of the syriac character, and it is more than likely that many among them were syrians. their activity and the circle of their disciples may not have extended to northern armenia; although there is presumptive evidence to show that the christianity of albania (eastern caucasus or daghestan) and siunik (country around lake gökcheh and part of karabagh) dated back to pre-gregorian times. [188] it seems at first sight strange that the earliest historians, such as agathangelus and faustus, maintain silence upon this older christianity of their native land; but the edict of tiridates against the enemies of paganism, preserved in the earliest source of the first of these works, implies the existence of christians within the limits of his dominions whom the king persecutes after the example of his colleagues at rome; and the luminous argument of one of the latest scholars in this field carries conviction that the priestly compiler agathangelus and the monk faustus had good reasons to ignore this pre-gregorian christianity, as being opposed to the character of the later orthodoxy. [189] the big gap left by armenian writers between the preaching of the apostles and the advent of st. gregory in narrating the religious history of their country is in itself a suspicious fact; armenian vanity was satisfied by the connection of their ancestors with the first disciples, and would not be wounded by a temporary relapse; but the laborious methods of modern research are year by year illuminating the interval, and removing the shroud which is perhaps due to ecclesiastical prejudice or fraud. what was the nature of this early christianity which made its way in despite of persecution among a barbarous people, professing a crude and perhaps unamiable form of paganism? it is difficult to believe that the religion of the first christians resembled even remotely the later state religion of the roman empire, which under the name of christianity was spread over the world by the imperial armies and has been bequeathed as a troublesome legacy to the modern world. the origins of this great spiritual movement are veiled in twilight; but from the shadows and uncertain glimmer shines forth a personality which no doubts and no disappointments can assail. round this personality centred many and diverse spiritual conceptions, old as time itself and young as time. they were quickened into new life by the emotional quality of a great example; and they were kept alive and made to focus upon the domain of morality by the daily and intimate intercourse of the members of a brotherhood which should embrace all the creatures of god. it is essential to the fruitfulness of such a community that they should maintain, not internal discipline nor even the agreement of the members upon matters of doctrine among themselves, but the enthusiasm which prompted their first efforts, a high sense of individual responsibility among the members, and the habit of mutual tolerance, mutual help, mutual consolation, and, above all, of mutual love. the simple ceremonies of the early church were calculated to promote this spirit. the candidate was admonished by the rite of baptism of the serious nature of the resolve which he had taken to break with the world of sense and appearance, and to become initiated into the higher meaning and purpose by which it is supported and inspired. the fast redressed the balance between the soul and the unruly flesh; and the agapes or love-feasts induced a close communion among the brothers, the necessary corollary to communion with god. it is scarcely open to doubt that the theoretical side of the religion was not defined by any rigid formula. "tell me," says archelaus, "over whom it was that the holy spirit descended like a dove. who is this one whom john baptizes? if he was already perfect, if he was already the son, if he was already virtue, the holy spirit could not have entered into him; a kingdom cannot enter into a kingdom. whose was the voice which came from heaven and bore testimony to him: 'this is my beloved son, in whom i am well pleased'?" it is clear that the theory of archelaus was of an adoptionist nature, or, in other words, that he believed jesus to have been adopted as the son of god by the descent of the holy spirit at the baptism. it is also plain that he was not arguing as an irresponsible disputant, but as giving voice to a strong current of orthodox opinion in his church, as opposed to the docetic teaching of mani, representing jesus as a heavenly spirit assuming the mask of man. other currents there certainly were in other dioceses than that of archelaus, and perhaps even among his own flock. but there seems strong reason for believing that the adoptionist christology was firmly established towards the close of the third century in outlying portions of the roman empire and among the christian communities outside its pale. [190] in antioch it had been suppressed in the person of bishop paul of samosata after the overthrow of his patron, zenobia, queen of palmyra, by the emperor aurelian in the year 272. the weight of the empire was placed in the scale of those tendencies which were to crystallise in the celebrated formula of nice (a.d. 325): christ a very god, begotten of god, but not a creature of god; son of god, of one nature with the father; who came down from heaven, and took flesh, and became man, and suffered and ascended into heaven; who was before he was begotten and who has always been. the same council of nice enjoined that the followers of bishop paul, or pauliani, should be re-baptized before admission to the church. the recalcitrant were driven out into the mountain fastnesses, where after the lapse of several centuries and under the armenian terminology of paulicians (paulikean), the inheritors of their spirit again emerge as a sharp thorn in the side of the orthodox churches both of constantinople and of armenia. the history of the wholesale persecutions of this hardy people by the successors of the cæsars during the ninth century, and of the successful reprisals which they made, is outside the scope of these remarks; they were driven into the arms of the mohammedan power, and their decimation by the imperial armies drove another nail into the coffin which was being prepared for the cancerous body of the roman empire. the connection of the assailants of armenian orthodoxy, who were known as paulicians, with their namesakes in the more westerly provinces of the empire, and of these with paul of samosata, has not yet, perhaps, in spite of the luminous researches of the scholar i have quoted, been sufficiently worked out. but we rise from a perusal of his work with the conviction that this connection was at least of the nature of a strong family resemblance dating back to apostolic times. the important document which he has disinterred from the library at edgmiatsin, and of which the title suggests the hopes that were excited in the breast of socrates by the pretensions of a certain work of anaxagoras, affords us a full and detailed, if partially mutilated account of the religious profession of the descendants of these armenian heretics, as copied from previous copies by a member of the sect in 1782. the same voice which found expression in the disputation of archelaus rings out from the pages of the key of truth not less clearly than of old. jesus is human, though free from sin, until he is baptized by john in the jordan when he has reached his thirtieth year. then the spirit of the father, descending upon him, fills him with the godhead. after adoption the elect christ is forthwith led up to the mountain, where he enjoys the mystery of intercourse with the father for forty days. baptism must therefore constitute a central event in the life of the christian, or imitator of christ. he must come to baptism after the full awakening of his individual conscience to a knowledge of sin and to the nature of repentance. he must come at mature age, when the heats of youth are passed and his natural instincts have been brought under control. no remission of sins can be effective until he shall have reached this age; nor is baptism under other circumstances more than an empty form. through baptism he becomes a christian; and the meal which follows baptism is the symbol of that feast of divine converse with god of which the son of god, after his adoption, partook. the holy ghost enters the catechumen immediately after baptism, and he in effect becomes filled with the spirit of god. the note of aversion to hierarchical grades which is struck in this treatise was no doubt accentuated by the opposition of the sect to the methods of their natural enemies, the orthodox church. but their polity--if the word may stand--could in this respect be based on scripture; and it encouraged that sense of individual responsibility and that habit of self-reliance which are not less effective qualities in the domain of evangelical enterprise than the opposite methods of the jesuits. the elect of god composed a body of which each member was sublimely conscious of his resolve to pursue a life of ideal justice by communion with the spirit which resided in himself. the example which they set was not that of a selected and exotic hierarchy, but was the example of simple peasants and artisans. when we meet such people, whatever the proximate origin of their particular tenets, we take farewell with a tear and perhaps with a sigh. the dukhobortsy, of whom i have spoken, would find much in the manual of these armenian adoptionists with which those resolute children of the reformation in europe would cordially agree. traces of adoptionism are to be found in the teaching of st. gregory himself and in the early institutions of the armenian state church. we must regret that what is probably the earliest source for our knowledge of that teaching has not yet been translated into one of our western tongues. [191] in one passage the saint instructs us that the spirit, coming down at the baptism, gave to jesus the glory which became his. john the baptist is represented as the depositary of the divine favours conferred of old upon israel; and it was he who conferred these favours--priesthood, prophecy and kingship--upon our lord jesus christ. [192] it is, i think, scarcely fair to argue from such passages that the christianity of gregory was, as a whole, of an adoptionist type. but it is interesting to remember in this connection that the armenians celebrate the birth and the baptism of christ upon one and the same day, the 6th of january. and we may perhaps be surprised to read that in the canons of st. sahak, one of the pillars of the early state church (390-439), the feast of the birth of christ is not included in the list of festivals which are formulated in some detail. [193] we know that st. gregory himself brought to armenia with great pomp certain relics of st. john the baptist; and the number of monasteries in armenia which are dedicated to the hermit on the jordan testify to the peculiar veneration in which he has been held. but the influence of orthodoxy in the west must early have restrained these adoptionist tendencies; and it is not improbable that they became identified with that stubborn heresy of their native land which is often mentioned and deplored by armenian writers. [194] there are reasons for supposing that the messalianism (meteslenuthium) against which is directed a cruel canon of the armenian council of shahapivan, convened in about the middle of the fifth century, was in effect a manifestation of this native heresy, and was identical with the paulicianism which was specifically stigmatised by a canon of the council held in dvin (valley of the araxes) in the year 719. the first of these synods enacted that priests convicted of messalianism should be branded on the forehead with the figure of a fox. this particular punishment was the same which was meted out to the paulicians of armenia during the persecutions of the eleventh century. the council of dvin forbade all intercourse with members of this sect under pain of heavy punishments. the pontiff of the day, john the philosopher, composed a tract against them, in which he speaks of them as dregs of the incestuous flock of the paulicians, and informs us that they had been placed under a ban by nerses katholikos, under which name he is probably alluding to nerses iii. (640-661). [195] he represents them as joining hands with certain refugees from the albanian church (eastern caucasus) who were opposed to the use of images. there is at least a family resemblance between these sectaries of the eighth century and those who, under the name of thonraki (thonraketzi), suffered persecution in the tenth and eleventh centuries at the hands of the armenian state church. their fiercest adversary, gregory magistros, who in the middle of the eleventh century carried fire and sword into their mountain retreats, alludes to them as having imbibed the poison of paul of samosata, and adds the important statement that their proximate founder was one sembat, and that for 170 years they had been continuously admonished and anathematised by successive patriarchs and bishops of armenia as well as of albania. [196] their seats in armenia were in the radial mountain mass of the ala dagh (thonrak), in sasun, south of mush, and in the neighbourhood of khinis, whence were derived the band who were the object of perhaps the latest persecution, that of 1837-45. it was on this occasion that the documentary proof of their professions was wrested from them and taken to edgmiatsin. it is the book entitled the key of truth. the plain of khinis contained members of this sect into quite recent times; but they suffered severely owing to the customary powers possessed by the heads of the gregorian community in turkey to inflict corporal punishment upon members of their own flock. the sectaries were not recognised by the government as an independent religion. not many years ago the remnant came over to the american missionaries and embraced the protestant faith. ii. what does my reader know about the ancient history of armenia? at least he remembers the wonderful march of xenophon (401-400 b.c.), who crossed the entire block of the armenian tableland from the plains of mesopotamia to the black sea. at that time the country was under the overlordship of the achæmenian king of persia--that splendid dynasty which was at length destroyed by a great wave from europe, and of which the latest champion was murdered by a satrap of bactria after his decisive defeat in the belt of mountains south of lake van by alexander the great (331 b.c.). the name of the greek hero is still alive in southern armenia, sharing the honours in this respect with solomon. perhaps our next familiar memory will be the visit of hannibal to the court of artaxias, one of the numerous governors in the empire of the successors of alexander, and a ruler whose territory embraced the scene of these travels. [197] nor are we likely to have forgotten the recoil of the east upon the west which took place under the leadership of the picturesque mithradates, that strangely composite embodiment of two diverse cultures. behind mithradates looms the power of a great king of armenia, whom, again, we know as a scion of a new dynasty which had arisen in asia--the arsakid or parthian dynasty. with these arsakid kings of armenia we are fairly familiar; the parthian archers ride unrevenged through the polished verse of horace, and the arsakids of persia and armenia supply the pages of tacitus with several lively interludes to his throbbing narrative. some acquaintance with these various events is part of the equipment of most among us--a little less or a little more. we may learn a great deal more of the subsequent history of armenia; but from what sources shall we collect material for a fuller knowledge of the older period? the armenian historians are all but worthless; the west was little inquisitive; and even now we can scarcely answer the leading questions: whence the armenians came to the seats which they have occupied throughout the historical period, and how they fared in culture, in art, or in arms. upon these subjects the fool is almost as well instructed as the wise man; we search the mists in vain for any definite image; till from among them emerge the thrones of these arsakids--a northern or scythian dynasty, holding persia as well as armenia, and crowning a polity which was of a strongly feudal type. [198] the last of the kings of this dynasty who ruled over persia was the ally and kinsman of the father of king tiridates, who was destined, after much vicissitude of fortune, to embrace christianity and to adopt it as the religion of the state. ardavan and chosroes were seated on the thrones of persia and armenia, when a prince of the persian province which is now known under the name of fars (shiraz, persepolis) overthrew the former of these monarchs by a decisive battle, in which ardavan himself was slain (a.d. 227). the victor, ardashir, became master of the great persian monarchy in which the king of armenia held the second place. his dynasty, the sasanian, supplanted the arsakids in persia, and continued to rule until the middle of the seventh century, when it succumbed to the arabs and to islam. the sasanians are familiar to all of us as the permanent enemies of the roman empire; and the traveller may be said to be on terms of intimacy with them, for they have left him several monuments of great solidity and architectural merit which mock the squalor of their surroundings at the present day. these, it is true, they erected with the aid of architects and artisans taken captive in their wars with the empire. [199] fars was in those days a centre of zoroastrianism or mazdaism; and ardashir was the champion of the fire-worshippers, leaned on their support and closely identified them with his dynasty. when the news of the death of his kinsman and ally was brought to the arsakid king of armenia, profound grief filled the soul of chosroes. for the moment he was powerless to arrest the triumph of the usurper; but in the following year (a.d. 228) he had matured extensive preparations, and, at the head of an army which comprised huns from beyond caucasus as well as other nomads, marched to the frontiers of persia and laid waste her provinces to the gates of ctesiphon. thirsting to avenge his race, he endeavoured to enlist the parthian satraps in the empire of ardashir; but these temporising or jealous princelets had thrown in their lot with the sasanian monarch and could not be induced to stir. he was, however, assisted by a portion of the medes and by the sons of ardavan. [200] for a period of ten years the war was continued by the armenian potentate; his capital, vagharshapat, [201] was filled with the booty of successful raids; and, while the temples of the gods throughout armenia were adorned with costly offerings, their priests received munificent largesses. his fortunes were assisted by an alliance with the empire; the reigning cæsar, alexander severus, was alarmed by the rise of the new dynasty, and may have been stung by impertinent messages on the part of ardashir. a roman army attacked persia from the side of armenia, while two more divisions, one under the leadership of the emperor, assailed other portions of the dominions of the king of kings. [202] if the result of the various engagements may appear ambiguous (231-233), it at least ensured the quiescence of the persian during several years. ardashir continued to be harassed by the armenian ally of the romans, and resolved to rid himself by any means of his inveterate foe. a parthian of the blood royal volunteered to execute his desire; he went over with his family as a refugee to the court of chosroes, who received him with the greatest warmth as a valuable ally. after much pleasant intercourse, when spring came on and the king was preparing to take the field, anak--for such was his name--bethought himself of the pledge which he had given and of the reward promised by ardashir. in company with his own brother he succeeded in drawing the king aside, when the two villains despatched him with their swords. the crime was committed at vagharshapat; the guilty pair fled down the valley, hoping to cross the araxes at the bridge of artaxata. but they were cut off by the armenian horsemen and precipitated into the river. the king, before he expired, gave orders that the family of anak should forthwith be massacred. only two little children were rescued from the carnage; one was brought up in persia, and the other, gregory, in greece (a.d. 238). [203] this unnatural treachery on the part of a parthian towards the parthian king of armenia in the interests of a dynasty which had supplanted the parthians on the throne of persia came near to costing the armenians the permanent loss of their independence. but ardashir appears to have contented himself with the enjoyment of his personal revenge and of a few raids into armenian territory. his death occurred a few years after the date of the tragedy (in 241 or 242); and the government of armenia appears to have been conducted by the nobles, under the nominal sovereignty of the son of chosroes, by name tiridates, a child of tender years. it was not until the year 252 or 253 that the successor of ardashir was enabled to establish his sway over armenia with the assistance of the uncles of tiridates, whose cruel treatment compelled the youthful king to take refuge in the empire. [204] but the triumph of shapur was not destined to be of long duration; the young tiridates grew up and prospered in the territory and under the protection of the romans; and, after distinguishing himself by personal bravery in a campaign of the emperor against the goths, was restored to his native dominions with the support of a roman army and perhaps in consequence of the victory of odaenathus, prince of palmyra, over the armies of the persian king (264 or 265). [205] it was in the first year of his restoration that occurred an event which no armenian can hear related without experiencing a thrill of emotion. when the son of anak, the murderer, who was being educated in roman territory, at cæsarea, the capital of cappadocia, had come to years of discretion, he was informed--perhaps after his marriage and the birth of two children--by the faithful guardian or governess under whose care he had grown up, of the crime committed by his father. forthwith the pious youth--for he had been brought up in the christian faith--sallied forth in search of the son of the murdered monarch, and attached himself to the person of the exiled tiridates, whom he commenced to serve with the utmost zeal. upon the subject of his origin and parentage gregory maintained a wise silence; but he was unable or unwilling to conceal his religion, which at that time happened to be not only unpopular, but subject to persecution. [206] tiridates in vain endeavoured to wean his servant from the christian faith; time after time he assailed his constancy with reproach and even with imprisonment; but the decisive moment arrived when he had recovered his long-lost dominions, and stood within the famous temple of anahid, hard by the present town of erzinjan. at the feast which followed the sacrifice he gave vent to his emotion in words characteristic of a king. addressing his trusty counsellor among the assembled guests, he commanded him to make an offering of garlands and leafy branches to the shrine of the great goddess; and, upon his refusal, "how dare you," exclaimed the king, "adore a god whom i do not adore?" the resources of persuasion and torture were without effect upon the will of the christian; and the monarch was meditating some fresh inducement when one of the nobles approached and said: "sire, this gregory is not deserving of life, and hence his unwillingness to live and see the light. we knew not who he was, this long while that he has sojourned among us--but now we know: he is son of that anak who killed thy royal father, and to whom armenia owed her exhaustion and captivity." when tiridates heard these words, he gave orders to bind the martyr and to conduct him to the castle of artaxata. there he was cast into a pit of great depth, where he was left to perish. for thirteen years gregory languished in this noisome dungeon, forgotten by the world but saved from death by the ministrations of a widow who resided in the castle. the hatred or fear of the christians, so early manifest in the new reign, was emphasised by tiridates in a pompous edict, which admonished his subjects to beware of the resentment of the gods--of aramazd, who gave fertility; of anahid, the goddess defender; of vahagn, the courageous god. the king had been a witness--so it proceeded--during his sojourn in the empire, of the great solicitude of the cæsars for the cult of the national divinities, to the prosperity and glory of their people. following the example of his august instructors, he bade his subjects, nobles and peasants, to lay hands on any offender against the gods. they should bind him, hand and foot, and bring him to the gate of the palace. his lands and possessions would be bestowed upon the denouncer. the religious policy of a decius and a valerian was at least extended by tiridates to the holier sphere of legitimate homicide. at the head of the roman cavalry he rode down the persian cohorts, and among his levies were reckoned a contingent of huns. of lofty stature and broad shoulders, his appearance was the signal of victory; and it became a proverb that tiridates would destroy the dams in his impatience, and in his courage arrest the rivers in their course towards the sea. at the point where the historian i have been following was perhaps about to change his theme, and to present the opposite picture of a king and people overtaken by calamities which could only be attributed to the wrath of heaven, the priestly compiler of the agathangelus treatise has gone to work with his scissors, and has substituted for the more straightforward account of the authority he was using one of those prolix and portentous legends, familiar to the student of hagiographical literature, which were at once the outcome of the diseased fancy of the cloister and the food with which it was sustained. the tale of the advent of the roman virgins, of the assault upon the modesty of the fairest among them, of their martyrdom and of the transformation of the royal violator into a wild boar, wallowing in mud and eating grass, bears the imprint at every phase of a monkish invention, which was probably stolen in its essential features from the literature of greek monasteries and adapted to the local conditions at vagharshapat. [207] but carelessness or want of skill on the part of the compiler has happily preserved for us a fragment of the original story, from which we learn that the armenians were afflicted by an extraordinary outbreak of diverse diseases: leprosy, palsy, dropsy, madness. [208] we are given to infer that the king himself was visited by some grave malady, and that he was cured in a miraculous manner upon the appearance and at the hands of gregory, who had long been numbered among the dead. [209] we are told how, from all parts of armenia, the people flocked to the province of ararat, to vagharshapat, the royal residence; how they were cured of their various disorders; and how king and people embraced the faith in the service of which the saintly doctor had effected their cure. the testimony of the historian is supported by a greek writer of the fifth century, who attributes the conversion of king tiridates to a miracle. [210] it is not unlikely that the mind of the monarch was influenced by some occurrence of the nature deducible from the mangled narrative of the original biographer. tiridates was a full-blooded heathen, prone to all forms of superstition, and free from any taint of rationalising tendencies. yet we may suspect that the number and power of the armenian christians prior to his conversion loomed much larger in the consciousness of himself and of his contemporaries than we are led to suppose by armenian histories. was he desirous of finding a counterpoise to the mazdaism of his persian enemy, which had been elevated by the sasanians into a strongly organised state religion and identified with the throne? was he impressed with the cohesion of the christians among themselves, and by the contrast thus offered to the fissiparous tendencies of his feudal polity? was the widow in the castle of artaxata a christian, and was the old authority of the prisoner in the king's counsels exploited by her co-religionists at an opportune moment, when his wisdom should appear restored, as by a miracle, to a necessitous land? if such questions be mere matters of surmise, we at least know that at the date of the conversion the roman empire was hesitating in a policy towards the christians, and that the repressive measures of a valerian were no longer in repute. [211] the armenian king became a convert before their revival under diocletian (284-305); and christianity was adopted as the religion of the state in armenia some thirty years prior to its triumph in the west by the decisive action of the milvian bridge (312), and over a hundred years before the edicts of theodosius the first against the practice of paganism. [212] the measures taken by tiridates and his statesman and mentor, gregory, to supplant polytheism by christianity were such as might have excited the envy of a cæsar, and which only an eastern despot could hope to enforce. from vagharshapat the king proceeded down the valley to artaxata at the head of the troops which garrisoned the capital. on the way he set fire to the temple of the god dir, from whom he is said to have derived his name (dirtad or gift of dir). [213] in a graphic figure our historian likens the priests and their followers to demons; and he relates how, some on horseback, others on foot, and all fully armed, they hurried hither and thither, gesticulating and screaming, until they were put to flight. but the swarm took refuge in the temple of anahid at artaxata, where from the roof they discharged arrows and precipitated a hail of stones upon the advancing host. gregory, making the sign of the cross, ran to the gate of the edifice, which dissolved into its foundations, wreathed in flames. the dusky troop vanished like a puff of smoke from the face of the land, to caucasus and chaldia [214] in the north. the treasures of the temple were distributed among the needy; some of the priests were selected or accepted for the service of the church, to which body was also allotted the confiscated land. king and minister travelled the country in all directions, preaching, [215] overthrowing temples and endowing the church with their rich possessions. one after another the most famous sanctuaries succumbed to the royal zeal: the fane of aramazd, father of the gods, at ani, the modern kemakh, the burial-place of the kings; that of nanea, daughter of aramazd, at til, beyond the western euphrates; the temple of mithra, son of aramazd, at pakharij in terjan, and the temple of barshamin at tortan. a more personal delight may have thrilled the saint--if saints be capable of such emotions--as he shattered the golden statue of the goddess anahid at erzinjan, and watched the lofty walls of her numerous shrines sinking to the level of the ground. they were the most magnificent of all the sacred edifices in armenia, and they were defended to the last by quite an army of dusky foes. within the vacant enclosures was erected the sign of the cross. months and perhaps years were occupied in the overthrow of these strongholds of paganism; [216] but it was not until after the return of gregory from ordination at cæsarea of cappadocia, whither he was escorted by sixteen of the great nobles and conducted in a car drawn by white mules, [217] that king and people received at the hands of the minister, no longer a layman, the crowning benefit of baptism. the first act of gregory upon his return to his native country was to destroy the temples of astishat in the province of taron (mush), which lay upon his road and which were still frequented. these were three in number and dedicated to three gods. the first was the shrine of vahagn, destroyer of serpents; the second belonged to anahid, the golden mother; while the third preserved the cult of the goddess astghik, the aphrodite of the fair mythology of greece. they were situated on the summit of mount karke, close to the euphrates, and in full view of the chain of the taurus mountains. the place was called astishat because of the frequent sacrifices which were offered up; and it was there that the kings of armenia had been wont to appease the gods. the saint was carrying with him certain relics obtained in roman territory, namely a parcel of the bones of st. john the baptist and of those of the holy martyr athenogenes. [218] when his numerous party had arrived in front of the temples, and were not further from the euphrates than a space which a horseman would cover in two careers of his steed, the white mules of the car with the relics came to a standstill in the hollow of a valley, where there was a little water and which still remained to be crossed. efforts were being made in vain to induce them to proceed, when an angel appeared to gregory and signified the divine will. the relics should be deposited upon the spot where they were stationed. forthwith the entire company busied themselves with the erection of a chapel, where in due course the bones of the saints were laid to rest. the next care of pontiff and princes was to demolish the temples of the idols which stood above the valley. in their place gregory laid the foundations of a church, and erected an altar to the glory of god. [219] it was here that he first commenced to build churches, and to erect altars in the name of christ. for twenty days he sojourned on the spot; and having prepared fonts for baptism, baptized first the great princes who had journeyed with him, and next the people to the number of over a hundred and ninety thousand. in the chapel of st. john and athenogenes he dispensed the holy sacrament; and it was ordained that an annual festival should be celebrated in that place in honour of the saints and in commemoration of the first foundation of christian churches and ordination of christian priests. from astishat the illuminator journeyed to bagaran in the province of ararat; but it was at the foot of mount nepat and on the banks of the river euphrates that the son of anak administered to king and assembled army the regenerating rite. a church was erected upon the site and endowed with a remnant of the relics; and a festival was appointed in honour of the saints in place of that of amanor, at the season of first fruits. [220] it would not be easy to find an account equally graphic and circumstantial of the methods employed to substitute christianity for polytheism, which, although, no doubt, they were less violent and more gradually operative in more civilised countries, were yet essentially similar. we learn from the armenian writer how the churches rose on the sites of the temples, how the ancient festival in honour of the god was converted into the festival of a martyr, and how, in fact, while the myth was new and unfamiliar, much of the ritual and all the surroundings remained the same. the sacred groves were taken by storm amid scenes of carnage which our historian skilfully veils by the use of metaphor. the lands and slaves of the heathen fanes were made over to the church; the number of the chapels exceeded that of the shrines which had been demolished, and separate endowments were made to all by royal decree. the children of the priests were distributed among the newly founded seminaries, where they were instructed in the greek and syriac languages and introduced to the literature of the church. their loyalty to the new religion was stimulated by an annual salary; and the most deserving among them were consecrated bishops. such was the nature of the revolution accomplished by st. gregory with a thoroughness and decision which we cannot but admire. the old cult was not extinguished, but irremediably disabled; it lurked even in the highest places, and we hear of a queen of armenia who encouraged the polytheists to assassinate verthanes, the son and successor of st. gregory. [221] many armenians practised christianity as a mere matter of form, regarding it as an aberration of the human intelligence to which they had been compelled to subscribe. [222] those who had embraced the faith with conviction were limited to the circles which spoke greek or syriac, or were at least fairly familiar with those idioms. [223] yet gregory preached to the armenians in the armenian language. [224] under the shadow of night the devotees of the old religion would adore their divinities and chant the tempestuous epics of their native land. [225] years elapsed before they would abandon their lamentations for the dead, a practice specially repugnant to the christian spirit. [226] still, in spite of the constant undercurrent and frequent ebullitions of paganism, the institutions of the illuminator were never jeopardised by a decisive relapse. the religion which he invested with all the authority of the state became inextricably interwoven with the self-consciousness of the armenian nation, and derived from their inveterate obstinacy or admirable heroism a stability which hardened the more it was threatened from without. then, as now, the keystone of the ecclesiastical edifice was the person of the katholikos. i do not know that we can instance among christian organisations any counterpart of this high office. beside it that of the king seems mere fable and tinsel. the title itself was unimportant and unpretentious, designating as it did among the christians of the east an archbishop with plenary powers (ad universalitatem causarum), such as were necessary in countries removed by distance from the hierarchical centres. it is applied by our earliest extant authority to st. gregory; [227] and, so moderate are the claims or pronounced the hierarchical spirit of his successor, faustus, that he coins the cumbrous superlative, katholikos of katholikoi, to express the superior dignity of the metropolitan of cæsarea. [228] but, whatever grade in the army of the church may have been assigned to him by his clerical colleagues, the position occupied in his native country by the katholikos of armenia was one of extraordinary glamour. the office was hereditary in the family of the illuminator; and that family had been endowed with territories extending over fifteen provinces and comprising several princely residences. [229] the pontifical palace was at astishat, in the neighbourhood of the mother-church of armenia and the chapels of st. john the baptist and of st. athenogenes. from the spacious terrace expanded a landscape which aroused the envy of the richest laymen and which was only commensurate with a fraction of the pontifical possessions. when the scions of the family were unwilling to sustain the burden of the office it was entrusted to prominent clerics of the church at astishat, while the unworthy heirs pursued the vocation of arms or the attractions of pleasure, surrounded by a court which polluted the sanctity of the pontifical residence. [230] it was customary for the descendants of gregory to marry into the king's family, and they were accorded many of the honours due to royalty alone. as often as the king aroused and probably deserved the censure of the katholikos, that spiritual castigation was unflinchingly enforced. in a vacancy of the chair, owing to failure in the line or renunciation on the part of the heirs, it was not the priesthood who chose the successor but the king, the nobles and the army. [231] in these several respects the office was identified with the existing institutions of the country, and it was perhaps indeed modelled upon that of the high priest among the polytheists and the jews. [232] but, however great was the prestige derived from such a splendid establishment and from the fame of the first occupant of the chair, the hold of the pontificate upon the imagination of later generations was derived from a less antique and more constantly operative source. two descendants of the illuminator, one in the fourth, the other in the fifth century, added new and peculiar lustre to the institution. nerses the first introduced the refinements of hierarchical government; sahak the great gave to the people an alphabet of their own. the throne of the successors of tiridates crumbled away in the course of about a century from the death of the first christian monarch; that of the successors of st. gregory has weathered the storms of sixteen centuries and remains a solid and impressive monument at the present day. two events of high importance remain to be mentioned in this brief survey of the momentous revolution carried through by the great king and his great minister. the first is the journey to europe. the reciprocal advantage of the ancient alliance between tiridates and the empire had been experienced in the campaigns which were waged by the cæsar galerius against the persians (a.d. 296 and 297); and the memory of comradeship in arms may have preserved the first christian state from incurring the active displeasure of the colleague of diocletian during the subsequent onslaughts upon the christian religion (303-311). but the cæsar maximin was less patient or more oblivious, and their new faith cost the armenians a war (312). [233] the advent of constantine averted their ruin and set the seal of political wisdom upon the spiritual policy of their monarch; and it was only natural that the two exalted instruments of the christian profession should desire to profit in every sense by the christian sympathies of so great a prince. the journey of gregory and tiridates to the court of constantine has been regarded as unauthentic by a competent authority; yet it probably took place. the meeting perhaps occurred in serdica, a residence of the emperor in illyria, and it was attended by the friend and relation of constantine, bishop eusebius of nicomedia. the highest honours were paid to the aged visitors, and the emperor prostrated himself at the feet of the saint. the pair were escorted with much pomp to their native country, having still further strengthened the link which attached them to their powerful neighbours, and perhaps concluded a formal treaty. [234] the second event reposes upon less questionable evidence; it is the participation of the armenian church in the deliberations of the council of nice (325), and her formal subscription of its acts. the great age of gregory may well have deterred him from personal attendance; his younger son aristakes represented the armenians in the famous assembly. upon his return he communicated the canons to his father, who accepted them and contributed a few additions. the formula of nice with its uncompromising identification of christ with god was adopted as the dogmatic base of the state religion. [235] iii. a general impression which one receives from the perusal of the early histories is that the armenians of the fourth century were not far removed from barbarism. the king might here and there set up a copy of a classical building; but i should doubt whether he could have left us any monument which might approach the originality of the creations of the bagratid sovereigns in the middle ages. very few among his subjects had a knowledge of greek and syriac, still less of latin, the languages of the literature of their day. the scriptures--that mine of knowledge--were read in the syriac or greek versions to congregations of which not even the most intelligent members could profit by the service. [236] identity of interests with the empire on the score of culture was a bond which, i suppose, scarcely existed in that age; and, alas, when at length it became a reality, how fragile it proved--how fragile such bonds have always proved! still, although we must be careful in thinking of the armenians of the fourth century as we might think of their descendants in the tenth, the ties which should have united them to their powerful neighbours on the west were of a nature which could appeal to all. there was the tie of a common religion, which either nation had recently adopted and subscribed at a joint conference. both were threatened by a common enemy--the fire-worshippers of persia, enlisting all the resources of the further east. from that persian dynasty the armenian monarchs were separated by difference of origin and by a blood feud, unmitigated by the lapse of time. they had been restored to their possessions by the roman power. a great king and a great statesman, in whom they recognised a saint, had crowned their life work by the conclusion of an alliance with rome which in no previous age could have reposed upon so stable a base. shall we therefore be edified by the spectacle of their successors following in their footsteps, patiently waiving differences, insisting upon elements of union, ranging themselves upon the side of christianity and civilisation and fighting their battles in such sacred causes as these? king tiridates was followed on the throne by his son chosroes the little, to whom is ascribed a reign of nine years. [237] if perhaps his stature was small and his body feeble, he at least possessed the merit of keeping well with the successor of gregory, whom his queen in vain endeavoured to remove from the world. his name is therefore in favour with the priestly historian, who indeed narrates the events of this period in a somewhat fabulous manner, but presents us with a picture of contemporary society which is lifelike and full of movement and colour. [238] that the early years of the reign were not disturbed by a war with persia was perhaps due to the youth of the persian monarch; but the storm burst before its close. after sustaining with success the brunt of a hunnish invasion--in which, however, the capital, vagharshapat, was temporarily lost--chosroes was called to the defence of his eastern frontiers by the approach of a persian army. the first encounter took place near the shores of lake van, and resulted in a victory for the armenians. the assistance of imperial troops [239] may have nerved the king's resistance, which continued until the close of his life. with chosroes is contemporary the pontificate of verthanes, the eldest son of the illuminator. that saintly personage did not long survive the successor of tiridates; but he may have lived to confirm the reign of his son tiran, and he was perhaps instrumental in placing him upon the throne. [240] it is during the rule of tiran that we observe for the first time manifestations of that bitter rivalry between the head of the church and the head of the state which was destined, as much, perhaps, as any other cause, to bring about the downfall of the dynasty. such an outcome of the ecclesiastical institutions of the first christian monarch might indeed have been foreseen. had armenia not been exposed to a struggle for life and death with enemies from without, her statesmen might well have solved the problem of this dangerous dualism without endangering the safety of the nation. enveloped as they were in such a struggle, the only policy was to postpone the issue; king tiran chose the opposite course. he had given his daughter in marriage to the son of verthanes, yusik; but after the experience of a single night the youth deserted his bride, in apprehension, it is said, of the terrible progeny which she was destined to give to the world. such conduct and such explanations could scarcely have satisfied her royal parents; but the princess died after giving birth to twin sons. upon the death of verthanes, yusik was placed in the pontifical chair, the ceremony of his installation being performed at artaxata. the king was a lukewarm christian and, perhaps, an inveterate sinner; the katholikos was at once pious and severe. a long feud and partial estrangements resulted in an open rupture; and, when the sovereign on a certain feast day was about to attend divine service, he was publicly denounced by the enraged prelate and forbidden to enter the church. yusik was beaten to death under royal orders; and a similar fate befell the saintly bishop of astishat, who, although a syrian and not a member of the family of st. gregory, was summoned by king and nobles to fill the vacancy in the chair. we are told that king tiran lived on friendly terms with persia; however this may be, he contrived to fall into the hands of these powerful neighbours, who put out his eyes and led him to the feet of their master. a deputation of the great barons was forthwith despatched to constantinople in order to obtain succour from the emperor. before their return a persian army was let loose upon armenia, and those of the inhabitants of every rank who were able to make good their escape took refuge upon greek territory. the arrival of imperial troops--it is said with the emperor at their head--was shortly followed by a decisive victory and the capture of the harem of the persian king. that potentate was summoned to restore tiran to his native country; but, upon the refusal of his blind prisoner to undertake the office, the son of tiran, arshak, was placed upon the throne. two occurrences in the reign of this prince, as it is described by faustus, may be identified with known events. the one is his connection with the great massacre of christians in persia which took place during the reign of shapur. [241] our historian attributes the wrath of the persian monarch to the monstrous perfidy of the christian sovereign of armenia. the other is the conclusion of a treaty between the roman and persian empires, of which a provision was the engagement on the part of the former power not to offer any assistance to arshak. these terms are familiar to us from other sources as having been wrung from the commander of the luckless roman army after the death of julian. [242] the reign of arshak is, indeed, contemporary with the great wars which were waged by shapur with the power which disputed his supremacy over the east. however little credit we may attach to the narrative of the armenian historian, it is at least plain that a king who owed his throne to the cæsars was often their enemy and never their loyal ally. we are told, indeed, that on one occasion his armies violated the roman territory and advanced as far as angora; on another that the king himself led his troops against those of the empire, and fell upon them as they were preparing to receive a persian attack. when the duel was being waged most fiercely he maintained an attitude of expectant neutrality, waiting to see which of the antagonists would offer him the best terms. the only palliation which we may discover for such a course of outrageous conduct is derived from the obscure notice of a religious persecution, directed against the armenian pontiff, nerses, by one of the successors of constantine. yet that prelate with true wisdom enjoined resistance to the persians at a moment when it might well have seemed a desperate course. the king, left to his fate by the provision in the roman treaty, maintained for awhile a courageous front to the persian onslaught. but he was at length compelled to sue for peace and to place his person in the power of his enemy under a guarantee of security. his former treachery was requited, as it deserved, by the same treatment; and, while he himself was taken to persia and consigned to the castle of oblivion, his queen, after a brief resistance, was brought to the presence of shapur and outraged before the eyes of his army until she expired. a series of massacres on a large scale and organised by shapur in person was the sequel of these events. the unfortunate armenians were collected into large bodies and trampled down under the feet of elephants. the number of the victims is said to have amounted to thousands and tens of thousands of either sex and every age. the great cities, including artaxata and vagharshapat, were ruthlessly destroyed. whole populations, among which were conspicuous the numerous jewish colonies, were driven off into captivity. from this calamity, which must have occurred after the year 363 and before 379, the arsakid dynasty does not appear to have recovered. the son of arshak, by name pap, was indeed placed upon the throne by the emperor, and reigned for several years. but, like his father, he turned his arms against his protectors the moment they had cleared his frontiers of the inveterate foe. like his father he coquetted with the persian power, forgetting the unspeakable insults to which his family had been subjected. he even possessed the effrontery to despatch to the emperor an insulting message, summoning him to restore edessa and cæsarea and ten other cities which he averred had belonged to his ancestors. pap was put to death by imperial order, and another member of the arsakid family sent to reign in his place. but that prince was expelled by the most valiant of the armenian chieftains, who proceeded to administer the country in the interests of the sons of pap. when these had come of age the royal authority was divided between them, while the numerous persian party among the armenians selected a rival arsakid and enlisted in his favour persian support. armenian politics were becoming a farce when the rulers of the two great powers arrived at a solution to which both had been provoked. the buffer state was divided between them, the persians taking the greater portion, and the smaller, including the valley of the western euphrates, falling to the roman empire (a.d. 387). phantom kings of arsakid descent were set up by either power, until in the course of time persian governors and greek prefects administered the government in either sphere. i have anticipated in this brief summary upon the sequel of the ecclesiastical policy pursued by king tiran. after the murder of the bishop of taron, whose diocese included astishat, a priest of the church in this religious centre was elevated to the pontifical dignity and duly consecrated at cæsarea. he was succeeded by a scion of the house of albianus--a house of which the founder is mentioned first in the list of bishops chosen by st. gregory from the ranks of the children of the heathen priests. [243] meanwhile the sons of yusik--the terrible progeny given to the world by his bride of a single night--had reached an age which permitted the full indulgence of their wicked appetites in every kind of vice. they are said to have met their death in the pontifical palace, where their wassail was cut short by the angel of god. one of the twins, by name athenogenes, had already produced an heir; and it was this child who, when he had reached the estate of manhood, was acclaimed katholikos by army and nation during the reign of king arshak. nerses--such was his name--had been brought up at cæsarea, the native city of his contemporary, st. basil the great. after an early marriage he adopted the military profession and became chamberlain and counsellor to his king. he is delineated as the ideal of a perfect cavalier--tall and supple of figure, with a face of great beauty, which enlisted the sympathy of both sexes and all classes. yet the youth wore the flower of a blameless private life; and his high capacities were from the first bestowed upon the intimate care of the poor or afflicted, and the protection of the oppressed. his function at court was to stand behind the person of the king, attired in a rich and elegant robe, and bearing in his hand the royal sword of tried steel with its golden scabbard and belt inlaid with precious stones. such was the station which he was fulfilling when the nobles and assembled troops approached the steps of the throne. they had come to demand his acceptance of the high office, hereditary in his family; but the embarrassed chamberlain waved them aside. his profession of personal unworthiness was received with laughter; his indignant protests by the clash of shields. upon his persistence king arshak gave orders that he should be bound in his presence, and shorn of his long and abundant hair. many of the bystanders shed tears when the ruthless scissors severed those silky and floating locks. stripped of his gay apparel, he was made to assume the garb of a priest; and it was difficult to recognise in the face of the deacon, who was being ordained by a venerable bishop, the brave soldier and princely courtier of a few minutes ago. [244] the national character of the armenian church is mainly derived from the institutions of st. gregory; but it was this nerses, his direct descendant, who brought it into line with the church of the empire in the important sphere of internal development and discipline. the family likeness which it still presents to the neighbouring greek church is largely due to this prelate. the monastery is still the pivot of the ecclesiastical organisation; and it was this contemporary, perhaps this disciple of st. basil of cæsarea, who spread broadcast cloisters and convents over the land. a single rule was established for the several orders of monks; and the laity were bidden to observe certain wholesome regulations, among which was included abstention from animal food. the poor and the sick were lodged in hospices, and were not allowed to beg; a humane enactment provided that their neighbours should bring them food to their public or private dwellings. in each district was founded a school for the instruction of the people in the greek and syriac languages. every action of the great katholikos bears the imprint of a high purpose, and overwelling zeal. that purpose was to conquer the lusts of a full-blooded and intemperate people by subduing their unruly bodies and fanning into life the spark of the soul. but just in the execution of this lofty project he was brought into conflict with the king, and the fate of his grandfather stared him in the face. the son of tiran was indeed the son of that obstinate sinner, nor was nerses less inflexible than yusik. perhaps the monarch acted with design, and wished to divide his people into separate communities of the black and the white sheep. the saints might be handed over to the sway of their prince-prelate; over the sinners his own prerogative would remain supreme. he proclaimed an edict which enacted that every debtor or accused person, those who had shed the blood or taken the property of their neighbours, should assemble in an appointed place, where no law would be allowed to touch them and each man might lead his life after his own guise. [245] to that haven beyond their dreams flocked the company of the unrighteous--women with the husbands of other women, and men with the wives of other men. the brigands and the assassins and the unjust judges and the perjured witnesses, all collected at the given tryst. the place was at first a village; but it soon prospered, and became a town, which again extended until it filled an entire valley. then the king built a palace in the midst of his congenial subjects and called the city by his own name (arshakavan). upon the return of the katholikos--he is said to have been exiled by a roman emperor; but his vicar during his absence had not betrayed his trust--this truly original and royal solution of the problem of joint government was vigorously arraigned. the pontiff taxed the monarch with having founded a second sodom; but, relenting to a mood of greater amiability, he suggested that the sovereign might continue to reside in his city if he would entrust its management into the hands of the katholikos. the rejection of this kind proposal was shortly followed by the outbreak of a malady, which decimated the inhabitants. the king was constrained to sue for pardon from the saint and to disband his colony. the quarrel broke out anew when the inveterate profligate shed the blood of a subject and espoused his beautiful wife. nerses left the court and did not return. arshak, in open defiance, appointed a katholikos in his stead--a certain chunak, who was nothing better than one of his minions. he could not hope that his action might be endorsed at cæsarea; so he summoned all the bishops of his own country and bade them consecrate the object of his choice. only two could be persuaded to perform the ceremony; and these were perhaps pensioners of the king. [246] the full activity of the lawful pontiff was not resumed until after the calamity which resulted in the bondage of his old enemy and the seclusion of arshak in the castle of oblivion. the accession of pap was attended by the presentation of a solemn petition, in which sovereign and nation craved the assistance of their true pastor. nerses devoted his energies to the restoration of the churches which had been destroyed by shapur. but the son of arshak was quite as licentious, although less capable than his father; and he is said to have added to the sum of the delinquencies of his predecessor the habitual practice of unspeakable vice. the monster was forbidden entry even into the porch of the church; and he retaliated by poisoning the katholikos with a cup of peace which, in token of repentance, he tendered with his own hand. the death of nerses, which occurred not later than the year 374, [247] marks an epoch in the history of the church. on the one hand its emoluments were considerably curtailed; on the other--and this is a fact with the most far-reaching consequences--it was dissevered for good and all from the church of the empire. it is quite evident that nerses failed to gauge correctly the temper of his countrymen; and it was the defect of his undoubted virtues that he at once endeavoured to go too far and to accomplish too much. the reaction from his severe ordinances enabled the king to proceed unhindered in the work of overthrowing the structure which his victim had reared. the hospices were abolished, the convents were destroyed and their inmates given over to prostitution. moreover the greater portion of the lands bestowed upon the church by tiridates were appropriated by the state. of each seven domains belonging to the former institution the revenues of five were allotted to the treasury. nor can we doubt that popular support was forthcoming for the revolution which the monarch initiated in the relations with the greek church. the armenians have at all periods approved a national policy, and preferred to perish than unite with their neighbours. a bishop of the house of albianus, always obsequious to the throne, was invested with the vacant primacy. the consent of cæsarea was not even applied for, nor was the bishop despatched to the capital of the province of cappadocia for consecration in accordance with the usual custom. with the possible exception of the two sons of st. gregory and, of course, of the pseudo-katholikos, chunak, each successive holder of the pontifical office, including the illuminator, had been in the habit of proceeding with great pomp through the territory of the empire to the steps of the episcopal throne in the greek city. it was there that the chosen of the armenians bowed his head before a prelate who loomed in the eyes of his countrymen as the living embodiment of the authority of the church of christ. the defiance offered him by the king was accepted by basil in a similar spirit. he called together all the members of the provincial synod of cæsarea, without inviting the nominee of king pap. a violent despatch was addressed to the armenian bishops and a similar one to the king. the right of consecrating bishops was taken away from the katholikos, and he was left the single prerogative of blessing bread at the court of the king. the result of this hot temper upon either side was a bitter conflict in the armenian church itself. the clergy were divided into followers of the king and the house of albianus, and those who held to the necessity of consecration in cæsarea and to allegiance to the house of gregory. [248] the subsequent lapse of the greater part of armenia under persian influence promoted the policy initiated by pap; and when, towards the close of the century, the chair was again occupied by a descendant of st. gregory, the link with cæsarea was not restored. there can, i think, be no doubt that the story of the foundation of the armenian church by a direct mandate of christ himself was invented not earlier than the period at which we have now arrived. the mandate is said to have taken the form of an injunction to st. gregory to build the church of vagharshapat. neither the author of the life of the illuminator, as we can trace that source through the agathangelus treatise, nor the historian who continues his narrative, displays any cognisance with such a momentous event. the former tells us that it was at astishat in the south of armenia, the country of the murad, that gregory built the first christian church. the cult of martyrs which he first introduced was not the cult of the ripsimians but that of st. john the baptist and athenogenes. we learn from the latter that after the death of the saint, and at least down to the murder of nerses, the mother-church of armenia was situated at astishat and not at edgmiatsin. faustus, indeed, expresses himself not once alone or in a doubtful manner upon this important point. astishat contains the "first and great mother of armenian churches," "the first and greatest of all the churches of armenia, the principal and most honoured seat of the christian religion." it was at astishat that was situated the palace of the katholikos. the great synod which was convoked by nerses of all armenian bishops was held at astishat. when that prelate wished to chide the chief of the king's eunuchs for casting covetous glances upon the wide domains which surrounded the church, he quoted the scriptural injunction against such ignoble conduct, and added that such was the will of jesus christ, "whose choice had first fallen upon the church at astishat for the glorification of his name." [249] on the other hand, i cannot help detecting in these passages indications that their author was aware of the growing rivalry of the church at edgmiatsin. faustus wrote after the severance from cæsarea and after the partition of armenia (a.d. 387). he displays acquaintance with the ripsimian legend. but there is no trace in his pages of a knowledge of the vision of st. gregory upon which edgmiatsin has founded her claim. as time went on, several causes, which perhaps we may distinguish, contributed to widen further the breach with the church of the empire. the persian occupation and the ultimate removal of the arsakid dynasty, whose hereditary blood feud with the house of sasan had long embittered the antagonism of the peoples, were no small factors in an estrangement from greek influences which the policy of persia lost no occasion of promoting. the invention by mesrop of an armenian alphabet, [250] and the institution of a school of translators during the pontificate of the son of nerses, isaac the great (c. 390-439), constitute elements which, while they worked for the attachment of the armenians to greek culture and for the wider propagation of christianity, were yet calculated to foster the strong proclivities of this people towards complete religious independence. lastly--if indeed there be an end to such a catalogue, in which each item is as much an effect as a cause--the peculiar genius of the armenian nation imprinted a stamp upon the dogma of their church which was not the stamp sanctioned by that of the empire. the council of chalcedon (a.d. 451) addressed itself to the solution of the problems which were the natural outcome of the dogma adopted at the council of nice. what was the true view of the mystery expressed by the words of the formula: son of god, of one nature with the father, who came down from heaven and took flesh and became man? how explain the character of the union of god with man in the person of christ? over the answer which should be returned to this question conflicts arose which destroyed thousands of innocent people, and which prepared the way for the disappearance of the roman empire from the map of asia, and for the triumph of islam. the compromise adopted at chalcedon is difficult to place in a short sentence; but perhaps no essential feature is omitted in the following phrase: christ according to his godhead is of one nature with the father, according to his humanity is, apart from sin, of one nature with us. this one and the same christ is recognised in two natures indissolubly united but yet distinct. the armenians were not represented at this council; [251] and, indeed, it is contemporary with the fierce religious persecutions directed against them by yezdegerd ii. but, when once the unfortunate nation, or what remained after the orgy of the fire-worshippers, had settled down to a more peaceful routine, they proceeded to hold a synod of their own, which assembled at vagharshapat (a.d. 491), and which with all solemnity cursed the council of chalcedon. this procedure was repeated at several subsequent synods; nor has the bitterness which was consequent upon this open breach with the church of the west subsided at the present day. at edgmiatsin, the seat of this synod, held fourteen centuries ago, i was informed that the armenian church expressly rejects chalcedon; and the emphasis of language was underlined by the tone of the voice. the armenians therefore differ both with the greek and with the roman church in their expression of the mystery of christology. they will not hear of two natures. they hold that in christ there is one person and one nature, one will and one energy; and their liturgy presents this dogma in an impressive manner in the trisagion, which runs: "o god, holy god, mighty god, everlasting god, who wast crucified for us." [252] at the same time they deny and denounce the teaching of eutyches, protagonist against the nestorians. eutyches held that the body of christ is not to be regarded as of one nature with ours; the armenians maintain that god became man in the fullest sense. [253] one might argue this question to all eternity; but one feels that the greeks were the subtler disputants. the armenians, like the persian mohammedans, would appear to be averse to abstractions; they go, perhaps, to extremes in the concreteness of their conception of god--a god-man in the crudest sense. this christology has probably embodied the sentiments of the people; but it had the effect of estranging them not only with the church of the empire, but also with the great body of their fellow-christians of different nationality within the persian dominions. at the synod of beth lapat (a.d. 483 or 484) the old christian church of persia welcomed into its bosom the flying forces of nestorianism, and adopted the nestorian confession. the georgians, it is true, followed the lead of the armenians, with whom their church was directly connected. but these allies broke away before the close of the sixth century, and went over to the teaching of chalcedon. as the centuries rolled by, these various breaches became wider, and they are still marked features in the christianity of the east. martyrdom and political slavery were alternatives which were gladly accepted rather than compromise dogmatic and doctrinal differences. when heraclius visited armenia after replacing the cross in the churches of jerusalem, the armenians refused to camp with his troops. in the middle ages, when the sasanians were already forgotten, when the caliphs, their successors, were approaching their doom, the stubborn hierarchy insisted upon baptizing babes a second time if the ceremony had been performed by a greek priest. all attempts to effect a union--and they have been many and serious--have invariably failed. the more attractive the offers of the greeks, the greater grew the hatred of them; nor have the popes met with better success. they have added costly objects to the treasury at edgmiatsin; the result remains a blank. when we reflect that this obstinate people are as intelligent as any in the world in the various pursuits of civilised life, our anger at such conduct, which gave away the cause of civilisation, may be tempered by a different feeling. the armenians have fought at all hazards to preserve their individuality, and the bulk of the nation have perished in the attempt. the remnant may be destined, like the son of anak, to redress the wrongs inflicted by their ancestors upon the common christian weal. on the other hand, the lesson which is taught by history is that no nation and no christianity will succeed with the armenians which endeavours to deflect them from their own opinions and to preclude them from working out their own salvation in their own way. [254] chapter xvii to ani and to kars october 14.--we left the cloister at half-past eight, our little party of five persons including the armenian cook. we had hired in the district ten miserable ponies, of which five carried our effects. the most direct way to ani crosses the basal slopes of alagöz, from the southern to the most westerly extremities of the shield-shaped mass. you proceed from edgmiatsin in a north-westerly direction, the ground rising at every step of your advance. on the point of course, beyond oases of verdure in the foreground, lie the stony and arid declivities of the mountain--contours of immense length and low vaulting, joining the plain to the horizontal outline in the sky. the belt of verdure consists of fields of the cotton and the castor-oil plants, of patches of orchard and vineyard, and sparse groves of poplar, rising from the dusty and boulder-strewn waste. it is sustained by runnels which exhaust the waters of the kasagh or abaran su, the stream which collects the scanty drainage of the volcano upon its eastern flank. the boulders are worn by water and have been dispersed by the swollen river, during the season of spring floods. where we crossed the kasagh itself, or principal channel, it was a languid and soil-charged body of water, threading these stony tracts. we passed several villages within the irrigated area, some inhabited by armenians, others by tartars, and a few by both races alike. hiznavuz, or kiznaus, an armenian settlement, containing the state-school of the district, was the last of these hamlets of the fertile zone. we stayed a few minutes before the open windows of the schoolhouse, listening to a lesson given in russian to armenian boys. behind the village, a sterile eminence leads over into the barren highlands which compose the pedestal of alagöz. the moderate elevation of these highlands above the plain of the araxes and their long extension from east to west are conditions favourable to the full appreciation of the landscape, and of each new feature in the slowly-changing scene. their free position contributes to invest them with the character of a natural gallery, which commands unbroken prospects over some of the grandest works of nature in her most inspired moods. the european, whose conception of mountain scenery is founded upon the arbitrary peaks and scattered valleys characteristic of his alps, who has looked with emotion upon the doubtful features of his lowlands from the summit of some famous pass, can scarcely fail to be deeply impressed by the attributes of a panorama in which reliefs and depressions of stupendous scale are disposed as members of a great design, and are seen in the pure atmosphere of an eastern climate with all the clearness of a model in clay. at his feet lies a plain which is level as water, which in no very remote geological period was covered by an inland sea. it is a distance of some thirty miles to its opposite confines; yet the towns and the plantations are pencilled upon its surface as though they had been traced by a draughtsman's pen. the plain is bordered by the volcanic range which we have come to know as the ararat system--a chain of which the jagged and fantastic outline is already familiar from many a rich sunset effect. the summits rise to nearly 8000 feet above the campagna; but how humble they appear behind the train of the fabric of ararat, gathering immediately from the floor of the plain! the bold snow bastions of the north-western slope are seen in face from these highlands; and it is difficult to realise that the pronounced lineaments which compose that airy figure are removed by a space of nearly forty miles. we had not yet lost sight of the line of poplars which screens the cloister when the distinctive features of this magnificent landscape were unfolded to our view. the several ranges and mountain masses were disposed in the form of an amphitheatre, of which we seemed to occupy one of the middle tiers. in the east, along the araxes, the crinkled buttresses of the northern border were still visible, projecting in a southerly direction beyond the cock-combed hill of karniarch. in the west, at an interval of sixty miles from those eminences, the level ground extended to a double-peaked mountain which juts out into the valley from the ararat system, and is known under the name of takjaltu. face to face with one another stood alagöz and ararat. in the plain we could discern an isolated hummock, north of the araxes and bearing about south-west. it marks the site of armavir. that this scene--in itself a world, and a world which fills the mind with wonder--has of necessity been the theatre of momentous events in the life of humanity, the traveller realises at a single glance. his pious predecessors were surely justified in accepting the ancient belief of the armenians, that our first father and mother loved and suffered in this plain. [255] if we are to seek the site of paradise within the limits of armenia, neither the euphrates nor the tigris crosses a country equally appropriate to have been the earliest and fairest home of man. it looks the land of hope which noah tilled and planted with vineyards, the second nursery of the human race. the armenians, whose mythical history connects them closely with babylonia and assyria, who from the earliest times have been accustomed to receive jewish immigrants and to see jewish colonies established in their midst, must at a remote date have localised the events of the biblical narrative in this the most favoured of all their valleys and at the foot of the loftiest of their mountains. [256] if the jewish writings which they inherited were believed to have reference to their native surroundings, it was only natural that they should identify with the same districts the primeval setting of the later creations of the jewish mind; the whole countryside became hallowed by religious tradition; nor need we feel surprise when we read that a tree in the neighbourhood of karakala on the araxes was believed to have sheltered job and his three friends. [257] when the horizon narrows and embraces the particular history of the armenians, we find that some of the first beginnings of their history are placed within this fertile and spacious plain; it was the chosen seat of armenak, the son or grandson of their progenitor, hayk, to which he descended from the mountains about the head waters of the euphrates, accompanied by his whole race. here were situated their most ancient cities, of some of which the relics still stand above ground and invite discussion of which city they denote the site. armavir, the contemporary of nineveh, with the grove of plane trees which worked the magic of the oaks of dodona, has been identified with the ruins that are found on the little hillock which we distinguish from the detail of the landscape at our feet. [258] further west, on the southern bank of the river, where it is enclosed by rocky cliffs of basaltic lava, due to the passage of a lava stream, modern travellers have discovered considerable remains of ancient masonry, which have been utilised to build the castle of karakala, and which are still, i believe, in want of their older name. [259] traces of the fortress of ervandakert, and of ervandashat, its companion city, which were built in the first century of our era by an armenian monarch of arsakid descent, have been remarked on either bank of the arpa river, the ancient akhurean, where it issues from the elevated country on the north of the araxes and effects its confluence at the head of this plain. [260] in the days when those cities flourished, the haughty araxes was spanned by bridges of which, here and there, a pier or a buttress still survives. [261] below the lofty rock of takjaltu lie the famous salt mines of kulpi, which have been exploited from immemorial times. after leaving the armenian village we continued in the same direction over the barren highlands, in possession of the landscape which i have endeavoured to describe. we were riding at walking pace; our immediate surroundings were indifferent to us; nor for the space of three hours did we meet a single settlement, except here and there a group of kurdish tents. when at midday the clouds cleared above the summit of alagöz, we remarked that the fangs of its rocky core were invisible behind the bulging contours of the outer sheath. above us, upon those slopes, we could discern some small green patches, which mark the site of hamlets, peopled by tartars and armenians who eke out a scanty subsistence on the mountain side. when we had reached a point some thirteen miles in direct distance from edgmiatsin, we crossed a close succession of deep ravines. the first of these was the most considerable of the three, and contained the broad bed of a dry watercourse, which descends from the central mountain mass. on the further side of the last among them we came upon the remains of a large church, of great simplicity but of much beauty of form. it was built of hewn stone, in the style of the best armenian architecture; and the ancient frescos still stained the walls of the apse. but the lofty dome had fallen in, leaving nothing but a yawning circle, with fragments of cloud crossing the blue above our heads. an inscription in the interior bears the date 876 (armenian era), which corresponds to the year a.d. 1426. just beyond this ruin is situated the little armenian village of talysh, on the southern confines of which we visited the remains of some towers which are probably of the same period as the church, and which overlook the ravine upon the west. both the starshina and the priest of talysh were absent from the settlement; the inhabitants professed complete ignorance of the history of their antiquities, which, since they could neither read nor write, was perhaps not feigned. the afternoon was well advanced when we left this pleasant site; a mist arose, and developed into rain. in less than two hours we were glad to find shelter in the tartar village of akhja kala, a refreshing oasis of green willows on these sterile slopes. the essential majesty of the armenian landscapes derives enhanced value from the presence at all seasons of clouds. in this respect armenia is more favoured than persia, where month after month you long for a cloud to temper the glare. to the radiance of her pellucid atmosphere is added the charm of effects of vapour; but the vapour has already been tamed in the passage of the border ranges, and floats in quiet masses over the central regions of the tableland. we awoke on the following morning to a scene which is characteristic of the season and of this plain. the whole valley of the araxes was covered by a sheet of white mist, and had the appearance of a vast sea. from invisible limits in the west to the foot of the ararat fabric the deceptive substance followed the base of the mountains, as though we had suddenly been introduced to that geological period when the waters washed these rocky shores. in the east several islands rose above the shining surface, eminences of the plain. the high ground upon which we stood was bathed in pure sunlight, and all nature was intensely still. as the morning advanced the vapours lifted or were dissolved; films of white cloud were wafted across the blue. we continued our march over highlands of the same stony character as those which we had traversed during the preceding day. but beyond the village the land had been cleared in places, and wheat planted, which was showing green above the ground. it is protected by the snows which cover these slopes during winter, and it is reaped in spring or early summer. the rocky heart of alagöz was still concealed behind the declivities which swept towards us, on our right hand. in the great plain, which still lay beneath us, we missed the stretches of pleasant verdure which in that direction had become familiar to our eyes; desert tracts, seared by gullies, had taken the place of the gardens; while further west the valley was broken into hummock waves. a ground of ochre, washed in places with rose madder--such were the colours which clothed this naked expanse; the delicate tints were continued up the sides of the mountains which border the plain upon the south. these lower slopes of the ararat system receive the light at sunrise; and, being composed of a marly substance, which is modelled into soft convexities, display a variety of tender hues. bold peaks, of which the summits had been strewn with snow during the night, rise along the spine of the range; but they are dwarfed, even at this distance, by the fabric of ararat. we could discern on the west of the mountain the pass which leads to bayazid, and we had not yet lost sight of the mound of armavir. but it was evident that the even ground in the valley of the araxes was coming to an end. the western limits of the level plain may be placed in the neighbourhood of karakala; and, according to dubois, the last canal which derives from the araxes waters the fields on the west of the village of shagriar. [262] villages became less rare as we rounded the mass of the mountain and opened a view over the country in the direction of the arpa chai. an hour from akhja kala our attention was attracted by a still distant eminence, rising above the shelving land upon that side. it was the crag of bugutu, which is probably due to a later eruption on the flank of alagöz. we passed two tartar settlements, and crossed a couple of ravines, the first of which must have had a depth of nearly a hundred feet. it contained a pleasant growth of lofty poplars and other trees, and it was threaded by a babbling brook. when the prospect extended to the upper slopes of the mountain, we observed that they were sprinkled with fresh snow. a stage of two and a half hours brought us to the village of talin, a prosperous and picturesque little township at the foot of bugutu (fig. 61). both the pristav and the priest were quickly forthcoming; we were by them conducted to a house which contained two storeys, and which was the residence of the priest. while food was being prepared, we were accompanied by our hosts in a walk round the place. we were informed that it contained some thousand inhabitants, all of whom were armenians. it possesses a church, but is still without a school. the old prejudices survive, and it was impossible to persuade the young women to submit to the camera. but talin is distinguished by the close proximity of a piece of architecture which appears to date from the golden period of the bagratid dynasty and which ranks among the most charming examples of the armenian style. it is a church--they call it cloister (vank), and it perhaps belonged to a monastery--which, although in ruins, is fairly well preserved. the roof has fallen in; the walls display wide breaches; but the masonry is still sharp and fresh, as when first put together, and the traceries might just have undergone the finishing touch. with its bold windows--no mere apertures--and bands of elegant sculpture, i thought it the most beautiful building i had yet seen in armenia. i reproduce some of these chiselled mouldings of the exterior. the first, a vine pattern (fig. 62), belongs to the southern transept; and the second (fig. 63), representing a pear or apple, is taken from that upon the north. on the south side of the ruin we observed a sun-dial, carved in stone; and we were shown a square block, which had been found among the débris, and upon which was sculptured a relief, representing the virgin and child, attended by two angels. a graveyard surrounds the building; some of the old crosses have been built into the walls of the village church. a little on the east we noticed the remains of a small chapel. the ground was strewn with fallen stones, some red, others grey--the two colours which are so skilfully blended or placed in contrast by armenian architects upon the broad, undecorated spaces of their walls. we enquired the history of the ruin, and were referred to a partially defaced inscription on one of the piers which once supported the dome. it mentions the name of king sembat, a member of the bagratid dynasty, which reigned from the ninth to the eleventh century. [263] the grandfather of the priest informed us that both the monastery and the church had been maintained up to a comparatively recent period. he said that the priests had fled during the campaign of paskevich, since which date the buildings had been allowed to fall into decay. ker porter, who crossed the district on his way from ani to edgmiatsin, mentions the existence in this neighbourhood of extensive ruins--the deserted relics of two churches, of walls and houses, which he saw at a distance, but did not stay to examine. he calls the place talys, and ritter hazards the conjecture that these may have been the remains of bagaran. [264] that city, which was founded by the same monarch who gave his name to ervandakert and ervandashat, became a royal residence of the bagratid dynasty, and at the end of the fourteenth century of our era still continued to exist. we did not hear of further antiquities in the vicinity of talin; but the correspondence of name suggests that ker porter's account may have been called forth by the former condition of the site which we visited. it was evident that these highlands had been the seat of a flourishing civilisation, later in date than that which produced the vanished cities of the plain. first at talysh and next at talin we discovered traces of this mediæval culture, of which the evidence was lavished upon us when we had reached the banks of the arpa, at ani and at khosha vank. the upper chamber of the priest's house and the company therein assembled recalled the simplicity of the early christian times. our host was still a young man, and his natural capacities had not been blunted by indigence and ill-treatment. his villagers were well off, and appeared to live on terms of friendship with their neighbours of tartar race. a tartar khan, a grandee of the district, happened to be visiting the place on business (fig. 64); and we were glad to see that his intercourse with the principal people was marked by tokens of mutual respect. his grave face and dignified figure contrasted with the vivacity of the armenians; his presence added to the interest of the group which i photographed, and which included the pristav (fig. 65) and the priest (fig. 66). neither the official head of the village nor our clerical acquaintance possessed any education, except what had been provided by an armenian primary school. but both, and especially the former, were men of great intelligence, and did honour to the peasant class from which they had sprung. we were in want of another pony, which we were able to hire at talin; his owner, a tartar belonging to akhja kala, accompanied or followed us on foot (fig. 67). measured on the map, it is a distance of sixteen miles from the village to the point at which we struck the arpa chai. we owed it to the nature of the ground and to the sorry condition of our horses that we were four and a half hours in performing the stage. it seemed an interminable ride; the landscape was monotonous; and we soon lost any glimpse of the valley of the araxes, as we continued our north-westerly course. we crossed the neck of the ridge which culminates at its western extremity in the crag of bugutu; and, on its further side, descended into the little tartar settlement of birmalek, where a stream trickles down from alagöz. a dam had been constructed which, aided by the nature of the ground, had forced the waters to collect into a small lake. beyond birmalek a second ridge was placed athwart our way, and constrained us to deviate towards the west. in the hollow we passed a small settlement of kurds, called sapunji, of which the inhabitants were the wildest people we had yet met. it speaks well for the russian officials that they did not dare to lay hands upon us, travelling, as we were, alone and unarmed. this second ridge was succeeded by another, similar in character, which was followed by several more. they are the outworks or spurs of the central mass of the mountain, from which they radiate outwards in a westerly direction towards the trough of the arpa chai. although their relative elevation above the valleys is not considerable, our guide preferred to turn them than to take them in face. their sides were clothed with burnt grass, or were sterile and strewn with stones, like the depressions which they confined. for more than two hours we continued among such dreary surroundings, crossing the western basal slopes of alagöz. these decline, by an almost imperceptible transition, into a tract of open and undulating ground. we were refreshed by the sight of a village, which stood alone and without neighbours on the bare surface of the more even land. it belonged to a colony of armenians from the plain of alexandropol. let us hope that they will be followed by further migrations of their countrymen into the valley of the arpa chai. that classical river of their ancestors crosses a region which was long famous for its salubrious climate and productive soil. it has not yet recovered from the state of abject desolation to which it was reduced when it formed the borderland between the turkish and persian empires. during a ride of nearly two hours from this settlement to the bank of the river, we were not aware of any sign of the presence of man. yet the features of this more level zone reminded us of the plain of alexandropol, of which in some sense it forms an outlying part. we stood in face of the western declivities of alagöz, with the rocky core of the volcano again disclosed. the contours of the mountain were composed of a number of ridges, which in perspective appeared to belong to two principal groups. one group declined away into invisible limits on our left hand; the other into an uncertain distance on our right. we were placed in the fork between these two diverging branches. it was evident that the last group separated us from the valley of the araxes; nor could we doubt that the principal and humble ridge in the reverse direction was the only barrier between us and the plains on the north (fig. 68). in the west, to the far horizon stretched the loamy tracts about us, bare of surface, like the sea. above the outline of this high land rose the peaks of the ararat system, fretting the sky from south-west to a bold mountain in the south, which we recognised as the familiar takjaltu. we knew that we were overlooking the trough of the arpa; but the river was hidden from sight. the light was failing as we entered the armenian village of khosha vank, on the left bank of the stream. it is a picturesque little settlement of some 120 tenements, grouped around a stately church. i have referred to it under the name which i received from the priest and the pristav, but which more properly belongs to the neighbouring monastery. it is called kizilkilisa (red church) on the russian maps. it was our intention to sleep in ani, after fording the river at this village; and we were surprised to learn that the ruins were four hours distant, and that it would be almost impossible to reach them that night. since the baggage was behind us, we listened to the counsel of our informants, who conducted us to a stone house, containing a single room--the only decent building in the whole place. although without a school, the inhabitants are no dullards; they seemed extremely ready to make a little money, and pleased to be able to exchange ideas. in fact we discovered on the following day that they had deceived us about ani, with the express purpose of retaining us for the night. we waited some time in vain for the luggage to overtake us, and then composed ourselves to sleep. when morning came our effects had not yet arrived; we reflected that we had given the rendezvous at ani, and, although we felt sure that the laggards would cross the river at our village, decided to push on. the arpa flows between high banks, a deeply eroded and sinuous bed, hidden by precipitous cliffs of black rock. you form the conception of a trough or fissure in the surface of the tableland, which undulates away into the distance on every side. after fording the stream, we proceeded along the right bank, and, at no great distance, opened out a romantic valley on our left hand, similar in character to that which adjoins the site of the armenian village. in both places the river describes a complete s, and is lost in the gloom of overhanging walls. the disposition of these rocky sides assumes the appearance of a glen, in which are situated the remains of an extensive monastery, bearing the name of khosha vank. just beyond this standpoint we gained the high land above the river; and there before us, on the plain, lay the ruins which we had been seeking, at the distance of an hour's canter from the cloister, or of a couple of hours' ride from kizilkilisa. descrying horses in the direction of ani, we galloped forward and overtook them; they proved to be our missing cavalcade. they had passed the river at a place lower down than where we had crossed it, and were pursuing their way in a most leisurely manner. after opening one of the cases in order to replenish the slides of the camera, we returned to the glen, and again forded the stream. we spent a considerable time at the cloister and in its neighbourhood; it was certainly the most remarkable building which we had yet seen. reserving a description of its ancient church and halls of audience, i shall only refer to a couple of illustrations in this place. the one (fig. 93, p. 386) shows the ensemble of the monastery; but, having been taken from the east, where the ground is open and the landscape tame, misses the peculiar characteristics of the site. the other (fig. 94, p. 387) may convey some conception of the appearance of the glen, when seen from the river-bed below the cloister. from the flat and water-worn bottom rises a little tongue of higher land, upon which stand the remains of two little chapels. on the cliff above the ravine you see the pier of a ruined gateway, outlined against the sky. the track to ani leads up the cliffside and passes that ruin, which stands on the plain in which the still-distant city lies. it was late afternoon when we reached the walls of the ancient capital (fig. 70, p. 369), and passed within the great gateway. no massive doors creaked upon their hinges; we rode through empty archways into a deserted town. from among the débris of the public and private buildings rose the well-preserved remains of a number of handsome edifices--here an elegant church, there a polygonal chapel. an old priest with a few attendants were the sole inhabitants--they and the owls. we had only to follow the track to be brought to the humble tenement in which the priest lived. he stepped forth to meet us, a grey head, a feeble figure; he walked with difficulty, and with the demeanour of a man who is awaiting death. he told us that he had dwelt here since 1880, the only custodian of these priceless architectural treasures, and the only exponent of the topography of the site. he had been attacked in his house by a band of kurds in 1886; they had inflicted knife wounds, and stripped him of everything he possessed. we remained two whole days within the walls of ani, examining the creations of a vanished civilisation, and collecting material with which i propose to deal in a separate chapter. at nine o'clock on the morning of the 19th of october we took leave of our aged host; and, leaving the city by the same gate through which we had entered it, pursued a track which leads in the direction of kars. clouds were clinging to the hill slopes upon our point of course and concealing the shield-shaped mass of alagöz. lost fragments of opaline vapour lay on the surface of the grassy plain. here and there we perceived the ruins of little chapels and other buildings, or the scattered débris of masonry. from these suburbs we looked back upon the bold line of the city walls, with their double girdle and towers at regular intervals. it seemed as though the stream of life had wandered off into other channels, leaving behind this eloquent evidence of its former course. we could not descry the form of man or of animal in the landscape; even the sky was without a wing. we rode in silence and at ease along a beaten path, where the burnt herbage had been worn away from the rich brown soil. west of ani, at a distance which leaves the site of the city open, rises a hill of irregular shape and moderate elevation, known as the alaja dagh. it is due to volcanic action, and covers a respectable area; its sides and summits are overgrown with grass. it is placed across the direct line between kars and the ancient capital, and compels you to deviate a little to the north. as we rose along the north-eastern slopes of the mass, we were lifted at a convenient altitude above the plains. outspread before us lay a vast extent of undulating ground, on the south, on the east, towards the north. after we had passed the small armenian village of jala, we could just discern in the lap of the expanse the city of alexandropol, at a distance of over twenty miles. we had again opened out the northern slopes of alagöz; and we could even see the meridional range which intersects it upon the east, and the gap through which we had journeyed to erivan. when one reflects upon the significance of this panorama, it must be recognised that our standpoint on the skirts of the alaja deserves a high rank among those apposite and commanding positions which armenia appears to lavish upon her admirers, and which imprint her features indelibly upon the mind. we might be said to have been standing on the dividing line between two landscapes and even of two climates. on the north lay the immense plains around kars and alexandropol, vague and grey in spite of the clear atmosphere, and with their distant limits shrouded in haze. these pass over, along the course of the deeply-bedded arpa, into the ever-widening valley of the araxes, bathed at all seasons in sun. had it not been for the projecting spurs of the hill which we were skirting, the prospect would have embraced the peaks of the ararat system, bounding the expanse upon the south. snow had fallen upon the upper slopes of the mountains--alagöz, no longer a shield but a towering parapet; the chaldir system, the border range in the far east. as we proceeded towards the west, the instructive lesson was developed--no ridge to cross, but continuous tracts of level land. the plain rises with gentle gradation from the right bank of the arpa to the labyrinth of hills on the west of kars. its surface is slightly vaulted, and the configuration of the ground is such that you lose the outlook towards the east. we passed through subotan, a prosperous village of turks and greeks. the gay dresses of the greek girls formed a brilliant patch of colour, and their trinkets sparkled in the sun, which was already high (fig. 69). education is provided in a little schoolhouse, built and maintained at the charges of the christian inhabitants, but supplied with a teacher by the state. a little further on we entered a second and smaller settlement, and again found ourselves among greeks. i am under the impression that these scattered colonies date from the campaigns of paskevich, when christians in considerable numbers accompanied his armies across the frontier after their evacuation of turkish territory. on and on we rode over the spacious plain, beating the brown and idle soil, with nothing to divert us from the simple pleasure of cantering along. vague tracks came converging towards us from the distance, the arteries along which the supplies of the fortress flow. it was evident that there was a pronounced slope of the ground upwards; and, at length, on the western horizon we opened out a long, low ridge, against which we could just discern without the aid of glasses the yellow masonry of the castle of kars (fig. 98, p. 406). as we neared the site, we were impressed by its strange and romantic character. from the hills upon the west a mass of gloomy basalt projects towards the east into the level and loamy land. concave towards the plain, to which it presents a line of cliffs, it forms an extensive bay and terminates on the east in a commanding promontory, called the karadagh. the answering horn of this sinuous line is composed or accentuated by the cluster of modern buildings which the russians have erected, and which jut out from the ancient city on the side of the cliff into the even ground. their white faces and iron roofing, coloured a quiet red or green, present a contrast to the black masonry which mounts the slope behind them--groups of houses, a few minarets, a large church. above these towers the well-preserved pile of the old castle--an object which is rendered the more conspicuous by the yellow stone of which it is composed. further eastwards along the summit of the ridge you see the ruins of the old armenian fortress, with the remains of a wall rising towards it from the foot of the cliff. in the bay itself you will always find a confused medley of sheep and cattle, of bullock-carts threading the piles of hay and stores. we were met and challenged by a gendarme upon our arrival, but were allowed to proceed to a modest inn. i am conscious of having hazarded to tire my reader with the continuous narrative of a journey of four days' duration and of more than the usual variety of interest. anxious to avoid diverting his attention from the features of the country, i have not suffered him to rest, as we rested, at ani; but have taken him without a break from the sunny depressions at the foot of ararat to the wintry highlands about kars. he has almost traversed from east to west one of the central regions of armenia; and i would ask him to reflect that he has not crossed a single mountain barrier, but has throughout been riding upon the margin or over the surface of immense plains. in so far as it may be possible to parcel out this level surface, a triple division is suggested to the mind. in the north the basin-like area of the plain of alexandropol (5000 feet) declines along the banks of the arpa chai; on the western side of the river the ground again rises and develops into the spacious plain of kars (5700 feet). in the south lies the sheltered valley of the araxes, commencing on the west with an elevation, in the neighbourhood of the confluence of the arpa, which is rather less than 3000 feet above the sea. chapter xviii ani, and the armenian kingdom of the middle ages in europe we may find examples of mediæval towns from which the tide of life has long since receded, and which have been preserved almost intact to the present day. less fortune attends the footsteps of the traveller in armenia, until he arrives before the walls and towers of the city on the arpa chai. it is perhaps to the complete desolation of the neighbourhood that is due this welcome surprise. no settlement has arisen in the immediate vicinity to despoil these architectural remains. favoured by the dryness of the armenian climate, the pink volcanic stone displays all the freshness of the day when it was fashioned by the mason's tool. even lichen has failed to effect much hold upon its surface, while our persistent ivies and sweet, irresistible wallflowers have not adventured into these sunny and treeless plains. we admire these buildings in much the same state and condition as when they delighted the eyes of armenian monarchs nine centuries ago. such a site would in western lands be at least occupied by a small town or village; the solitude of ani is not shared by any such presence; and the mood engendered by the spectacle of her many noble monuments is not disturbed by the contrast of commonplace successors or of miserable tenements, clinging to the creations of a culture that has disappeared. the impression of the ancient city which is perhaps likely to prove most permanent is due to the aspect from without of that long row of double walls with their even masonry and graceful towers at intervals (fig. 70, p. 369). how well they are seen from the floor of this plain without limits; how strange they look among surroundings which scarcely display a trace of man! when we reflect that we are face to face with the capital of a kingdom, towards which the roads converged from every direction, and which was situated in the midst of a fertile province, famous for the production of corn, we are the more affected by the bareness and the loneliness of the countryside, which is only traversed here and there by a few vague tracks. years upon years have elapsed since district and city throbbed with the pulse of human life. yet if the present be quite voiceless, the past is doubly eloquent; and by reason not only of these many memorials, with their countless inscriptions, but also happily because of the comparative richness of the material which has been preserved in literature. in the case of many an old armenian city, of which we shall visit the scanty remains, we have to deplore the broken skein of history. ani has been better treated both by time and by written records; and the dynasty which produced her splendour still lives in the lifelike narrative of the most attractive of the armenian writers of that age. [265] in the ninth century of our era the plains and mountains of armenia were divided between the two great contemporary powers which held sway in the east. the western portion of the country formed a part of the roman empire; while that on the east, comprising by far the largest and most populous area, was subject to the caliphs at baghdad. the span of this single century is sufficient to include the full splendour and the decay and incipient disruption of the caliphate. at its commencement harun-al-rashid (786-809) was real master of vast dominions--a personality round which the romance of the age collected to adorn the literature of all times. before its close many of these possessions had become parcelled out among petty dynasties, whose titular overlord--a mutaz (866-869), a muhtadi (869-870), a mutamid (870-892)--was scarcely better than a puppet in the hands of his turkish bodyguard. such was the period and such the political environment in which the armenian dynasty of the middle ages rose by successive steps to the position of kings of armenia--a rank which was recognised by their co-religionists, the greek cæsars, but which was conferred or confirmed by the commander of the faithful, within whose realm their dominions lay. [266] the native institutions of the armenian people were not unfavourable to such a development. at the present day they cannot be said to possess a class of nobles, and they are devoid of natural leaders. but in the ninth century their councils were governed by a strong territorial nobility, a relic of the period when they possessed their own independent kings of arsakid descent. the arsakid dynasty had struggled on into the fifth century, when it succumbed to the sasanian monarchy of persia and mesopotamia, and a persian governor was sent to rule over the land (a.d. 428). but the great nobles maintained and perhaps increased their ascendency; they were supported by the obstinate patriotism of the people; and the interval between the overthrow of the ancient and the rise of the mediæval kingdom is filled by the almost incessant clash of arms. from the east the pertinacity of the armenian race is challenged at first by the persians, eager to convert them to the religion of the magi, and next by the arabs, who, after supplanting the sasanian dynasty, seek to impose upon them the precepts of islam. their neighbours upon the west are scarcely less obtrusive; and we may discover beneath the religious controversies with their fellow-christians of the roman empire the same fervid self-assertion which has enabled this strange people to preserve, in the face of odds which appear to us to have been overwhelming, the inflexible individuality of their race. while their clergy are resisting the menaces or the blandishments of the church of the empire, their nobles are combating the worship of the persians or of the mohammedans at the head of the native levies. it thus happened that, when the bonds relaxed which bound the subject states to the arab caliphate, the armenians possessed, in their class of nobles as well as in their patriarchate, institutions which had been tested in the furnace of adversity during a period of over 400 years. two armenian families of princely rank were conspicuous at that time. the artsruni had extended their possessions during the domination of the arabs, until they comprised a vast territory and some of the richest districts in the neighbourhood of the ancient city of van. they claimed descent from one of the kings of assyria, whose two sons were reputed to have escaped to armenia after having perpetrated parricide. they drew their name from the lofty office which had been bestowed upon their ancestor, that of bearing before the arsakid king the emblem of the golden eagle--an emblem which is cherished by the armenian inhabitants of van at the present day as the distinctive ensign of their city and province. the family of the bagratuni or bagratids had attained a position in the centre and north of armenia which rivalled and perhaps surpassed that of the artsruni in the south. of jewish origin, they were already powerful in the earliest arsakid times, when they had been invested with the hereditary privilege of crowning the king. their ancient seats appear to have been placed in the chorokh country, in the vicinity of the town of ispir. but this nucleus became lost in the territory which they subsequently acquired, whether by marriage or by conquest. the province of shirak, by which is designated the extensive grain-growing district on the right bank of the arpa chai, was perhaps the richest appanage of their house; but they were masters of the armenian districts on the side of georgia, while towards the west and south their possessions at one time extended into the plain of pasin and the fertile districts about the present town of mush. a branch of this same family established themselves in georgia--the salubrious uplands and rich plains at the southern foot of caucasus, which are separated from the highlands of armenia by the belt of mountains on the right bank of the river kur. the georgians, like the armenians, professed the christian religion, and at the period with which we are dealing were being harassed by the arab caliphs. during the decline of the caliphate, when native impulses were revived in georgia as well as in armenia, the movement centred in a dynasty of bagratid descent. this dynasty outlived that of their kinsmen in armenia by many centuries. the georgian sovereigns weathered the storm of seljuk invasion in the eleventh century, which swept before it the feeble thrones of the armenian monarchs. perhaps they owed their escape in part to the geographical position of their country, removed as it was by a zone of intricate mountains from the highway of the armenian plains. yet their capital, tiflis, fell a prey to the same sultan who captured ani, the famous alp arslan. during the first half of the twelfth century they were successful in expelling the invaders, and a little later their kingdom was increased to the limits of an extensive empire during the reign of the great queen thamar. the georgian bagratids maintained their throne until the end of the eighteenth century, when the last king renounced his crown in favour of the russian tsars. [267] about the middle of the ninth century, to which i return from this brief digression, the reigning caliph, mutawakil, despatched an army into armenia with instructions to punish the inhabitants and to bring them over to the mohammedan faith. his severity had been invited by the behaviour of his subjects, who had fallen upon and killed their arab governor. the arab commander, by name bugha, acquitted himself of his congenial mission in a manner which accords with the best traditions of eastern statecraft. he crossed the taurus, descended into the plains about the murad, and took prisoners all the armenian chiefs of the districts through which his route lay. the bagratid family had become involved in the preceding troubles; one of their members was already in the hands of the caliph; and his two sons were now added to the train of the avenging general, who directed his march from the territory of taron (mush) to that of vaspurakan (van). the artsruni were not more fortunate in their resistance; their prince was captured, loaded with chains, and sent to the caliph. bugha pursued a leisurely course through the armenian country, giving over to the sword the less prominent among the people, selecting some for their birth or personal qualities as worthy of conversion to islam. when he arrived at the capital of central armenia, the city of dvin, in the neighbourhood of the present town of erivan, which had been conquered by the arabs in a.d. 642, [268] he was met by a native prince who bore the title of commander-in-chief [269] and the name of sembat. this notable was the great-grandson of a distinguished bagratid chief, ashot, who had been entrusted with the government of armenia by the last of the ommiad caliphs, and who had been deprived of sight by his countrymen, incensed at his arab proclivities. according to the armenians, this ashot was the progenitor alike of the georgian sovereigns and of the armenian dynasty of the middle ages. his descendant endeavoured to propitiate the tyrant, who appeared to listen to his fair words. but sembat was conveyed to baghdad with the rest of the prisoners, and accompanied the triumphal return of the caliph's legate. arrived at court, the armenian princes were offered the choice of islam and freedom or a painful and violent death. sembat was one of those who refused to abjure his religion and who perished as a martyr to the christian faith (a.d. 856 [c.]). [270] the pompous title of the deceased chieftain, together with his influence, descended to his son ashot. this prince had contrived to escape the meshes of the moslem net; and in the period which immediately followed the departure of the arab general he proved himself worthy to sustain the burden of his high position. in the flower of his age, he enjoyed the union of imposing physical qualities with habits of mind which gave peculiar weight to his counsels, and with a natural suavity of disposition and expression. an agreeable face--in which, however, the eyes, with their heavy black eyebrows, were shot with blood, like a speck of red upon a pearl--was set around with a magnificent beard, and sprang from broad shoulders in keeping with his fine stature. whatever defects might belong to such an exterior were compensated by the habitual purity of his life. the prince was missed at the sumptuous banquets of the rich, but his presence was felt by the poor in every action of their daily life. he once said, "the service of humanity is a life-long service"; and his precept was illustrated by the example of his own long life. how far the qualities of the son of sembat were instrumental in obtaining a reversal of the policy of the caliphate, or whether the complete change which ensued in the treatment of the armenians may have been due to causes of a different order, our historian has omitted to relate. five years after the martyrdom of his father and of the leading nobles of his country, ashot is invested by the new arab governor with the title of prince of princes, and becomes the recipient of almost royal distinctions (a.d. 861 [d.]). [271] those of the nobles who had become apostates during the recent persecution openly return to their old faith. for twenty-five years he continues to exercise his authority, which reposes not only upon the goodwill of the arab governor, but also upon the loyalty of his fellow-nobles, who consent that his family shall be assigned a special and quasiroyal rank, and be permanently elevated above all other princely families. at the end of this period the armenian nobility unanimously petition the caliph in favour of the elevation of their prince to the rank of king. their desire is conveyed to their suzerain by his representative in the country, a governor by name isa. it is accorded with the greatest readiness. a royal crown is despatched, and placed by isa himself upon the head of ashot. armenian royalty is revived in this branch of the bagratid family after an interval of over 450 years (a.d. 885 [d.]). the reigning cæsar, basil i., confirms this investiture, and accompanies the friendly sentiments of an attached ally and a spiritual father with the gift of a crown, the second to be worn by the new monarch. [272] for five years ashot continued in the exercise of his kingly prerogative, supported by the armenian nobles, the most powerful of whom he attached by marriage, and enjoying the favour both of the caliph and of the emperor. his capital was the city of bagaran, on the banks of the akhurean, the modern arpa chai, situated to the south of the later capital at ani. [273] he died in advanced age (a.d. 889 [c.] or 890 [d.]) [274] and with unimpaired reputation at a date when the empire of the caliphs was in process of dismemberment, and when a number of petty mussulman dynasties, such as the tahirids and the saffarids, had arisen in the adjacent lands. [275] we can scarcely doubt that his elevation was occasioned by the decline of the central authority; and he and his descendants were glad to purchase by the promise of an assured tribute the greater independence of the armenian people and their own ascendency. at the time of the death of ashot i. his son and successor sembat was absent on an expedition of conquest in the country of the upper kur. he received the homage of his subjects upon his arrival at erazgavors, a town in shirak, which was his own particular residence. thither repaired the prince of georgia, aternerseh, himself a bagratid, proffering his sympathy and his aid (a.d. 890 [c.]). the succession was hotly disputed by abas, brother of the deceased monarch, a vain and ambitious prince. his animosity appears to have been directed in the principal degree against the prince of georgia; he broke the peace which he was induced to make at the instance of the patriarch with that potentate, and at length he turned his arms against the province of shirak. the approach of sembat at the head of a numerous army compelled him to take refuge in a strong place, and his condition was desperate when he obtained from the clemency of his royal nephew a pardon which he had not deserved. sembat was already in possession of supreme power when he received from the arab governor of azerbaijan [276] on behalf of the caliph a royal crown such as had been bestowed upon his father. at the same time he confirmed the friendly relations which had subsisted between ashot and the byzantine empire. the reigning emperor, leo vi., received his ambassadors with great distinction, and dismissed them charged with valuable presents. in the missives between them the king of armenia was addressed as a beloved son, and the cæsar with the reverence due to a father. nor was this intercourse confined to a single and a splendid occasion; it appears to have been renewed every year. it naturally excited the jealousy of the arab governor of azerbaijan, the powerful neighbour of the new state upon the east. this individual, by name afshin, is depicted by the priestly historian with all the resources of the vocabulary of hate. he is a wild beast; he is armed with the poignard of perfidy, and his death is described as the outcome of a loathsome malady which destroyed the body before the soul descended to hell. throughout the reign we see him harassing the dominions of the armenian monarch; but his first expedition appears to have been met by a vigorous and successful resistance, which no doubt helped the remonstrances of sembat. at the head of his troops the king reasoned with his mohammedan adversary, and represented that his friendship with the emperor of the greeks was to the advantage of the master of afshin. "you yourselves," he said, "may at any moment have need of the support of the greeks, and your merchants require openings in greek territory, whence they will draw riches which will swell the treasury at baghdad." these advances were met on the part of the arab governor by the offer of a peace, which was duly ratified. afshin returned to azerbaijan, and the king retraced his steps up the araxes and appeared before the walls of dvin. this city, which was at this period the acknowledged capital of armenia, was reduced to an obedience from which it had lapsed. its situation in the neighbourhood of the present town of erivan was calculated to invest it with the character of a strong place on the side of the arab possessions in persia. its subjection to sembat does not appear to have been of long duration; during the subsequent portion of his reign we find it in the hands of the mohammedans, serving, it would seem, as an advanced base to the troops of afshin and of his successor. the diplomacy no less than the prowess of sembat was successful in other directions nearer home. if his kingdom remained essentially feudal in character, its limits were at least extended over the adjacent lands. on the west his sovereignty was acknowledged as far as the city of karin, the modern erzerum; while on the north-east and east it embraced the foot of caucasus and the shore of the caspian sea. the armenian princes who ruled in the country on the southern side of the barrier of mountains which culminate in ararat were attached to him by feudal or family ties; his name must at least have been respected among his countrymen beyond the limits of the lake of van. his ascendency was for a second time challenged by afshin, who advanced to nakhichevan and dvin; but he led his troops in person against the mussulmans, and inflicted upon them a signal defeat. the subsequent defection to his enemy of his nephew, the prince of vaspurakan (van), who was joined for a time by the prince of siunik, a province bordering that of van upon the north, does not appear to have materially shaken his power; we find him directing his attention to the outer limits of his territory, and endeavouring to establish his dominion not only over the country of taron (mush), but also as far south as the mesopotamian plains. this advance brought him into collision with an arab emir, named ahmed, who, in the decay of the caliphate, cherished pretensions to these districts. the armenian prince of taron was unable to withstand his mussulman adversary, and sembat was obliged to take the field in person (a.d. 896 [c.]). at the head of a numerous army he marched towards taron, west of which his enemy was encamped. the reverse of his arms was due to the treachery of a countryman, a prince belonging to the province of vaspurakan; and, indeed, the jealousy of the chiefs of the van country seems to have paved the way for the successes of his mussulman neighbours. his old enemy afshin was not slow to profit by this turn of fortune. after attempting in vain to seduce the loyalty of the northern feudatories of sembat, he entered the province of kars and laid siege to that fortress. thither had taken refuge the armenian queen, a daughter of the king of kolchis, and several of the wives of the principal nobles. the capitulation of kars and the capture of the queen came as a melancholy pendant to the disaster of the king's arms in the south. he was obliged to purchase peace on humiliating terms, and to give his niece in marriage to the mohammedan potentate. but it was not long before hostilities were again resumed in the same quarter. afshin directed his march towards the city of tiflis, swept like a whirlwind through the georgian country, and advanced upon shirak. sembat and his army were obliged to take refuge in the strong places of his ally aternerseh, upon whom he had previously bestowed a royal crown; while his adversary, after having endeavoured in vain to sap the loyalty of the georgian prince, retraced his steps along the araxes to azerbaijan. afshin was meditating a fresh attack when he fell a victim to a malignant malady, which appears also to have made ravages among his troops (901 [st.-m.], 898-99 [d.]). the tyrant was succeeded by his brother yusuf in the government of azerbaijan. upon the accession of this potentate the armenian monarch despatched an embassy to the caliph at baghdad with the view of contracting a stable alliance with the nominal sovereign of persia and of that portion of armenia which lay within the arab sphere. his advances were well received by the successor of the prophet, who confirmed him in his royal dignity. [277] although yusuf continued to pursue the hostile policy of his predecessor, he appears to have been thwarted by the greater readiness of sembat. armenia enjoyed a short respite from the inroads of the mussulmans. "at this period," says our historian, who is fond of allegory, "our saviour visited the country of the armenians, and protected their lives and property. lands were bestowed, vines were planted and groves of olive-trees; the most ancient fruit-trees yielded their fruits. the harvests produced corn in excessive abundance; the cellars were filled with wine when the vintage had been gathered in. the mountains were in great joy, and so were the herdsmen and the shepherds, because of the quantity of pasturage and the increase in the flocks. the chiefs and notables of our country lived in perfect security and were not afraid of depredations; they were free to bestow their leisure and zeal upon the construction of churches in solid stone, with which they graced the towns, the open country, and the desert places." the king enjoyed the favour of his byzantine ally, and the gifts of heaven were supplemented by the imperial presents. the ambition of the king of kolchis, who was striving to extend his dominions eastwards at the expense of his relative, the armenian monarch, was restrained by a conjunction of the armenian forces with those of the king of georgia; the unhappy kinglet was taken prisoner and lodged in a fortress, from which he was released by the clemency of his captor and restored to his possessions. this mild treatment of a rival excited the jealousy of aternerseh; the attached ally became converted into a perfidious enemy; and the incident, while it seems to mark the culmination of this brighter era, was the prelude of the domestic and foreign calamities in which the reign of sembat was brought to a tragic close. a curious incident now occurs, which is characteristic of the times (a.d. 905 [st.-m.]). yusuf prepares in secret to sever his allegiance to the caliph, and goes so far as to issue orders in his own name. apprised of his proceedings, the sovereign at baghdad sends messengers throughout his dominions to effect a rising against his rebellious servant. one of the highest in rank of these envoys arrives at the court of the armenian monarch, and delivers a personal letter requiring the prince to assemble his forces and to march against the emir of azerbaijan. as an inducement, the vassal is remitted the payment of a year's tribute. this request or command was at once difficult to comply with and impossible to elude or reject. sembat was bound to yusuf by the terms of a treaty, and still more forcibly deterred from offending his neighbour by motives of interest. it was only natural that he should have recourse to perfidy, the usual expedient in such circumstances among eastern princes. but his double-dealing was of transitory advantage: and it may, perhaps, be excused by the reflection that his own weight would have been insufficient to turn the scale to the advantage of either side. yusuf affected submission to his spiritual and temporal superior; the armenians were confronted by a coalition of the contending influences; and the unhappy king was besieged by emissaries from both the mussulman princes, demanding the arrears of tribute in imperious terms. on four occasions he had succeeded in acquitting his obligations by making the prescribed payment in kind; but this time he was compelled to discharge the debt in money, and to impose taxes which strained the structure of his feudal rule. a combination of some of the nobles with aternerseh of georgia was the outcome of these events. ani, which was then a fortress, was handed over to aternerseh, together with the treasures of the royal palace at erazgavors. sembat at the head of his forces hurried back to shirak, whereupon the conspirators evacuated the province, laden with spoils. the armenian monarch carried the war into the territory of aternerseh, who was constrained to sue for peace. many of the revolted nobles fell into the hands of their sovereign, who, after putting out their eyes, dispatched some to the byzantine emperor for custody and others to the king of kolchis. this rising had no sooner been quelled than the reigning prince of vaspurakan separated himself from the king. the cause of quarrel was a dispute about the town of nakhichevan in the valley of the araxes, which sembat had conferred on another noble, but to which this prince had a hereditary claim. gagik--such was his name--had recourse to the common enemy, yusuf, who was eager to profit by such dissension among his christian neighbours. the emir bestowed upon him a royal crown in order to perpetuate his rivalry with sembat. it was all in vain that our historian, who was at that time patriarch, endeavoured to avert the rising storm. he even journeyed to the court of the emir in azerbaijan, taking with him magnificent presents, among which were included some of the sacred vessels belonging to the churches. he was treated with distinction by his mussulman host so long as his gifts held out. when these were exhausted he was thrown into prison, where he lingered for a considerable time. the hardships of his condition were aggravated by the mortification which he must have experienced at the complete failure of his good offices. he was strictly refused an audience of his countryman, king gagik, who shortly afterwards arrived at the court of yusuf in order to concert an invasion of the territory of sembat. at the approach of spring the emir set out for armenia, taking with him the unhappy patriarch, loaded with chains. in the neighbourhood of nakhichevan were received the messengers of gagik, who announced the approach of their master with his troops (a.d. 909 [st. m.]). sembat endeavoured to pacify his enemy by a payment of money, which the emir swallowed without arresting his advance. the king was quite unable to cope with the forces arrayed against him; he fled to the fortresses of georgia, whither he was pursued by his implacable adversary. it is unnecessary to follow in detail the developments of a situation, of which the historical interest consists in the light which it throws upon the armenian monarchy of the middle ages, and upon the relations of that monarchy to the neighbouring states. we see the artsrunian prince of the extensive province of vaspurakan turning his arms against his own countrymen and their bagratid king, and in active alliance with the enemies of his religion and race. the mussulman horsemen overran the fertile plains of armenia, and the tardy repentance of gagik came too late. sembat appealed in vain to the suzerain at baghdad, who was too much occupied by domestic troubles to intervene. better success attended his entreaties at the byzantine court, and his old friend, leo, collected troops and marched in person to his assistance. the death of the emperor at the inception of the enterprise, and the internal troubles of the new reign, removed all hope of succour from the side of the roman provinces. the christian state in the heart of asia seemed doomed to destruction, and the king and queen were taken prisoners. sembat was conducted to dvin, where he was barbarously tortured in the presence of the populace. every indignity was inflicted upon him, and each refinement of oriental cruelty; after he had expired, his body was nailed to a wooden stake and exhibited to the townspeople (a.d. 914 [c.]). a desperate effort was made by his son ashot to retrieve the fortunes of the armenian arms. he expelled the mohammedans from many of the fortified places which they had occupied, and allied himself closely with the king of georgia, who placed the crown of armenia upon his head. yusuf was not slow to revenge the reverses of his adherents, and the whole country was given over to war. the wretched inhabitants fled to the mountains and the deserts; the remnant wandered about in a state of nakedness, and experienced all the tortures of famine. when winter came thousands perished in the snow. if they fell into the hands of the enemy they were either massacred or subjected to every description of torture. in many cases they were offered liberty and even affluence if they would abjure the christian religion; but these advances were almost always without effect. our historian relates with pride the tragic incidents of this period of martyrdom; and the profession of faith which he puts in the mouth of one of the victims is worthy of the highest conceptions of religious minds. "we are christians," exclaimed a young noble in the presence of yusuf; "we believe in god, who is truth and who dwells in the midst of light without limits." these afflictions might have excited the compassion of their christian neighbours. but perhaps these neighbours were conscious of their own helplessness; they preferred to ride on the wave of the mussulman invasion, and to share in the spoils of the armenian provinces. whole towns were destroyed and whole countrysides depopulated; while the nobles, instead of combining, were involved in civil war. this state of affairs continued for no less than seven years, exhausting the country and denuding it of cultivation. "we sow, but we do not reap; we plant, but gather not the fruit; the fig-tree bears not, and the vine and olive-tree are barren. we collect a little and abandon the rest." page after page our author unfolds the tale of all the miseries which were endured by himself and his countrymen. he himself was a refugee at the court of the king of georgia, where he was in correspondence with the patriarch of constantinople. it was the aim of byzantine policy to unite the christian nations of transcaucasia with the armenians; and the historian, as the spiritual head of the latter people, used his best endeavours towards this end. issuing from his retreat, he made his way to the province of taron (mush), whence he addressed a long missive to the byzantine cæsar (a.d. 920 [c.]). in touching terms he entreated him to become the avenger of the armenian christians, whom he represented as the spiritual sons and servants of constantine. at his instance the byzantine court despatched an imperial legate to the son of sembat, with the view of renewing the relations which had subsisted between his father and the deceased ruler of the eastern empire. our writer met this envoy in the territory of taron, and accompanied him to the presence of ashot. the prince returned with the legate to constantinople (a.d. 921 [c.]), where he was received in a manner becoming his royal rank. he was addressed as the son of a martyr and the spiritual son of the cæsar, was arrayed in purple and invested with the insignia of royalty. meanwhile the historian was sojourning in the province of terjan, a district which has retained its name to the present day. he naïvely exhibits the difficulties of his position, endeavouring, as he was, to avoid complying with the pressing invitations to the imperial city which were lavished upon him by his spiritual brothers of the greek church. he was deterred by the fear that he would be pressed to conform to the doctrine which had been laid down at the council of chalcedon. his peregrinations brought him to the scenes where st. gregory the illuminator passed his later years in the seclusion of an anchorite. he describes the cavern where the saint lived, and where his remains were deposited, to be removed by an angel to a grave in the vicinity. his account of this lonely place, so difficult of access, agrees in a striking manner with that of a modern traveller, which it invests with an impressive reality. [278] the patriarch found the district inhabited by anchorites, who maintained an altar in the holy cave. in the meantime yusuf had become embroiled with his old ally of vaspurakan, and the war was being carried into the southern province. a vigorous resistance was offered by king gagik, who owed his title to his enemy. hostilities appear to have lingered on without decisive result. such was the state of affairs when king ashot ii. returned to his dominions, accompanied by several generals of the roman empire, together with a considerable detachment of the imperial troops. this material support, as well as a subsidy in money, enabled him to recover his position among his feudatories; and we may conclude that the relations between himself and king gagik had become improved by the change in the attitude of the latter towards the mussulman emir. but that crafty statesman knew too well the weak spots in the political organisation of the armenians. if two kings did not suffice to divide his opponents, it could do no harm and might bring him fortune to create a third. his choice fell upon a cousin of king ashot, who had previously been invested by that monarch with the title of general-in-chief. his name, which was also ashot, introduces further confusion into the turbid narrative of the priestly historian. the stage becomes filled with a crowd of nobles, contending with each other and combining to mutual destruction round the persons of the two ashots. behind these figures emerge those of the king of kolchis and the king of georgia, while in the background we perceive the light cavalry of the mohammedans and the gorgeous functionaries of the byzantine empire. it is scarcely possible during this troubled period to follow the threads of the emir's policy. no sooner has he placed a crown upon the forehead of the one ashot, than he invests the other with similar insignia of royalty. [279] nor does the king of the van country yield in splendour to his colleagues; the caliph himself sends him a crown and magnificent robes. this act excites the fury of the emir of azerbaijan, who presently revolts from his sovereign at baghdad. his capture and imprisonment removed for awhile the sword suspended over the head of gagik, and were the occasion of a general although transitory improvement in the condition of the armenian provinces. the caliph sent one of the highest in rank of the officers about his person to take over the administration of the province of his rebellious emir. this official not only concluded a treaty of peace and alliance with ashot ii. (son of king sembat), but also conferred upon him the title of shahanshah, or king of kings. in this manner the bagratid dynasty of shirak recovered their titular sovereignty over armenia; and the fact illustrates a marked divergence between the policy of the caliphate, which appears to have desired a strong armenia, and that of the semi-independent emirs of azerbaijan, who strove incessantly to prepare the country for their own yoke. on the other hand, while the caliphs were anxious to secure a counterpoise to their turbulent governors, the byzantine cæsars were well pleased by any accretion of strength to a buffer state which was attached to themselves by community of faith. our historian was not spared to witness the splendour of this dynasty, as it is manifested in the noble buildings of their capital, ani, which had not yet become a royal residence. his closing years were spent under a recrudescence of the old troubles--disunion from within and new inroads of the mussulmans from without. the release of yusuf restored this malefactor to the scene of his iniquities; [280] he crossed the kurdish mountains, and descended into the territory of vaspurakan. king gagik was in arrears with several instalments of the annual tribute, and was obliged to collect all the available riches of his country and deliver them up to his implacable foe. yusuf continued his journey to persia, and, upon his arrival, sent one of his officers to assert his authority over the armenian provinces. there ensued an era of constant activity on the part of the mussulmans. the patriarch became a fugitive, taking refuge in the little island of lake sevan, and proceeding thence to a small castle in his own possession. but the enemy surrounded the place and took him prisoner, together with the companions of his flight. escaping from their clutches, he made his way to the court of ashot, who was residing in the royal palace of bagaran; and the curtain falls upon his narrative while he is on a visit to king gagik, with whom he appears to have maintained relations which were perhaps prompted by motives of interest, since the patriarchal palace and domains were situated within his dominions. [281] panic had taken hold of the feudal levies, and his countrymen were being massacred (924 [c.]). in one of the closing sentences in which he describes that reign of terror he, in fact, resumes the larger history of his race: "who can foretell our future? spare me the attempt. we are like a harvest reaped by bad husbandmen amidst encircling gloom and cloud." [282] we close these graphic pages with the feeling that we have been privileged to gain some insight into the state of the country during the reigns of the bagratid sovereigns, as well as to estimate the nature of their rule. if i have eliminated by this brief abstract whole chapters of our author, i may perhaps have saved my reader from becoming wearied by his declamations, and from losing the main thread of his thrilling narrative among the side issues in which he allows it to become involved. the sovereignty of the bagratids was essentially feudal in character; and the loose ties of such a political organisation were ill adapted to withstand the strain to which they were subjected at the hands of their mussulman neighbours. indeed, the fact that such a dynasty could ever have arisen in the heart of asia, among a people which could not have numbered more than a few millions of souls, can only be explained by the comparative weakness of their contemporaries professing the mohammedan faith. the armenian historians are fond of railing upon their countrymen on account of the internal divisions which precipitated their political fall. they are not less inclined to attribute the miseries of their nation to their desertion in critical moments by the greek empire. but they do not appear to have reflected that the frequent instances of treachery among the armenian nobles need not have been due to any inherent defects in the character of the armenian people. similar examples abound in the annals of our european nations while they were still in the feudal stage of development. again, the greeks, while they were no doubt prejudiced by dogmatic differences, might, one cannot doubt, have established a good case for their abstention from more strenuous succour of the young state. their subsidies were spent, and their troops were marched across asia with little further result than the aggrandisement of one princelet at the expense of a competing claimant of the same race. the lesson which may be derived from a perusal of this contemporary record explains to us many points which would otherwise be obscure in the much more meagre annals of the subsequent period which witnessed the frail blossoming and premature destruction of the armenian kingdom of the middle ages. when the hordes of turks descended from the valleys of the tien-shan and swept across the settled territories of persia towards the richest portions of the old world, they found upon the high road of the armenian tableland a state which was as little adapted to provide a bulwark against their invasions as any other of the fissiparous fragments of the caliphs' empire. the narrative of john the patriarch brings us down to the closing years of ashot, second king of that name. the picture which he has presented of the troubled reigns of these bagratid sovereigns may enable us to dispense with the repetition of similar struggles during the reigns of their successors. even were i permitted by the scope of this work and by the material at my disposal to assign to that later period the same proportion of space which has been devoted to the actions of the first three kings, i should run the risk of inflicting upon my reader the same fatigue which i have myself experienced by the perusal of a samuel of ani [283] and a matthew of edessa, [284] to say nothing of the industrious compilers of our own times. the storm-clouds, beneath which the work of the priestly annalist closes, appear to have lifted over the setting of ashot's career; and a mild light envelops the reign of his brother abas, who succeeded him on the throne. this tranquil era seems to have been induced by the weakness or somnolence of the neighbours of abas. the activity of the sajid family in azerbaijan, which had been manifest in the exploits of afshin and of yusuf, came to an end at the commencement of his reign. the caliphate was becoming more and more the shadow of a reality; and the death of radi (a.d. 940) removed the last of the successors of the prophet who sustained a measure of personal power and prestige. in the west the armenian monarch might observe without anxiety the enforced seclusion of the cæsar, constantine the seventh, as well as the later application of his benignant mind to the affairs of state. such a wholesome respite was employed by king and nobles in adorning armenia with churches and monasteries. in the city of kars, where abas appears to have placed the seat of government, a cathedral of unusual grandeur rose into being. [285] the pugnacity of the race was exercised in fierce religious dissensions with the church of the empire. the western provinces, subject to the cæsars and administered by them, were convulsed by the rival battle-cries of greeks and armenians, each imputing to the other heretical opinions upon the unfathomable subject of the divinity of christ. many armenians took refuge within the dominions of the bagratid king; and if their babes had been baptized according to the greek ritual, the ceremony was performed a second time by the jealous clergy of the armenian church (944 [c.]). but it was under the next two reigns that the brilliancy of the dynasty attained the culminating point. upon the death of abas his son ashot assumed the government; and it was perhaps due to a combination of domestic dissensions and war with his neighbours that for ten years he remained an uncrowned king. on the part of the mussulmans, an arab emir, whom the historians name hamdun, and who may perhaps be identified with the powerful adversary of the cæsars in mesopotamia, seif-ed-daula of the hamdanid family, made incursions into the southerly provinces of armenia, and even threatened the dominions of ashot. the signal victory of the armenian monarch (a.d. 960) [286] appears to have gratified the caliph and his masters the buwayhids, a petty dynasty which had arisen in persia, and into whose hands had fallen baghdad (945). the same event may have been instrumental in consolidating the power of ashot at home. in the year 961 he was anointed king at ani, in the presence and with the consent of the great nobles. the rulers of the neighbouring states, mussulman and christian, signified their goodwill by sending valuable presents. his suzerain at baghdad bestowed upon him a royal crown, addressing him as shah-i-armen or armenian shah. but we must impute to this sovereign a new division of authority, and a consequent reduction of the resisting powers of the armenian nation in face of foreign aggression. by investing his brother mushegh with royal prerogatives at kars, he added yet another to the number of kinglets whose mutual jealousies prepared the way for the passage of the seljuk turks towards the mediterranean and the black sea. his successor continued and even developed this baneful policy, adding to the kings of kars the kings of lori, in the mountains which border armenia upon the north. this latter bagratid dynasty struggled on into the thirteenth century; but the kings of kars made over their realm to the cæsar constantine the tenth after the capture of ani by the seljuks under alp arslan. the reign of ashot the third is contemporary with the campaigns of nikephorus phokas and of john zimiskes against the saracens. throughout this period the arab emirs of syria and mesopotamia are actively engaged in harassing the outposts of the great christian empire, and are not less actively repulsed. the conceptions of the crusaders are anticipated by these generals over a century before the arrival of the western chivalry. both successively ascended the throne of the cæsars; and it was in the capacity of emperor of the romans that zimiskes, himself of armenian descent, summoned the armenian monarch to attach to his army a contingent of troops. his expedition appears to have excited the alarm of the armenians; and the native levies had been marshalled to the proportions of a large army under the command of the three armenian kinglets, ashot, his colleague of kars, and his colleague of van. zimiskes advanced into the territory of mush; but an alliance was secured by the despatch of a body of 10,000 armenian warriors to share in the victories which were about to secure the triumph of the imperial arms over the followers of the prophet. these brilliant feats are narrated for the benefit of king ashot in a despatch which was addressed to him by the emperor, and which has been preserved by matthew of edessa. the armenian monarch is styled shahinshah of great armenia, the spiritual son of the cæsar (a.d. 974). [287] the reign of this prince has a special interest for the traveller to ani; for it is at this period that the city on the arpa emerges from the condition of a mere fortress into the splendour of a royal residence and capital of a kingdom. ashot the third is known to have added both to the defences and to the public buildings of a town which had witnessed the ceremony of his coronation. [288] it was considerably enlarged by his son and successor, sembat the second, who built the outer wall in face of which i have brought my reader at the commencement of this chapter. [289] sembat also laid the foundations of the cathedral, but died before it was completed. [290] the title which is assigned to this king by the armenian historians dissembles with truly oriental ingenuity the inherent weakness of the structure which supported his throne. he is styled the king of armenian kings, shahinshah-armen. sembat was succeeded by his brother gagik the first, a prince who is described as at once victorious in the field and strenuous in the works of peace. his military qualities may have been displayed in a campaign against the mussulmans under the emir of azerbaijan, mamlun. but the credit of the victory over this successor of the afshins and the yusufs belongs in the principal degree to an armenian prince of the country of akhaltsykh, david, who endeavoured, at the head of forces composed of georgians and armenians, to wrest from the moslem yoke the fortresses in the south of armenia, melazkert, akhlat, arjish. [291] it is rather in the sphere of a patron of art that we may be able to remember gagik. it was during his reign that the noble cathedral at ani was brought to completion, largely at the expense and by the initiative of his queen. [292] he built another of the great churches which adorned his capital, that of the illuminator on the side of the valley of flowers. [293] the monastery of marmashen, near alexandropol, was constructed at this period by one of the armenian princes, vahram. [294] lastly, the seat of the patriarchate was removed to ani from the neighbouring town of arghina. [295] upon the death of king gagik the eldest of his three sons ascended the ancestral throne. rare natural intelligence belonged to john sembat-the monarch is known under either name; but these mental qualities were perhaps clouded by an excessive corpulency. on the other hand, his brother ashot displayed the union of physical symmetry to ardent courage and passion for war. the man of action chafed under the supremacy of the peaceable civilian; and no sooner was the natural heir in possession of his heritage than his ambitious brother broke into open revolt. a peace was at length concluded upon the terms that john should reign in shirak, with the capital ani, and ashot over the remainder of his father's dominions. [296] this compact was observed at least so far that ashot the fourth was never permitted by his jealous colleague to enter the capital. [297] but the civil war loosened the bonds which attached the feudatories to their king, and the neighbouring states to a dynasty in its strength. the one partner was obliged to have recourse to the cæsar basil; and it was not without the assistance of a contingent of imperial troops that ashot iv. imposed his rule upon his allotted territories. the other was defeated at the commencement of his reign by the bagratid king of abkhasia and georgia, whose troops entered and pillaged ani. [298] these events appear to have been followed by a period of comparative tranquillity, during which either monarch was enabled to recover breath. but the mussulman emirs were encroaching; the seljuk turks were harrying the frontiers; and the armenian nation, the natural bulwark against their invasions, was distracted by the separate counsels of the king with ani and the king without ani, of the king of lori and the king of kars. the king of van, upon whom the brunt of the mussulman and turkish incursions had fallen, was preparing or had already accomplished the cession of his kingdom to the cæsar, in despair of withstanding these unceasing assaults. the tribes composing the wave of the great turkish invasion appear upon the stage of armenian history as early as the commencement of the eleventh century. [299] the aspect and dress of these savages were as unfamiliar to the armenians as their mode of conducting war. the christian warriors, armed with the sword, encountered swarms of archers whose long hair floated behind them like that of women. [300] the signal defeat of his son david by these nomads about the year 1018 caused the reigning king of the van country to lose heart. the news was brought to him while he was residing in the delicious town of vostan, upon the wooded spurs of the kurdish mountains overlooking the lake of van. his despondency was confirmed by the recollection of a prophecy in which st. nerses, the fifth successor of st. gregory, had foretold the advent of great calamities at the hands of a barbarous people a thousand years after the divine mission of christ. senekerim despatched his son to the court of constantinople, where he was received with the greatest kindness by the emperor basil ii. the cæsar accepted the gift of his extensive and populous realm, and gave in exchange a secure retreat within the borders of the empire, the city and territory of sivas (a.d. 1021). an imperial governor was sent to take over the ceded dominions, in which were included no less than 72 fortresses, 4000 villages, and 8 towns. [301] some display of force was necessary in order to fasten upon the southern province the rule of the byzantine monarchs; and it is probable that the measures taken to assert their authority still further enfeebled the rampart they had come to defend. the progress of the shepherds may be traced through the pages of the armenian historians during the ensuing years. in a.d. 1021 they advanced from azerbaijan upon the town of nakhichevan under the conduct of their prince, the famous toghrul bey. this incursion was directed up the valley of the araxes into the country about ararat. it was resisted by a force of georgians, who retired without coming to an engagement, and, a little later, by a small detachment of the armenian army under vasak, the commander-in-chief. but no concerted action was taken against the invaders, the armenians contenting themselves with deeds of personal prowess, and the turkomans swarming over the settled country, plundering, destroying, and putting the inhabitants to the sword. [302] in the year 1042 they were encountered by the king of armenia, gagik, the successor of john sembat and ashot. at the head of his troops he inflicted upon them a signal defeat on the banks of the zanga, the river of erivan. the turks retired into the van country, which they devastated anew. [303] three years later they appeared again in the same province; but this time they were fugitives from mesopotamia, where they had been repulsed by the emir of mosul. their prayer for a safe passage home into persia was refused by the imperial governor residing at arjish, on the lake of van. but the forces at his disposal were routed by the tribesmen, who took him prisoner and put him to death. [304] the turks returned in greater numbers during the following years, laying waste the southern province, flooding northwards into pasin and into the valley of the chorokh. to this period belong the sack of arzen (near erzerum) in 1049, and the pillage of kars and massacre of its inhabitants in 1050. neither the imperial generals nor their georgian and armenian dependents were successful in making headway against the storm. [305] the year 1054 was made memorable in the native annals by the siege of melazkert. toghrul had arrived at the head of an immense army in the districts bordering the lake of van on the side of azerbaijan. the town of berkri was taken by assault, that of arjish purchased immunity; and the conqueror led his host across the level country at the foot of sipan to the walls of the fortress on the murad. melazkert was at that time in the possession of the empire, and was stoutly defended by its governor. after a close investiture, during which the garrison displayed great resource and bravery, the seljuk king was constrained to retire. but he had already despatched detachments of his army in all directions; the turks penetrated as far north as the slopes of caucasus and the pontic forests, and as far south as the mountains bordering the southern shore of lake van. [306] the area of their raids was still further extended during the subsequent decade. the territory of mush was overrun in 1058; and the lonely cloister of surb karapet, which overlooks that extensive plain, witnessed the prowess of the armenian chiefs, who directed their gaze towards it before falling upon their savage foes. [307] these bands had perhaps returned from the sack of malatia beyond and on the west of the euphrates. [308] in the following year the advancing tide reached the city of sivas, that peaceful haven in the interior of asia minor which had been allotted to king senekerim, and which was now in possession of his sons. these princes fled for their life, and the turks were for a moment arrested by the spectacle of the multitude of white domes, belonging to the churches, which they mistook for the tents of their enemy. but both the city and the plain of sivas were given over to pillage and massacre; streets and countryside were deluged with blood. [309] north, south, and west spread the relentless inundation; at one time the current sets towards the territory of karin (erzerum), at another it eddies around the mountains in the south between diarbekr and palu. [310] armenian patriots of the present day brand the memory of king senekerim, the artsrunian, and insult his tomb in the cloister of varag, overlooking van. no more lenient judgment is meted out to the bagratid king of ani, who, as early as the year 1022, willed away his dominions to the same cæsar who had supplanted the sovereign of the southern province. but these events are but the outward signs of a general retreat of the armenians before the advance of turks and kurds, battering in the gates of the caliphate and pressing forward into the settled countries. [311] a fairer view might impute it to these christian kinglets that they failed to stand their ground upon the bulwarks of eastern christendom, drawing support from their powerful neighbours of the same faith, who were welded together in a single and magnificent empire. but that empire, so justly respected by the mussulmans as the realm of the romans, was an object of particular aversion to the armenians as the home or the prey of the hated and unorthodox greeks. on every page of armenian history is written large the mutual suspicion which envenomed the relations of the two races. where co-operation might have seemed impossible we may perhaps excuse the abdication of the weaker party, and even justify the usurpation of the stronger. and the judicial historian, who may sift the facts with greater care than the inquisitive traveller, will perhaps conclude that the blame must be laid on wider shoulders--upon the pan-greek policy of the byzantine cæsars and their masterful hierarchy, and upon the perversity of two cultured and christian peoples, who, rather than compose or postpone their quarrels, threw this culture and this religion into the maw of savages. at the time when the bagratid kingdom of armenia was suffering from a fresh division of the regal authority under john sembat and ashot, the neighbouring empire was administered by a worthy successor of nikephorus and of zimiskes. the emperor basil the second stands out in the byzantine annals as a monarch who did not disgrace the title of the roman cæsars. his personal intervention in the affairs of armenia dates from the reign of gagik the first, and was occasioned by the death of the prince of the akhaltsykh country, david, who had during his lifetime been a fast ally of the emperor, and who had named him heir to his principality. basil hurried to armenia to take over his new possessions; he was greeted by the kings of kars and of van; but king gagik excited his displeasure and provoked his resentment by somewhat pointedly remaining away. the cæsar appears to have made a peregrination of the armenian country, visiting shirak, and perhaps occupying some of the fortresses in the south, such as akhlat, melazkert, and arjish. [312] years later he was again summoned to the scene of his former successes; but on this occasion it was his duty to combat the folly of two christian princes who had taken up arms against that empire which alone could save them from their doom. king george the first of georgia, in concert with king john sembat of ani, had been raiding in the imperial dominions. basil established his camp in the plain of erzerum, and summoned the georgian monarch to submit. upon the failure of his embassies he made his way by the plain of pasin to the territory of kars. the armies came together in the neighbourhood of lake chaldir; and if the issue of a furious engagement may have seemed uncertain, the result was established by the retirement of the georgians into their strong places, and by the devastation of their country by the imperial forces, which included contingents of barbarous peoples such as russians and bulgarians. the emperor spent the winter in the neighbourhood of trebizond, where he received an envoy from the king of ani, no less a person than the patriarch, accompanied by twelve bishops, seventy monks, two scholars, and three hundred knights. the presence no less than the gifts of this distinguished embassy might have appeased the just wrath of the most christian emperor; but his expectations were perhaps exceeded by the production of a testament in which john sembat named him the heir to his dominions. this voluntary cession (a.d. 1022) secured the immunity of the kingdom of ani; and basil was free to exact his terms from the georgian. measures were taken to ensure the future safety of the domains of akhaltsykh, and the imperial army was paraded upon the extremities of the armenian country, carrying fear into the hearts of the inhabitants of azerbaijan. basil returned to his distant capital, having smoothed the way for the extension of the empire across the natural bridge of the asiatic highlands. the masters of akhaltsykh in the north and of van in the south could afford to wait for the death of a feeble and childless king. [313] but the emperor basil died in the year 1025, and was followed upon the throne by no less than six sovereigns within the space of seventeen years. his bold policy was committed to feeble hands and incapable brains; and perhaps the testament of king john was forgotten by the emperor romanus when he bestowed his niece in marriage upon its author. [314] the bridegroom did not profit by this opportunity of producing an heir who might have rivalled the claims of the heir of basil. upon the death of john, which occurred some years after this event, the reigning emperor, michael, took steps to enforce those claims. one of the most powerful of the armenian nobles, by name sargis, supported the cession of the kingdom in accordance with the imperial demand. his proposal was resisted by his compeers, and the imperial forces were despatched into shirak. arrived under the walls of ani, they were surprised by a sally of the garrison, who were led by the chiefs of the faction opposed to sargis, under the supreme command of the intrepid vahram (a.d. 1041). the greek army was routed after incurring heavy losses, and the river of ani was reddened by the blood of the greeks. gagik, the son of king ashot, who was then a mere youth, was raised to his uncle's throne; and the hateful sargis was taken prisoner by the successful party, but restored to liberty by the clemency of the young king. the imperial anger continued to harass an inexperienced prince who was regarded by the byzantine court as an usurper; but the death of michael in the same year suspended the delivery of a decisive blow. his nephew, another michael, ruled or tyrannised for a few months; the disorders of his reign were followed by those consequent upon his expulsion; and a short period was perhaps necessary for his successor, constantine monomachus, to establish himself upon the throne. the revenge which he inherited against the kingdom of ani was stimulated by the intrigues of sargis, who suggested that the youthful gagik should be enticed to constantinople, in order to smooth the way for the surrender of the city. the promises of the emperor, and the oaths of the nobles that they would conserve his capital during his absence, were successful in drawing the monarch away; but a considerable display of force was rendered necessary before the garrison could be induced to surrender ani. after a first reverse, measures were taken by the absent emperor to secure the triumph of his arms. a kurdish emir, who was powerful in karabagh and the valley of the araxes, was induced to join his forces to those of the empire; and matters had become hopeless when the city was delivered over to the emissary of the cæsar by the notables in concert with the patriarch (a.d. 1045). king gagik was allotted a territory in cappadocia and a palace at constantinople. a greek governor was despatched to take over ani and the new possessions, which placed the crown upon the extension of the roman empire along the valley of the araxes and round the shores of lake van. [315] in this manner and by these several stages the protagonists in a world struggle were brought face to face. the seljuks reinforced the failing energies of islam, but infused into the body to which they lent new vigour an intractable strain of barbarism which it has retained to the present day. on the high-road of their depredations they were now confronted by a redoubtable adversary, the champion of christianity and of whatever culture the age possessed. but that religion, become debased, had already sapped the foundations of culture; the winged mind of the greeks had been imprisoned by a rigorous dogmatism; and their bodies were either crushed by the discipline of the monastery or exhausted by the refinements of the life of sensual pleasure. the greatness of their inheritance and the extent of the resources which they administered had been equal to producing a nikephorus, a zimiskes and a basil; but this grain of roman genius was allowed to wither by the succeeding princes; and we feel the force of the comparison which is drawn by the armenian historian between the quiet strength and benignant policy of basil and the dissolute habits and feeble half-measures of monomachus. [316] the safety of the provinces was made subordinate to the interests of the greek hierarchy; the armenians were irritated by renewed attempts to bring them over to byzantine orthodoxy; and their resistance was punished by the removal of the strongest characters from the native seats in the defence of which they would have given their lives. the new territories were handed over to greek eunuchs, to whom was entrusted their administration and defence. [317] in the year 1055 the inhabitants were massacred outside the walls of ani by an enemy which perhaps consisted of a detachment of seljuks in concert with the forces of the emir of karabagh. [318] the final blow was delivered nine years later by the successor of toghrul, the famous alp arslan. after a successful campaign in the georgian country he arrived before ani in the summer of 1064. the appearance of the city at that date is described in eloquent terms, if with some exaggeration, by matthew of edessa. such was the number of the population assembled within its ramparts that the turks believed them to comprise the greater part of the armenian nation. mass was celebrated in a thousand and one churches. precipitous cliffs protected the site for almost the whole circuit, and it was embraced by the sinuous course of the arpa chai. on one side only was there level or slightly shelving ground for a distance about equal to the flight of an arrow. it was upon the walls which defended this vulnerable side that the seljuk sultan directed his attack. after a siege of twenty-five days the turks penetrated into the city. each man carried a knife in either hand and a third between his teeth. the garrison had retired into the inner citadel, and the defenceless inhabitants were mown down like grass. one of the barbarians mounted upon the roof of the cathedral, and hurled to the ground the great cross which rose from the dome. a little door gave him access to the interior of the dome, whence he precipitated a crystal lamp, perhaps of indian origin, which had been presented by king sembat the second. the capture of ani prepared the way for the investiture of kars; but the king of kars appeased the victor by attiring himself in black robes, which he affected to be wearing out of respect for the death of toghrul. from these successes the seljuks were carried forward into the bosom of the empire; and the signal defeat near melazkert of the cæsar romanus in 1071 finally decided the long struggle in favour of the mohammedan world. [319] from these momentous issues, with which the fortunes of ani were so closely connected, it is an abrupt descent to the plane of her subsequent history. i have already had occasion to mention the two chief actors in this minor drama, the bagratid dynasty of georgia and the kurdish dynasty of karabagh. [320] the georgian bagratids weathered the storm of the seljuk invasions; and they attained during the course of the twelfth and the commencement of the thirteenth century a wide dominion over the adjacent lands. a lesser station must be assigned to the mussulman family of the beni-cheddad, who in the decline of the caliphate had established themselves in the valleys of the kur and the araxes, and whose kinsmen probably wandered over the mountains of karabagh, which at the present day still harbour kurdish tribes. the particular clan to which they belonged is said to have been named rewadi; but they became possessed of the important town of gandzak in the valley of the kur (the modern elizabetpol), and of dvin, the ancient armenian metropolis, in that of the araxes. i have twice spoken of their prince, a figure of some importance during the reigns of john sembat and gagik the second, at first the ally and then the determined adversary of the empire and the coadjutor of alp arslan. abulsevar--the chawir of the arabs, the aplesphares of the greeks--is well known to the byzantine annalists, and is styled by them, no less than by the armenian writers, the prince of dvin. [321] his son and successor, fathlun, purchased ani from the seljuk sultan, and gave it over to his brother manuchar (a.d. 1072). this ruler appears to have governed with moderation; and he was confirmed in his dignity by the successor of alp arslan, the humane malek shah, who extended the seljuk empire to the mediterranean. after the death of manuchar in a.d. 1110 [322] the inhabitants were much harassed by their mussulman and georgian neighbours during the government of his son and successor, another abulsevar. they appealed for help to the bagratid king of georgia, david the second, and opened their gates to that monarch (a.d. 1124). abulsevar and his sons were carried off to tiflis, and the unhappy prince, with two of his children, perished in an unhealthy prison. [323] this revolution restored the city to a christian administration, after a mussulman occupation of sixty years. the cathedral, which had served as a mosque, was restored to christian worship and consecrated anew with great pomp. but david the second died in the following year; and his son and successor dimitri was confronted with an investiture of ani by fathlun, the eldest son of the deceased ruler, who had been absent at the time of the georgian conquest and who was thirsting to avenge his father. the issue of a lengthy siege was a happy compromise, by which the kurdish emir assumed the government under a pledge to reserve the cathedral to the exclusive use of his armenian subjects (a.d. 1125-26). [324] fathlun was killed in battle in the year 1132, and was succeeded by his brother mahmud. [325] the kurdish dynasty continued to drag on a precarious existence as lords of ani until towards the close of the twelfth century; but they lost gandzak to the seljuks in 1088, and dvin to the georgians in 1162. [326] the conqueror of dvin, george the third, was twice the conqueror of ani. his first expedition belongs to the year 1161, when he made himself master of the place after a single day's siege. [327] but his success exasperated his mussulman neighbours, and he was confronted in the same year by the emir of akhlat at the head of an army numbering 80,000 men. the pompous title of this prince, that of shah of armenia, serves to accentuate his signal defeat by the georgian king. but the mussulmans renewed their attacks under the guidance or at the prompting of ildigiz, the atabeg governor of azerbaijan. about the year 1165 george was constrained to restore ani to them, and it again came into the possession of the beni-cheddad. from these it passed for the third time into the hands of the georgians in 1173-74. [328] during the reign of thamar the luckless inhabitants were surprised and massacred by the emir of ardabil in eastern azerbaijan. even at that period, the commencement of the thirteenth century, the city was still rich and populous. [329] but the advent of the tartars in a.d. 1239 was the occasion of a new catastrophe, the place being sacked by the savage bands of jenghiz khan. in 1319 ani was visited by a severe earthquake, to which armenian writers ascribe her final abandonment. but there exists evidence to show that this consummation was deferred to a later and uncertain date. i feel that i owe an apology to my reader for this long excursion into armenian history. but my endeavour has been to encompass a double purpose, that of presenting in a sufficient narrative the capital events in the annals of ani, and that of sketching in from various and scattered sources the larger history of the armenian kingdom of the middle ages. the attention of the traveller, no less than that of the statesman and the man of culture, is frequently directed to that neglected but fascinating subject, which indeed explains the present condition of the armenians and which conducts us to the threshold of our own era. we cannot learn much from the long intervening spaces of time during which tartars and turkomans, and ottoman turks and persians ruled in a country which was forgotten by the west. a deep sleep settles on the land, given over to shepherds, from which it scarcely awakes at the distant calling of the modern epoch. the natural development of the armenian people was suddenly arrested by the seljuk conquest, and the abler among them were forced to seek new homes. some stout spirits established themselves in the mountains of cilicia, where they founded a petty kingdom which endured for nearly three hundred years (a.d. 1080-1375). the obstinacy of their race was made manifest by the long resistance of this colony to the spiritual guidance of the popes of rome. the friends of the crusaders, they were at length overwhelmed by the turks, who suppressed the dynasty. their descendants still maintain themselves about their adopted seats, secure in their mountain fastnesses. but perhaps the most remarkable outcome of this dispersal was the emigration of the inhabitants of ani to poland, moldavia and galicia, to astrakhan on the northern shore of the caspian, and thence to the crimea. many of these colonies have endured to the present day. some among them were permitted to retain their own laws; and the jurisprudence of the armenian kings figures in the code of the colony of lemberg, which was administered by the armenian notables with the express sanction of the polish kings and which has been preserved to the curiosity of our own age. [330] my reader is now in possession of an outline of the history of the deserted city before the walls of which he stands. he is also familiar with the large surroundings which overpower this elegant architecture--in the distance the pile of alagöz and the dome of ararat; far and near the undulating upland plain, deeply cañoned by the sinuous course of the arpa chai. but the site of ani calls for some particular description. [331] it has been built within the fork described by the meeting of two ravines which have been eroded by the action of water to a considerable depth below the level of the plain. in the more westerly of these ravines flows a small stream coming down from the alaja dagh (p. 330), which was known to the old priest by its older name of tsaghkotz, [332] but which some travellers have called the alaja chai. the more easterly is occupied by the arpa chai, the ancient akhurean. near the confluence, the two streams are only separated by a narrow spit, and their waters hiss at the base of crags composed of lava. but the greater portion of the site consists of a spacious platform, flanked on two sides by the ravines. at a distance of about a mile above the junction of the waters two small side valleys descend into the principal depressions from within the area which they enclose. the one is directed towards the west and joins the trough of the alaja; the other pursues a south-easterly course to the chasm of the arpa chai. the heads of these two side valleys are separated from one another by a considerable stretch of unbroken ground. it is on that side only and along that space that the site is weak. and it is there that the double line of walls have been erected, fronted in ancient times by a moat (fig. 70). [333] the character of this double wall and the appearance of the towers are exhibited in my illustration, which was taken from outside, in front of the principal gateway. the long line of fortifications is seen extending towards the east. such walls are composed at ani of an inner core of solid conglomerate, faced on either side with rectangular blocks of hewn stone. one admires the exquisite art with which the masonry is disposed and the minute fitting at the joints. we enter the enclosure between the two parapets, and walk for a short distance in an easterly direction. above us, upon the face of the inner wall, is placed a fine bas-relief of a lion (fig. 71); and almost immediately we arrive at the inner gateway, just west of the great tower. a somewhat effaced inscription is seen above the arch. it has been copied, but the interpretation and date are obscure. [334] we know that these walls were originally built by king sembat the second (a.d. 977-989); [335] but they must have been restored and towers added at later dates. the earliest inscription which has been discovered was found on a round tower not far from this entrance. it is in cufic character, and records that the tower was erected by manuchar the son of chawir, or abulsevar. we have already seen that manuchar was the first ruler in ani of the kurdish family of the beni-cheddad (a.d. 1072). other inscriptions belong to the latter half of the twelfth century and the commencement of the thirteenth. they are in armenian and establish the fact that some of the towers were constructed by private persons as memorials to themselves. [336] once within the archway through the inner wall, the interior of the city is displayed in a long perspective to our gaze. but we might have to mount upon one of the parapets, in order to survey the irregularities of the large triangular space as far as the citadel at its further and narrow end. this north-easterly or broader portion of the site is covered with the débris of the private dwellings, not one of which has remained erect. they must have been packed together in a most uncomfortable manner, and they were probably built for the greater part of inferior material. [337] it is as though a persian runner had swished them away with his long cane to open the view to the noble monuments which still stand. behind us, as we proceed, the long barrier of the fortifications opens out on either side. the inner walls of many of the towers have fallen in, and their vaulted interiors are laid bare. they suggest the appearance of a series of apses as they soar up into the sky. directing our steps towards the cathedral, the largest of the buildings, we pass the scattered fragments of an octagonal tower (no. 11 on the plan), which must have succumbed at a comparatively recent date. it has been seen while still perfect by my predecessors, who have described it as a minaret. it may have also served as a watch-tower. one huge block of masonry which has held together still displays the large proportions and the form of the structure. the remains of a spiral staircase engage the eye, and one is impressed with the excellence of the masonry. two inscriptions have been found upon this pile. one in persian bears the date heg. 595 or a.d. 1198-99, and is to the effect that one kei-sultan of the beni-cheddad family "forbids the sale of sheep and camels in front of this mosque of abu-l-mamran." the other is in armenian and without date or personal sanction, being a mere exhortation to obey the order. one must suppose, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that the minaret belonged to a mosque which has disappeared. [338] the cathedral will surprise the traveller, even if he have come from edgmiatsin. although of small proportions, if judged by a european standard, it is nevertheless a stately building. [339] it bears the imprint of that undefinable quality, beauty, and can scarcely fail to arouse a thrill of delight in the spectator. it is seen to great advantage, adjacent edifices having disappeared (fig. 72). the extreme simplicity of the design--an oblong figure of four almost unbroken walls--at once appeals to the eye. the skill with which these plain spaces have been treated is the feature which is admired in the next place. the apse is only indicated by two niches which recess back from the face of the wall on the east (figs. 72 and 73). two similar niches are seen on the south, and, i think, also on the north side; but their purpose is ornamental and to secure uniformity of design. the remainder of the space is diversified by the lightest of false arcades, which rises almost to the roof, embraces the niches and extends to all four walls. my illustration (fig. 72) displays the southern and eastern fronts; that on the north resembles its counterpart, but is less ornate. the façade is practically the same as the eastern front, but without the niches and with a low doorway. similar doorways are conspicuous on the northern and southern sides. one remarks the tall and slender pillars of the false arcades, the cushion form of the capitals with their richly chiselled faces, the low spring of the rounded arches which curve inwards at the base, but scarcely suggest, so slight is the curve, the horse-shoe shape. the row of these arched mouldings is pleasantly broken at the doorway, which is surmounted by a narrow window with a rectangular frame of chiselled stone. and the bold arched moulding of pointed form, which envelops door and window, takes the eye above the tops of the neighbouring arches and leads it upwards to the loftier roof of the transept. the architecture of the roof is less single of feature. multiplicity of outlines and contrast of shapes are the characteristics which are here displayed. at one level you have the aisles, at another the nave and transept, at yet another the supreme crown of the dome. here it is a group of gables; there the large circle of the drum of the dome; there again the cone formed by the roof of the dome. this uppermost member of the series has unhappily fallen in; but enough remains of the drum to enable the eye to complete the picture, and to reconstruct the delicate mouldings of a false arcade. we have in fact a roof scene essentially byzantine in character, but which is quite free of that suggestion of a series of box-like elevations which is engendered by the appearance of some specimens of the style. on the contrary, we receive the impression of a stately simplicity underlying the diversity of outline and form. the interior is quite remarkable from the standpoint of the history of architecture; it is also calculated to deserve the admiration of the lover of art. it has many of the characteristics of the gothic style, of which it establishes the oriental origin. [340] the dome is supported by four massive piers of coupled pillars with plain capitals. four similar piers are placed at either extremity of the building, a pair at the entrance and one on each side of the apse. a feature of the edifice is the extreme narrowness of the aisles and the corresponding constriction of the side chapels at their eastern extremity. the relative proportions of the apse and of these minor apses may be discovered by a glance at the illustration of the eastern front, where the extent of the latter is indicated by the two arches with little windows, one on either side of the niches. the gothic appearance of the interior is still further accentuated by the bold pointed arches which spring from the piers. our curiosity is aroused by these characteristics; but our emotions awake as we contemplate the magnificent apse (fig. 74). [341] that element of grandeur which we miss in armenian churches is here made manifest in a high degree. it is imparted by the apse to the whole interior; and the apse becomes, by a happy inspiration of the architect, indeed the head and soul of the church. vestiges of paintings upon the ceilings have been observed by my predecessors; but i do not know that the building suffers from their destruction. the plaster has fallen, and the perfection of the masonry is exposed. the roofs as well as the walls are composed of stone, and, as usual in armenian churches, no wood or metal has been used. even at the present day the armenian masons are possessed of exceptional skill; and their natural gifts have been here directed by the conceptions of genius. although the interior is almost free of ornament, the art of the sculptor has been employed upon the enrichment of the outside niches, of the doorways and windows, and of the mouldings of the false arcade. in no case do we discover any trace of barbarism; the designs are sober and full of grace, the execution is beyond praise. [342] the impression which we take away from our survey of these various features is that we have been introduced to a monument of the highest artistic merit, denoting a standard of culture which was far in advance of the contemporary standards in the west. several inscriptions in armenian are visible upon the walls and have been copied and translated. [343] the earliest in date is found upon the south wall and is of some length. it records that in the year 1010 (arm. era 459), during the reign of gagik, king of the kings of armenia and georgia, the cathedral, which had been founded by king sembat, was completed by katranideh, queen of armenia and daughter of the king of siunik, at the bidding of her husband, king gagik. the queen adds that she had also embellished the church with precious ornaments, an offering to christ on behalf of herself and of her sons sembat, abas, and ashot. [344] two inscriptions belonging to the period of the occupation of ani by the byzantines figure upon the façade. both appear to be without dates, but both refer to known personages. the one mentions the empress zoe (1042), and is a memorial to her general, aron-magistros, who was entrusted with the government of the city. [345] the other is an edict of bagrat-magistros, governor-general of the eastern provinces, abolishing by order of constantine dukas (a.d. 1059-67) certain taxes which pressed upon the inhabitants. other inscriptions detail offerings on the part of private individuals; and the date of one, if it has been copied correctly, is as late as 1486. [346] an edifice of much smaller scale than the cathedral, [347] but closely resembling it in plan and style, is the church which is dedicated to st. gregory the illuminator, and which occupies a secluded site at the eastern extremity of the town upon the side of the cliff which breaks away to the bed of the arpa by a series of black crags (no. 4). it is indeed a romantic spot. the side valley already mentioned joins the valley of the arpa at this point, and is flanked by walls which descend to the river with bold bastions. the stream hisses in a gloomy ravine of grey and lichened rock. subterraneous passages lead inwards into the town. in presenting my photograph of the building i must ask my reader to imagine for a moment that the ruinous porch has been removed (fig. 76). he will then seize the characteristics with which he is already familiar: the oblong figure of unbroken walls; the elegant false arcades; the roof scene of nave, and transept and aisles, surmounted by a polygonal dome with a conical roof. the niches in the exterior of this church are perhaps less pronounced than in the case of the cathedral; but they are discovered upon all four walls. the stone is uniform of hue. tall double shafts support the arches of the false arcade which extends round the building. the face of these arches has been richly sculptured with the most elegant traceries, while the spaces above the capitals, between the arms of the arches, display the forms of birds and flowers in moderate relief (fig. 77, from north side). the architect has wisely discarded the use of the pointed arch in any part of this gem-like structure. but the slender pillars suggest the gothic. the byzantine feature of a narthex is wanting both to this building and to the cathedral. the porch has been added at a later date and is purely saracenic in character. it displays several traceries and designs of high merit, among which i would call attention to the zigzag moulding which is so common in norman architecture (fig. 78). entering the building we are at once impressed by its almost perfect preservation; the plaster adheres to the walls and ceilings, and the frescos with which they were adorned are still intelligible. yet here we have a monument erected nearly 800 years ago, and which has not yet been touched by a restorer's hand. the disposition of the interior resembles that of the cathedral; the dome rests on four piers, the apse is flanked by side chapels, which are of diminutive size. the frescos, which are also found upon the façade, represent biblical subjects. they must have appreciably faded since they were seen and described by my predecessors. [348] the legends which accompany them are all in georgian or in greek characters. this fact has led to the supposition that the church was designed for the greek form of worship. but we know that it was built by an armenian, as the church of an armenian convent dedicated to an armenian saint. one can scarcely fail to remark the dim lighting of the interior, a characteristic or defect which also belongs to the cathedral. both might easily have been flooded with light from the dome. the commemorative inscriptions are found upon the exterior and are in armenian character. within each of the three most easterly arches upon the south wall there is an inscription of twenty-five lines. it would appear that the lines are carried across, and that they constitute a single text. we are informed that in the year 1215 (arm. era 664), during the government of zakarea, chief of the mandatories, and of his son shahanshah, one tigran, of the family of honentz, built a monastery upon this site in the hope that his good work would bring long life to his house and to the son of zakarea. at the time when he bought it the place was covered with rocks and brushwood; but there was a building upon it known as our lady of the chapel. tigran surrounded it with a wall, constructed dwellings for the monks, erected this church of st. gregory, and enriched the church with ornaments and precious vessels. he also bestowed a permanent endowment upon the monastery. [349] the edifice is therefore a work of the period of georgian occupation. an inscription upon the east wall belongs to a later epoch, the date being given as 759 of the armenian era, or a.d. 1310. [350] but the city was still governed by a member of the family of zakarea. it records that one matheh, chief secretary of the ruler shahanshah, restored some conduits which brought water to the monastery, but which had been destroyed during certain foreign or civil troubles. it supplies us with the names of two other personages--khvandzeh, the wife of this shahanshah, and zakarea, their son. in the immediate neighbourhood of this church, but upon a higher level, we observe two ruins which are of interest. the one consists of the remains of a massive wall and a chamber which stand in an isolated position (no. 22). they are of the character which is usually known as cyclopean. the other ruin is that of a small and almost subterraneous bath. recent excavations have disclosed subsidiary chambers and passages; but the bath itself, which is divided into four small vaulted chambers, could scarcely have accommodated more than four bathers at a time (no. 13). [351] not far from st. gregory, as you follow down the stream of the arpa, are met remains of a walled enclosure of the usual finished masonry and in fair preservation. the walls descend the cliff-side to a projecting mass of rock which rises from the bed of the river with almost vertical sides. on the edge of this promontory, overlooking the stream, is placed a little chapel which, although ruinous, still retains many of the elements of its former beauty (no. 9, fig. 79). it is distinguished from the walls about it by the pink stone of which it is built. the form of the roof is a pleasant variation from the prevailing type, as is also the plan of the interior. six semicircular recesses are crowned by the circle of the dome. contiguous to this elegant monument is a chamber or chapel of different form. at the upper end of the enclosure are seen the ruins of the long vaulted staircase which was taken across the enclosure and through the wall on the west, in order to debouch upon the ravine on the western side of the promontory, and so to lead down to the water's edge. about 300 yards still further down the current you observe the piers of a bridge of which the single arch has fallen in. it was on the cliff-side above this bridge that the remains of a gateway were seen by my predecessors, bearing an inscription of the year 1320. it commemorates the allocation of a tax on cattle to the monastery of st. gregory by one sargis, chief of the custom-house. the gift is made for the repose of the soul of the master of sargis, shahanshah, and for the long life of zakarea and the other sons of shahanshah. fragments of inscriptions found within the neighbouring enclosure yield the dates of 705 and 759 arm. era (a.d. 1256 and 1310). [352] i am inclined to think it possible that the enclosure and chapel may have formed part of the same monastery of st. gregory of which i have already described the church. one of the most conspicuous buildings is the mosque with the polygonal minaret (no. 10, fig. 80). it rises from the cliff on the right bank of the arpa and overlooks the ruinous bridge. an arabic inscription, done in brick and inlaid in the masonry of the minaret not far from the summit of that lofty column, displays to the city in colossal characters the name of allah. the mosque is the work of the first mussulman prince of ani, manuchar, the son of abulsevar. this fact appears to be established by a cufic inscription which may be perceived in my illustration upon the north-west wall, the wall adjoining the minaret. [353] just above it is seen a long persian inscription which must be over two hundred years later in date. it is in fact an edict of the mongol king of persia, abu-said, one of the successors of jenghiz khan. abu-said is styled bahadur, or the brave. the edict is therefore posterior to the year 718 of the hegira (a.d. 1318-19), when that sultan acquired this personal title. the contents of this text are to the effect that the inhabitants of the city and neighbouring provinces had been suffering from illegal exactions on the part of their rulers. they had been emigrating and selling their goods and houses. the obnoxious imposts are specified and their abolition decreed. [354] of the trilingual inscription which was found by khanikoff i saw no traces; it was a mere fragment at the time of his visit. it mentions the name of zakarea, to which is attached the title of atabeg; and it may belong to the year 1237 and to the reign of zakarea iii. [355] the architecture of the mosque resembles nothing that has yet been mentioned. five massive and isolated pillars, of which originally there were six, [356] are seen rising from the floor of the chamber and supporting the vaultings of the roof. the circumference of these pillars is 9 feet 2 inches. the dimensions of the chamber itself are insignificant, being only 47 feet by 41 feet. beneath it and below the level of the ground on the north-west, but overlooking the river upon the south-east, are four square apartments with narrow windows. my illustration, which was taken from the south, does not embrace this feature; nor does it quite reproduce the peculiar effect of the masonry, in which pink and black stones have been variously employed. during the summer preceding our visit excavations had been made in ani by the russian archæologist mr. n. marr. [357] not the least interesting result of his labours, as they were manifest upon the site, is the discovery of a line of walls with bastions, crossing the neck or narrowest portion of the platform from the ravine of the arpa to that of the tsaghkotz. the one extremity of this fortification starts from the former of these valleys in the immediate neighbourhood of the mosque. south-west of this neck, with its transverse rampart, the platform again opens out; and at the same time it attains its greatest elevation, gathering together and composing a hill with a flat top. the summit and sides of this hill display the substructures of walls and buildings; and at least two edifices in a fair state of preservation rise against the background of sky. one can scarcely doubt that this strong position was the site of the old fortress of ani before it became a city and the residence of the king. it is flanked by the two ravines with the two rivers, which presently unite. it is only accessible from the level ground on the north-east. but on that side, as we have seen, it has the form of a narrow isthmus, easily defensible by a line of walls. this fortress must have composed the nucleus of the more recent city--that inner fortress of which we read. upon the summit of the hill, some four hundred feet above the rivers, was built the citadel. and there is ground for supposing that the citadel was also the palace, as in the case of trebizond and perhaps also of melazkert. unfortunately nothing remains of the actual walls of the palace; and the buildings which i have mentioned are two small churches. one stands upon the north side of the fortified eminence, and the other upon the south. the former is not noteworthy, except for the fact that its northern wall rises from lower levels and composes part of the wall of the citadel. but the edifice on the south is of considerable interest. it consists of two vaulted chambers placed side by side, and having the inner wall in common (no. 28, fig. 81, taken from the north). the more southerly is the largest; and the round arches which support the roof rest upon four pilasters of curious design. i photographed one of the best preserved among them, which is adorned with the figures of two birds in low relief (fig. 82). they are represented in the act of pouncing upon animals. the pilasters are composed of blocks of black stone; while for the capitals and the upper portion of the building only pink stone has been used. the façade and the apse have fallen away. the dimensions are small: a length of 30 feet 9 inches and a breadth of 17 feet 4 inches. one of my predecessors discovered in the contiguous building a bas-relief upon which was portrayed two figures on horseback, one of which is st. george with the dragon at his feet. but this piece, as well as another, in which a mounted and aureoled archer is displayed, surrounded by the forms of birds and wild animals, is no longer to be seen. i showed the reproductions in brosset's atlas to the aged priest; he recognised the latter of these sculptures and informed us that it had been stolen. quite probably both are now lost in some museum. [358] elements derived from assyrian art may be recognised in these bas-reliefs as well as the ornament of the pilaster. but in the absence of inscriptions one is thrown back upon internal evidence in assigning a date to the south chapel. such is the site of the ancient fortress of ani, which must have enjoyed a fine view over the city. i observed that this view comprises the south and west sides of the cathedral, while the north side is turned towards the town. the fact that the south wall of that edifice has been more profusely decorated than its counterpart which faces north confirms the supposition that the palace was situated within the citadel, and that it was for the royal windows that the decorative resources of the architect were principally displayed. if we descend the hill of the citadel in a southerly direction, as it falls away to the crags which separate the two ravines about the confluence of the rivers, we cross the remains of an inner wall and pass the ruin of a little chapel, of which the four piers as well as the cupola still stand. i photographed the charming detail of the doorway on the south, overlooking the arpa chai (no. 29, fig. 83). [359] what a contrast between these classical mouldings and the somewhat barbarous architecture of the chapel in the citadel, between the sobriety of the designs in these bands of sculptured stone and the wild spirit of the ornament on those pilasters! ani is indeed a museum of architectural styles--a characteristic in keeping with her geographical position and with the inquisitive and impressionable culture of her inhabitants. just west of this building is seen a piece of masonry which is in the last stage of decay (no. 30, fig. 84). it may represent the apse of another chapel. from here the view ranges over the crags below the citadel, of which the most southerly is crowned by the walls of a third chapel. the arpa is seen emerging from the deep ravine on the left of the ruin; it is joined by its affluent in the neighbourhood of the rock with the chapel. [360] just below the standpoint of this picture are situated the remains of the outer wall which encircled the peninsula. at the extremity of the figure stands a tower, which is concealed by the lie of the ground. but portions of the wall are visible in the illustration; and it appears to have extended along the valley of the alaja in a northerly direction, and to have been joined to the outer fortifications of the city on the side of the plain. where i examined the masonry of this wall i found it faced on both sides, and 3 feet 4 inches in thickness. issuing from the citadel or inner fortress, we examined the substructures of a curious building which had been recently brought to light by mr. marr. but the length of this notice warns me that i must confine it to a description of the monuments which are still erect. let us therefore retrace our steps in the direction of the town, keeping as close as we may to the ravine of the alaja, the ancient tsaghkotzadzor or vale of flowers. on the summit of the cliff, in full view of the city, rises a circular building with a drum-shaped dome and a conical roof. of this edifice, the chapel of st. gregory (no. 5), i am able to present three photographs, one of the east side (fig. 85), another of the entrance on the west (fig. 86), and a third of the interior (fig. 87). it is a charming little monument, which, like the cathedral, blends elements of byzantine and gothic art. but the niche is here again a prominent feature, a feature dear to the architecture of the east. the body of the edifice is polygonal rather than circular, having no less than twelve sides. of these six are recessed, the niches facing the town being framed by ornamental arches with classical cornices. the six niches correspond with the same number of cavities in the design of the interior. although the inside diameter is not more than about 30 feet, including these cavities, [361] yet the impression as you enter the chapel is one of space and height. especially remarkable is the great depth of the dome. traces of paintings may be observed upon the walls. two small vaulted chambers have been built into the wall on the east side, and are now in a ruinous condition. they are seen in the illustration on either side of the window. they may have served the purpose of sepulchral chambers, of which there are also vestiges outside the building upon the north side. we learn from the inscriptions that the chapel was dedicated to st. gregory; and it is a work of the period of the armenian kings. it seems to have been used as a place of burial by the pahlavuni or pahlavid family, which furnished some of the most illustrious names in armenian history. the great noble who led the faction which was opposed to the cession of ani to the byzantines was a pahlavid, vahram. he met his death in battle against the beni-cheddad of dvin in a.d. 1047. embodying as he did the policy of resistance à outrance both to mussulmans and greeks, he has been the idol of armenian patriotism. the name of this hero figures in the inscription over the door, which, although without a date, is probably assignable to him. he bestows the revenue of certain shops upon the church of st. gregory to defray the cost of masses for the soul of his son apughamir. in the same place have been found inscriptions of the mother of vahram, the lady shushan, making over certain revenues to the same church and recording the number of the masses obtained in return. she is styled the wife of the prince grigor. but a date is happily forthcoming to elucidate the identity of these personages. it is furnished by a long inscription of no less than fourteen lines upon the north wall. record is made that in the year of the armenian era 489 (a.d. 1040) aplgharib, prince of armenia, erected a sepulchre in this place [362] for his father grigor, of whom he describes himself as the youngest son, for his brother hamzeh, and for his maternal uncle seda. masses are to be said for his mother shushan, for his father grigor, for his maternal uncle seda, and for his brother hamzeh. i cannot help thinking that the sepulchre referred to is represented by the remains which i observed upon the north side of this building. and the vaulted chambers in the east wall may be the tombs of grigor and his wife shushan, an inscription over the highly decorated window on that side being a prayer to christ for mercy upon grigor. [363] a question of great interest with reference to this building is whether it may be regarded as the same church which is mentioned by the historians as a work of king gagik i. we are informed by samuel of ani that in the year 447 (a.d. 998) a church of st. gregory was completed by this monarch in the tsaghkotzadzor. the same event is recorded in the pages of kirakos, who gives the same date, and describes the situation as overlooking the valley of the tsaghkotz. [364] asoghik tells us that it was built on the model of a large church at vagharshapat, dedicated to the same saint, which had fallen into ruin. he adds that the edifice of king gagik was built on a high platform on the side of the tsaghkotz, and in possession of an admirable view. he speaks of three doorways and of the marvellous dome, reproducing the appearance of the sky. [365] i did not observe more than one door to this edifice, and perhaps the church which is referred to by these authorities was some larger building in the immediate neighbourhood which has disappeared. the chapel of st. gregory invites comparison with another monument of the same order in the opposite quarter of the town (no. 6, fig. 88). [366] my illustration was taken from the north. the design is less elaborate and the dimensions are rather larger, the dome especially having a much greater span. but the effect produced by the interior lacks the magic of the companion building, while the symmetry is marred by the recess for the altar on the east side. this building will not endure for many years longer, unless steps be taken to save it from falling in. the lower portions are in a state of advanced decay. the ornament on the exterior closely resembles that employed upon the cathedral. inscriptions bristle upon the panels of the false arcades. one records that in the year 483 (a.d. 1034) the prince aplgharib, having journeyed to constantinople by order of sembat shahanshah, obtained with great difficulty and at considerable expense a piece of the holy cross. upon his return he built this church, and directed that nightly services should be held within it until the coming of christ. the name of surb-phrkich, or church of the redeemer, is given in this and the following inscription, and may be applied either to this chapel or to some neighbouring church with which it was in connection. a second inscription belongs to the armenian year 490 (a.d. 1041), and mentions the contemporary reign of sembat, son of gagik shahanshah. [367] the chapel of the redeemer is therefore the work of the same pahlavid, aplgharib, who built the sepulchres to the chapel of st. gregory, and it belongs to the period of the kings. [368] continuing our walk along the cliff above the valley of the alaja, we pass a lofty mound, surmounted by the ruin of a wall (no. 31). the old priest was of opinion that it denotes the site of the priestly synod house, where endowments were received and other business of the church transacted. a little further, and west of this mound we stay to examine a small chapel which has been hollowed out of a solid mass of rock. but our attention is distracted from this fantastic object by the walls and yawning apartments of the castle (no. 12, fig. 89). it is situated in the extreme north-western angle of the town, where the ravine of the alaja is joined by the side-ravine already mentioned in the description of the site. my photograph displays the southern side of this extensive edifice and the junction of the valleys. the entrance is on the east and faces the town (fig. 90). you admire the exquisite masonry of the walls and the elaborate decoration of the doorway. that doorway is one of the most conspicuous objects in ani; and inasmuch as this building has been sought to be identified with the royal palace, it has been despoiled of many of its mosaics by patriotic armenians, who strip them off and carry them away as souvenirs. my reader will observe the recurrence of the form of a greek cross in the ornament on the face of the gate. this ornament consists of inlays or, as one might say, mosaics composed of a light red and of a black stone. the effect is original and pleasant to the eye. in the absence of any inscriptions--we searched in vain for any trace of writing both on the outside of the edifice and within its walls--i am inclined to consider that this so-called palace was nothing more than a magazine and barrack, in close connection with the outer defences of the city on the vulnerable side, the side of the plain. the only ornament in the interior was found over a doorway, and consisted of a chain moulding and inlays of red and black stone. on the other hand, the uses of the place appear to be denoted by the vaulted passages and by the spacious underground chambers. two of these chambers, smaller in size, have evidently served as dungeons. [369] two edifices of considerable interest remain to be mentioned. both are situated in quarters of the town which must have been densely built over, and both are in an advanced state of decay. the more westerly is perhaps the most curious of all the monuments of ani, and i do not pretend to have quite unravelled the complexities of its compound plan (no. 2). the eye is engrossed by the ruin of a spacious portal, longest from west to east. the western and southern walls have fallen away; but the east front and the whole of the vaulting of the most easterly portion have been spared by the ravages of time. entering this portal from the west (fig. 91), we are able to reconstruct in fancy the features of the design. there appear to have been three distinct domes to the roof, supported by arches resting on pillars. of the three divisions which were thus introduced into the interior, the largest was that in the centre. that on the east alone remains; and we may gauge the dimensions of the whole figure when we consider that this division measures within the pillars a square of 19 feet. the architecture is pure arab or saracenic, recalling that of the mosque. it is certainly later than the period of the kings. as in the mosque, the effect is heightened by the mixture of black with reddish blocks of stone. a large stone, sculptured with a cross, is inlaid in the south-east wall, and may be the same as the one which has been described by my predecessors as containing the figure of a double-headed eagle. [370] the walls are covered with inscriptions. the outer face of this portal or east front is extremely elaborate (fig. 92). the doorway on that side forms the centre of a saracenic façade in which honeycomb vaultings, false niches, and a mosaic of black and pink stones have all been made to play a part. four inscriptions in armenian are observed upon this front. this portal must have served as an entrance to two or more chapels. of these one alone remains. it is entered by a doorway with rich mouldings in the north wall of the most easterly division. the interior is of grey stone, and it is disposed in four semicircles. [371] but the dimensions are small as compared to those of the portal, and the portal is much longer than the chapel. the ruinous masonry upon the west of the latter building indicates the site of a second and contiguous chamber or chapel. that of a third is denoted by similar evidence upon the east wall. this structure projected beyond the east front of the portal, to which it was placed at right angles. traces of it may be seen in my illustration. it bears an armenian inscription. the inscriptions, which unhappily i had not leisure to identify, have been already published and translated. [372] the earliest in date appears to have been found upon the doorway of the chapel, and identifies it as a work of the period of the kings. it records that in the year 480 (a.d. 1031) apughamir, son of vahram, prince of princes, bestowed an endowment upon this church of the apostles for the health and long life of his brother grigor. my reader is already familiar with these names of members of the pahlavid family. the inscriptions upon the portal are of much later dates, ranging over the period of georgian occupation when the city was governed by the mkhargrdzels. some are in the name of the mongol overlord. most are of the nature of public proclamations; and from the one latest in date we learn that in a.d. 1348 members of this georgian family were still personages at ani, and that the city had not yet been abandoned by her inhabitants. the second of the monuments is also the last which i need mention; it is situated between the cathedral and the chapel of the redeemer (no. 3). it is of small dimensions and, as usual, of great elegance; but the roof and the whole of the upper portion have unhappily fallen away. in fact, the only portions which are still erect are the north wall, the apse, and part of the south wall. a vaulted chamber extends around the edifice. two bas-reliefs are seen in two of the panels of the arcade upon the north wall. the one on the left evidently represents the subject of the annunciation; while that on the right probably portrays the figures of two saints. i could not discover any trace of an inscription. but the old priest bases his opinion that the ruin is that of a church dedicated to st. stephen upon an inscription which has disappeared. [373] my illustration of the castle (fig. 89) will have revealed a characteristic of the ancient city which is of historical interest. the ravine of the alaja, as well as both the side valleys, which open respectively to this ravine and to that of the arpa, present the appearance of having been riddled into quite a network of cavities; such is the number of the troglodyte dwellings which they contain. legend peoples this underground city with the souls of those citizens of ani who, sooner than emigrate into distant lands, preferred to die in her defence. a stir and hum, as of a teeming and busy populace, may be heard by night above the rustling of the arpa chai. [374] the tuff composing the cliffs must at all times have invited such burrowings; and we know that, when ani was surprised during the reign of thamar by the emir of ardabil, the inhabitants, who were still numerous, took refuge in these caves. [375] our conception of the city of the kings would be wanting in an essential feature were we to pass over the neighbouring convent of khosha vank (fig. 93). it was there, we can scarcely doubt, that the monarch was often wont to deliberate; and it was under the shadow of those walls that his bones were laid to rest by the side of his ancestors. the triumphal archway through which he would pass on his way from the capital may still be seen on the summit of the cliff on the right bank of the arpa chai (fig. 94). the cloister is situated, as we have seen, upon the opposite or left bank, [376] and is bordered on two sides by a loop of the river. the bridge has disappeared. a small village has grouped itself between the monastery and the bed of the stream, where repose beneath the gloom of lofty cliffs of lava the two chapels and the tomb of king ashot. the monastic buildings occupy a considerable area upon the high ground within the bend of the river. they are surrounded by a lofty wall. entering from the west, we cross a court to an opposite doorway which opens into a vast and gloomy chamber (fig. 95). on the further or eastern side of this chamber we perceive the door of the church. the architecture of this outer hall or pronaos is quite remarkable. in some respects it resembles that of the mosque at ani. the ceilings are vaulted, and there are no less than four rows of pillars. the space is divided into the form of a nave and two aisles. the circumference of the pillars is 9 1/2 feet. the central vaulting of the nave is surmounted by a dome, different in shape from any of the domes which have been described. viewed from the outside, it becomes merged in a tall belfry, which is seen on the left of my illustration (fig. 96), taken from the south-west. to the interior it displays a drum of eight panels; and the only light which it transmits comes from above. the panels are of stone and covered with sculpture in low relief. here it is an architectural figure, there a beautiful vine pattern which is the subject of the ornament. one space displays the form of the virgin mary, set in a rich frame. the two extremities of the frame are supported by the shapes of animals, a bull and a lion. on the back of the lion is seated an eagle, and a child on that of the bull. two angels keep watch, one on either side of the mother of christ. the gloom of the building is due to the design of this dome, as well as to the smallness of the round windows, resembling the port-holes of a ship, of which there are three in the north and two in the south wall. the interior of this edifice is covered with inscriptions in armenian, which none of my party were able to read. perhaps they include some of those which were brought by abich from this cloister and which have been translated by brosset. [377] one of these inscriptions records a donation in the armenian year 650 (a.d. 1201) under the government of zakarea. another is to the effect that the monastery was restored in 1102 (a.d. 1652) by one daniel, a monk from tigranocerta. we are told that the buildings had previously fallen into ruin, and had become polluted by accumulations of dust and filth. the cloister is styled horomosi vank, and is described as having been constructed by the kings. i will not venture to express an opinion upon the age of the pronaos; but i would suggest that the belfry is perhaps of later date. the sculptures in the dome appear to belong to a hoary antiquity. the edifice may have served as a model for a rock chamber which is described by a modern traveller as belonging to the cloister of surb geghard. [378] you enter the church through the door in the east wall of the pronaos, passing a slab engraved with a pastoral staff, which marks the place of burial of some spiritual dignitary. a spacious dome rests upon four piers, and there is a single apse with the usual daïs. the walls are covered with a coating of whitewash. the interior measures roughly 53 feet by 33 feet, the former dimension including the apse. the attendant priest showed us an old but undated manuscript, which proved to be an illustrated new testament. it would appear from an inscription that the church was dedicated to st. gregory, [379] and it may perhaps be ascribed to the period of the kings. the monastic buildings are placed upon the south of the church and pronaos, and are approached from the southern side of the entrance court. they are just outside the area embraced by my illustration of the south walls of the edifices just named. two large apartments, communicating with one another, serve as antechambers to a great hall with pillars and vaulted ceilings, which is entered from the second of the two chambers, and in plan extends along the most easterly of its walls. the whole suite are impressive examples of the art of the mason and stone-sculptor, effect being gained by the regularity and perfect fitting of the blocks, while the stone takes an admirable surface. friezes with stalactite patterns are employed in one room as a cornice for the ceiling. in the second and smaller room there is a square aperture in the centre of the roof with a stalactite ornament. the same feature belongs to the hall of the synod (fig. 97), and is clearly seen in my photograph. at the further end of the two rows of pillars may be discerned a niche with a daïs, the recess being richly sculptured. it was there that was placed the throne. but i think these buildings are all later than the time of the kings, although they may have been used by the georgian princes who governed ani. we learn from an inscription, which was probably copied in the larger of the antechambers, that at least one of these apartments was constructed in a.d. 1229 to serve as a receptacle for the holy relics. [380] on the north side of the church buildings there is nothing but a narrow and vacant space separating them from the wall of the cloister. but at the east end of this part of the enclosure, and in line with the east front of the church, are situated the roofless remains of a little chapel, crowning a ruinous substructure which is overgrown by rank weeds, and of which the sculptured stones litter the ground. the pendant of this building on the south side of the church is seen in my illustration (fig. 96). it is much better preserved than the companion edifice, and the chamber in the lower storey is still intact. this chamber is oblong in shape, with a vaulted ceiling and an altar with sculptured stones. the chapel is of triple design, with three apses, the whole surmounted by a dome. it is possible that both these buildings, which so closely correspond, were designed to receive the remains of some high personages. but the actual tomb of one of the kings has been spared by a happy chance, and may be found quite close to the second and larger of the chapels which repose in the bed of the arpa chai (fig. 94). it is placed near the south-eastern angle of the building. with what a thrill of delight did we discover this eloquent relic--a rounded slab resting on two stone steps! in spite of the lichen and the wear of the stone, the words "ashot thagavor" (ashot, the king) were distinctly legible. the chapels are placed in a line from west to east, and were originally three in number. of these the most westerly is falling into ruin, a state which has already overtaken that on the east. the central member of the group is at once the largest and the best preserved. it contains an inscription over the south door to the effect that it was built in 460 (a.d. 1011) by one george, son of the patriarch martiros. but i have not been able to identify this patriarch; and it is possible there may be some error in the translation made by my dragoman, who, although well educated, was not a scholar in old armenian. the king whose name appears on the tomb is probably ashot the third. the inscriptions establish the fact that the monastery was known by the name of horomosi vank, which probably signifies the convent of the greek. [381] history supplements and explains this information. we learn from asoghik that it was founded in the tenth century under the reign of abas by armenian priests who had emigrated from greek territory. it was burnt by the mussulmans in a.d. 982. [382] an inscription of king john sembat, dated 487 (a.d. 1038), appears to have been found within its walls; and it has been inferred that the cloister was restored by that prince. [383] we know that he was buried by the side of his predecessors who ruled at ani; and we have an inscription of john sembat by which he bestows the revenue of a village in support of the royal cemetery at this monastery of horomos. [384] for the benefit of such of my readers whose leisure may be unequal to a perusal of this long description, i would single out for particular study the cathedral (figs. 72 and 74), the church of st. gregory (figs. 76, 77, and 78), and the two polygonal chapels (figs. 85 and 88). these monuments are examples of the armenian style at its very best, before it was brought under the direct influence of mussulman art and adopted with slight variations mussulman models. except in the case of the church of st. gregory, we have authentic evidence that they are works of the kingly period. the merits of the style are the diversity of its resources, the elegance of the ornament in low relief, the perfect execution of every part. it combines many of the characteristics of byzantine art and of the style which we term gothic, and which at that date was still unborn. the conical roofs of the domes are a distinctive feature, as also are the purely oriental niches. texier is of opinion that the former of these features was carried into central europe by the colonies of emigrants from the city on the arpa chai. [385] in the portals of st. gregory and of the church of the apostles (figs. 78 and 92) we have elaborate examples of the later period when the influence of mussulman art was supreme. and the pronaos of khosha vank, with its massive pillars and groined ceilings, with the finely sculptured panels in the dome, seems to blend some of the characteristics of the architecture of the kings with the plainer style which belongs to the mosque. but a lesson of wider import, transcending the sphere of the history of architecture, may be derived from a visit to the capital of the bagratid dynasty, and from the study of the living evidence of a vanished civilisation which is lavished upon the traveller within her walls. her monuments throw a strong light upon the character of the armenian people, and they bring into pronouncement important features of armenian history. they leave no doubt that this people may be included in the small number of races who have shown themselves susceptible of the highest culture. they exhibit the armenians as able and sympathetic intermediaries between the civilisation of the byzantine empire, with its legacies from that of rome, and the nations of the east. they testify to the tragic suddenness with which the development of the race was arrested at a time when they had attained a measure of political freedom, and when their capacities, thus favoured, were commencing to bear fruit. the armenian architects thenceforward subserve the taste of their mussulman masters; and during the long centuries which have elapsed since the seljuk conquest, the genius of their countrymen has been exploited by the semi-barbarous peoples of asia, while their abilities and character have progressively declined and become debased. for all these reasons a special duty devolves upon the traveller to address a pressing appeal both to the armenians and to the russian government for the preservation of these monuments. i have already mentioned the abstraction of two important bas-reliefs, and the petty thefts which are taking place with increasing frequency. of the buildings observed by my predecessors within comparatively recent years, the octagonal minaret has already succumbed. a like fate will presently overtake the chapel of the redeemer, unless measures be promptly taken to maintain that edifice. the monastery of horomos is falling into ruin. rich armenians spend vast sums upon the embellishment of edgmiatsin; can none be found to conserve for the instruction of posterity the noblest examples of the genius of their race? the co-operation of the russian government should be secured in this laudable enterprise; nor need we despair that it will be forthcoming in such a cause. much as that government is inclined to discourage armenian patriotism, it rarely omits to perform a service in the interests of culture when the appeal is general and the interests are clear. chapter xix kars while ani, the deserted stronghold and capital on the banks of the arpa, appeals to the patriotism of armenians, her neighbour kars, that fortress at once of ancient and modern repute, awakens a feeling of national pride in the bosom of the english visitor. few, indeed, of my countrymen have been privileged to gaze upon a site and scene which is associated in their memory with a most brilliant achievement of british officers. of the sieges which kars has sustained during the course of the present century only one has been conducted with any skill and spirit on the part of the defence. on that occasion a garrison of about fifteen thousand turks resisted, under the strategy of an english general, a force of from thirty to forty thousand russians for a period of over five months. the exploits of williams and his companions in 1855 are still familiar to the townspeople. it is they who first traced the design of the fortifications, such as we see them at the present day. the old school of russian officers still view with alarm or suspicion the approach of an englishman to the neighbourhood of their prize. kars is rigorously excluded from the jurisdiction of our consuls, and our travellers have rarely penetrated within her walls. on the other hand, the new school are of quite a different temper, and give free rein to the hospitable and amiable qualities which are natural to their race. they received me with open arms, overwhelmed me with attentions, and took pains to let me feel that, side by side with the russian laurels, one in honour of their british opponents had not been allowed to fade. i have already endeavoured to describe the characteristics of the site of kars as you approach the fortress from the east across the plain. the plan which i now offer will at once assist that description and supplement it with a view of the surrounding features. the volcanic mass which is pierced by the river where it projects into the level expanse is due to a local outbreak of basaltic lava, which is in orographical and, probably, in genetical connection with the volcanic water-parting between the araxes and the kur. the real boundary of these plains on the west and south-west is formed by the breaking away to the pontic region of the uplands of the soghanlu dagh; and the low water-parting between the two great rivers extends from the northern extremity of the soghanlu to the kisir dagh which confines lake chaldir on the west. upon that line of intermediary elevation the principal points of eruption have been the kabak tepe or kizilkaya (10,010 feet), and, further north, the buga tepe (8995 feet). minor emissions of volcanic matter have issued from radial fissures, which may be traced back to these parent stems. in this manner we may connect the ainalu dagh, on the west of kars, with kabak tepe; and, perhaps too, the local eruptions which have produced the rock of kars with the system of the ainalu. [386] it is with a feeling of astonishment, which will not be diminished by better acquaintance, that the traveller surveys the site of the fortress. that impression will be derived not so much from the course of the river--although one would expect to see it flowing towards rather than from the south, the direction of the araxes to which it is tributary--but rather from the phenomenon which attends its approach to the cliffs on the northern margin of the plain. it is seen for some distance following at the base of a low ridge which culminates further eastwards in the towering parapet behind the town. all of a sudden, when the obstacle becomes most pronounced, instead of indulging in an easy and not very lengthy bend and taking the rampart in flank, the wayward stream throws its waters at the face of the cliff and disappears in an almost invisible gorge. for a distance of about four miles, measured along its banks in the trough of the chasm, it cleaves the mass of gloomy rock; then issues into the plainer land on the north of the rampart, which it has isolated from the heights on the west. an insular mass of mountain, rendered impregnable on one side by the precipices which overhang the river, and easily defended on other sides--such a site must have been fortified from the earliest times, commanding as it does a wide area of fertile plains. at the commencement of our era the district but not the town is described by strabo under the name of chorzene. [387] it is possible that the chorsa or the kolsa of ptolemy occupied the position of the present kars. [388] but it is not before the middle ages that we become apprised of its certain existence, when it is mentioned under its present name by the imperial author constantine, and under that of karutz by armenian writers. [389] from both sources we learn that it was a capital of the bagratid dynasty before the rise of ani to the dignity of a royal residence. it was conferred by ashot the third (a.d. 951-977), the founder of the fortunes of ani, upon his younger brother mushegh together with the prerogatives of local kingship. the kinglets of kars were submerged by the wave of seljuk invasion; but the reigning prince contrived to appease the wrath of the conqueror of ani, and to gain time for the cession of the principality to the cæsars, which was effected in the year 1064 in exchange for a retreat in asia minor. [390] the byzantines did not remain long in the possession of their prize, and it became incorporated in the empire of the seljuks. nor, so far as i am aware, was it recovered from the mussulmans until its capture by the russians under marshal paskevich in 1828. the armenians, the seljuks, and the ottomans have all successively imprinted their stamp upon the town, such as it has come down to our times. the only noteworthy building is a church of the period of the armenian kings; and the citadel and walls are in part due to the armenians and in part to the seljuks and the ottomans. the names kars and karutz are believed to be derived from the georgian, in which language kari signifies a gate. the fortress would be known in that tongue as karis-kholakhi, or the gate-town. it would seem to have been originally a stronghold of the iberians, the ancestors of the georgians of the present day. [391] if this derivation be correct, we must suppose that the kars near marash in asia minor, which is mentioned by a writer of the seventeenth century, was named after the city in northern armenia. [392] during the bagratid period the province of kars was called vanand, [393] and the river akhurean. this last name was also applied to the present arpa chai from the confluence with the river of kars to its junction with the araxes. these appellations have disappeared during the long spell of mussulman rule, nor have they been revived by the russians. i must not weary my reader with an attempt to follow the fortunes of kars from the eleventh to the nineteenth century. but it may interest him to know that among its conquerors figure two great names, that of timur in the fourteenth century and that of shah abbas in the seventeenth. nadir shah attempted in vain to effect its capture in 1744, although he brought up no less than sixteen large cannons and spared no pains to reduce the ottoman garrison. [394] the memory of this failure and of that of the russian general nesvateff in 1807 had confirmed the turks in the conviction that the place was impregnable when the army of paskevich appeared beneath the walls. [395] the appearance of the fortified town upon that historic occasion must have been much more imposing than at the present day. mounting the hillside from the plain on the south, the walls and houses of black stone rose then as now to the very summit of the ridge. but instead of ruinous parapets, interrupted by wide breaches, a double wall with an interval of about 16 feet frowned out upon the advancing host. the inner rampart was defended by towers, the outer by bastions; and the whole circumference of the figure which enclosed the western portion of the insular rock measured 2555 yards. the height of the walls ranged between 14 and 28 feet, and they were from 3 to 5 feet thick. at the north-west angle of the enclosure, and immediately overlooking the river, which winds at the foot of vertical cliffs, was placed the inner fortress or citadel--narin kala--consisting of not less than three fortified spaces of which the most westerly or innermost was the keep. it was built throughout of solid stone. for a considerable space on the side of the plain the outer wall of the city was flanked by a moat, communicating with a marsh. in the plain itself the suburb on the south, which has now been transfigured by the russians and composes the modern town, was surrounded by walls and defended by towers. a fort had been erected on the horn of the karadagh, beyond the smaller suburb of bairam pasha. on the left bank of the river the only work of importance appears to have been a quadrangular fort with towers at the angles, called temir pasha, and protecting the outlying houses on the margin of the stream. [396] the russian army approached from the side of gümri, the present alexandropol, and passed within sight of the walls to the banks of the river where they encamped near the village of küchik keui. their number amounted to about seven thousand men, while the besieged counted about eleven thousand under arms. but paskevich was allowed to occupy the high land on the left bank, and to direct his attack from the south-west as well as from the south. the fortified suburb, orta kapi, was stormed on one flank and the karadagh on the other. the citadel capitulated on the same day, the fifth after the commencement of operations. kars was restored to the turks after the termination of this war, and was again besieged by the russians in 1855. four british officers were despatched by our own government to direct the defence, and the garrison numbered some fourteen thousand infantry, fifteen hundred artillery, and a small body of cavalry. the enemy, under muravieff, were more than double this strength; the advance was again made from the side of gümri, and the russian headquarters were established in the vicinity of the river, on the south-west of the town. but on this occasion the russian general discovered that all the approaches had been protected by works, which covered a large area. under the conditions of modern warfare kars is most assailable from the heights on the west, which rise from no great elevation along the left bank of the river, until they reach imposing proportions just north of the site, on the further side of the chasm. there they form a plateau which must be higher than the rock of kars, and which overlooks the ridge of that insular mass, the town itself being turned towards the plain. once gain possession of this line of heights and the old town is at your mercy. realising this fact, general williams and his subordinates had erected a line of forts to bar the approach on this side. the principal work on the west was situated some two miles from the town, at the extremity of the higher levels in that direction. it was called fort takhmas or tahmasp. inside of that position, immediately covering the heights on the north, a string of fortifications was constructed on the plateau, commencing on the south-west with fort lake, the strongest of all, and terminating on the north-east in fort teesdale near the edge of the cliff, where the river has almost effected its passage through the gorge. while such was the disposition of the defences on the left bank, the protected area on the right bank, the side of the plain, was considerably extended. a line of breastworks, enclosing a wide rectangular space, was taken from the foot of the karadagh on the east to the margin of the river on the west. at the angles of this enclosure stood the karadagh fort on the north, and the forts of hafiz pasha and kanly on the south. the point of junction with the river was defended by fort suwari, and breastworks and redoubts, placed upon commanding positions, joined these works of the plain to those upon the heights already described. [397] with certain changes in name my reader can follow this disposition of the defences upon the plan at the commencement of the present chapter, which is founded upon plans made during the last russo-turkish war in 1877. the russians have since added to the strength of the works and have vastly improved the communications between them. but they do not appear, so far as i was enabled to judge, to have materially altered their arrangement. the greater range of modern guns has perhaps already necessitated a further extension of outlying forts. the old citadel has sunk into insignificance; and the defence of the future will have to deal with a very large area, and will require many times as many men as in the past. how williams with such a small force could have held out for five months against an organised army of twice his own strength is a question which i cannot answer with satisfaction to myself. his ultimate surrender was occasioned by starvation; but he had already repulsed, with enormous losses to the enemy, the main attack, which was directed against fort takhmas. [398] for the second time the victors were compelled at the peace to disgorge their prize, which they justly regarded as the outer bulwark of erzerum and asia minor. its permanent conquest was reserved for the war of 1877, when the turks were left by england to their own resources, and when they practically gave it away to loris melikoff after the defeat at the alaja dagh. [399] my hopes of being able to investigate this historical site reposed upon the high authority of the letters which i carried with me and upon the doubtful factor of the personality of the governor. to measure this uncertain quantity was my first object, and i set out to accomplish it in fitting style. an open landau, driven by a russian coachman of the molokan sect, conveyed me from the modern town in the plain along the right bank of the river and for some distance into the gorge. a metalled road follows that bank under the shadow of the precipice for the space of about half a mile. it ends at a little respite of even ground between the cliff and the water's edge. in former days there had been planted here a grove and a flower garden, which was known as the paradise of kars. but, since the present governor appropriated the place to himself, and built upon it his private residence, it goes by the name of paradise lost. general fadéeff is not exactly a popular personage--if, indeed, he may still be numbered among mortal men. his abode is far removed from their habitations, and i came to the conclusion that it concealed a mystery. i rang in vain several times at the door. at last i contrived to summon a very pretty young woman with a very sulky countenance. as she spoke both french and german, i contrived to win her to my side, and she promised she would enquire after the general. she returned with a set expression which i felt i could not assail. i did, however, succeed in making her smile, and that was something pleasant in itself. his excellency was absent; it was not known where, nor by what time he would return. i enquired whether he made a practice of sleeping out. at last she relented into suggesting i might call in the evening; she would do what she could, but she was only a subordinate member of the household. she did not come to the door when i repeated my visit, and i received the same unsatisfactory answers. the vice-governor, general petander, examined my papers at the seat of government, but pleaded that his authority was extremely limited. he could not say when the governor would return to his house. i was glad to escape from him to the hospitable home of colonel rzewuski, in command of the uman regiment of cossacks of kuban. i had accepted an invitation to dine with him and madame rzewuski; and the party consisted of a group of as amiable and charming people as it would be possible to meet. all had travelled and knew the world. the conversation was free, and ranged at ease over every topic, including the mysterious governor. they were immensely entertained by my own experiences in that quarter, and they repaid me by narrating the gallant deeds of fadéeff, who appears to have been instrumental in the conquest of kars in 1877. but they left me in doubt whether he still existed in the flesh. i thought i detected a certain legendary phraseology in their remarks about him, from which a master of the higher criticism would easily be able to establish that they were not contemporary with the personage of whom they spoke. my host was determined that i should not be blindfolded, and that i should see what might be seen without endangering the safety of kars. his own aide-de-camp had recently returned from a visit to england, where he had been accorded facilities of a similar nature, and whence he brought back the most agreeable recollections. the deficiencies in our insular manners are in such cases outweighed in the mind of the visitor by the freedom of our life, the absence of suspicion against foreign designs, and, above all, by the world-wide bond of sport. never in the height of the hunting season at home have i listened to a more animated discussion of the relative merits of our countries and packs of foxhounds than after dinner in the company of these officers in this remote corner of russian asia. from hounds we passed to horses, and to an interesting experiment which had recently been made by the colonel. it is well known that the cossack horses are of great endurance; but they have little pace, and their shoulders are of the worst. my host had crossed one of his mares with the english thoroughbred, and had produced a colt of much promise which had only just been broken. if i did not object i should ride him on the morrow, when he would take me to have a peep at the fortifications on the heights. in spite of the twinkle in his eye when he spoke of the vivacity of the youngster, i felt that the opportunity was cheap at this price, and merely stipulated that i should be allowed my english saddle. very early on the following morning i sallied forth to the colonel's residence, and was surprised to find a whole squadron of cossack cavalry drawn up in the road. his aide-de-camp was conspicuous in a magnificent uniform, which set off his tall and graceful figure. the band of the regiment was mustered at its full strength; but these troops were only a portion of the effective, which numbered some eight or nine hundred horsemen. the remainder were distributed over the extensive tract of country between akhaltsykh and the turkish frontier at sarikamish. an iron-grey charger, over 15 hands in height, was being paced to and fro before the door. he excited the admiration and the curiosity of the onlookers, having a long and elastic walk, and arching his neck to the hand of the groom instead of stolidly following where he was led. that was a horse, they were all saying--those of the country were ponies beside him, and, as for the mounts of the cossacks, they looked mere dross by his side. my small and plain-flap saddle, which i recognised upon his back, brought out the points of his sloping shoulder and strong loins. a word from the aide-de-camp, and the squadron was brought to attention with the band at their head. when the colonel emerged from the doorway a salute was exchanged, and when he had mounted, the march commenced and the band prepared to strike up. none too soon had i adjusted my stirrup leathers on the iron-grey, for at the first sound he bounded high into the air. but he had plenty of room at the head of the regiment, where the colonel beckoned me to ride by his side. this was the second time i had ridden at the head of cossacks; i mention the fact merely to justify the assertion that there can be few more inspiriting positions. one feels the peculiar quality of the material behind one; it is in the air and makes the pulse beat. there is no champing of bits and impatient curvetting; nor do the riders sit up in their saddles and look smart. they may be seen in every posture, lolling about in their shabby drab uniforms, and holding their reins long. but they communicate the impression that each man is a born soldier, and that one might march with them from one end of asia to another without troubling much about the commissariat or the length of the particular stage. they are just the troops with which to traverse these vast plains. the long-backed horses are hardened to every kind of privation, and so are their owners, for every cossack owns his mount. where would you march? say the word, and we go now. on this occasion the proceedings were quite of a gala order. we passed through the main streets of the modern town upon the plain; and all the karslis were there assembled to hear the inspiriting music and to pass remarks upon the foreigner on the grey horse. we wound along the side of the river, at the foot of the precipice crowned by the citadel, where a window in the walls of that airy edifice marks the spot whence the turks were wont to precipitate spies. we crossed to the left bank by the lower of the two bridges, and followed along the chaussée upon that side. it is now the principal avenue of communication with alexandropol; but it is destined to be replaced by a road which will pass to the south of the town, leaving this chaussée with its secrets for purely military use. the further we proceeded the loftier loomed the walls of the chasm, especially that upon our left hand. it rises almost vertically from the margin of the road to the edge of the plateau, some five hundred feet above the stream. the heights on the left bank are here called by the name of mukhliss, and such is their elevation that the buildings upon them--the military hospital and the redoubts--may be seen from the plain on the south of kars, showing up behind the insular ridge against which the ancient town is built. opposite the old citadel they are known as vali pasha, and, further west, as takhmas. on the right bank the mass of rock which falls abruptly to the river is styled kars and karadagh. we had arrived at a point whence the solitary house of the governor could be clearly seen beyond the winding channel on that side. the choice was offered between two roads. the one we had been following pursued its course through the chasm; the other took advantage of some milder acclivities in the cliff to mount to the plateau above our heads. the forts upon the plateau are the interesting feature of modern kars; the word was given to take the upper road. the colonel and myself were still riding in front of the band, and could look back upon the long train of one of the finest of cossack regiments defiling in half column up the incline. when we had reached a considerable elevation, all of a sudden a human figure springs into the road. it is a little gendarme, and he stands immovable in the centre of the road. the regiment is at once brought to a halt. the figure enquires whether there be a foreigner riding with them, and receives an affirmative reply. then he points to an adjacent bifurcation of the road, one branch leading to the heights, and the other rejoining the chaussée at a point some distance down the stream. he directs us to take the latter way. the colonel bites his lip, turns pale and obeys. we have come up all this distance, and now we are to go down. the ghost of general fadéeff must be chuckling--if ghosts can chuckle--behind those windows in the speck of a house on the opposite bank! it had been the plan of my kind host to cross the block of heights containing the forts, and thence to descend into the plain upon the north. a little molokan village, called blagodarnoe, is situated in the more level country on that side. a troop of his cossacks was billeted within it, and it had been thought convenient to pay them a visit. the return journey would be made by way of the chaussée. there was now nothing for it but to proceed and to come home by the same route, since the little gendarme had given orders to this effect. we continued our passage through the chasm. i was impressed with the admirable communications which the russians have established at great cost between the heights on either bank. soon after regaining the main road we passed two opposite flights of steps, of which the one scaled the steep side of the plateau on the left, and the other that of the insular rock of kars. both were broad and perfectly maintained. the latter conducted from the water's edge to the karadagh fort, now called fort fadéeff, invisible on the further side of the ridge. and from the base of these steps a military road was carried slantwise towards the citadel. during the last siege the garrison suffered from the want of ready access to the outlying positions. this want has now been supplied. troops can be moved with rapidity between the town and these positions as well as between the positions themselves. the cliffs on either hand retain their elevation until you have reached the fourth military verst stone (over two and a half miles). then they decline and become less rocky and steep. the formation on the right bank is continued into the distance in a low outline; that on the left already opens to plainer land at about the sixth stone (four miles). we now left the chaussée, and cantered over the plain, across which it was a pleasure to extend the iron-grey. he had all the makings of a very valuable horse. luncheon was served in one of the neat little houses of the molokan village, and many a glass of white liqueur was consumed before the meal. on the way home there was a display of cossack exercises, a succession of riders galloping past us in single file, and vaulting to the ground with one foot in the stirrup in full career. or they placed their bodies parallel with the flanks of their horses, avoiding the arrows of their ancestors or the bullets of their contemporaries. like kurds and circassians they raised wild shouts; but, unlike these, they never got out of hand. last of all there was a race, conducted on strict principles, in which i cantered in, an easy winner, on the grey. the squadron then re-formed, and we retraced our steps through the chasm to the inspiriting music of the band. it soon ceased playing; and with the last strain, at first low, then gradually louder, a sad and mysterious chant broke from the ranks. it was carried like sobs into the recesses of the gorge, rising and falling like the sighing of the wind. what did they sing in that expression of bottomless misery? their homes had been laid waste, their parents were no more, nor their horses any longer at tether or stall. then the theme would change abruptly, and a note of triumph would be heard. nowhere except in hungary have i heard such moving music, giving utterance through the canons of western harmony to the tempestuous motives of eastern songs. it remains to say a few words about the town of kars, as you see it at the present day. it is a mere shadow of its former self. the old fortress city on the side of the insular rock is scarcely better than a heap of ruins. the suburb on the plain--orta kapi of mussulman times--is rapidly pushing it out of existence. this suburb contains the residences of the high officials and officers, and can boast of a new russian church, at its southern extremity, and of a number of single-storeyed but spacious and well-supplied shops. the church displays the masonry of the grey stone found at kars; but the bulk of the buildings have their walls painted white, and their roofing of sheet metal, coloured pink or a soft green. the aspect of this modern quarter, jutting out from the hill into the plain opposite the answering horn of the karadagh on the east, presents a striking contrast to the uniform grey of the old city, overlooking the bay of the plain. the stone of the walls and of the old armenian church have weathered almost black. but the majority of the ancient houses have disappeared, and the walled area is for the most part covered with rubble and ruin, or with straggling hovels, resembling those of a village. the citadel was blown up by the russians prior to their evacuation at the close of the crimean war, [400] and has been rebuilt in a softer and yellow stone (fig. 98). it now forms a most admirable target for artillery, being the only patch of brighter colour on a ground of the sombrest hue. the population of city and suburbs is censused at not more than 4000, of course excluding the garrison. of these 2500 are armenians and only some 850 are turks. the russians, including molokans, number 250, and the greeks over 300 souls. it is true that the total might perhaps be doubled if there were included in it those families who are allowed to reside here on sufferance, prior to being settled elsewhere. kars is constantly receiving refugees from the turkish provinces, flying before the excesses of the kurds. still the number of the inhabitants has grown smaller and smaller, if we even confine ourselves to the present century. prior to the campaign of paskevich, we are informed by a credible authority that kars with its suburbs contained some 10,000 families, or from 50,000 to 60,000 souls. [401] after it was evacuated by the russian army upon the close of that war, the bulk of the armenian population deserted their homes and followed the russian retreat. [402] the figure then drops to a pretty uniform estimate of 2000 houses or families, giving a result of some 10,000 to 12,000 souls, of whom the vast majority were mussulmans. [403] it must now be further reduced by more than one-half. perhaps the projected railway will increase the prosperity of kars if the military regulations be relaxed. but it will be a long time before it can recover its former splendour, when the fortress city contained no less than 3000 houses, 47 mosques and 18 schools. [404] i was prevented by the number and ubiquity of the gendarmes from making use of my camera. the only illustration which i am able to offer is a view of the citadel, reproduced from a photograph which has been placed at my disposal by my friend mr. f. c. conybeare (fig. 98). i should have liked to reproduce the interesting features of the armenian church, now converted into a temple of the russian orthodox profession and serving as the principal resort of the garrison. in mussulman times it was used as a mosque. there can, i think, be little doubt that this is the same building which was erected by the armenian monarch of the bagratid dynasty, abas, in a.d. 930. [405] the teachers in the armenian school ascribed it to this prince, but were not certain about the date. i have remarked upon the blackness of its walls from without. the interior has been covered with a yellow buff paint, and its proportions are spoilt by an elaborate altar. it wears an air of comfort and even of luxury, all the ornaments being out of keeping with the austerity of the ancient pile. the form of this church is one i have not seen elsewhere, presenting on plan four semicircular arms with a rectangular projection between each arm. the vaulting of the ceilings above the projections composes with that of the ceilings of the apsidal recesses a group of eight arches. another monument of the same period is said to be the ruinous castle at the upper end of the wall on the east. the wall on the south has well-nigh disappeared, and what remains is almost lost among the houses. the gate on this side contains an arabic inscription, and several armenian crosses are inserted into the adjacent rampart. from the citadel a wall still descends the side of the precipice, and is taken by an archway over the road to the margin of the river. i cannot help thinking that the plan of the place and its essential features have not changed much since the time of the armenian kings. sultan murad iii. (1574-1595) is credited with extensive works, but it may be questioned whether they were much more than restorations. a renewal is ascribed to sultan selim, but it appears doubtful to which monarch of that name. [406] the days of the fortified town, with its mediæval castle and ramparts, are perhaps already numbered. the russians will build in the open, where there will be room for their favourite boulevards, although trees are rare at present in kars. the fortifications will year by year be extended over a larger area, the neighbourhood being sown with volcanic eminences admirably adapted both for the attack and for the defence. the armenian inhabitants have a single elementary school, or, rather, one for boys and one for girls. it is housed in the buildings adjacent to the little church of st. mary, under the citadel at the western extremity of the rock. the teachers simply cowered with fear during my visit. the russian school dispenses a somewhat higher standard of education, and profits by the disabilities imposed upon its rival. i was shown specimens of the easter cards which each child had received this year from inmates of schools in france. the little french boy sends some poetry translated into russian to his russian contemporary. the girls here received similar presents from french girls. it would appear as if no russian school within the limits of the empire had been passed over by the organisers of an act of demonstrative patriotism which, let us hope, is not spontaneous with the young. chapter xx across the spine of armenia the long and lofty barrier of the ararat system affords a natural partition of the surface of the armenian highlands, and, corresponding with the frontier between the russian and the turkish empires, divides armenia into two. the fairest districts of either territory are found on their southern confines; and what the valley of the araxes is to the russian provinces, that is to those under turkish rule the country of van. van, with her famous lake and immemorial antiquity, became the next, and not the least alluring objective of the journey which we had planned. a new world lay on the further side of the mountains towards which we now directed our course. october 22.--during our stay in kars we had experienced the first spell of cold, bleak weather that the coming winter held in store. on the day of departure the district was visited by a storm of rain which delayed us until afternoon. at a few minutes after one o'clock we were crossing the bridge which spans the river, and taking a last view of the castle and the gorge. above the entrance to the cleft the stream flows between humbler slopes; but they are still of rock, and the metalled road, which follows the western shore at no great distance, is without a prospect on either side. a few versts are covered among such cheerless surroundings; then the river comes towards you through a nice tract of flat pasture land which opens out upon the right bank. the meadows, brown of hue after the heats of summer, were seen to extend to the cultivated skirts of a hill range, some six miles distant, at the foot of which we were shown the village of azat. a second settlement, little tikma, was nearer to us, in the same direction; and on our side of the water a group of low stone houses were aligned upon the road. we were surprised to hear the german tongue and the mournful sounds of a concertina; the dress, the hymn reminded us that the day was sunday; and the simple people were delighted to converse with a son of protestant england in the language of their fatherland. they told me that it was two years since they had left the colony at tiflis, and migrated to these distant wilds. the soil was rich, and it only needed a small expense of capital to diffuse the river over the adjacent plain. but whence could they draw the money for works of this nature? they harvested their corn in the month of august, but the crops suffered from want of water. although they possessed no school, they were not without the rudiments of learning; their frank, intelligent faces were a pleasure to see. petrovka is the name of their settlement, which contains some forty houses. a few versts further we entered the russian colony of vladikars. we were crossing an open country which stretched away on either hand to the outlines of low hills. several of these russian villages were visible in the landscape, and the brown loam had been exposed by the plough. vladikars bears a strong resemblance to gorelovka--the same white faces and little windows of the neat stone houses, ranged at intervals on either side of the road. the inhabitants, too, display a family likeness to the dwellers in the northern watershed--the men with their lank figures and dull but honest faces, the women with their broad shoulders and massive hips. the feminine members of the colony were especially conspicuous--strapping wenches, as one might call them, attired in the gayest of printed cottons and exhibiting a plainness which was almost repulsive. i entered the oblong and single-storeyed building in which they conduct their services of prayer. a wooden bench along the walls, a few wooden chairs were its only furniture; you saw no pulpit or altar or religious picture; god resided in the living objects of his love. this village as well as its neighbours are peopled by molokans, a sect of which the doctrine, like that of the dukhobortsy, represents an extreme and a logical form of the protestant faith. an old man to whom i turned, and whose striking features i was able to record (fig. 99), spoke to me with much charm of voice and manner concerning their religious beliefs. they reverence moses and the prophets and the holy gospel, but they practise their religion in their own way. singing psalms appears to be their principal method of spiritual expression. infants are not baptized, but are brought to this building; a passage from the new testament is read in the child's presence and his name is publicly declared. a similar ceremony consecrates the marriage tie. a little beyond this village--in which is placed the eleventh verst stone--the road bifurcates. the well-metalled and well-maintained chaussée, which we had been following, pursues its course to the confines of the turkish frontier at the station of sarikamish. the other branch--which is in places a road, but more often a simple track--stretches off towards the south. taking the latter direction, we drove for some distance over even ground, where here and there the rich, brown soil had been exposed by the plough. on our left hand rose a grassy and hummock-shaped eminence, scarcely a mile away. hill ranges of similar appearance circled around us, their summits capped with lowering clouds and strewn with fresh snow. in such surroundings the gay houses of novo-michaelovka were a pleasing diversion for the eye. the elaborate fretwork of wooden gables and shutters, the lavish display of vermilion and cobalt, lent an air of festivity to the place (fig. 100). it was evident that the inhabitants were extremely well-to-do; yet, like all these sectaries, they neither possessed nor appeared to desire a school in which to educate their young. near this village we had again approached the banks of the river, which had a width of some 20 yards. we now crossed to the right bank. on our point of course, a little to our left, we held a bold and lofty hill, of which the outline assumes the appearance of two humps. it bears the name of akh deve or the white camel; and one can understand how appropriate would be this appellation during the winter months. snow had not yet rested upon its grassy convexities, which still wore the ochreous hues of autumn, and were flushed in places by a detritus of red, volcanic stone. after losing all prospect for the space of some twenty minutes, during which we crossed a bleak side valley of the sluggish river, and a stream which winds along the base of rocky slopes, we again opened this landmark on the further rim of the amphitheatre, close by the village and station of chermaly. the post house stands at a little distance from this armenian village; our tired horses were replaced by a fresh team of four, having covered a stage of 23 versts or 15 miles. it was half-past four o'clock; we made our way over lofty uplands, of which the moist loam held our carriage-wheels. or we jolted upon large boulders, embedded in the track. away on our right rose the slopes of the akh deve. magnificent eagles, with their square shoulders and long plumage, circled round us or observed us from adjacent rocks. we were not long in discovering the bait of this assemblage--the mangled remains of a horse. in three-quarters of an hour we had reached the skirts of the hill mass, whence we commanded an unbroken view towards the north. vast tracts of idle soil extended to the horizon, except where, here and there, the yellow herbage was interrupted by little carpets of ploughed land. hills, which appeared little better than hummocks, were set at random in the expanse. their summits were streaked with snow; from the white linings of their satellite clouds vague lights descended upon the plain. we were standing upon the elevated but imperceptible water-parting between the araxes and the river of kars. a gradual descent of some 500 feet brought us to the considerable village of kemurly, where we passed the night in the posting house. it was the first settlement which we had seen during a stage of 20 versts, or a little over 13 miles. the latter portion of the drive from the akh deve to the village had been performed under the shadow of night. it was only on the following morning--which broke serene and radiant--that we were able to realise the great significance of our position in a geographical sense. the even ground over which we had travelled from the banks of the arpa to kars, from kars to the southward-flowing streams, does not descend, as one might expect, to the valley of the araxes through a series of gradual inclines. the transition is effected by an exactly opposite process; the plain continues to rise until it has almost reached the latitude of the river, then suddenly breaks away, and overhangs the valley in a long line of gigantic cliffs. these cliffs extend for miles along the left bank of the araxes; and it has been ascertained that for a space of over 30 miles they maintain about the same elevation, namely, a height of 6400 feet above the sea, and of 2000 to 2500 feet above the river. [407] they may in fact be regarded as forming the rim of an extensive plateau, which commences at the confluence of the arpa with the araxes, and stretches westwards, unbroken by any considerable mountain barrier, along the narrows above kagyzman, and along the broad depression of pasin to the very threshold of the plain of erzerum. their peculiar boldness in the neighbourhood of kagyzman may in part be attributed to the lavas which have issued in considerable volume from centres of emission along their edge. these eruptive centres, long since dormant, are seen in the shape of low convexities, stretching inwards from the brink of the cliff. there is seldom wanting to such formations a natural pass or opening, through which the communications with the lower levels flow. our road availed itself of a deep and gulf-like inlet in the rim of the plateau. the descent along this avenue was comparatively long and gradual, commencing indeed above the village--which has an elevation of some 6500 feet [408]--and ending in the neighbourhood of the lower kemurly. measured on the map from point to point, the distance between the two settlements is about 6 1/2 miles. the road was carried along the slopes through an infinitude of windings, which measured 18 versts or 12 miles. it was not yet eight o'clock when we proceeded in our carriage down the easy gradients of this descent. beyond a foreground which was choked by a succession of shelving convexities rose the crags and peaks of the ararat system--that long range to which in a collective sense this name may not be inapplicable, and which, like ararat, is known to the inhabitants of these districts under the name of aghri dagh. aghri dagh! these words, with their roughness on the palate, are just as appropriate to express the ruggedness of the barrier which we were fronting, as they are unsuited to reflect the harmony of the giant in the east. the eye, already accustomed to the vaulted eminences of the tableland, is impressed by the contrast of these sharp, precipitous shapes. it seems some invasion of the border ranges into the area of the great plateaux. the sun was touching the summits of the chain, which were softened by a covering of fresh snow. but the underlying rock still asserted its essential character, moulding the snow into an infinite number of facets, which sparkled in the light (fig. 101). the northern wall of the valley--the heights we were leaving behind us--is composed by the lofty cliffs already described. their even outline was drawn across the sky into invisible limits, as we made our way over the broken ground to which they decline (fig. 102). marls and sandstone had taken the place of the layers of volcanic matter; far and wide, the slopes about us were broken into hummock shapes, tinged with delicate yellows and pinks. the only vestige of wood were some low trees and bush, seen on the lower tiers of the opposite mountains in the far west. again we opened out the distant outline of ararat, beyond the dark peak of takjaltu. the araxes was long invisible; when at length we overlooked the narrow floor of the valley, the river resembled a slender white thread. kagyzman was distinguished on the first of the slopes which faced us--an oasis of verdure and some faint blue smoke. we felt the power of a southern sun; and, as we neared the end of the descent, bouquets of atraphaxis, with succulent flowers and blaze of madder, clothed the waste and sandy soil. at twenty minutes before ten we were at the lower kemurly; and, a little later, our wheels were cleaving the shallow waters of the araxes, spread in a wide bed of silt and shingle, over which a rapid current flows (fig. 103). the ground rises from the opposite margin of the river up the beautiful side valley of kagyzman. the town is situated at an elevation of some 700 feet above the ford, which crosses a hollow of nearly 4000 feet above the sea. [409] the houses nestle among lofty trees, on the left or western bank of a broad depression, which harbours in its deep and wooded recesses a scanty affluent of the araxes. the soft tracery and mellow tints of the luxuriant foliage are backed by the rugged sides of the ararat system; while, in the north, the eye follows the horizontal edge of the tableland, with the low volcanic eminences protruding above that outline, and robed, this morning, in fresh snow (fig. 104). the inhabitants of this little paradise are armenians and mohammedans, the latter of whom belong to the sunni persuasion and are classed in the russian census as turks. [410] a strong detachment of cossacks was quartered in the place--a significant outpost of the northern empire. i was anxious to cross the mountains on the following morning; and it was painful to realise that we were at the mercy of the civil authorities--of a sour-faced nachalnik who had no doubt received his instructions, but in what sense remained to be seen. had fadéeff hardened his heart? had the order come to arrest us? the question remained for some time in suspense. the route which we were taking excited suspicion; with what object were we pursuing this unbeaten track? there were not wanting practical difficulties which might excuse the authorities, should they decide to detain us at kagyzman. we were in need of transport; to purchase suitable animals was next to impossible; and, as for hiring, the owners were not accustomed to cross the frontier, and might reasonably apprehend detention on the other side. indeed we failed in all our efforts to induce them to make a contract; and we were brought to recognise that it would be necessary to abandon our intention, unless the nachalnik would intervene. by dint of much persistence and some cajolery we were able to bring him round. he of course protested that oriental methods were out of place in russia; we approved the sentiment, and expressed the hope that something would be devised to take their place. the owners were given their orders to appear before dawn on the following day. i rose at four, certain that they would not obey. but there was still a hope that we might create the necessary quantity of initiative by rousing the nachalnik from his sleep. this plan, based, as the reader knows, upon former experiences, was productive of instant success. by half-past seven our tiny caravan was in motion, pointing along the base of the mountains a little south of west. we sank by a steep incline to a long valley which follows the araxes in the relation, as it appeared to us, of a parallel trough. it was filled with hummocks of a red, sandy substance; the slopes on either side screened off the view. those on our left hand were the more stony, and were tinged in places a greenish hue. in about an hour after starting we opened out the river, flowing at some little distance from the heights upon which we stood. a lateral depression afforded access to the principal valley, which we followed, keeping to the high ground. the araxes was threading the narrow bottom of a fork, of which the arms rose to thousands of feet above its bed. close up now, on our left hand, towered the escarpments of the range, fronting the opposite cliffs of the tableland. at a little before nine we turned our backs to the river and rose, on a southerly course, up the mountain side. we had reached an elevation of some 5500 feet, when a little village, with a few willows and the ruins of an ancient monastery, broke upon our view (fig. 105). it is inhabited by armenians, and bears the name of kara vank (the black cloister). the even masonry of hewn stone which composed the crumbling edifice recalled the culture of a forgotten age. what a contrast it presented to the rude and featureless walls of the modern village church! we passed through this little settlement, which contains some thirty houses, and mounted the slopes on the further side. in a valley on our left hand we noticed some sparse brushwood, and bushes of wild rose here and there relieved the rock. we were nearing the level of the opposite edge of the tableland, of which the cliffs were seen descending to the narrow river valley with shelving sides of richly modelled marls. at a quarter before ten we made halt on the neck of a spur, whence we obtained a wide prospect over the more distant scene. we overlooked the surface of the tableland. towards the east, the mass of alagöz could be distinguished from banks of cloud, which clung to the recent snows upon its slopes. kagyzman was still visible in the trough of the landscape; the two low cones on the cliffs beyond the town were especially prominent, enveloped in a sheet of unbroken snow. our people identified them with the great and the small jagluya, and said they were famous for their rich pasture-land. from east to west, in a wide half-circle, land and cloud were woven together, the horizontal outlines always felt and sometimes seen. but in the west these nebulous shapes met the profile of the savage ridges which were seen descending from the range about us, almost at right angles, into the narrows through which the river flows. from this point we continued during a considerable space of time to skirt these upper slopes. the keen air was full of sun; the prospect was inspiring; we loitered for an hour over our lunch. i focussed the camera upon one of the long meridional parapets which cleave the soft landscape of the west (fig. 106). i would ask my reader to observe the deep incision of its flanking valley; these valleys extend to the very spine of the mountain system, and, in some places, appear to break it through. we were obliged to descend to the bottom of this particular ravine; a slender stream was rustling over the boulders in the hollow, which had an elevation of some 5800 feet. the rocky escarpments of the opposite parapet were seen to consist of a compound diabase, veined in places with beautiful marbles. of wood there was little, even within these recesses--a brushwood of beech and willow and fir. the rose bushes were still with us, and the yellow immortelles, which we had not seen since our sojourn on ararat. beyond this valley we rose towards the summits of the chain and made our way through this winter's snow. we were on the pass at four o'clock (fig. 107); a grass-grown eminence on our right hand was identified as the akh bulakh dagh. the range was highest on our left; the saddle by which we crossed it has an elevation of some 8600 feet. half an hour later we had passed into the opposite watershed, and planted our feet upon turkish soil. vast plains lay below us--dim tracts of even soil, broken in places by hummock shapes. the outline of an opposite chain was drawn across the horizon, loftier in the east, where it was crowned with snow, declining in the west to a range of blue-grey hills upon our right. it was the system of the ala dagh. beyond this barrier, the harmonious shape of a single mountain formed a beautiful white presence in the sky. we could not doubt that it was sipan, nearly seventy miles distant, the goal to which we were directing our steps. a thread of water on the plains reflected the blue heaven, and was recognised as the murad. we had crossed the spine of armenia, and were descending to the banks of the euphrates, to the sources of the streams which issue into the persian gulf. chapter xxi geographical in the present chapter i shall invite my reader to make good his advantage over the traveller, and to realise, before proceeding further with the journey, the true meaning and wider connection of those natural features which have composed the landscape day by day. at the same time i shall endeavour to trace the limits of north-eastern or russian armenia, extending our view for awhile to comprise the whole of armenia, and again narrowing it to the area of the russian provinces. but at the outset we are prompted to examine the conception so vaguely expressed by the metaphors of tableland and frame of mountain ranges which, with slight variations in the figure, have in the foregoing pages so often been employed. the pursuit of this analysis carries us beyond the sphere of our particular survey, compelling us to consider the structure of asia as a whole. from the mediterranean to the pacific the asiatic continent is traversed by a zone of elevated country, which, flanked on the north and south by great chains of mountains, breaks off on the west to the ægean sea and to the lowlands of china on the east. extensive areas of land with considerably lesser altitude are outspread on either side of this gigantic system: in the north the plains of russia and siberia, in the south the peninsulas of arabia and india. the mountain chains which confine the zone of elevated country have been reared during different geological periods; yet they are subject to common laws. they are disposed in extensive arcs, of greater or lesser curvature, which are festooned across the continent on either side of the plateau region with a general direction from east to west. the plateau region is in general synclinal or, in other words, of slightly hollow surface, and, in comparison with the flanking ranges, is flat. if we enquire of the geologist the origin of these phenomena, we receive an answer which, while it leaves many points obscure and doubtful, still enables us to trace the operation of fixed principles in the mighty work unfolded before our eyes. our globe sails through the wan expanse of æther, diffusing the heat with which it is charged. the cooling crust shrinks and gathers inwards towards the centre; but the material of which it consists is inelastic and is thrown into gigantic wrinkles or folds. radial contraction induces tangential stresses at the surface, colossal forces which bend over and invert the folds, and even thrust the strata one beneath another, causing them to be disposed like the tiles upon a roof. this lateral tension finds most relief where the crust is weakest; and it is at such points, or along such zones, that the process of mountain-making has been developed on the largest scale. it is the tendency of such folded ranges to form arcs of large curvature, which are drawn inwards, where the lateral pressure meets with most resistance, and expand outwards, where it is withstood in a lesser degree. in asia the operation of this process of mountain-making has been accompanied by, or has produced, the elevation in mass of large portions of the earth's crust. the intensely folded regions, or, in other words, the great chains of mountains, are found along the inner and the outer margins of the elevated mass. between these zones the stratified rocks have no doubt been subjected to the folding process; yet they have escaped the immense contortions that have taken place on either side. throughout the continent the lateral force which has been most operative in mountain-making has proceeded from the north. the fact may perhaps be explained by supposing that this force is the result of the active pressure exerted by the hard, unyielding material of which the steppes of siberia and the basin of the arctic ocean are composed. the great arcs which are described by the mountain ranges are in general convex to the south. thus in western asia the chains on the inner and outer margins of the elevated area are disposed in two roughly parallel series of arcs bulging towards the south. of these series the inner arcs have less curvature than the outer, to which they are roughly parallel. the inner series may be traced with greatest singleness of feature on the west of hindu kush--that natural centre of the mountain systems of asia which at once supplies the most convenient standpoint for a general survey of the structure of the continent, and is placed at the junction of the two great divisions, western and eastern, into which geographers have partitioned this vast area. the hindu kush inclines over into the paropamisus; and the southern portion of the latter range is continued, on the north of persia, by the mountains of khorasan. a sharp bend in the belt, just east of the caspian, turns southwards into the elburz range, and the beautiful curve of the chain along the margin of the shore may be admired from the waters of that inland sea. the line of elburz is protracted across the depression of the araxes valley into the peaks of karabagh; while the karabagh system unites with the bold and lofty ridges which in full face of their gigantic neighbour, the caucasus, overtower the right bank of the kur. these ridges again connect with the chain we have ourselves crossed between kutais and akhaltsykh--a chain which joins the mountains on the southern shore of the black sea. the pontic range forms a bow of wide span and gentle curvature, ending in the hump of anatolia, where it meets the arc of the bithynian border hills. the parallel series on the outer margin of the elevated area commences with the outer arc of the hindu kush system, the severely bent and s-shaped salt range. thence it proceeds into the mountains which flank persia upon the east and belong to the outer iranian arc. [411] the bold sweep of this arc into the chain of zagros may be recognised by a glance at the map. we remark the greater protraction of the north-western arm of the bow, a feature which may be traced in the configuration of most of the great asiatic chains. we admire the clean and uniform outline of the curve, broken only by a slight indent at the straits of ormuz, which may be answered by the bend in the inner system which we have already noticed on the east of the caspian sea. the outer iranian arc effects a junction with the tauric ranges along two parallel but fairly distinct orographical lines. of these the inner line crosses over from the zagros to the ararat system, and assumes commanding orographical importance in the western arm of that system, known as the aghri or shatin dagh. it is in the shatin dagh that the bend to the west-south-west is effected, which may be followed through a series of volcanoes into the anti-taurus and the mediterranean range. the outer line is formed by the grand half-circle of the kurdish mountains; from the parched plains about diarbekr you see them, as from the well of an amphitheatre, covered or capped with gleaming snow. this principal chain of taurus extends to the coast of syria, and emerges from the sea in the island of cyprus and in many a headland and island of the anatolian coast. it can scarcely fail to impress the most casual of observers that this double series of arcs, from hindu kush to mediterranean, meet or almost meet at three distinctly traceable and widely separated points. such approximations occur in hindu kush, in armenia, and in the mountainous districts which border the ionian seaboard. we can scarcely doubt that they are due to the incidence of a strong opposing force, moving from the south and causing the arcs to be constricted, the ranges to be piled up one behind another, and mountain development to assume its grandest forms. it is probable that the resisting pressure has been furnished in the first two cases by the indian and arabian peninsulas. another feature, less obvious but not less noteworthy, is furnished by the fact that in armenia and asia minor the arcs have been fractured in the process of bending over at or near the points where the approximations between the two series have taken place. the closer the constriction, the sharper, of course, becomes the curve, and the greater the tendency to split. in asia minor the union of the series has resulted in complete fracture; the folded area sinks beneath the waters of the ægean to be represented by the islands which stud the archipelago, and, further west, by the mountains of the dalmatian coast. on the east of hindu kush we are as yet in want of sufficient material for so convincing an analysis as the researches of geologists have rendered possible on the west. we know that in eastern asia a vast area of elevated land is bounded both along the inner and the outer margins by mountain systems of wide extension and great height. such are the systems of altai and tian-shan upon the north, and the mighty bow of the himalayas on the south. probably the kuenlun range carries over the inner series of western asia, extending eastwards from the pamirs and serving as a buttress to the immensely elevated plateau of tibet. if this view be correct, then the tian-shan and altai systems may perhaps be regarded as minor earth-waves, following close upon the heels of the kuenlun, and supporting the highlands of the tarim basin and the desert of gobi, the han-hai or dry sea of the chinese. the plain reader may be content to observe the echelon of mountain ranges which extends from hindu kush towards behring sea; to note the constant curvature of the arcs towards the south, until, in the altai group, the eastern arms of the bows are protracted ever further towards the north; to contrast the low-lying plains along the western ends of the echelon with the lofty highlands of mongolia on the east. the necks of the valleys issue upon the depression of siberia and the low country through which the oxus and jaxartes flow. in western asia the elevated area with its flanking ranges is bordered on the north by the northern paropamisus and further west by the caucasus chain. the paropamisus may perhaps be regarded as the most southerly of the many branches which belong to the system of tian-shan. [412] geologists invite us to connect the paropamisus with the caucasus, and trace the links of the broken chain to the mountains of krasnovodsk on the caspian, whence a submarine ridge carries the line into the mountains of caucasus, to be protracted far to the west, through the crimea, and emerge from the waters of the black sea in the balkans, carpathians and alps. in this manner we see described on the north of the asiatic highlands, with their series of inner arcs, a further arc of immense span and wide curvature, which is represented on the east by the northern paropamisus and by the caucasus on the west. both these ranges may best be viewed as independent of the inner series; but paropamisus is closely adpressed to the inner arc of persia, and caucasus is joined at a single point to the series, namely by the meschic linking chain. lines of elevation, similar to that which we have traced from paropamisus, may be discovered, although with less orographical distinction, proceeding westwards and struggling over towards europe from the more northerly branches of tian-shan; they are almost lost in the great depression of the turanian lowlands, but they follow arcs of increasing width of span. this interesting study of the structure of asia, which is due to the researches of recent years, not only serves to explain the pronounced features of asiatic landscapes, as integral members of a vast design, but also enables us to understand many of the movements of history and many of the phenomena of the human world. [413] india is enclosed on all sides by the sea or by the outer mountains, and appears reserved by natural causes for herself. china, with her teeming millions, is separated from western asia by the whole bulk of the broadest and least hospitable portion of the system of lofty plateaux with peripheral ranges. the echelon of chains, which seam the continent in a north-easterly direction, are the nurseries of the hardiest tribes. the valleys which space these ranges are the arteries of human movement, and they lead from west to east, from east to west. thus during the period of armed migrations which is represented by the tartar conquests, one division of the tartar armies might be fighting in china on the yellow river while another was laying waste khorasan. the bend of the arcs towards the south places the framework of nature in harmony with the migrations of man. the tablelands of persia, armenia and asia minor are members of a continuous system of elevated plains at a temperate altitude, which extend like some great causeway along the breadth of asia, giving access from east to west, from west to east. this causeway forms the natural avenue of commerce and of conquest, by which the tide of war or of commercial intercourse ebbs and flows between the remote recesses of central asia and the ionian shore of the mediterranean sea. only on the east is the causeway blocked by nature to human traffic, by the constriction of the arcs on the north of india, leading over by a gigantic knot of mountains into the impassable plateau of tibet. the stream is therefore diverted from the highlands to the lowlands; great cities arise on the lowlands, at the mouths of the tian-shan valleys, merv, bokhara, samarkand. and when we contemplate and contrast the structure of asia and of europe--the vast forces which have produced the stately body of eastern asia dying out towards the west in the insignificant but widely ramified elevations of the european mountain chains--we may readily understand how different has been the influence exercised by structural features upon the peoples of either continent. in asia such features are a factor of the first importance, determining climate, controlling migrations, setting barriers to intercourse or relentlessly fixing the highways which it must pursue. in europe, on the other hand, they have done little more than diversify the scenery, and for purposes of peaceful or hostile movements among the nations may with some exceptions be almost left out of account. what are our european mountains but arbitrary wrinkles on the face of the continent? one valley leads over into another of much the same height above sea-level by a pass which is not more lofty than the neighbouring ridges. one plain is succeeded by a companion expanse of similar character, and only some small diversity in the forms of the spires of the churches tells the tale of national distinctions. differentiation rather than the presence of marked ethnological types is characteristic of the peoples of europe. but once the narrow strait is passed we may no longer dally with our geography; and the further we proceed towards the east and the inner sanctuaries of nature the greater grows the necessity of comprehending phenomena which must always exercise a dominant influence upon human affairs. it will not suffice in asia to observe the latitude of a great plain in order to know beforehand the degree of heat which it will support in summer, the rigour or the suavity of the climate during winter. you will be freezing in erzerum while erivan is relaxed in sunshine; yet both cities are placed on the margins of level expanses, and the advantage of latitude is in favour of the temperateness of that first named. not even the convenient distinction of highlands and lowlands will carry us very far. we must enquire into the nature of the highlands; are the mountains their prevailing feature, or are those mountains, as we see them from the floor of the lowlands, a mere buttress to a sequence of elevated plains? penetrate the chain, and you rise by successive steps from valley to valley, while each ridge is higher than the last. follow its extension upon the map and you will see it rising from the mediterranean and terminating in the knot of mountains north of india. mark the characteristics of the people who inhabit it, be they kurds or lurs or lazes, they will not offer much divergence from a common standard. yet what a gulf of human nature between these and the inhabitants of the lowlands--a gulf which is scarcely spanned by the equalising tendencies of a long spell of misgovernment! when at length these alps expand, and you overlook a more level country, everything--climate, the aspect of the sky as well as of the land, people, language, cities, villages are new. and yet our diplomatists who dwell on the bosphorus, and ruminate asiatic problems with the aid of indifferent maps which they would not pretend to understand, group the highlands and the lowlands, the shepherds of the mountains and the cultivators of the plains, all together--a strange collection of birds and beasts and fishes--in a single scheme of administrative reforms. the turk is little wiser; but we may perhaps view with a large indifference his passive resistance to such reforms. but to return to our plains and mountains--the country which we may still call armenia takes its place as an integral member of the system of tablelands, buttressed by mountain ranges, which extends from the hindu kush to the mediterranean sea. it is not separated by any important natural frontier from persia on the east or from asia minor on the west. moreover most of the characteristics which are found in either of these neighbours are prevalent in armenia to a greater or a lesser degree. the stratified rocks include the later palæozoic, the cretaceous, eocene and miocene series; and these extend across the whole system. the salt deposits of miocene age which are spread so widely over persia are not among the least remarkable of the surface features of armenia; although they have not produced that widespread devastation which attends the extension of the great salt deserts over the persian plateau. [414] in armenia they are friendly to man, providing him with one of his necessaries; and the various salt works, known in turkey under the name of tuzla or salt pans, have been exploited from immemorial times. considerable depressions of the surface of the highlands are phenomena common to all three countries; and the same may be said of the volcanoes which are dominant in armenian landscapes, but are not wholly absent from the contiguous territories on either side. all participate in the benefits of a southern climate, and are exempted by their elevation above sea-level from the excesses of a southern sun. slowly-flowing rivers threading vast plains, mountains which determine districts rather than states; a natural penury of vegetation, enhanced by the depredations of countless goats, but perhaps balanced in the eyes of the traveller by the beauty of the land-forms--such are some among the many impressions which may be derived in various degrees from a visit to any of the individual members of the group. but, if armenia be closely linked with her neighbours on the west and east, she is divided by some of the most effective of natural barriers and natural distinctions from the countries which lie to the north and south. the zones of mountains which on the one side separate her from the coast of the black sea and the georgian depression, and on the other from the lowlands of mesopotamia, possess in an equal degree the rugged character due to intense folding and are both of considerable width. sharp ridges with serrated outlines rising one behind another, narrow valleys in which the shadows lie, hissing rivers and bush-grown rocks, grassy uplands or stretches of forest determine the scenery both of the northern and of the southern zone. the alpine region has a breadth of some fifty miles more or less in the direction of the black sea, while the corresponding zone, facing the lowlands about diarbekr, extends, on the whole, over a smaller span. both zones are practically unlimited in length. they have been factors of paramount influence in the history of the peoples, not only screening the territories they confine from those which lie outside, but also investing them with distinct climatic conditions. for these parallel belts of peripheral mountains do in fact perform the function of supports or buttresses to a series of elevated plains; the valleys in the alpine region are but the succession of terraces which rise to the margin of a lofty platform. a difference in level of several thousands of feet is productive of marked features in the habits and character of the inhabitants; while the alps themselves must necessarily determine the mode of life of the dwellers within them, constraining them to follow the vocation of shepherds rather than that of agriculturists. thus along the section between diarbekr and the armenian highlands three strongly-contrasted types of people will be met. the nomad arabs or arabic-speaking cultivators of the lowlands are succeeded by the pastoral kurds with their tribal organisation, and these again by the armenian tillers of the soil. i have already indicated the intimate connection of these peripheral mountains with the structural system of the asiatic continent. the northerly belt belongs to the inner series of arcs, and that on the south to the outer series. the compression of these arcs--a phenomenon which has engaged our attention--has been effected in the greatest degree within the section of country between diarbekr and trebizond. you see the two opposite arcs, one bent to the south and the other to the north, endeavouring to meet under the stress of contending pressures; while on either side of the section the curves diminish in intensity and the spines of the ranges have been allowed to expand like the spokes of a wheel. the northern boundary of armenia is constituted by the mountains of the northern peripheral region, which enter the country on the west in the gumbet dagh. the line may be followed on the map on the north of shabin karahisar through the giaour dagh and the kuseh dagh to the pass over the vavuk dagh, lying to the north-west of the town of baiburt. from the vavuk pass the spine of the chain confines the valley of the chorokh by a well-defined and regular parapet; until just east of the town of ispir it commences to lose this singleness of feature, and to favour a tendency towards bifurcation and branching out. the ridges stretch across the valley in an east-north-easterly direction, the direction which the spine has so long pursued; and their course may be traced through the mountainous country on the north of olti until they become buried beneath the volcanic accumulations of the plateau country in the districts of göleh and ardahan. it is most interesting to trace their probable emergence from this canopy on the further side of the tableland, and to recognise in the elevations of shishtapa (north of alexandropol) and of madatapa ridges that have survived the splitting and fracture of the pontic chain. but this is a feature of greater interest to the geologist than to the geographer; and the latter will follow the black sea range through the heights of the khachkar and parkhal mountains to the kukurt dagh on the west of artvin. the ridge which stretches thence in a north-north-easterly direction towards the seaboard, giving passage to the chorokh and determining the russian frontier, has been deflected by the mass of the karchkhal mountains, the radial system to the north-east of artvin. it crosses the river close to the coast behind batum, and may be traced through the peaks of taginaura, gotimeria and nepiszkaro along the plains of imeritia to the passage of the kur through the gorge of borjom. these last-named peaks belong to the akhaltsykh-imeritian border range, which my reader has crossed with me by the pass of zikar, and of which the direction is almost due east and west. it is impossible to delimit the northern frontier of armenia by a slavish insistence upon the boundary of the black sea range. that system is the natural boundary for a distance of very many miles, as it extends along the course first of the kelkid su, the ancient lycus, and then along that of the chorokh. but the fracture of the arc which has taken place in the country watered by the uppermost branches of the kur and arpa chai, and the eating back of the more easterly affluents of the chorokh, which have carved out the intricate country in the neighbourhood of olti, have resulted in the interruption of the normal sequence until it is again resumed in the akhaltsykh-imeritian range. it is consonant with the natural conditions to take the frontier across the valley of the chorokh in the vicinity of ispir, and to lead it by the heights which contain the sources of the chorokh and the serchemeh chai to the dümlü dagh, the parent mountain of the western euphrates. it will then follow, first in an easterly and then in a north-easterly direction, the elevated water-parting between the basins of the araxes and the black sea; and, after effecting a union through the chamar dagh with the volcanoes of the soghanlu dagh, will be protracted along the meridional and volcanic elevation which confines the highlands of göleh and ardahan on the west. the junction of these vaulted heights with the akhaltsykh-imeritian range may be traced through the ridge of the sakulaperdi dagh to the peak of gotimeria. all the rivers on the northern slopes of this section of the armenian frontier drain into the black sea. the passes across this zone are of considerable elevation, though a good number are open all the year round. i have been unable to ascertain the height of the pass over the gumbet dagh between karahisar and kerasun. but the valleys of the upper kelkid and the upper chorokh may be reached from trebizond without encountering a greater altitude than something less than 7000 feet. to this figure must be added another 600 to 1000 feet before the traveller will have crossed the block of elevated tableland interposed between those valleys and the great armenian cities, erzinjan and erzerum. east of baiburt the spine of the pontic range becomes more lofty: and the track which leads from rizeh to ispir in the chorokh valley surmounts it at a height which has been estimated at 9000 feet above the sea. where the frontier has become coterminous with the northern border heights of erzerum and pasin the roads are taken by passes of over 7000 feet (erzerum-bar-olti) and 8500 feet (hasan kala-olti) into the basin of the black sea; while during its protraction northwards through the soghanlu dagh to the sakulaperdi dagh it may be traversed by well-beaten paths or tolerable roads at elevations which range between 6085 feet (eshak-meidan pass) and about 7000 feet. the principal avenues of communication across the mountainous region are those of erzinjan-gümüshkhaneh, baiburt-gümüshkhaneh, erzerum-olti, kars-olti, ardahan-olti and ardahan-ardanuch. a road has been constructed from kutais to abastuman, and is gaining traffic every year. copious rainfall and abundant vegetation are characteristic of the northern peripheral mountains. in some of the valleys the clouds settle for several months in the year, seldom lifting to disclose a view of the sun. it may often happen that during several weeks or even months crests and depressions alike will be shrouded in mist. in summer there is produced the likeness of a succession of forcing houses, the slopes and hollows being covered with a bewildering tangle of trees and creepers and scarcely passable undergrowth. from the branches are festooned the lichens, grey-white streamers like human hair; the crimson stools of a fungus shine out from the gloomy brakes, and the pointed pink petals of the kolchian crocus clothe each respite of open ground. such conditions are most prevalent in the narrow valleys near the pontic coast, while the slopes which face the rion and the opposite caucasus are distinguished by magnificent forests. several peoples, distributed over fairly distinct zones, inhabit these fastnesses. on the west we have the greeks, inclined to commerce and close to a seaboard; they may be found struggling upwards to the spine of the range and even in a sporadic manner upon its southern slopes. further east dwell the lazis, a wild people; and their neighbours, the ajars, in the mountains behind batum. these are succeeded by a population of georgian shepherds and small cultivators, whose picturesque chalets are surrounded with indian corn. it remains to follow the extension of the mountains of the northern border during their progress eastwards from the borjom gorge. the comparative narrowness of the belt in the neighbourhood of that great cleft is explained by the fracture of the arc to the south of this region and the covering up of its more southerly members by volcanic emissions. but this decrease in width is to some extent balanced by the propinquity of the caucasus. it is in this neighbourhood that the single link connecting the belt with caucasus stretches across the georgian depression, dividing the rion from the kur; it may be known as the meschic linking chain. east of this barrier the vegetation diminishes in luxuriance. the akhaltsykh-imeritian range is continued beyond the gorge by the latitudinal trialethian chain--a system of which the backbone is formed by the arjevan ridge, and which is bounded on three sides by the course of the kur. a branch of this system is seen to continue the direction of the pontic range, inclining off at a sharp angle from the principal elevation to form the valley of the gujaretis. it culminates in the peaks of the sanislo group at an extreme height of 9350 feet, and sinks beneath the lavas of the plateau region. the trialethian mountains have undergone a process of uptilt, which has caused them to fall away abruptly towards the north and to form terraces of plateau-like character on the south. just as on the west we were constrained to draw the natural frontier inwards from the spine of the pontic range, so on the east the next successors of the trialethian ridges lie outside the proper boundary of the armenian plains. a glance at the map will show that a dislocation of the natural features has taken place in this region. the inner arc, so clearly defined on the one side by the pontic chain and on the other by the shah dagh, overlooking lake gökcheh, has snapped during the process of bending over; and the survivors of the catastrophe, the ridges which obstruct the khram and the somketian mountains, are constrained to play a subordinate part. the water-parting and principal elevation is composed of volcanoes, reared in a meridional direction. what an impressive analogy to the phenomena on the side of the black sea! these volcanoes pursue two lines, one line close behind the other, and the outer or more easterly far the longer of the two. it is the outer series, known as the gori mokri, or wet mountains, that constitute the border of the armenian highlands on this side. the traveller who journeys westwards from the plateau of zalka (5000 feet) up the elevated valley of the river kzia to the little upland plain of the same name (7000 feet) [415] will be treading on the dividing line between the folded mountains of the trialethian system and the meridional volcanic series. on his left hand he will admire the shapely cone of tawkoteli (9211 feet), which constitutes the most northerly of these volcanic elevations. the barrier is continued southwards through the samsar dagh (10,770 feet) to the daly dagh; and thence along the eastern shore of the lonely lake of toporovan (6875 feet) to the dual crown of agrikar (9765 feet) and to the conical summit of the emlekli dagh (10,016 feet). the sequence ends in the heights of karakach (over 10,000 feet), of which the southerly extension is interrupted by the latitudinal ridges of aglagan and shishtapa. but the border is protracted along the parting of the waters into the westerly extremities of the pambak chain. we may, perhaps, regard this chain as the most southerly of the latitudinal ridges which begin on the north with the akhaltsykh-imeritian and trialethian systems. it extends the area of the highlands for some distance towards the east, when, after commencing to incline in an east-south-easterly direction, it effects a junction with the shah dagh. this last-named ridge takes the frontier along the eastern shore of lake gökcheh to the confines of karabagh; and the elevation may be traced through the spine of the northern karabagh mountains across the kur to the range which faces the caspian sea. but karabagh may be regarded as a separate geographical unit, combining in miniature many of the characteristics of the armenian highlands--an inner plateau region flanked by peripheral ranges. the immemorial home of armenian inhabitants, the seat of tartar immigrants and the happy hunting-ground of nomad kurds, it constitutes a solid outer buttress to armenia on the side of the caspian. [416] the true boundary must be taken southwards from the ginal dagh (over 11,000 feet) to the kety dagh, where it forms a loop towards the west; and, after almost encircling an upland sheet of water, called the ala göl, is protracted through the heights of sir-er-syrchaly (11,298 feet) and salvarty (10,422 feet) to the valley of the araxes at migry just east of ordubad. the karadagh mountains on the southern bank of the river continue the ridges of karabagh; and the natural frontier is pushed westwards up the course of the araxes as far as the village of julfa. from this point you have the choice of two methods of demarcation, both of which repose on geographical facts. the line may be taken south-eastwards along the marginal ridge of the karadagh to the water-parting between the basin of the araxes on the one side and that of lake urmi on the other. this parting is of little orographical relief, but it would conduct the frontier almost in a straight line to the serried ridges of the southern peripheral zone on the south of lake van. [417] or the more pronounced bulwark between the lake van and lower araxes basins may seem to constitute the true boundary of the armenian country. in this case an arbitrary line must be drawn from behind bayazid, leading from the crest of these mountains, which at present constitute the turko-persian frontier to our original starting-point, julfa. my reader will observe that we have left the barrier of the northern peripheral mountains, to explore the less certain limits on the side of persia. we have now pursued the northern border of the armenian highlands from the coast of the black sea to that of the caspian, where the belt passes over into the mountains framing persia upon the north to be protracted into the hindu kush. the corresponding southern zone is much more simple of feature; but it lies outside the province of the present chapter, being included, throughout its entire extension along these highlands, within turkish territory. between the northern and southern zones of peripheral mountains several distinct but minor members of the orographical system we have been examining furrow the surface of the tableland. these will receive their proper attention in the companion chapter of the second volume, situated as they are for the most part beyond the limits of our present survey. but one of them may be traced to the commanding elevation which determines the valley of the araxes during its passage through chaldiran to the confluence of the arpa chai; and it is this range--for it deserves to be described as a range--that not only constitutes the present frontier between the russian and turkish empires, but in fact divides the area of armenia into two parts. you must either cross the spine of this chain, which describes a symmetrical curve, or follow along the plains at its northern or southern flanks, should you desire to pass from the plateau region on the north and east to the corresponding districts on the south and west. in the preceding chapter we have become familiar with some of its interesting features; and we have been introduced to it under the general name of the ararat system or aghri dagh. shatin dagh is another name under which its westerly portion is designated by some writers, and which is scarcely less well qualified to express its ruggedness. this range carries the natural frontier between the two divisions from the kuseh dagh (11,262 feet) in the west to little ararat (12,840 feet) in the east. it will thus be seen that the present area of russian armenia corresponds in a remarkable manner with the limits assigned by nature to the more north-easterly of the two extensive regions into which she has parcelled armenian soil. the russian frontier is drawn from the coast of the black sea along the water-parting of the tributaries to the western bank of the lower chorokh through the peripheral region, and west of the town of olti, to the armenian border at the chakhar dagh. thence it is taken across the araxes to the spine of the aghri or shatin dagh just north-west of the dome of kuseh dagh. it follows the spine of the range to the neighbourhood of great ararat, whose hallowed summit it embraces within the dominions of the tsar. from the crest of the little ararat, whose south-eastern slopes are left to persia, it reaches across the plain to the right bank of the araxes a little below the famous monastery of khor virap. the araxes forms the boundary between the russian and persian empires from this point to near its confluence with the kur. it is a misleading, nay, a false conception of natural features to distribute the surface of the plateau region into a number of distinct geographical units. that is a method which is favoured by russian sciolists with political connections in their endeavour to confuse the essential unity of a country which russia has not yet fully absorbed. enter this region where you will and with the eyes of any qualified traveller, the same or similar impressive characteristics will at once appeal to the mind. the german scientist koch has well described these idiosyncrasies as they may be observed from the marginal districts on the west. after a long and laborious climb from the valley of ardanuch (1800 feet) to the summit of the pass which leads to ardahan (at least 7000 feet), he was astonished to observe that instead of a rounded ridge, descending with more or less abruptness to lower levels on the further side, the elevation upon which he stood was continued towards the east by the gentle slope of a lofty plateau. "here was the commencement," he says, "of the plateau which slopes away from the pass, and which is usually called the armenian plateau." the same traveller journeyed back into the chorokh region from the highlands of göleh on the south of ardahan. on this occasion he crossed the water-parting at the kanly dagh between ardahan and olti. he tells us that it consists of a narrow ridge with red, porphyritic rocks. he describes the double prospect from the summit, with its contrast of forms and impressions. on the one side, towards the kur, a scarcely perceptible incline, forming upland valleys after a descent of only some 1500 feet, and leading over to vague and vaulted heights. on the other, in the direction of olti, rent mountains, gaping ravines--nowhere a gentle, convex shape. where he was placed the climate was raw, even in early september, and scarcely tempered by a southern sun. deep down, and far away, they could see the river of olti, winding like a snake through a maze of sheltered valleys. [418] the language in which herrmann abich describes his impressions, coming from the side of georgia up the valley of the akstafa, and reaching the pass (7355 feet) over the eastern marginal heights between the village of bekant and the town of alexandropol, is not dissimilar to that of koch. he speaks of the strong contrast between the physical characteristics of the plateau region before him and those of the peripheral mountains he was leaving behind. he describes the prevailing horizontality of the land-forms which he overlooked, extending to the limits of sight. in another place he alludes to the lofty, rim-like elevation with which "the armenian plateau breaks away to the valleys of ajara." [419] i might multiply the instances in which the most competent observers have at the same time recognised the unity of the plateau region and its sharp distinction from the peripheral mountains. my reader has journeyed with me from the zikar pass to akhaltsykh and akhalkalaki; from the cañon of the toporovan river and the basin of the kur to the streams which constitute the most northerly sources of the araxes. we have crossed the country from alexandropol to erivan, from erivan to kars, from kars to kagyzman. what an impressive unity underlies the pleasing diversity of the landscapes, which melt into one another as you pass! the partings of the waters are formed by slopes which you perceive with difficulty, so gradual has been the rise and the decline. the territories of akhaltsykh, akhalkalaki, alexandropol, kars and ardahan are all bound up together in the distribution of the space, and share features in common to a much greater extent than they are distinguished by local idiosyncrasies. the mountains, of which the outlines are never absent from the landscape--soft, long-drawn, convex shapes--stand on the floor of the tableland, like pieces upon a chessboard, which one may move from square to square. such are the radial mass of dochus punar near akhaltsykh (over 9500 feet), the two considerable elevations which enclose lake chaldir (akhbaba dagh, 9973 feet; kisir dagh, 10,472 feet), and even the colossal alagöz (13,436 feet). all are due to volcanic action, quite recent in geological time; and a similar origin belongs to the minor shapes which stud the country like bubbles upon a cooling body. mountains of this character perform the function of boundary columns between the various districts, great and small. they determine but do not separate. how different in form and function from the folded ridges of the peripheral region, among which a single example of such recent volcanic fabrics could seldom be observed. if we desire for convenience to partition the plateau region which is russian armenia, it falls most naturally into two spheres. the one will comprise a rectangular area, of which the limits on the west and east are the meridional volcanic water-partings from the soghanlu dagh to the heights of sakulaperdi on one side and from the karakach dagh to tawkoteli on the other. the southern boundary of this area will be the cañon of the araxes from its entrance into russian territory to below the confluence of the arpa chai. towards the north it includes the districts as far as the sanislo extension of the trialethian mountains and the akhaltsykh-imeritian border chain. the vast circumference of alagöz is placed on its south-eastern confines, sending out long feelers towards the left bank of the arpa chai, pushing back the mountains of the eastern border and, as it were, propping up the highlands on the north-west. this volcano may be said to lead over to the second sphere, which is for a great part an area of considerable depression, and, as compared with the longitudinal axis and symmetrical shape of its companion, is of irregular form with the greatest length from north-west to south-east. these two spheres are distinguished by features which are sufficiently contrasted to suggest a double image to the mind. i. i have invited attention to the characteristics which armenia shares in common with her neighbours in the series of the asiatic tablelands, persia on the east and asia minor on the west. in the brief survey to which i proceed of the plateau region within the russian frontier it is necessary at the outset to remark upon some of the idiosyncrasies which distinguish armenia as a whole from the other members of the series. there is in the first place the far greater elevation, investing her territory with the attributes of a roof to the adjacent countries, from which the waters gather to be precipitated in different directions, and to find their way not only to the black sea and the caspian but also by almost endless stages to the persian gulf. the prominent part which has been played by recent volcanic action is another and not less impressive phenomenon. which of her neighbours could compete with her in this respect? where could one meet with an ararat, a sipan and a nimrud, to say nothing of an alagöz and a bingöl? both these manifestations are exemplified in a striking manner by the surface features of the rectangular area of the more northerly sphere. the higher levels of this region are situated at an altitude of some 7000 feet above the sea. i am speaking not of the mountains but of the plains. the uplands which give rise to the kur in the district of göleh must come very near to this level. the parting of the waters of the kur and araxes near the village of shishtapa, in an open landscape which may be compared to rolling downs, lies at about 7000 feet. lake chaldir has an elevation of 6522 feet; while of the smaller sheets of water lake toporovan, with 6876 feet, and the arpa göl, with 6706 feet, slightly better this already considerable figure. where the plateau falls away to the abysmal cañon of the araxes its edge is nearly 6500 feet high. the town of ardahan stands at a level of 5840 feet and kars of 5700 feet. alexandropol, the principal city, occupies the hollow of a vast basin-like plain; yet it is over 5000 feet above the sea. these elevations are much greater than the average even in persia, though they are to a certain extent maintained in the frontier province of azerbaijan and along the edge of the southern peripheral mountains (tabriz, 4650 feet; but tehran, 3800 feet; ispahan, 5070 feet). the process of gradual uplift of the region by earth movements has been attended by eruptive action, flooding the country with volcanic matter, levelling inequalities of the ground and adding to the height. it has been estimated that the volcanic deposits laid bare in the ravines of the streams which descend from the radial dochus punar attain a depth of hundreds of yards. [420] a similar phenomenon is made manifest in the cañon of the araxes--a cleft which in the neighbourhood of the village of armutli, west of kagyzman, has a depth of about 2000 feet and a width on top of at least a mile. [421] there the miocene sedimentary deposits are overlaid with tuffs and lavas in a belt over 300 yards deep. [422] the points of emission of volcanic matter are in some cases true volcanoes, in others mere pustules or fissures of varying extent. one or other of these features is never absent from the landscape. but the fires are extinct; the viscous seas have long been solid; not a breath of smoke rises from the stark summits which erewhile were wreathed with vapours reflecting the glow of the flames beneath. the distribution of such shapes due to volcanic agency may often appear arbitrary to an unpractised traveller. here a group of stately forms resembling the giants of a forest, there a number of insignificant eminences representing the small fry. all will be found to be subject to definite and ascertainable principles, the nature of which becomes clearer at each step forward of scientific research. perhaps the most interesting principle which we see operative in this region is the outcrop of volcanoes along meridional lines. such groups pursue a course at right angles to the strike of the rocks within the area of the peripheral mountains. in this connection we may recall the fact that the plateau region with which we are dealing occupies the apex of the bend over of the inner arc. lines of fracture have been thrown out at right angles to the folding, and eruptive agency has fastened upon these weakened zones of the earth's crust. not only may these lines be traced on the west and east of the plateau, of which, indeed, they have largely determined the shape, but also well inside of the marginal districts. in the west we have the soghanlu group stretching north to allah akbar (10,218 feet), whence the direction is continued through the ueurli dagh (9055 feet) and the arzian dagh to the chibukh-naryn-bashi dagh. there the volcanic water-parting effects a junction with the akhaltsykh-imeritian chain in the ridge of the sakulaperdi dagh. in the east we have already followed the row of marginal volcanoes from tawkoteli to karakach. inside these series we recognise this same north-south direction in the abul-samsar system, in the mountains on either side of lake chaldir, and, lastly, in the connection which we can scarcely err in assuming between the kisir dagh, overlooking the westerly shore of this lake, and its neighbour on the north, the dochus punar. compared with alagöz and ararat even the absolute height of these mountains may be termed insignificant. the lofty level of the plains from which their slopes gather robs them of several thousand feet. great abul, with an altitude of nearly 11,000 feet, rises from a plain which itself lies at an elevation of 5500 feet. the dome-shaped vaultings of the soghanlu dagh near some of the sources of the kars river are almost entirely shorn of their considerable stature by the height of the adjacent downs. in such surroundings the mountains appear to the eye as little more than hills. the rivers as a rule flow in deep cañons which they have eroded in the volcanic soil. their head waters meander over grassy downs. temperately they thread their way over the uplands or in the cañons, except where blocks of lava may have tumbled into the trough, causing the stream to wreathe and hiss. you pass from district to district either along such natural avenues, with the towering cliffs, for the most part bare, on either hand; or, emerging from the weird scene within the hollow, over the surface of almost limitless plains. not a tree in the landscape, and only patches of fallow and stubble, without a boundary, with rarely a village discernible from afar. from time to time you may obtain a glimpse of the peripheral mountains--serrated summits, bush-grown slopes. these contrast to the soft convexities of the forms about you and the vaultings of the volcanic eminences. the surface of the friable soil is devoid of wood and almost of vegetation; and the volcanic matter of which it is composed produces tints of pink and ochre upon which the shadows lie transparent and thin. the rarefied atmosphere of these high regions braces the faculties and sharpens the senses; and whatever clouds may have climbed the barrier of the peripheral ranges are suspended high in the heaven, seldom obscuring the brilliant sun. during winter the land is covered with snow. it is a country admirably adapted to grow cereals. the plains through which the arpa chai (grain river) eats its way to the araxes constituted one of the granaries of armenia in historical times. [423] at the present day they have not recovered from the devastations of the mussulman peoples, and the russians are jealous of allowing the armenians a free hand. extraordinary fertility is induced by the intermixture of the lavas with alluvial or lacustrine deposits. the black earth of the plains about akhalkalaki is famous [424]; and the soil in the neighbourhood of alexandropol derives its richness from the incidence of a peculiar kind of lava side by side with the sediment of a former lake. the southerly extension of these vanished waters is marked by the belt of high ground extending from alagöz across the plains to the arpa chai. the river has forced its way through this elevation between ani and magaspert. [425] other effects of the violent disturbance to which the region has been subjected are manifest on a large scale. thus all the way from the soghanlu dagh on the south to the neighbourhood of the mountains of the ajars on the north the ground has fallen away to the labyrinth of valleys which feed the chorokh by what geologists would call an extensive fault. the edge of the plateau region stands up boldly upon that side from the levels adjacent on the west. a still more recent earth movement may be represented by the uptilt towards the north-east of a considerable block of country lying between kars and the junction of the arpa with the araxes. this phenomenon, which recalls a similar occurrence in the trialethian district, has occasioned the curious course of the stream of kars, which, rising in close vicinity to the flood of the same river to which ultimately it becomes tributary, pursues a course almost at right angles to that of the araxes for a distance of thirty miles. to the same cause is in part due the extraordinary elevation of the levels along the left bank of the araxes between armutli and the confluence of the arpa chai. besides the last-named stream this lofty stage of the armenian tableland gives birth to one of the great rivers of western asia. the kur rises from the highlands on the south of ardahan, between the wall of mountain which overlooks lake chaldir on the west and the rim of the plateau region. in turkish times this district constituted a separate fief, and was governed by a hereditary prince of georgian origin who resided at urut. the name of the district, göleh, still figures on the russian maps. it is subject to a rigorous climate, the snow lying during eight months in some years. only the hardiest of the cereals come to maturity; yet the olive and the pomegranate flourish in the valley of artvin, but thirty miles distant, and even at this altitude and during winter the rays of a southern sun temper the cold. one of the principal arms of the river comes from the south-west, and is named the river of ardahan; it is joined by four considerable tributaries, of which the most easterly is said by koch to have been known to the inhabitants under the name of kyürr. [426] even at the present day the kur is called the river of ardahan until its entry into the passage of borjom. the basin from within which these various branches gather has a length which may be computed at eight hours' journey on horseback and a breadth equivalent to about six hours. it abounds in springs, and marshes cover its floor. below ardahan, where it skirts the base of the dochus punar system, the kur threads a narrow valley, deeply buried in the volcanic soil. so it flows past the grottoes of vardzia and the devil's city at zeda tmogvi, augmented by small affluents of which the largest is the karri chai. at khertvis it is joined by the toporovan river, bringing the drainage of the districts on the east, and swirling into the channel with foam-shot waves. the united volume dwells for a short space in wider landscapes, until it pierces the extreme base of the sanislo branch of the trialethian mountains, and is again confined in a narrow valley. thence it issues upon the plains about akhaltsykh, receives assembled tributaries from the northern border range, and disappears into the gorge of borjom. ii. a traveller coming from alexandropol down the stream of the arpa or along the valley of the abaran, further east, can scarcely fail to become sensible of an appreciable change in climate and scenery by the time he shall have rounded the colossal pile of alagöz. it is not, indeed, a new country or a new clime. the shapes which rise on the skyline are due to the same volcanic agency which has imprinted its character upon the northern landscapes. the shelving away of the ground to the basin-like depression which receives the araxes recalls similar surface features in the northern districts. the rays of the sun fall from a heaven which remains blue. clouds are still floating upon the azure, or are suspended upon the higher outlines. what has changed is the scale and intensity of the phenomena. the hills have given place to great mountains, the down-like expanses to one vast area of sloping ground. into those dreamy spaces sweep the forms of the landscape, circled round them for a visible distance of some sixty miles. the valley of the araxes from the neighbourhood of sardarabad to that of julfa--a space of over a hundred miles--composes nearly one-half of the more southerly sphere of north-eastern armenia. we are already so familiar with its overpowering individuality that it would be turning finished ground to describe it anew. for many a mile it is only confined at an immense interval by the fabric of ararat and the pile of alagöz. but, even when the river--a ribbon in the expanse--has already distanced the little ararat, the folds of the landscape are ample into which it descends. volcanoes on such a huge scale as these two armenian giants could scarcely be expected to rise save on the margins of a great depression, whether subsidence may have been the cause or the effect. to the 7000 feet of the plateau region on the north this basin-like plain opposes a maximum elevation of 3000 feet and a minimum of something over 2000 feet. the vine flourishes and is cultivated in these plains of the araxes, and fields of castor-oil plant grace the ground. such oases with thriving villages soften the lap of the landscape, and diversify the wide stretches of rich but idle soil which the network of trenches with their fertilising waters have not yet reached. irrigation rather than rainfall is here the productive agency; and, indeed, this valley, with a yearly rainfall of only about six inches, is probably the driest throughout russian transcaucasia. the storms of the pontic region spend themselves before reaching this haven; but they beat against the volcanoes of the meridional water-parting on the easterly margin of the more northerly sphere. even at alexandropol the yearly rainfall is almost three times as great as in the neighbourhood of ararat. and while the climate of the city on the arpa may compare with st. lawrence in north america, that of erivan resembles palermo or barcelona. [427] on the north of this most extensive depression of the surface of armenia lies the plateau region supporting lake gökcheh. the axis or greatest length of that expanse of sweet water lies about parallel to the course of the araxes, to which it sends a tributary varying in volume with the season of the year through a trench-like passage at its south-westerly extremity. [428] on the north the lake is confined by a long ridge of the peripheral mountains, and its lofty level (6340 feet) is held up by the volcanic plateau of akhmangan, acting as a dam on the side of the low-lying plains. the akhmangan region consists of a gently vaulted platform, interrupted by a series of volcanic eminences extending over a distance of nearly thirty miles. several of their cone-shaped summits attain a height of nearly 11,000 feet, and one, the akh dagh, of close upon 12,000 feet above sea-level. an absence of springs, due to the nature of the volcanic rock, is characteristic not only of this region but also of that part of the neighbouring karabagh country which lies within the embrace of the two mountainous zones. [429] in this respect it contrasts to the well-watered and wooded retreats of the district of darachichak to the west of the lake. the wealthier citizens of erivan take refuge in those pleasant upland valleys when the plain of the araxes has become a furnace under the rays of a midsummer sun. the area of the country comprised within the two spheres of which i have been speaking is about 20,587 square miles. with the exception of a narrow strip on the right bank of the araxes, measuring 1518 square miles, the entire territory--more than commensurate with that of servia--lies within the dominions of the tsar. chapter xxii statistical and political the solid block of territory over which russia now rules on the tableland of armenia is neither a new acquisition nor the fruit of a single conquest. at the commencement of the last century she gained a foothold upon it by the voluntary accession of the georgian kingdom and its constitution into a russian province in 1802. this event, the outcome of the folly of the mussulman powers, who had driven the christians to despair, was followed by the rapid expansion of the northern empire in these countries as the result of successful war. karabagh was taken from persia in 1813, and the important khanate of erivan in 1828; from turkey, the district of akhaltsykh in 1829, and the fortress and province of kars in 1878. appearing as a deliverer of the christian peoples and profiting by their aid, russia has succeeded in advancing her border beyond the araxes and to the threshold of erzerum, and in establishing herself behind a well-rounded frontier which comprises the venerated mountain of armenia as well as the seat of the supreme spiritual government to which the armenians bow. the armenian provinces constitute a part of the great administrative system of the caucasus, which is presided over by a single governor-general. formerly it was usual to appoint a grand duke to this important post, who exercised, not without advantage to the country, a very large measure of personal initiative. at the present day it is occupied by a nobleman of high rank; but his administration has become much more intimately connected with the bureaucratic machine which is worked from st. petersburg. he remains, however, the principal civil and military authority in the caucasus, which consists of no less then twelve governments, and is divided into north caucasus and transcaucasia. north caucasus is composed of the governments of kuban, terek and stavropol; while the governments of chernomorsk (a narrow strip of coast at the foot of the caucasus range between novorossiysk on the black sea and a point a little north of pitsunda), kutais, tiflis, zakataly, daghestan, baku, elizabetpol, erivan and kars are embraced under the title of transcaucasia. five of the governments, namely kuban, terek, daghestan, zakataly and kars, are still in the military stage of administration. the territories of north caucasus lie quite outside the scope of the present work; and the government of daghestan ought more properly to be classed with the northern governments, lying as it does to the north of the main ridge of the caucasus range. to the same category belong certain districts of the government of baku; but for statistical purposes it is advisable to retain them under transcaucasia, in order to preserve the unity of the government. on the other hand, the little government of chernomorsk may either be left out of account, or be included under north caucasus. transcaucasia will thus consist of seven governments, of which the names and population, according to the two last censuses of 1886 and of 1897, are exhibited in the following table. i must explain that the figures of 1897 have not yet been split up into the different racial elements of which the populations of the various governments are composed. table i.--population of russian transcaucasia (including russian armenia) +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------+----------+---------+ |government | pop. 1886.| armenian | pop. 1897.|square | pop. per | pop. per| | | | pop. 1886.| |mileage. | sq. mile | sq. mile| | | | | | | 1886. | 1897. | +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------+----------+---------+ |tiflis[430]| 875,429 | 211,743 | 958,775 |15,305.4 | 57.2 | 62.643 | |erivan | 670,405 | 375,700 | 804,757 |10,074.75| 66.54 | 79.878 | |kars[431] | 200,868 | 44,280 | 292,498 | 7,307.29| 27.489 | 40.028 | |kutais | 923,306 | 16,399 |1,075,861 |13,967.5 | 66.1 | 77.026 | |elizabetpol| 728,943 | 258,324 | 871,557 |16,720.5 | 43.6 | 52.125 | |baku | 712,703 | 55,459 | 789,659 |15,094.59| 47.216 | 52.314 | |zakatal | 74,449 | 521 | 82,168 | 1,542.04| 48.28 | 53.285 | |-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------+----------+---------+ |total | 4,186,103 | 962,426 |4,875,275 |80,012.07| 52.318 | 60.931 | +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------+----------+---------+ the admirable volume of statistics for transcaucasia which we owe to the labours of m. de seidlitz, and which was published at tiflis by order of the civil government in 1893, supplies us with the most detailed information concerning these russian provinces--the numbers of the different races and of the votaries of the various religious sects, and how the inhabitants may be classed and labelled as nobles or clergy, as tradesmen or as tillers of the soil. the figures are derived from the census of 1886, and we are thus presented with a fascinating statistical picture of the country towards the close of the nineteenth century. i do not propose to spoil the effect of his ingenious combinations by transferring them to my own pages in a mangled form; or to forestall the pleasure which the perusal of his serried columns is sure to bring to every well-regulated mind. but their aid will be useful, and indeed indispensable, in fixing upon a surer foundation those more general conceptions and conclusions which are suggested by the experience of travel. the country immediately on the north of the armenian tableland--the plain of the rion on the north-west, and the wide trough of the kur on the north--is inhabited by various branches of the georgian family and by settlers of tartar race; while the caucasus itself, the northern boundary of the whole geographical system, contains within its countless recesses an homeric catalogue of nations whose names it is difficult to pronounce and whose languages are as mysterious as their names. of a total population in transcaucasia of 4,186,000, the armenians numbered upwards of 962,000 souls in 1886, or a proportion of nearly one quarter. but the importance of the armenian element must be measured not so much by its numerical strength as by the solidarity of the armenian people when compared to the peoples among whom they live. the armenians are little divided by religious differences; the roman catholics are a mere handful among the solid ranks of the gregorians; and the gregorian church is not only the symbol of national existence, but the stronghold of national hopes. two other races in transcaucasia slightly exceed the armenians in number; the tartars with 1,139,000, including daghestan, and the different divisions of the georgian family who number over a million souls. but the bitter religious antipathies of sunni and shiah divide the tartars, and the georgians are in a period of transition from their old feudal system to a new and more settled social order, while the union of their church with the orthodox church of russia has deprived them of the natural rallying point for that community of sentiment which is based on a consciousness of race pride. should the russians become possessed of the armenian provinces of the turkish empire, the most numerous as well as the most solid of the elements of population in transcaucasia will be furnished by the armenian race. the distribution of the armenians within the present limits of russian transcaucasia, but outside the area of the armenian tableland, may be presented in a concise manner as follows:--in the government of elizabetpol, which includes karabagh, they number 258,000; but only in the governmental divisions of shusha and zangezur, that is to say in the tract of country between the araxes on the east and the south-eastern shore of lake sevan on the west, do they constitute the numerically preponderating race; while in the other divisions and in the whole government they are largely outnumbered by the tartars. the government of tiflis contains nearly 212,000 armenians, of whom i shall include 99,000 in my estimate for the tableland itself; the remainder are distributed over the other divisions of the government, and in the town of tiflis, where they attain the imposing number of 55,000 among a total population for the nineties of 145,000 souls. in the government of baku, out of a total armenian population of 55,000 there are over 24,000 in the town of baku itself, where they are engaged in commerce and in the oil works; they are also numerous in the town and district of shemakha, which lies to the west of baku. in the government of kutais they only number 16,000, and most of these reside in the towns. the armenians, being a commercial and industrial as well as an agricultural people, have spread themselves outside the natural limits of their country, attracted to the growing centres of industry upon its confines. they contribute a valuable and increasing element to the urban populations. but it is only when we have crossed the mountains which separate their highlands from the rest of transcaucasia that we become conscious of treading upon armenian soil. throughout its extension from akhalkalaki and alexandropol on the north-east to egin and kharput on the south-west, that elevated stage of the asiatic tablelands which we may still call armenia bears the imprint of the individuality of the armenian people to a greater degree than of any other race. in the immense expanse of these armenian landscapes--where blue lakes lie lapped in treeless plains, swelling with ochreous surface from hummock to hill, from hill to some long descending mountain outline that sweeps from the summit of a snow-crowned cone--the note which is uttered by man is lost. yet there is scarcely a remote valley or lonely island which does not attract a band of pilgrims to worship in the beautiful monasteries which date from the times of the kings of armenia and keep alive the story of the past. the fertile ground is for the most part tilled by an armenian peasantry, whose burrows, resembling large ant-hills, are scarcely perceptible in the scene. all the machinery of whatever civilisation the land may possess is furnished by armenians. the language which you most often hear is the somewhat harsh armenian tongue; the legends and historical memories which attach to the great works of nature have for the most part an armenian origin. over the area of the armenian tableland, as it is delimited in the present work, these people are found in nearly double the numbers of any other race. in the preceding chapter i have established the natural frontiers of the country within russian territory; and in the companion chapter of the second volume i shall hope to perform the same task in respect of the turkish area. our present concern is with the population of the russian provinces of the tableland, which i have endeavoured to exhibit according to its various racial elements in the following tabular statement. the little map, with which i accompany this table, will make plain to my reader the statistical area with which we are dealing. he will observe that it agrees in a general manner with the area enclosed by the natural frontier. it would not be possible to adapt exactly the statistical information at our disposal, based as it is upon governmental units, to the geographical boundaries represented by the natural frontier; but those boundaries are so strongly marked that they correspond pretty closely with those of the administrative divisions. only in two cases does the statistical area, as shown in the map within russian territory, diverge in a marked degree from the geographical; and in both these cases it would have been easy to have made them approximately coincide. the one occurs about south of tiflis, where i have preferred to include the ouezde of borchali within the statistical area. it comprises a transitional region between the natural frontier and the valley of the kur, presenting many of the characteristics of the tableland, and inhabited in considerable numbers by armenians. the other is furnished by the administrative division of olti, belonging to the government of kars. my reason for retaining it is principally because it corresponds on the east to the eastern limits of the turkish vilayet of erzerum on the west. both these governments, of kars and of erzerum, overlap into the chorokh region; and in the case of erzerum i have not been able to determine the exact boundaries of the overlapping administrative units. with these exceptions the natural area of the armenian provinces in russia corresponds fairly closely with the area comprised by the governments of erivan and kars together with the ouezdes of akhaltsykh, akhalkalaki and borchali, belonging to the government of tiflis. karabagh i have excluded both from the geographical and from the statistical area, representing as it does an armenia in miniature on the side of the caspian sea. table ii.--population of the armenian tableland in russia (census of 1886 and figures of 1891 for kars) +-------------+------------------+-----------+----------+----------------+ | | govt. of tiflis; | | | | | nationality.| ouezdes of | govt. of | govt. of | totals. | | | akhalkalaki, | erivan. | kars. | | | | akhaltsykh and | | | | | | borchali. | | | | +-------------+------------------+-----------+----------+----------------+ | | | | | | | armenians | 99,258 | 375,700 | 44,280 | 519,238 | | tartars | 55,253 | 251,057 | ... | 306,310 | | kurds | 2,127 | 36,478 | 30,259 | 68,864 | | greeks | 19,170 | 1,026 | 27,567 | 47,763 | | turks | 31 | ... | 46,954 | 46,985 | | georgians | 31,069 | 33 | ... | 31,102 | | russians | 12,879 | 4,152 | 11,813 | 28,844 | | karapapakhs | ... | ... | 27,247 | 27,247 | | turkomans | ... | ... | 10,174 | 10,174 | | others | 4,650 | 1,959 | 2,574 | 9,183[432] | + +------------------+-----------+----------+----------------+ | total | 224,437 | 670,405 | 200,868 | 1,095,710[433] | | | | | | | +-------------+------------------+-----------+----------+----------------+ | sq. miles. | 4,585.85 | 10,074.75 | 7,307.29 | 21,967.89[434] | | | | | | | +-------------+------------------+-----------+----------+----------------+ | pop. per | 49.877 | | sq. mile. | | +-------------------------------------------------------+----------------+ further analysis of the figures which have just been presented would show that the stronghold of the armenians, the locality in which they are most numerous, is the rich country through which the arpa chai flows on its way to join the middle course of the araxes. there is situated the fortress and modern town of alexandropol, which is inhabited almost exclusively by armenians; and there are placed, a little further south, the remains of the ancient city of ani, of which the deserted site still testifies to the state and splendour of their kings. the upland plains about akhalkalaki on the north are dotted with armenian villages; while the valley of the araxes on the south, from kagyzman to erivan, and especially in the district of edgmiatsin, contains a considerable armenian population. the town and district of novo-bayazet, on the western shore of lake sevan, is for the greater part armenian. on the other hand, the eastern portion of the araxes valley, commencing from the town of ordubad, is held in large numbers by the tartars, who run the armenians close in the extensive and important area which is covered by the government of erivan. it must be remembered, in reference to the armenian population of the russian provinces, that their numbers have been considerably augmented by emigration from turkey and persia. it is computed that not less than 10,000 families from the district of erzerum followed the russian army out of turkey in 1829; and numbers of their countrymen--it is said not less than 40,000--had already accompanied the same force from the frontier districts of persia when it retired from tabriz at the peace of turkomanchai. next to the armenians, the most numerous element in the population are the tartars, who extend from the persian frontier up the valley of the araxes, and cover with their settlements the eastern districts of the plateau region and the whole of karabagh. the tartars of transcaucasia represent a section of those warriors of turkish race who, from the time of the appearance of the seljuks down to the end of the eighteenth century, were driven to this country by political conditions from the northern provinces of persia--that is, from azerbaijan, and from the eastern shores of the caspian sea. their language is still the lingua franca of the districts between caucasus and the armenian plateau. within the area with which we are now dealing they belong almost entirely to the shiah sect, and, besides sharing the religion of persia, contain an admixture of persian blood. it is not so long ago that their seats in armenia formed a persian khanate, and were administered by persian sirdars; and the wealthy families who flourished during that period are still the owners of extensive gardens, and live on the proceeds of their land. in the humbler walks of life they are distinguished by their skill in all those methods of working mud which are practised in the east; they are plasterers, wall-makers, skilled men in the construction of works of irrigation; while most of the little tradesmen, the hucksters and fruit-sellers are tartars, and many of the gardeners and drivers of carts. in the country they have passed from the nomadic stage, and are prosperous settlers upon the land. in the town of erivan, where their numbers equal those of the armenians, many of the largest gardens are owned by tartar families, and many of the most prosperous houses of business are in tartar hands. the degree of religious tolerance which they have achieved in that town was a matter of extreme astonishment to me, when i remembered how often i had in vain resented the bigotry of the shiahs while travelling within the dominions of the shah. the persians are unable to enforce reciprocity in their country, and to repay us for the pleasure and the profit which they may derive in inspecting the great religious buildings of europe by suppressing and impounding the vicious fanatics who drive us from the doors of their mosques. it is a pleasure to offer a well-deserved tribute to that sense of respect for themselves and for their religion of which the shiahs of erivan give so striking a proof by admitting the stranger, whatever his creed, into the innermost courts of their spacious and beautiful mosque; and it is not imprudent to hope and to expect that the narrow path which they are still treading may widen as the years increase. on the other hand, it is not without disappointment that we may note the small progress they have hitherto made in availing themselves of the opportunities of education which the russian government have placed within their reach. i have drawn attention to this circumstance in my notice of the schools of erivan; and it is safe to prophesy that, unless a radical change be soon effected, the tartars will be edged out by the armenians and will diminish in numbers year by year. the remaining peoples native to the country upon whom it is necessary to bestow a passing glance are the kurds, the greeks, the turks, the georgians and the karapapakhs. the kurds within russian territory have not yet abandoned their nomadic habits; they are found as far north as the country about batum, but their principal pasture-grounds are on the turkish frontier and in karabagh. the kurds in the neighbourhood of ararat pursue two main directions during their summer wanderings; one body proceeds towards the north, through the districts of edgmiatsin and alexandropol, and stations itself upon the highlands about akhaltsykh and akhalkalaki; the other takes an easterly course and enters the government of elizabetpol. the total number of kurds in transcaucasia is given as 100,000, of whom the larger part inhabit within the area with which we are concerned; the rest are found in greatest number in karabagh. the greeks have several villages, principally in the government of kars; those which i saw were prosperous, and the gay dresses and trinkets of the women betokened a somewhat higher stage of comfort than that which is usual in the country as a whole. these greeks speak turkish and are learning russian; their versatile genius enables them to change nationality as we take a change of air. they are excellent miners and road engineers; the fine chaussée which has recently been completed up the valley of the toporovan river to akhalkalaki was constructed by the skilled labour of greek workmen. the small number of georgians who are included in our area are found, as would be expected, in the valley of the kur. in many places the race has received such a large admixture of turkish blood that the inhabitants, although classed as georgians, would call themselves turks, and are in religion mussulman. in such villages i found much discontent with the existing order, and the evident outward signs of breaking up and decay. the turks are found almost exclusively in the government of kars, which is also the seat of a hybrid tribe called karapapakhs, or "black caps," from the black lambskin caps which they wear. the origin of the german and of the russian settlers has already been described in the course of this work (see ch. vii.); the latter belong almost exclusively to the dukhobortsy and molokan sects, expelled by the russian church-state from the home provinces of the russian empire. the dukhobortsy must have diminished in numbers to an appreciable extent since the date of these statistics, owing to the recent emigration of large numbers into the bosom of the british empire (p. 116). when one reflects upon the social condition of the country, no circumstance is perhaps more striking than the complete separation of one race from another. although living side by side, there is an entire absence of natural fusion of the different elements upon a common plane. cases exist both in the russian and in the turkish provinces of armenia where, from a sense of advantage or by compulsion, the people of a particular district have adopted the mussulman religion during periods of mussulman persecution, and have become, by intermarriage and closer intercourse, absorbed into the dominant race. i may instance in russian armenia the georgian inhabitants of the valley of the upper kur, and across the turkish frontier the armenians of the tortum district and the greeks of many of the valleys of the peripheral region. but such examples have only aggravated the differences to which separation is due. they have converted the existing prejudices into animosities, and have retarded rather than advanced any tendency towards fusion. when russia appeared on the scene, it might have been expected that at least in the case of christians of various professions and nationalities a disposition to draw together might have made itself felt. as a matter of fact the reverse has been the case. to the old religious breaches has been added a new barrier--the hungry russian orthodox church. certainly in the case of a marriage between a russian sectary and an armenian--and i believe also in that of the other professions, should, for instance, an armenian of the gregorian persuasion wed a protestant of the same nation--the children of such a mixed union are required by russian law to be brought up in the russian orthodox faith. it makes no difference that neither of the parents professes that faith. the result has, therefore, been that the old heterogeneous collection have been increased by two more species of the christian happy family--the molokans and dukhobortsy. and upon both is riveted isolation from their neighbours--or in the alternative the necessity of educating their children in a creed and religious system which they abhor. in such circumstances very little has been effected by the russian settlers towards raising the standards already prevailing in their adopted country. inasmuch as these sectaries belong to the flower of the peasantry in russia, one should, perhaps, regret the presence of any artificial barriers. it is true that they do not stand as high in the scale of peoples as their armenian neighbours with their ancient but deeply corroded culture and their natural aptitudes--these, happily, unimpaired. but in moral force the russians are easily superior; and their methods of agriculture, if they were generally followed in the country, would produce an economical revolution. up to the present time their example has been thrown away. their neat stone houses, spacious carts, ploughs and field implements have not inspired the armenians to forsake their ancestral habits--to improve the means of cultivation, and to emerge from their unhealthy burrows into the light and comfort of glass windows and solid walls of stone. this barrenness of result is, no doubt, in part due to the manner in which the russian immigration took place. expelled from their native country, the peasants came in whole villages, with their women and their children and their household goods. their new settlements were grouped together and rendered self-sufficient; and neither the necessities nor the inducements of social intercourse drew them away from their own circles. to the traveller as well as to the native they are a piece of russia laid down in armenia; the curious stare and pass on. as an outpost of the northern empire they can be of little value owing to the religious opinions which they profess. it is well known in the country that the government are reserving vast tracts of land in the hope that some day russian colonists, these, it is expected, of the orthodox faith, may be attracted to these salubrious uplands. the climate would suit them well. should the germans realise their scheme of colonising asia minor, an ethnical redistribution would be accomplished on a large scale. but the population of the country is at present so scanty and its resources so vast, that the armenians have little to fear from such a development. let us now proceed to the political side of our subject, and endeavour to measure the system of government under which these various peoples live. it will be interesting to keep in view both their dispositions towards it and the results, material and moral, which it may be considered to have brought about. the administration by russia of the north-eastern half of armenia has been occupied with races whose more recent political history consists in their passage from one domination to another; and the presence of discontent in certain quarters may be regarded as the inevitable outcome of the change. the mussulman adherents of the old turkish dominion share with their neighbours of turkish origin the humiliation of a fallen state; and their turkish sympathies and connections, while they excite the suspicions of the russian government, dispose them to yield to the lightest pressure, and to cross the border into turkish soil. [435] the armenians, who have been a mainstay to russia both in her persian and in her turkish wars, whose lands were swept by the tide of battle, and who can recall the memory of conflicts which extended even to the walls of their sanctuary, the cloister of edgmiatsin, are inclined to temper their sentiments of gratitude with the consciousness of the services which they rendered--services which many among them may be disposed to consider have only resulted in the imposition of a fresh and more burdensome yoke. north of the tableland the georgian races, whose kingdom, harassed by mohammedan peoples, was driven to seek assistance outside, have not yet forgotten the disappointment of the hope which many among them had cherished, that russian intervention might assume the form of a protectorate rather than of a complete absorption of the georgian element into the russian state. but such regrets and disillusionments are but the familiar sequel to the constitution of empire upon a new soil; and human nature under such circumstances is more prone to count the loss than to recognise the gain. over twenty years have now elapsed since russia completed her subjugation of the caucasus, whose peoples, untamed for so long a period, menaced the base of her advance; order and peace have been given to the country, and life and property are safe. georgian children are no longer sold into slavery, and a middle class is forming amongst that people, whose traditional relation to one another was that of noble and serf. an experienced traveller, who visited the armenian provinces in 1868, and passed through the more fertile regions of the country between kars and kagyzman, has left on record a striking picture of the misery of those mussulman times. he was crossing the district of shuragel, the ancient shirak of the armenians; and he speaks of deserted towns and villages, of armenian peasants who clung to their ruined homes with a pertinacity of affection which neither poverty nor oppression could subdue, of the dispossession of the christians by the turkish beys, and of the exactions and forays of the kurds, which had curtailed agriculture and stifled industry, and had reduced both to the extreme limit on which human life is able to subsist. [436] if, at the present time, the armenian peasant gathers for himself the crops which he has sown, and the restless kurd consults his safety by a sober respect for the law, it is to russia that the people owe this deliverance from the license and anarchy of former years. had the russian government confined its energies to the amiable and disinterested task of establishing and maintaining public order as the guardian of a distracted country and the knight-errant who clears the land of thieves, it would have received the ungrudging gratitude of the armenians, until in the maturity of time they had learnt to walk unaided and to cope alone with those lawless elements which might still resist the yoke of law. when that happy state had been accomplished it might only be natural to suppose that the progressive tendencies of the armenian would lead him to take counsel with his neighbours and friends, to thank his protectors for past benefits, and to submit that the continuance of foreign tutelage was no longer necessary or desirable in the interests of a country to whose welfare they had contributed so much. to the russians such a possible, but i think improbable, outcome of all their efforts was scarcely calculated to present so rosy an appearance as their ingenuous wards might have expected or hoped, and, if the advantages offered by the russian empire were not sufficiently apparent by themselves, it was necessary to reform and to educate a perversity which sooner or later would yield. the russians are not a commercial people, and would be content to see the armenians conduct the commerce of their native country and develop its vast resources, could they but collect the means; but only on one condition were they prepared to encourage such activity: that their subjects should become russians, and that the province should be joined to the russian empire not only by the slender thread of annexation, but by the abiding tie of a common patriotism founded on a community of sentiment with themselves. but just at this point the real difficulties of empire arise. races who stand on a low scale in nature have become absorbed into the russian system by the exertion of little further energy than was required to ingrain in them that wholesome respect for their northern conqueror which the first sharp conflict had inspired; and the broad, expansive russian character has been able to assimilate them to itself. it is different when, whatever the degree of degradation to which they may have been reduced by mussulman oppression, a people is conscious of elements of vitality impelling them to higher ideals and standards than those which guide the powerful protectors under whom they have commenced to breathe. an empire which is confronted with such a situation has few alternatives among which to choose. if it cannot attract the subject people towards it--if it cannot accomplish that task of self-change which is more difficult than any problem which the exercise of empire may present--it will sooner or later be driven to adopt the expedients of coercion and repression, and to lower the plane of civilised life by arresting the race for progress in which it was itself unfitted to compete. such a political situation can best be gauged and appreciated if we approach it from several different points of view--the nature of the russian system, the attitude of armenians in particular towards it, the true significance of such struggles in the larger issues of the outside world.... the kindness and hospitality of the russian people, the amiable disposition which, in spite of official exigencies, makes them wish the traveller well, the real desire which a large and increasing number among them cherish for social progress at home--are features in the russian character which the shortest acquaintance will recognise with respect, and which make for the true advance of russia as a civilised nation among her peers. but the moment that the elements of progress in russia have asserted their right to rule, the russian system, as we know it, will die and disappear, and the laws which govern its existence will be subject to new conditions, which may make for closer national concentration rather than for expansion abroad. such reflections, although not new, are pertinent in this place. the element of finality, always relative, may justly appear in the eyes of many armenians to be wanting to the political system and to the government under which they live; and the abhorrence which that system inspires tempts them to convert the thought into a wish. the ultimate outcome of any revolution in the affairs of russia is too uncertain, and the present evils of her government are too substantial and apparent to induce them willingly to cast in their lot with the russian people, and to abandon their hope of fulfilling their destiny in their own manner and, if possible, by themselves. a people whose commercial activity has brought them into contact with the most progressive races of europe, and whose natural instinct renders them eager to assimilate western thought, can scarcely be blamed if they chafe under a system which assumes to establish the opinions they shall hold and to select the books which they shall read, and which subjects every action of their daily life to an inquisitorial control. such methods are only the manifestations of a settled and uniform plan. the armenian must sink his individuality and resign his initiative into russian hands. he must imbue himself with the ideas which his rulers have prepared for him, and which may be opposed to the tendencies and the capacities with which he has been endowed. in such a prospect he recognises nothing to admire and much to fear. he sees the more capable races either driven from the russian empire or made the object of a constant jealousy and antipathy rather than of increasing respect. he feels the grip of an organisation which is founded on european methods, and commands all the resources which those methods provide; but he distrusts the hands which wield these weapons, and he is indifferent to the objects to which they are turned. even the material results of such a system leave him little to hope beyond what he has attained. the resources of the country still lie dormant, and the government seems to lack the means or else the will to turn them to account. he sees the rich forests of the peripheral region, which might yield a considerable revenue in return for an outlay which would be comparatively small, left unexploited and neglected, while shiploads of wood are entering the ports to supply the requirements of the oil industry. that industry itself he sees promoted by foreign capital in russian guise, while the jealousy of all foreign capital has closed the door to its beneficent action in the provinces of his home. only a single military railway traverses the tableland, and there is scarcely a road upon it except such as are rendered necessary by the exigencies of the military arm. a few examples of the economical condition of these provinces may emphasise and explain such statements of a general kind. the two principal towns are alexandropol and erivan; yet the road which joins them makes the colossal circuit by the northern shore of lake sevan, where it meets the main avenue of traffic between tiflis and erivan. from a point further west on this roundabout line of communication a road has been cut with the laudable object of shortening the distance; but the same contempt for the smaller and more irksome duties of life to which we become accustomed in purely eastern countries has allowed it to fall into ruin by neglect, and we are met by the sight, so familiar to the traveller in the east, of yawning culverts and broken bridges and parallel tracks which have diverged and avoided the perilous surface of the metalled way. in erivan itself, the chief town of a district where capital might be turned to the greatest advantage, it is impossible or difficult to find a foreign newspaper, while the industrial skill of the advanced races of europe is not represented by a single foreign enterprise, or, so far as i know, by a single foreign man of business or industrial employee. persons who know the country well have told me that from the point of view of irrigation, so important a requirement in a land which suffers from want of rain, it has gone back since the times of the persians, who are experts in such arts. as a consequence of this economical stagnation, the spectacle is often presented in a country which enjoys security and repose of miserable villages, pinched by the scantiest resources and in appearance not more prosperous than those on turkish soil. i cannot help thinking that many of these evils are due to excessive centralisation in the russian capital. when the governor of the transcaucasian provinces was a grand duke residing at tiflis, he was able to gratify his personal interest in their welfare by the exercise of a large measure of independent initiative and control; at the present day the smallest projects are referred to st. petersburg, and are made subservient to the general economic policy which governs the empire as a whole. but such an explanation serves only to display and emphasise the character of the russian system itself: how small are the prospects which it offers in return for the leaden yoke which it brings. little by little, as all danger on the side of the mussulman states has gradually disappeared, the russian government have considered it opportune to apply more drastic methods, and to impose upon the newest of their adopted children a fuller measure of the disciplinary régime. with what instruments they have worked, and how first the church and next the schools have been the objects of their relentless embrace, has been already told in the foregoing chapters, notably those on erivan and edgmiatsin. on their side the armenians have shown no disposition to adopt russian ways of thought. the greater has grown the pressure, the more they have writhed and twisted; at the present moment they are lying still with broken wings. the situation is cruel in the extreme. from the turkish provinces they are beaten up towards the russian frontier by bands of long-beaked, predatory kurds. should they reach their asylum, they are caught in the meshes of a quite impervious network; they are sorted and sifted about by a swarm of active little officials--the police of the districts, the police of the towns, the political police. camps are instituted where the great majority will be detained at pleasure, to be returned on the first opportunity to their rifled homes. the repetition of this process is causing the decimation of the armenian people in a surer and much more efficacious manner than any massacres. it is true that the amelioration if not the removal of such conditions lies to some extent in their own hands. "accept our system, follow the georgians, and seek spiritual and political salvation within the bosom of the russian church-state." one cannot doubt that in that event the whole weight of the great russian empire would be thrown into the scale for the armenians. what a tempting prospect for a people so sorely tried! will they not before very long subscribe this obvious solution, for which there is so much to be said? i have put the question to all the armenians with whom i have enjoyed opportunities of intercourse, and i have put it to those one or two european consuls who have been in armenia and know the armenians well. the answer has invariably been in a negative sense. many armenians go so far as to openly profess their preference for the turkish government. they state the matter neatly in the form of an antithesis. it is a choice between two oppressions, one physical and spasmodic, the other moral and systematic. it is not the first time in history that they have been offered the alternative of slavery in body or slavery in mind. a remnant may be absorbed; but the majority will follow their destiny, will wander out, and, perhaps, disappear. such is the conclusion, so full of pathos, with such a vein of unconscious satire, throwing curious side lights upon the gilded figures of christianity and empire marching down purple steps with arms entwined.... my reader who may know the armenians from his sad experience of an armenian dragoman picked up in the levant, will not, perhaps, be disposed to view the ruin of that people with feelings of keen regret. for myself, coming to the subject free from any prepossessions, but with the lessons of extensive travel in the countries west of india fresh imprinted on my mind, i must freely confess to exactly contrary sentiments. we are living in a time of startling changes in asia; we are witnesses of one of those great waves from europe upon asia of which the tide-marks have all but vanished from the sands of the present after many centuries of repose and stagnation. some diversion of the current, it is true, has taken place towards africa; but the reservoirs of europe are being filled in a much greater measure than they are depleted by issues in that direction. a new and, to all appearances, a permanent factor of immense potentiality in its reflex influence upon the economy and diplomacy of europe has arisen in the shape of the united states of america. american competition is already obliging the industrial states of europe to compose those ancient quarrels which have so often exhausted their great resources, and which have been so long exploited with success by oriental rulers. day by day new inventions are annihilating the old-world obstacles of distance and of time. asia is brought to our doors; and, when we lift the veil in which she has so long slumbered, there is nothing beneath but her fair frame and the flimsiest web of human littleness, yielding to the first and most clumsy attempt to brush it aside. nepioi!--we are surely simpletons if through motives of adventure and cupidity we fondly cherish the vision of this long-lost continent parcelled out like virgin ground among ourselves. the asiatic, with all his debility, is not the african; he is our father, from whose lips we received our first lessons, and his old age, become almost child-like, contains the germs of rejuvenescence, like the gods of ancient greece. tenderly and with affection should we approach these old races whom providence has conducted to our threshold. they will repay us for our forbearance and solicitude. they worship strength; but the display of power in a brutal and ruthless spirit betrays in their eyes, who have seen the passage of so many despotisms, underlying elements of present weakness and certain failure. in some condition, one cannot help feeling, they are likely to survive us, the richer or the poorer for the example and imprint which we may have bestowed. in the armenians we have a people who are peculiarly adapted to be the intermediaries of the new dispensation. they profess our religion, are familiar with some of our best ideals, and assimilate each new product of european culture with an avidity and thoroughness which no other race between india and the mediterranean has given any evidence of being able to rival. these capacities they have made manifest under the greatest of disadvantages--as a subject race ministering to the needs of mussulman masters. they know well that with every advance of true civilisation they are sure to rise, as they will certainly fall at each relapse. for nearly a thousand years they have been held in subjection; and it would be folly to expect that they should not have suffered in character by the menial pursuits which they have been constrained to follow. they have been rayas, exploited by races most often their inferiors in intellect; and i need not enlarge upon the results which have followed from such a condition. one should rather wonder that their defects are not more pronounced. on the other hand, they are possessed of virtues with which they are seldom credited. the fact that in turkey they are rigorously precluded from bearing arms has disposed superficial observers to regard them as cowards. a different judgment might be meted out were they placed on an equality in this respect with their enemies the kurds. at all events, when given the chance, they have not been slow to display martial qualities both in the domain of the highest strategy and in that of personal prowess. the victorious commander-in-chief for russia in her asiatic campaign of 1877 was an armenian from the district of lori--loris melikoff. in the same campaign the most brilliant general of division in the russian army was an armenian--tergukasoff. [437] the gallant young staff-officer, tarnaieff, who planned and led the hair-brained attack on the azizi fort in front of erzerum, was an armenian, and paid for his daring with his life. at the present day the frontier police, engaged in controlling the kurds of the border, are recruited from among armenians. these examples may be sufficient to nail to the counter an inveterate lie, from which the armenians have suffered, at least in british estimation, more, perhaps, than from any other supposed defect. if i were asked what characteristics distinguish the armenians from other orientals, i should be disposed to lay most stress on a quality known in popular speech as grit. it is this quality to which they owe their preservation as a people, and they are not surpassed in this respect by any european nation. their intellectual capacities are supported by a solid foundation of character, and, unlike the greeks, but like the germans, their nature is averse to superficial methods; they become absorbed in their tasks and plumb them deep. there is no race in the nearer east more quick of learning than the persians; yet should you be visited by a persian gentleman accompanied by his armenian man of business, take a book down from your shelves, better one with illustrations, and, the conversation turning upon some subject treated by its author, hand it to them after a passing reference. the persian will look at the pictures, which he may praise. the armenian will devour the book, and at each pause in the conversation you will see him poring over it with knitted brows. these tendencies are naturally accompanied by forethought and balance; and they have given the armenian his pre-eminence in commercial affairs. he is not less clever than the greek; but he sees further, and, although ingrained with the petty vices of all oriental traders, the armenian merchant is quick to appreciate the advantages of fair dealing when they are suggested by the conditions under which his vocation is pursued. a friend with a large experience of the balkans, with their heterogeneous urban populations, has told me, as an interesting fact, that in the statistics of bankruptcy for those countries the proportion of armenians implicated is comparatively low. inasmuch as such bankruptcies are usually more or less of a fraudulent nature, the fact indicates not, perhaps, so much the greater integrity of armenians, as their power to resist an immediate temptation and their promptitude in recognising the monetary value of commercial stability. but in order to estimate this people at anything like their true worth, one should study them not in the levant, with its widespread corruption, but in the russian provinces of armenia. here they have most successfully utilised the interval between the period when the sword of russia was the sword of the deliverer and that present-day period when the principles which inspire her rulers are those of pan-orthodoxy and panslavism. i was so much surprised by the results achieved, and by the contrast which was offered between the sterling progress of this newly-emancipated population and the stagnation and progressive relapse of their neighbours of different nationality, spread over the whole wide area of the nearer asia, that, without any certain previous purpose, i resolved to pursue the study further and to protract the journey into turkish territory. for what was it that i saw? in every trade and in every profession, in business and in the government services the armenian was without a rival and in full possession of the field. he equips the postal service by which you travel, and if you are so fortunate as to find an inn the landlord will be an armenian. most of the villages in which you sojourn are inhabited by a brawny armenian peasantry. in the towns, if the local governor attaches to your service the head of the local police, it will be a stalwart armenian in russian uniform who will find you either a lodging or a shady garden in which to erect your tents. if you remark on the way some well-built edifice which aspires to architectural design, it will be the work of an armenian builder from alexandropol. in that city itself, where the armenians are most numerous, the love of building, which was so marked a characteristic of their forefathers, has blossomed again among kinder circumstances; a spacious cathedral and several large churches stand among new stone houses fronted with ambitious façades. in erivan each richer merchant has lodged himself in an agreeable villa, of which the italian architecture rises from the shade of poplars and willows and fruit trees laden with fruit. the excellent wine which is found in erivan is made according to the newest methods by an armenian who has studied for two years in germany the most modern appliances of the industry in europe. the monetary transactions of the country are in the hands of armenian bankers. the skilled workmen--jewellers, watchmakers, carpenters--are armenians. even the ill-miened officer of mounted frontier police, whose long association with the wilder elements--kurds and robbers of small and large degree--has lent him the appearance of a chief of brigands, will bear, not much to its honour, an armenian name. the large majority of the people do not speak russian, or speak it very imperfectly. indeed, were it not for the fact that the governors and chief police officials of large districts are russians, and that cossacks and russian regular soldiers may here and there be seen, the traveller would not suspect that he was in a russian province, and would go the way he listed with the most serene composure until he was rudely awakened by some abrupt collision with the russian system and brought to his proper mind. as it is, the armenian has edged out the russian, and, if peace were allowed her conquests unhindered, he would ultimately rule in the land. such a situation is suggestive; nor can we feel surprise if the armenian has exercised his oriental imagination upon it in a manner less prudent than may be calculated to appeal to the slower veined races of the west. the idea of a modern armenian kingdom has set the spark to that national enthusiasm which the perusal of his historical records has fed. the example of eastern europe has seemed to justify his speculations. when i come to deal with the turkish provinces, i shall endeavour to show the falseness of such premisses; but i do not believe that any such details have influenced his somewhat more general conceptions, and they are not pertinent here. the vision of an independent armenian state, could it be realised in a remote future, will not appeal to all minds alike. many will see a real danger to human progress in the creation of these small states. the national sentiment they would place among those realised ideals upon which, as our civilisation widens, it is necessary to build anew. the magnitude of the conflict, should any of the greater nations enter the arena of war, acts as a wholesome preventive to ambitions which the small state is prone to indulge on the least pretence. the gratification of such ambitions causes bad administration and ends in bankruptcy, while few of the advantages which are offered by a great empire can the people of a little country enjoy. such considerations have great weight, and it would probably be well if, whenever it were practicable, our political actions were founded upon them; yet they scarcely indicate a solution in the present case. the armenian, who is a convert to such views, might justly ask in what quarter he should look. the turkish empire will not even protect him, and massacres its armenian subjects; while, should he turn his eyes to russia, he sees no prospects of material advantage which would enable him to rise above the economic stage to which he has already attained, and surrender to russian ideals could only be effected in his opinion at the price of moral and intellectual annihilation. confronted with such an outlook, he seeks refuge within himself; and, should he consult his more sober perceptions, he will labour in silence and without ostentation to supply the requirements which his race still needs; to raise the peasant from his present degradation, to purify the church, to promote the interest of his richer neighbours in work for the common good. these are the more legitimate ambitions which, however tedious, are certain of success, and which will establish, whatever be the revolution of politics, his right to influence the history of his country as one of the only stable native elements of progress in the nearer east. if, before concluding these reflections, we turn to the broader issues upon which such questions bear, and, having examined the comparative failure of russia in armenia, consider its significance to the larger world, we may find that the very strength of the russian system as a powerful factor in international life derives from the self-same character which has denied her victory here. had russia through a natural process of attraction been able to draw towards her the higher races who stood on her path, she would have been a greater nation, but perhaps a less formidable force. round her she groups the less cultivated peoples--the nomads of asia, the wanderers of the steppe--and arms them with the might of a european organisation which the intellect of europe, impressed into her service, perfects as a weapon for her use. the dangers which such results threaten can only imperil the improvident and those whose nervous powers are unstrung; but the world has not yet advanced sufficiently to render those dangers unreal. the indolence of mind which shrinks from facing difficulties and leaves them to solve themselves is not the least element of weakness in her european neighbours by which russia profits and through which she grows; but the victory will now as always be given to those states which unite with a higher civilisation a spirit of enterprise still healthy and powers still unimpaired. end of vol. i notes [1] j. p. fallmerayer, born in 1790, the son of humble parents, whose flocks he tended on the mountain-sides as a boy. died in 1861; a great scholar, a great writer, whose work has not yet received all the recognition which it deserves. [2] finlay, mediæval greece and the empire of trebizond, oxford, 1877, p. 340. [3] the dimensions of the interior are: length to head of apse, 33 feet; breadth, 21 feet 7 inches. [4] the ornament is as follows: [illustration]. the inscription is: [illustration]. i notice that m. gabriel millet identifies this figure as a saint michael (op. infra cit. p. 436). [5] bejeshkean (op. infra cit.) publishes the inscription of justinian on the face of the old gateway of tabakhaneh, which has now disappeared. it records the restoration of the public edifices of the city by that emperor. see also hamilton, op. infra cit. [6] the population of trebizond at the present day is estimated at 45,000 souls. [7] since writing this chapter two articles in the bulletin de correspondance hellénique (paris) for 1895 have come to my notice. they are: g. millet, les monastères et les églises de trébizonde, pp. 419-459; and j. strzygowski, les chapiteaux de sainte sophie de trébizonde, pp. 517-522. [8] a railway, connecting the capital of georgia, tiflis, with alexandropol and kars, has been completed since the date of this journey. it winds its way up the valley of the borchala. [9] at 11.15 a.m. 83° f. [10] temperature 86° f. [11] temperature at 10 p.m. 72° f.; 6.30 a.m. 66° f. [12] radde (reisen in hoch armenien, petermann's mitth., gotha, 1875, p. 59) says: "it appears that at least in this district potato culture is making considerable progress in recent times among the armenians." he attributes this to the example of the molokans and dukhobortsy. [13] by the road the distance, according to our coachman, would be 15 versts or 10 miles; by the track which we followed 10 versts or 6 1/2 miles. [14] dubois de montpéreux, voyage autour du caucase, paris 1839-43, vol. ii. [15] brosset, voyage archéologique en transcaucasie, st. petersburg, 1849, 1re livraison, 2me rapport, pp. 119 seq., and atlas, plates v. and vi.; dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 292 seq. [16] brosset, op. cit. p. 143. [17] population of akhaltsykh:-(1) according to nationality: armenians, 10,417; georgians, 2730; jews, 2545; others (including 145 russians and 110 poles), 424--total, 16,116. (2) according to religion: gregorian armenians, 9678; catholic armenians, 739; roman catholics, 2311; jews, 2545; others (including 777 russian orthodox, 9 lutherans, and 57 sunni mohammedans), 843. (statistics concerning the populations of transcaucasia derived from the family lists of 1886. published by government, tiflis, 1893.) [18] they were: akhaltsykh, atzkur, aspinja, khertvis, akhalkalaki, ardahan (dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 284-85). [19] the slave trade was carried on through circassians, who kidnapped the inhabitants of georgia proper and fled with them across the turkish border to akhaltsykh (dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 261-62; haxthausen, transcaucasia, london, 1854, p. 100). [20] adrien dupré in gamba, voyage dans la russie méridionale, paris, 1826, vol. i. p. 403. [21] for the interesting siege and capture of akhaltsykh by paskevich i may refer the reader to monteith, kars and erzerum, london, 1856, ch. vi. pp. 182 seq.; dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 258 seq., and a note to haxthausen, op. cit. p. 100. eli smith, who travelled in the country in 1830-31, informs us that the siege of akhaltsykh was one of the two occasions upon which the turks gave the russians a fair trial of their bravery. the other was at baiburt (missionary researches in armenia, london, 1834, p. 82). [22] dubois saw it still standing in 1833. i cannot find when it was cut down. brosset (op. cit. p. 149) mentions the conversion of the mosque. [23] dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 263. [24] eli smith informs us that at the time of his journey (1830-31) akhaltsykh was the only place, coming within the range of his enquiry in turkish armenia, that contained any jews (missionary researches, p. 100). [25] brosset, op. cit. p. 149. [26] dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 267. [27] brosset, op. cit. pp. 139, 149. [28] brosset speaks of the church and tower of akhashen as being remarkable both as an example of composite architecture and for possessing a fine sculptured cross on the door and a figure of st. theodore on horseback (voyage archéologique en transcaucasie, st. petersburg, 1849, 1re livraison, 2me rapport, p. 150). [29] neither dubois (voyage autour du caucase, paris 1839-43, vol. ii. p. 330) nor brosset (voy. arch. 2me rapport, p. 176) has more than passing notices of aspinja. but dubois tells us that in his time all the inhabitants spoke georgian except the mollah, who had recently arrived from asia minor. he adds that they were formerly georgian christians, and their ancient church still existed in a ruinous condition. [30] i have not verified their statement, which was repeated in other places, that according to a decree of 1890 they would be liable to military service in ten years after the date of the decree. [31] 229 houses, with 1360 inhabitants (family lists of 1886). [32] he gives a population of 800 souls (op. cit. vol. ii. p. 304). [33] dubois (op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 298, 299) informs us that the mussulmans of these districts are the old georgian inhabitants whom safar pasha compelled to embrace islam in 1625. he adds that the armenians escaped this persecution, having been accorded by the reigning sultan liberty of conscience, like the jews in france under similar conditions. the river kur is essentially a georgian river, even where it traverses districts which belong geographically to the armenian tableland. for the history and character of the country about its upper course one may usefully consult the works of dubois and brosset already cited in this chapter, and koch's reise im pontischen gebirge, weimar, 1846. [34] dubois (op. cit. vol. ii. p. 314) calls the kur a torrent above khertvis, and says it only becomes a river after the junction with the toporovan river. [35] i must refer the reader to dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 302 seq., and brosset, voy. arch. p. 152. [36] so abich explains the phenomena (geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, part iii. p. 31). [37] dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 308 seq.; brosset, voy. arch. 2me rapport, p. 165, who gives an account of the adjacent church of tsunda; and abich, op. cit. part iii. p. 34. i would refer my reader to the last of these writers for an account of the geology of the gorge of zeda tmogvi (part iii. pp. 35, 36). [38] brosset is not quite sure about it (voy. arch. 2me rapport, p. 165). the governor of akhalkalaki had no doubt about the correctness of the identification. [39] dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 319; and see also brosset, atlas (plate xii.) to the voyage archéologique and text, pp. 163 seq. i shall not attempt to reconcile the text of brosset with his plan of the church, his plan with that of dubois, or the measurements of either with my own. my own measurements at vardzia and throughout the journey were made by myself with a long tape-measure which i always carried with me. the height of the church is given by dubois as 40 feet. [40] in taking leave of vardzia may i refer the reader to the excellent description of dubois. he mentions the existence of a third and smaller church, which he says is adorned with ancient frescos, with inscriptions which are all in the greek language. the frescos are in the byzantine style, and cannot be much later than the middle of the eleventh century. brosset, who also saw this chapel, maintains, on the other hand, that all the inscriptions are in the georgian ecclesiastical character; he adds that there is a greek inscription disposed about the emblems of a calvary in an adjoining niche (voy. arch. 2me rapport, p. 106). [41] the published total of 59,496 is made up as follows:--armenians, 42,301; georgians, 9771; russians, 6617; kurds, 689; others, 118 (official statistics based on the lists of 1886, tiflis 1893). it is noticeable that the governor's list places the russians at 6300, a diminution since 1886. [42] the plain has a gulf-like extension or arm on the side of lake tabizkhuro. coming from the lake, radde estimated that the plain proper commences at the village of kestano, which i take to be the bejano of the russian map, and that this village lay some 1000 feet lower than the level of the lake. the plain would therefore have an altitude of 5650 feet at its north-eastern extremity. from bejano to the south-western shore of lake khozapin is a direct distance on the map of thirty-six miles. [43] radde in petermann's mitth. 1876, p. 143. [44] radde is almost certainly in error in making the pass of karakaya, which is the shortest route, over 9500 feet high (petermann's mitth., 1876, p. 141). [45] monteith (kars and erzeroum, pp. 85, 168, 173 seq.). haxthausen informs us that "not one turk accepted his life--every man remained dead upon the spot" (transcaucasia, p. 100). he had received the story in this truly oriental form. [46] abich calls it "das am weitesten umfassende des armenischen hochlandes" with the exception of the view from ararat (geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1887, part iii. p. 39). but few have been or probably ever will be privileged to reach the summit of the mother of the world under conditions entirely favourable to such a panorama. and from such a height the world appears very insignificant. [47] according to eli smith (missionary researches in armenia, london 1834, pp. 195 seq.), upon whom i have based this account, the whole number of these german colonists was in 1830 about 2000 souls. their present number may be estimated from the published statistics of 1886. the following are the figures for the various colonies:- government of tiflis: town of tiflis, 1117. administrative division (ouezde) of tiflis: alexandersdorf, 384; marienfeld, 396; petersdorf, 195; friedenthal, 83; elizabeththal, 1148. ouezde of borchali: ekaterinenfeld, 1209; alexandershilf, 366. other localities, 60. total for government of tiflis, 4958. government of elizabetpol: helenendorf, 1457; anenfeld, 437. total, 1894. grand total, 6852 souls. [48] eli smith, speaking of the roman catholic missions, is not ashamed to make use of the following language:--"unfortunately a missionary can hardly set his foot upon any spot in that field (the mediterranean) without encountering some sentinel of the 'mother of harlots,' ready to challenge him and shout the alarm" (op. cit. p. 210). in the course of my reading i have incidentally collected parallel passages from the works of other writers belonging to the cloth, and it is with pain that i note that for foul thoughts, expressed through a foul mouth, it would be difficult to find their equal in the writings of lay authors. [49] the armenian lutherans of baku were numbered at 350 souls in 1886 (official statistics, etc.). according to sembat, there are also communities at shemakha, erivan and its neighbourhood, karakala, near kars, and tiflis. [50] müller-simonis, du caucase au golfe persique, paris, 1892, p. 3. [51] letter of the rev. athelstan riley to daily chronicle of london, august 1897. [52] maksimoff, transcaucasia, quoted by radde in petermann's mitth., 1896, p. 145. [53] see count tolstoy in the times, october 23, 1895. i would also refer my reader to a book published since this chapter was written, entitled christian martyrdom in russia, edited by vladimir tchertkoff, with a chapter and letter by leo tolstoy, london, 1897. [54] tolstoy (the times, loc. cit.) puts their present number at 20,000, i know not upon what authority. the official figures based on the lists of 1886 are:--government of tiflis (akhalkalaki and borchali), 7263; government of elizabetpol, 2404; government of kars, 2766; government of erivan, 15. total, 12,448. [55] according to the statistics of 1886 it would contain 93 houses and 839 inhabitants. [56] koch speaks of the surprise with which he saw rye being harvested in the country north of erzerum at an altitude of at least 7500 feet (reise im pontischen gebirge, weimar, 1846, p. 267). telfer (crimea and transcaucasia, london, 1876, vol. i. p. 278) quotes from reports issued by the tiflis observatory which establish the following limits for the southern caucasus:--barley, 8100 feet; corn, 7906 feet; wheat, 7400 feet; vine, 3500 feet. radde estimates that on the northern slopes of alagöz corn ripens at 8300 feet (petermann's mitth., 1876, p. 147). [57] lukeria vasilievna kalmakoff was given to me as her full name. [58] count tolstoy's informant says: "to christ, as to an historical personage, the dukhobortsy do not ascribe much importance" (the times, loc. cit.). he goes on to tell how, when the quakers visited them in 1818 and heard their opinion about jesus christ (that he was a man), these pious people exclaimed, "darkness!" i cannot reconcile this account with what i learnt at gorelovka, except by the reflection that the christian world itself holds many opinions upon this subject. [59] as a sequel to these events, the dukhobortsy have emigrated in large numbers from their seats beyond caucasus. once the flower of the peasantry in russia, and afterwards the special pride of russian governors in their seats of exile, they have now lost their hardiest spirits in a fresh exodus. and it is the british empire which receives them! their choice was at first bestowed upon the island of cyprus; but the warm climate was unpropitious, and they lost some 100 souls in about eight months. the bulk of the emigrants appear to have taken ship from cyprus for canada and british north america during the spring of 1899. [60] the official statistics, based on the census of 1886, give alexandropol a population of 24,230 souls, of whom 22,920 are armenians. only 200 of these are armenian catholic. [61] ritter (erdkunde, vol. x. pp. 438-39) identifies the modern name shuragel with the country designated in armenian literature as shirak. [62] ker porter, travels in georgia, persia, armenia, etc., london, 1821, vol. i. p. 168. [63] wilbraham, travels in the transcaucasian provinces, london, 1839, p. 277. [64] for the explanation of this term see the chapter on erivan. [65] fragments of the walls of this building alone survive. [66] so the inscription on the south wall, as rendered by brosset (voyage archéologique, 3me rapport, p. 86; and ruines d'ani, p. 64). [67] brosset, loc. cit. [68] radde in petermann's mitth., 1876, p. 147. [69] "...contemplate the company of the stars by night, and them that bring winter and summer to mortals, the radiant potentates conspicuous in the heaven" (æschylus, agamemnon, ls. 4-7). [70] bryce, transcaucasia and ararat, 4th and revised edition, london, 1896, p. 312. [71] at aralykh the thermometer ranged between 60° and 70° fahrenheit between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. on the several mornings. at mid-day it rose to about 80°. [72] the temperature at 6.30 p.m. was 50° fahrenheit, but it sank rapidly in the cold wind. [73] temperature 10.15 a.m., 72° fahrenheit. [74] it is alluded to by some travellers under the name of tash kilisa. [75] madame b. chantre, à travers l'arménie russe, paris, 1893, p. 219. [76] markoff, ascension du grand ararat, in bulletin de la soc. roy. belge de géographie, brussels, 1888, p. 579. [77] temperature at 8 p.m., 18° f., and next morning at 5.45 a.m., 28° f. [78] see the photograph of the summit region (fig. 36, p. 180), which clearly shows these various features. [79] yet it looks a mere streak in the illustration (fig. 36). the lower end of the snow slope was not well seen from the standpoint of that photograph. actually it resembles a magnificent river. [80] abich (geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1882, part ii. p. 455) ascribes to it an elevation of 14,600 feet. [81] the temperature of the air a few feet below the summit out of the gale was 20° f. the height of the north-western elevation of the south-eastern summit of ararat is given by my hicks mountain aneroid as 17,493 feet. the reading is no doubt too high by several hundred feet. the carey aneroid gives a still higher figure, and the boylean-mariotti mercurial barometer entirely refused to work. [82] the readings on the prismatic compass were 310° and 105° respectively. [83] sophocles, oedipus at colonus, l. 610 seq. [84] abich, besteigung des ararat, in baer and helmersen's beiträge zur kenntniss des russischen reiches, st. petersburg, 1849, vol. xiii. p. 63. he supports this suggestion by the fact that neither parrot nor spasky avtonomoff mentions the existence of such a fissure. but whether you may be able to see any trace of it or not must depend upon the state of the snow. [85] tournefort, voyage du levant, paris, 1717, vol. ii. pp. 357 seq. see also ritter, erdkunde, vol. x. p. 507. [86] i refer my reader to the works of tournefort (already cited), parrot (reise zum ararat, berlin, 1834), and dubois de montpéreux (voyage autour du caucase, paris, 1839-45, vol. iii.). [87] the measurements are my own. dubois speaks of akhury as being five leagues distant from the kara su. [88] parrot says the same thing, op. cit. p. 108. [89] for a discussion of the name see parrot, op. cit. p. 110. ritter (erdkunde, x. 508) also refers to brosset (bulletin de l'acad. de sc. de st. pétersbourg, 1841, vol. viii. p. 43), but is in error when he says that brosset spells it aghuri. he actually spells it acorhi, and throws doubt upon the popular derivation of the name. it would appear that the old armenian name for the place was akuri or agguri, and that later armenian writers turned the word into ark-uri in order to extract the signification which i have given in the text. i have adopted the spelling of the russian official map, which practically reproduces the old word. dr. belck has made the ingenious suggestion that the adduri of the assyrian inscription of shalmaneser ii. (859-824 b.c.)--a name which is applied to the mountains whither arame, king of urardhu or ararat, fled before the armies of the assyrian monarch--may be represented by the armenian akuri or agguri (verhandlungen der berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, 1893, p. 71). that the ancient name of a district often survives in that of a town in these countries is proved by the analogy of the town of van, which bears the name of the kingdom of which it was formerly the capital, the biaina of the vannic texts. [90] wagner (op. infra cit. p. 166) says that at the time of the catastrophe the armenian inhabitants numbered nearly 1600 souls, besides kurdish labourers. [91] von behagel (apud parrot, op. cit. 2nd part, p. 183) says 1000 feet. i quote parrot p. 147. [92] parrot, op. cit. p. 147. von behagel (loc. cit.) says that it was 3258 paris feet, or 3472 english feet, above the plain of the araxes. [93] parrot, op. cit. p. 135; dubois, op. cit. vol. iii. p. 471. most travellers tell this story with amplifications and variations. it is to be found in its earliest form in faustus of byzantium (book iii. chap. x.). [94] parrot, op. cit. p. 205. [95] von behagel, apud parrot, loc. cit. [96] tournefort, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 368 seq. [97] the testimony of these witnesses is given by abich, geognostiche reise zum ararat, with two drawings of the chasm, in monatsberichte der gesellschaft für erdkunde zu berlin, series 2, vol. iv. 1846-47. the account is reproduced in his geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1882, part ii. pp. 395 seq., and illustrated by a fine geological view of the chasm in the atlas, plate vi. it can best be understood in the reprint. see also wagner, op. inf. cit., and ritter, erdkunde, x. pp. 507 seq. [98] see the summary of this report in ritter, erdkunde, x. pp. 509 seq. [99] see moriz wagner (reise nach dem ararat und dem hochland armenien, stuttgart, 1848, contained in widermann and hauff, reisen und landesbeschreibungen, lieferung 35), and abich in op. cit. [100] consult the argument in wagner, op. cit. pp. 176 seq. [101] see ritter, erdkunde, x. 510; and for former earthquakes see dubois, op. cit. vol. iii. p. 474; abich, geolog. forsch. part ii. pp. 390 seq. with map. [102] "5 versts in a direct line" are abich's words, op. cit. p. 413. [103] ritter, erdkunde, x. pp. 512, 513. [104] abich, geolog. forsch. part ii. p. 412. [105] abich, op. cit. pp. 413, 414. it is evident that he had wagner's objections in his mind. [106] this was the reading of my hicks mountain aneroid, which was working well, and it agrees with parrot who says that the shrine stood about 1000 feet above the cloister, i.e. at about 7400 english feet. i fear, therefore, that madame chantre is in error in ascribing to the site of the cloister, much lower down, an elevation of 2250 metres or 7382 feet (l'arménie russe, p. 238). monsieur chantre, in his monograph on ararat, confuses the site of the shrine with that of the cloister, an error which was also made by my armenian guide (annales de géographie, paris, 1893-94, vol. iii. pp. 81-94). [107] abich, geolog. forsch. part ii. p. 412, and see for the glacier, etc. pp. 397, 399, 400. the illustration is contained on table vi. of his atlas. parrot appears to be silent on the subject of this glacier; but von behagel, his companion, offers some remarks upon it (parrot, 2nd part, p. 184). i may also refer my reader to dr. markoff's article in the bulletin de la société royale belge de géographie, 1888, p. 589. [108] feodoroff, the companion of parrot, measuring from the valley of the araxes, estimated the difference at 7 feet; khodzko at 120 feet; bryce at "some 50 feet or so," all in favour of the more westerly elevation. my reader will notice that in the photograph (fig. 37) the more easterly, viz. on the left hand, appears to be slightly higher; but this circumstance is due to the fact that it stands out a little in advance of its neighbour, when seen from the side of the country between erivan and aralykh. [109] in estimating the level of the zone of perpetual snow on ararat i am leaving out of account those smaller or greater collections of snow which owe their subsistence all through the summer to special circumstances, such as shelter from the sun. mr. d. w. freshfield (exploration of the caucasus, london, 1896, vol. i. p. 55) gives 10,000 feet as a fair figure for the snow-level in the central chain of caucasus. [110] the account of an ascent in 1897 has quite recently come into my hands. it is written by herr a. oswald, whose attempt was crowned with complete success (eine besteigung des ararat in jahrb. schweiz. alpenclub, berne, 1899-1900, vol. xxxv. pp. 157-183). [111] for artaxata, dvin, khor virap, etc., see ker porter's travels (vol. ii. pp. 619 seq.); morier (second journey, p. 316 and pp. 339 seq.); dubois (op. cit. vol. iii. pp. 382 seq.); smith and dwight (op. cit. pp. 273 seq.). dubois mentions, but was unable to visit, the grottoes of okhtchapert on the direct road between erivan and garni, p. 402. they are mentioned by telfer (crimea and transcaucasia, vol. i. p. 210), who passed by them on his way to garni from erivan. telfer's book should be consulted by english readers for an account of these various antiquities. i would also recommend to the archæologist who is desirous of investigating the question of the site of artaxata a reference to dubois (vol. iii. p. 449). [112] op. cit. vol. iii. p. 480. [113] according to the jesuit, père monier, who wrote an account of the mission at erivan in the eighteenth century, there were only 4000 inhabitants of the town proper in his day. of these only one-fourth were armenians (lettres édifiantes, mémoires du levant, paris, 1780, vol. iii. p. 25). in the thirties of last century the usual estimate seems to have been 2500 families or at least 10,000 souls, of whom some 700 to 1000 families were armenian (smith and dwight, missionary researches, p. 279; sijalski, aufenthalt in erivan, das ausland, augsburg, 1839). the armenians are rapidly turning the tables upon the tartars. [114] chardin, edit. paris, 1811, vol. ii. p. 169. [115] "erivân, apparens, quia regio ista prima apparuit noe cum descenderet ex monte ararat" (villotte, dict. arm. p. 273, quoted by langlès ap. chardin, loc. cit.). [116] moses of khorene, vol. ii. p. 46. [117] lane poole, mohammedan dynasties, london, 1894, p. 259. [118] for the mohammedan tradition see travels of evliya, translated by von hammer, london, 1850, vol. ii. p. 150. "in the year 810 (a.d. 1407) khoja khan lejchani, a rich merchant of timur's suite, settled here (at erivan) with all his family and servants, cultivating plantations of rice, by which means a great kent was soon formed. five years later shah ismail gave to revan kul, one of his khans, an order to build a castle here, which, being finished in seven years, was named after him revan or erivan." the five years of evliya are incomprehensible to me. erivan is mentioned by john katholikos, who wrote in the eleventh century, as having been a considerable place in the seventh (saint-martin's translation, paris, 1841, p. 80). [119] dubois de montpéreux, voyage autour du caucase, paris, 1839, vol. iii. pp. 346 seq. when morier, secretary to the british embassy to persia, visited the sirdar or governor of erivan in 1814, he was told by his host with great gravity that "if three or four of the kings of fireng (europe) were to unite to take this castle, they might just take the trouble of going back again, for their labours would be in vain" (morier, second journey, london, 1818, p. 319). the sirdar's view was not held by british officers, one of whom, in giving an account of his visit in 1837, says, "i had expected to find the castle almost impregnable from the honours which were heaped upon the marshal paskevich for its capture, and was quite surprised to find a mere turkish fort, strong indeed by nature on one side, but on the other three defended merely by a mud wall, and commanded from all the adjoining hills" (wilbraham, travels in the transcaucasian provinces, etc., london, 1839). [120] "in dieser abermahligen veränderung seynd auch alle türkische moscheen der stadt übern hauffen geworffen ... also das etliche dergleichen tempel bis zum fundament erniedriget und übel ärger von persianen verwüstet als jemahl die kirchen der christen von türcken zugerichtet worden seynd. so züchtiget gott die mahumetaner mit mahumetanern" (schillinger, persianische und ost-indianische reise vom jahr 1699 bis 1702, nürnberg, 1707). [121] tavernier, edit. of paris, 1679, vol. i. p. 37; père monier, op. cit. vol. iii. p. 24. [122] von hammer, geschichte des osm. reiches, vol. vii. p. 321. [123] morier, second journey, p. 320. [124] dubois de montpéreux, op. cit. vol. iii p. 452. [125] dubois, ibid. pp. 339 seq. and atlas. [126] dubois, ibid. p. 346, and morier, hajji baba. [127] chapter viii. of the polojenye of 1836. [128] i was informed by a competent authority that, including tiflis and the whole of russian transcaucasia, there were not less than 400 armenian schools in existence at the time of my visit. about one-third of the number would be schools for girls. [129] müller-simonis (du caucase au golfe persique, paris, 1892, p. 62), speaking of the celebration of the ceremonies in honour of ali and hoseyn at erivan, says: "le soir les fanatiques qui devront représenter les martyres à la grande procession, font une promenade aux flambeaux, armés de sabres et de gourdins. ils agitent en mesure leurs flambeaux et leurs armes, criant en même temps à tue-tête: 'hussein, ali, hussein, ali.' les reflets rouges des torches, ici découpant les blanches silhouettes des maisons, là plongeant en lueurs étranges sous la verdure des arbres, puis éclairant en plein les figures hideuses de ces dévots, forment un spectacle sauvage et fantastique." the picture is true to life. i have little doubt that such a procession may still be witnessed at erivan. [130] according to dubois de montpéreux the fortifications of edgmiatsin were restored by the katholikos simeon between 1763 and 1780 (voyage autour du caucase, paris, 1839-43, vol. iii. p. 360). [131] the true inwardness of this policy did not escape the notice of the french traveller boré, who, writing in 1838, says: "en s'avançant vers l'asie centrale la russie cherchait à réaliser une pensée politique habilement conçue, qui lui promet pour l'avenir des résultats avantageux. comme puissance chrétienne, elle se déclare la protectrice de tous les chrétiens assujétis à la double puissance mahométane qu'elle combattait.... voilà pourquoi l'on tenait beaucoup encore à enclaver dans l'empire le monastère d'echemiazin; attendu qu'étant le siège du chef principal de la communion arménienne, on devait tenir dans les liens de son pouvoir spirituel la majeure partie des arméniens répandus dans les royaumes limitrophes" (correspondance et mémoires, paris, 1840, vol. ii. pp. 36, 37). [132] monteith, kars and erzerum, london, 1856, p. 38. during the campaigns against persia the convent of edgmiatsin obtained declarations from both belligerents that their territory should be considered neutral ground. the russians, however, appear to have made use of it as a base (ibid. p. 133). while at edgmiatsin i was told that in 1804 the persians erected a battery upon the roof, which naturally suffered, although i am not aware that the russians came to any harm from the battery. [133] morier's second journey, london, 1818, pp. 323 seq. according to von haxthausen russian influence had already become preponderant in the election of a katholikos as early as 1768, when the katholikos lukas sought and obtained the sanction of russia upon his elevation (transcaucasia, english edition, london, 1854, p. 307). we learn from another source that the katholikos ephraim (1809-31) was accorded the special protection of the tsar, and that he did not assume his functions before receiving the imperial assurance at st. petersburg that the pontificate of armenia would ever receive such protection. this same tsar, alexander i., loaded the bishops and priests who accompanied ephraim with honours and presents (avdall's continuation of chamchean's history, calcutta, 1827, pp. 519-20). [134] melikoff is said to have had under his command a body of 2000 armenian volunteers as well as some 400 officers of the same nationality. see the reminiscences of a delegate to the congress of berlin in the newspaper l'arménie for 15th august 1892 (published in london). [135] nine articles of the polojenye deal with the election of a katholikos. upon a vacancy of the chair it is the duty of the synod to issue invitations to all armenian dioceses, whether in russia or elsewhere, calling upon them each to name two deputies, one clerical and one lay, who shall repair to edgmiatsin after the lapse of a year. these deputies, should they be unable to attend in person, may signify their vote by letter. in addition to the deputies the members of the synod and seven of the oldest bishops of edgmiatsin have votes ex officio. the election takes place in the church of the illuminator. four candidates are chosen by vote in the first place. a second ballot narrows the selection to two. the assembly then appoints three delegates who repair to the governor-general of the caucasus and officially communicate the result. the governor-general transmits the two names to the emperor through the minister of the interior. the emperor confirms the katholikos and gives him the ukase. after he has taken the oath of allegiance to the russian throne he is consecrated according to the rite of the armenian church. in russia there are at present only six dioceses of the armenian church; they are specified in the polojenye. they are:--1. new nakhichevan and bessarabia; 2. astrakhan; 3. erivan; 4. tiflis; 5. karabagh; 6. shirvan. kars is at present a vicarate, dependent upon erivan. in turkey there are, i am informed, usually no less than fifty-two dioceses; but there are not always bishops to every diocese. in persia there are two, namely new julfa and tabriz. it will thus be seen that the armenians of turkey have the preponderant vote, and that the clergy have a small majority over the lay members, to the extent of the synod and seven of the bishops of edgmiatsin. at the last election, which took place on the 17th of may 1892, there were present in the church of st. gregory 72 electors, including the synod and the 7 bishops. the number might have been about 135. but several dioceses appointed the same delegate. the vote for mgr. khrimean was unanimous, the second candidate being only nominal. other articles of the polojenye to which i should like to call attention are to the following effect:--the usual russian provision forbidding proselytising is inserted. the katholikos alone is permitted to make the holy oil. the synod is to consist of four bishops and four archimandrites, all resident at edgmiatsin. it is to assemble at least twice a week. the katholikos is ex officio a member of synod and presides when he is present. it is not said whether the procurator has a right to be present at the deliberations; but the minutes and decisions must all be submitted to him. all monasteries are to be regulated according to the rule of st. basil, and to become a monk it is necessary to obtain the sanction of the synod upon the recommendation of a bishop. a married man may become a monk if he have no children under age and if his wife agree to enter a convent. the church schools are recognised; but their rules and curricula must be submitted to the synod. the synod must in turn submit them to the minister of the interior. finally it is stated that the armenian clergy are supported by the gifts of the armenian people, and the nature of these gifts is specified. [136] according to von haxthausen (journey in 1843) the synod took the place of the general council of the church, which it was impossible to assemble. he adds that in 1783 the patriarch lukas decreed that it should not consist of fewer than seven members; in 1802 there were nine members (transcaucasia, english edition, p. 305). [137] captain richard wilbraham, travels, etc., london, 1839, p. 98. at the time of his visit in 1837 the procurator was actually an armenian, but quite russianised. [138] transcaucasia, german edition, leipzig, 1856, vol. i. pp. 256 seq.; english edition, pp. 284 seq. von haxthausen speaks of the "grobheit des procurators." it is only just to add that the katholikos was absent during his visit. [139] i was shown the documents in the library. the method of the election of the katholikos makar affords great sport to the jesuit vernier. he hails with delight the constitution of edgmiatsin into a state prison "où l'élu de la nation demeure sous la garde d'un gêolier moscovite. cet élu a fini par déplaire au despote couronné de st. pétersbourg; le czar vient de rejeter avec mépris l'oecuménique qui avait réuni la majorité des suffrages, et de lui substituer arbitrairement un russe qui n'a d'arménien que le nom. dans quelques années de par le knout, ce nom même disparaîtra, et quelque pape cosaque remplacera l'arménien russifié et occupera à edgmiatsin le trône de saint grégoire. terrible et juste vengeance de dieu...." the italics are mine (histoire du patriarcat arménien catholique, paris, 1891, p. 285). [140] sophocles, oedipus tyrannus, 1. 58. [141] the new catalogue, which has not yet been printed [september 1900], will contain some 3500 titles. so far as i have been able to ascertain, there already exist two catalogues--(1) that published by the academy of sciences, st. petersburg, 1840, and (2) that by caréniantz, tiflis, 1863, 4o [in armenian]. [142] for a description of this book and its ivory panels see strgygowski, das etschmiadzin-evangeliar, vienna, 1891. [143] the institution of the twelve bishops, who reside in the palace of the katholikos and fulfil various offices about his person, dates from the commencement of the armenian state church. see faustus of byzantium, vi. 5, and gelzer (die anfänge der armenischen kirche, in berichte der k. s. gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu leipzic, phil.-hist. classe, 1895). [144] i was informed that the notes are those of the fifth century; but there appears to be no sufficient historical evidence for this belief. the historians, however, speak of this or that vartapet as having been a musician (erajisht). the katholikos george iv. (d. 1882) transcribed the original notes from the armenian manuscripts, but brought them into consonance with european methods. [145] so it is known to all the early travellers. cp. poser, 1621; evliya, 1647, "the three churches, a great convent built by the greek emperors"; rhodes, 1648-49; tavernier, 1655; chardin, 1673; jesuit missionaries, seventeenth century, letter of père monier; schillinger, c. 1699; tournefort, 1701, who notices the inappropriateness of the name. [146] it is given at length by agathangelus, and may be found in that portion of the treatise to which i shall hereafter allude as "the acts" (see note on p. 291, infra). there can be little doubt that the legend of the ripsimians took the place of an old heathen legend, associated with the site at vagharshapat. there seems to have been a local tradition that the cathedral and the chapels of ripsime and gaiane stand upon three rocks, whence in pagan times voices would be heard coming from underlying cavities and returning answers to questions addressed to them. [147] this is probably an anachronism. [148] i interpret him in the sense of there and back. [149] it appears to have been the custom among the armenians down to comparatively recent times for pious people to place large blocks of stone in front of the entrance to a church by way of offering. dubois de montpéreux saw a number of such stones, 6 or 7 feet high, covered with crosses and arabesques, in front of the portal of the cathedral at edgmiatsin. i do not know what has become of them. [150] chardin (ed. langlès, paris, 1811, 8vo, vol. ii. p. 175). see also tavernier (book i. ch. iii.). the jesuit missionaries, however, later on in the seventeenth century, speak of a structure resembling a mausoleum and having four stone columns and an altar in the centre. there can be little doubt that this is an allusion to the erection of eleazar. [151] chardin, ibid. [152] history of architecture, book i. ch. iv. neo-byzantine style. his remarks have reference to the shape of the dome and not to the pointed arches of the false arcade, which perhaps argue a much later date. [153] dubois de montpéreux, voyage autour du caucase, paris, 1839-43, vol. iii. pp. 372 seq. [154] ibid. atlas, series iii. plate 7. [155] see telfer, the crimea and transcaucasia, london, 1876, vol. i. p. 222, and dubois, op. cit. vol. iii. pp. 382 seq. [156] strgygowski, das etschmiadzin-evangeliar, vienna, 1891. i read the large inscription thus:--iêsou boêthei pantas tous euchomenous en tê ekklêsia zibithain (?)--kyrie eleêson ton doulon sou archian--kai kyrie eleêson elpidin (for elpida or elpidian, the variation of the accusative of elpis into -pidin being not unusual)--daniêl, tirer, garikinis. the word zibithain is taken as a proper name by brosset (voyage archéologique, st. petersburg, 1849-51, 3me rapp., p. 16), and by strgygowski, who supposes it to be the same as zuithai, found in armenian writers, e.g. in faustus of byzantium, who speaks of a zuithai as priest of the town of artaxata during the persecution of shapur (faustus, iv. 56). zuithai would be the priest in whose church the memorial had been placed. as for the three proper names at the end, that of tirer has been found in an inscription of the thirteenth century. garikinis denotes the proper name garegin. [157] it is a matter of surmise that nerses i. restored the sacred buildings of vagharshapat after the destruction of that city by the persian armies in the fourth century (see faustus, v. 1); but the first restoration of the cathedral of which i can find any certain mention is that of the great armenian chief vahan mamikonean in or about the year 483 (lazar pharpetzi in langlois' collection des historiens de l'arménie, paris, 1867-69, vol. ii. p. 352. and see saint-martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, paris, 1818, vol. i. p. 328). armenia was at this time struggling to rid herself of the persian (sasanian) yoke, having lost her arsakid dynasty. the katholikos no longer resided at edgmiatsin, the pontifical seat having been transferred to dvin in a.d. 452 (saint-martin, ibid. vol. i. p. 437); nor does he return until a.d. 1441. in 618 it was again restored by the katholikos komitas (saint-martin, i. 116, quoting john katholikos; and cp. sebeos, hist. of heraclius, iii. 25 (in armenian)), who substituted a dome in stone in place of the earlier wooden one. certain repairs are attributed to the katholikos nerses iii., surnamed the builder, a.d. 640-661, i know not upon what authority. after this there ensues a long period, for which we appear to have no records. the katholikos often changes his residence. after the destruction of the cilician kingdom and in the year 1438 the right arm of st. gregory, a relic which had become the palladium of the pontifical office, was transferred from sis, the capital of that kingdom, to edgmiatsin (gelzer, article armenien in realencyklopädie für protestantische theologie, leipzic, 1896). saint-martin places the transfer thither of the seat of the pontificate in the year 1441. in 1442 the katholikos kirakos undertook the necessary repairs (thomas metsobatzi). we now leap to the reign of shah abbas of persia, who, as is well known, transported a whole colony of armenians from the valley of the araxes to the outskirts of his capital, ispahan. in 1614 this monarch carried off a number of the venerated stones of the church to new julfa to form the nucleus of a new edgmiatsin (arakel of tauris, ch. xxiv.). the famous monastery fell into woeful neglect. the katholikos moses (1629-33) restored it, but added no new feature. his successor philip renewed the roof (inscriptions, records, etc.). i think i have mentioned subsequent additions. the steps which run round the church were added or extensively restored by the katholikos lukas (in 1784). but they have been modified by makar i. repairs are ascribed to the pontiffs astvatsadur, simeon and ephraim, the last of whom repaired in 1816 the damages which the persians had done to the roof by placing a battery upon it. for more detailed information i may refer my reader to a work entitled: description of the mother church of the armenians, by vahan vardapet bastamean, edgmiatsin, 1877 (in armenian and russian). [158] see the translation of the de edificiis by stewart, annotated by sir charles wilson, london, 1896, pp. 73 seq. (palestine pilgrims text society). [159] john katholikos, c. xii. and see sebeos, hist. of heraclius, iii. 33. [160] they bear the monograms of nerses katholikos and are reproduced by strgygowski (op. cit.), to whom i refer my reader. i only saw one of them during my stay. [161] brosset (bull. scient. de l'acad. de sc. de st. pétersbourg, vol. ii. 1837) has transcribed the letters and published a valuable little notice on the subject. [162] the circumstance appealed to brosset as a rare example of religious tolerance (voyage arch., rapp. 3, p. 19). [163] dubois, voyage autour du caucase, vol. iii. p. 371. but see haxthausen, transcaucasia, p. 287. [164] i was unable to measure each apse; but i was assured that they were all of the same or nearly the same size. the portal is of course not included in the above measurements. [165] telfer (crimea and transcaucasia, london, 1876, vol. i. p. 231) seems to refer to this throne, which he ascribes to pope innocent xi., a gift to james iv. (1655-80). [166] see morier, second journey, pp. 323 seq. [167] see dubois de montpéreux, op. cit. vol. iii. p. 213, and neale's holy eastern church, vol. i. p. 296. the former of these writers informs us that our church of st. ripsime "a servi de type à une foule d'autres églises," and the latter has improved upon this statement by asserting that it is "the norm of all armenian ecclesiastical buildings" (dubois, vol. iii. p. 380, and neale, vol. i. p. 293). leaving georgia out of account, both these statements are incorrect. [168] unless we accept neale's hypothesis that they served as a narthex. but the narthex is not a feature of the churches of great armenia. [169] according to brosset (voyage arch., rapp. 3, p. 82) the diameter of the dome is not less than about 35 feet. the height is given by neale, op. cit. p. 296, as 104 1/2 feet to the top of the cross. [170] sebeos, history of heraklius (in armenian), part iii. ch. xxv. [171] for the theft and recovery of these relics see smith and dwight (missionary researches, london, 1834, p. 280), and brosset (voyage arch., rapp. 3, p. 83). [172] brosset, ibid. p. 82. the date reposes upon the authority of the historian, john katholikos. [173] according to agathangelus the third chapel was built upon the site of the wine-press. further on we are told that it was situated north of the town, and that in it was buried the unfortunate nun who was left behind owing to sickness. [174] brosset (bull. scientifique acad. sc. st. pétersbourg, 1840, pp. 46 seq.) quotes a letter from nahabet to this effect. [175] brosset, ibid. [176] belck, in zeitschrift für ethnologie, berlin, 1893, heft ii. p. 77. [177] haxthausen, transcaucasia, p. 295. [178] schillinger, persianische und ost-indianische reise, nürnberg, 1707. i do not credit the statement of evliya, who visited edgmiatsin in a.d. 1647, to the effect that at that time the monastery was inhabited by about 500 monks. [179] bryce, transcaucasia and ararat, note to 4th edition, london, 1896, p. 314. [180] it is interesting to place together the two following passages, the first taken from a modern and representative armenian source, the second from the work of a german scholar. i translate both from the german. dr. arshak ter-mikelean, professor of theology in the academy at edgmiatsin, writes (die armenische kirche in ihren beziehungen zur byzantinischen, leipzic, 1892, p. 9): "the mother church of gregory was not founded by him nor even by the apostles, who are only mortal men; but the everlasting founder, the only head of the church, himself descends in glory from heaven and commands him to build a church after his plan and his directions on a prescribed site in the royal city, vagharshapat. christ himself appears to gregory in a vision and instructs him what he shall do ..."; and professor gelzer draws the inference (die anfänge der armenischen kirche, in berichte über die verhandlungen der k. s. gesell. der wissenschaften zu leipzic, phil.-hist. classe, 1895, p. 127): "the ancient capital vagharshapat ... bears at the present day the name edgmiatsin, 'the only begotten descended from heaven,' in everlasting remembrance that christ himself founded the armenian church and thereby established her as autokephalous and completely independent of every patriarchate, whether of the east or of the west." [181] moses of khorene mentions st. bartholomew and st. simon (ii. 34, in langlois, collection des hist. de l'arménie, paris, 1867-69, vol. ii. p. 98), and says that the former suffered martyrdom in the town of arevban, while the other was reputed to have met the same fate in veriospora. according to gelzer (article armenien in realencyklopädie für protestantische theologie, leipzic, 1896) the martyrdom of st. bartholomew in urbanopolis, a town of great armenia, was known to greek writers as early as the fifth century. urbanopolis, albanopolis, or korbanopolis (armenian, arevbanos or arebonos-kaghak) may perhaps be identified with arabion castellum, where in fact vardan (c. 1270) tells us that the saint was murdered. arabion castellum was a fort on the stranga, or great zab, which mr. f. c. conybeare (key of truth, oxford, 1898, p. cii.) connects with the modern deir, where at the present day the monastery and church of st. bartholomew stand. i surmise that nothing is known of the site of veriospora. moses, following the edessene tradition, speaks of st. thaddeus as one of the seventy disciples, relates at length his mission to king abgar of edessa (urfa in mesopotamia), and speaks of his conversion of king sanatruk, successor of abgar, and of his martyrdom in the canton of chavarchan, called in his day ardaz, as well-known facts. for st. jude i rely on issaverdens (armenia and the armenians, venice, 1878, vol. ii. p. 21), who relates that he was put to death and buried in the city of urmi in azerbaijan. [182] moses of khorene, ii. 30-36, in langlois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 95 seq.; and saint-martin, mémoires, etc. vol. i. p. 127. [183] professor carrière (la légende d'abgar dans l'histoire de moïse de khorène, paris, 1895) shows that moses used an armenian version of the legend of abgar which commenced to form about the middle of the third century but was subsequently remodelled. the same writer in this work relegates the unfortunate moses of khorene, or rather the writer who assumes the mask of this name, to a position inter deos minores and to a period not earlier than the eighth century. he had previously been made to step down several places, and was shivering somewhere in the seventh century. see gutschmid, kleine schriften, leipzic 1892, iii. p. 335. [184] faustus of byzantium, iii. 1, and iv. 3, in langlois, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 210, 237. [185] issaverdens, ii. 20, and saint-martin, i. p. 131. [186] eusebius (hist. eccl. vi. 46, 2), speaking of dionysius of alexandria (a.d. 248-265), says, "and in the same manner he writes to those in armenia over whom merujan was bishop on the subject of repentance." for the probable connection of this bishop with the van country see gelzer (die anfänge, etc. pp. 171 seq.). [187] mr. f. c. conybeare (key of truth, oxford, 1898, pp. ci. seq.) discusses the locality of the see of archelaus. he is called in the acts of archelaus bishop of karkhar (episkopos karcharôn or kascharôn), which again is called a city of mesopotamia, three days' hard riding from castellum arabion, a fort on the river stranga, the modern great zab. karkhar was included in the roman dominions. may it not have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of sert? [188] conybeare, ibid. pp. lviii. and ciii. [189] conybeare, ibid. p. cx. [190] conybeare, ibid. p. xcvi. [191] i refer to the long account contained in the agathangelus treatise (see note infra). [192] conybeare, op. cit. pp. cxi. cxii. [193] ibid. pp. clx. clxi. [194] letter of lazar pharpetzi ap. conybeare, op. cit. p. cviii.; nerses of lampron, ibid. p. lxxxv.; isaac katholikos, ibid. appendix vii. p. 171, and pp. lxxvi. lxxvii. [195] conybeare (op. cit.) gives the gist of the canon of the council of shahapivan (pp. cvii. cviii.) and a translation of the canon of john katholikos at the council of dvin and of portions of his tract (pp. 152 seq. in appendix iv.). [196] conybeare (ibid. appendices i. to iv. inclusive) details these various persecutions from the original sources; his discussion of the identity of sembat is a most interesting contribution to the history of armenia in the middle ages (pp. lxi. seq.). [197] the visit is almost certainly a fable. [198] for some enquiry into the ethnical affinities and earliest history of the armenians see vol. ii. of the present work, pp. 67 seq. [199] note especially the interesting incident mentioned by faustus of byzantium (v. 4). an ally of the sasanian king of persia and a sincere imitator of his example thus addresses his army: "when you get to close quarters with the imperial troops i bid you try your best to make prisoners and avoid bloodshed; we must endeavour to carry them off with us as trophies, and we will make them work for us when we get home as artisans and masons for the construction of our cities and palaces." [200] dion cassius (lxxx. 3) adds this last statement. the preceding are based on agathangelus (ch. i.). the chronology is that of a. von gutschmid. see his article persia in ency. brit. and kleine schriften, iii. pp. 402 seq. [201] mommsen (provinces of the roman empire, vol. ii. p. 75) tells us, on the authority of dion cassius ap. suidas, that it was the roman general priscus who, after destroying artaxata in a.d. 163, laid out the city which was called kainê tolis, or, in armenian, nor-kaghak. this latter name is used by armenian writers of the fifth century alongside of that of vagharshapat (edgmiatsin). [202] herodian (vi. 5, 6) gives us an account of the war waged by severus, which is not even noticed by the armenian historian. [203] agathangelus, ch. ii. life of st. gregory. a. von gutschmid, who throws doubt upon the statement in the life that st. gregory was a son of anak who was taken to greece, views with a suspicion, which is quite natural, the words of the historian, "one was taken to persia, the other to greece." the territory of the empire would have been hostile to such protégés of the persian king. but even if this view be plausible it is surely not necessary to take the words too literally (kleine schriften, iii. 380). [204] elisoeus vardapet (ap. langlois, collection des hists. de l'arménie, vol. ii. p. 206) gives the text of a petition despatched by the armenian nobles to theodosius ii., in which occurs the following passage:-... "our king tiridates, while yet a child, was taken to greek territory and educated there in order to escape from his cruel and parricidal uncles...." on the other hand, agathangelus leads us to infer that ardashir took possession of armenia after the murder of chosroes and that it was then that the child tiridates was taken to greece. in this statement he comes into conflict with zonaras, who tells us (xii. 21) that it was only in the time of gallus (252 or 253) that the persians were able to possess themselves of armenia, after the flight of the king, tiridates. it does not seem open to doubt that it was not ardashir but his successor shapur i. who became master of armenia; and these various sources may perhaps be partially reconciled in the manner suggested by von gutschmid (kleine schriften, iii. 405) and adopted in my text. von gutschmid interprets parricidal in the sense of the uncles having murdered, or helped to murder, not their own father but the father of tiridates. [205] the campaign of odaenathus against shapur is placed in 265 by robertson smith (article palmyra in ency. brit.) and in 264 by mommsen (provinces of roman empire, ii. 104). we learn from vopiscus (aurel. 27) that an armenian contingent was enrolled under the banner of zenobia against the emperor aurelian in 271. what was the attitude of tiridates during the war? [206] tiridates was no doubt influenced by the persecutions of the emperors decius (249-251) and valerian (253-260). the latter persecution took place during the last three and a half years of the reign of valerian. [207] agathangelus is our earliest authority for the reign of tiridates and for the events connected with the conversion of the armenians as a nation to christianity. but the scholars who examined this precious treatise were impressed with the scale and frequency of the interpolations to which the original text appeared to have been subjected; and partly for this reason, partly owing to the former ascendency of moses of khorene, full use was not made of the work. in 1877 there appeared in the pages of a german periodical one of those masterpieces of the higher criticism of which german writers now appear to have a monopoly. it is entitled agathangelos, by alfred von gutschmid, and it has been incorporated in the collected edition of von gutschmid's minor works (kleine schriften von a. von gutschmid, leipzic, 1892, vol. iii. pp. 339 seq.). the author laboured under the disadvantage of not being an armenian scholar; but he has nevertheless succeeded in discriminating between the various sources from which the treatise, as it has come down to us, has been built up. they are--1. an earliest source which we may call the life of st. gregory, and which also contains an account, running parallel, of the reigns of chosroes and tiridates down to the conversion of the latter. von gutschmid thinks that this writing was composed in armenian during the pontificate of sahak, or isaac, the great (a.d. 391-442). it seems more probable, however, that it was originally written in greek or syriac and subsequently translated into armenian. 2. a later piece which we may distinguish as the acts of st. gregory and of st. ripsime and her companions. it is a hagiograph, which von gutschmid supposes to have been written about the year 450. it seems to me, however, that a certain passage in faustus of byzantium (iii. 13, in langlois' translation, "jusqu'à changer même l'image de l'homme en une figure de bête") points to that author having been acquainted with the acts; at all events he is familiar with the legend of the ripsimians. faustus appears to have written 395-416. to the acts portion of the agathangelus treatise belongs a long and possibly independent piece which contains the teaching of st. gregory; but neither the greek version nor the extant translations include it, and i am not aware that any consecutive account of its contents has yet appeared. in the armenian text this last piece takes up over one-half of the treatise as a whole. and finally--3. the vision or apocalypse of st. gregory, in which the saint receives the divine mandate to build the church at edgmiatsin. this piece, together with the prologue and epilogue to the whole work, was probably added by a priest of vagharshapat (edgmiatsin), who edited the treatise and gave it its present form, publishing it under the pseudonym of agathangelus. von gutschmid thinks that the work as a whole may be assigned to the period of persian persecution (a.d. 452-456). the fact that lazar pharpetzi displays an intimate acquaintance with it under the name of agathangelus shows that it cannot be placed later than about the close of the fifth century. i do not know, however, that lazar shows a knowledge of the apocalypse, or that the statement contained in a paris ms. can be conclusively disproved, that the armenian text which has come down to us is a translation made in the seventh century, at the time of the discovery under komitas of the relics of st. ripsime, from a greek original. von gutschmid, however, argues against this view (pp. 354 seq.). ter-mikelean (die armenische kirche, p. 5) supports the view that the work was translated at the close of the fourth century by koriun from a greek original (see langlois, vol. ii. introduction to koriun, p. 4); but von gutschmid has shown that certain passages have been borrowed from koriun, and until the armenian text has been subjected to a searching philological criticism we are not safe in saying more than this. the student will find the various pieces enumerated above distinguished one from another, passage by passage, in the table given by von gutschmid (pp. 375 seq.). the latest edition of our present greek text, which is a translation from the armenian, is that of de lagarde (göttingen, 1887), but the references given in my notes are to that of langlois. the best translation is that of the mekhitarists in italian (venice, 1843). the french translation in langlois omits some of the most important passages. as regards the historical importance of the pieces, von gutschmid concludes that the life may be regarded as a source of absolute reliability for the conversion of the king and for the events in armenia which succeeded the conversion. as regards what took place before that event, it is in the main reliable, although interwoven with legend. the acts, on the other hand, and the apocalypse are as good as useless as historical material. the scholarly study of von gutschmid rendered possible professor gelzer's profound and brilliant essay, die anfänge der armenischen kirche, to which i have already alluded (p. 277, note 1) and in which he reviews the work of the armenian writer known to us under the name of faustus of byzantium. [208] see p. 145 of the italian translation of agathangelus. von gutschmid (kleine schriften, iii. 358) is careful to point out the discrepancy in the two sources. while the acts speak of possession by devils as the malady with which the people of vagharshapat were afflicted and which caused them to be transformed into animals, the life only mentions "possession" as one of the diseases which are enumerated. [209] see the italian translation, p. 153. [210] sozomen, ii. 8. he places the conversion before constantine, but does not give the exact date. [211] "with gallienus (260) there begins for the christians a long period of peace, lasting about forty years" (moeller, history of the christian church, a.d. 1-600, london, 1892, p. 196). [212] it seems impossible to precise the date of the conversion of tiridates. the author of the life in agathangelus allows thirteen years for the captivity of gregory, who was imprisoned in the first year of the restoration. but i am not aware that we are able to fix this latter date. the conversion probably occurred about the year 280. [213] emin, recherches sur le paganisme arménien, p. 20, note 1. [214] the pontic regions. [215] the king himself preached (agathangelus, life of st. gregory, in p. 253 of the italian translation). [216] i insert the word "years" in deference to professor gelzer, who argues (die anfänge, etc., p. 166) that if the conversion took place about the year 280, the journey to cæsarea could scarcely have been undertaken before 285-290. he is wishing to show that the statements contained in a portion of the agathangelus treatise ascribed by von gutschmid to the less reliable source, viz. the acts, to the effect that st. gregory was ordained by leontius, archbishop of cæsarea, may quite well be true. we know that leontius subscribed the council of nice (325); and his pontificate must have covered a period of forty-five years if st. gregory was ordained by him in or about the year 280. the life mentions the visit of gregory to cæsarea but not the name of leontius; and von gutschmid, while he regards the visit as historical, views with suspicion the connection with that particular prelate (kleine schriften, iii. pp. 415 and 418). that seems to me the sensible view. we learn from an independent source (gelas. cyzic. ii. 36, ap. mansi, ii. p. 929) that in the year 325 and during the lifetime of saint gregory and leontius, great armenia was in ecclesiastical subordination to cæsarea; and the link with the capital of cappadocia was maintained until the death of the katholikos nerses i. about the year 374 (cp. faustus, v. 29). the later story, to the effect that tiridates received christianity from the bishop of rome (so in the petition of the armenians in the year 450 to theodosius, ap. elisoeus in langlois, ii. 206), is plainly a story with a purpose and must therefore be viewed with suspicion. [217] the car with the white mules is mentioned in the life, and the escort of sixteen princes in the acts. [218] a bishop of sivas with this name was martyred under diocletian; but this saint will not suit our chronology. certain features in connection with the cult of the saint--a hind is offered up to him on his name day--have suggested to von gutschmid (kleine schriften, iii. 414) that athenogenes was a heathen god of the chase, converted in comparatively remote times into a christian martyr. a local cult of this nature seems to have attached to herakles in certain countries; therefore it might quite well have been natural for gregory to supplant the worship of his armenian counterpart, vahagn, at astishat with that of athenogenes, the saint corresponding to the god of the chase. this is ingenious but not convincing. the hunting features in the cult of athenogenes may surely have been derived from his worship at astishat in place of vahagn (herakles). [219] i adopt the greek version of agathangelus in this passage in preference to the armenian text, which has "he laid the foundations of the church and erected an altar to the glory of christ. it was here that he first commenced to build churches, and erected an altar in the name of the holy trinity and added a baptistery." see gelzer (die anfänge, etc., p. 129). [220] after a second perusal of the passages in agathangelus and faustus (in langlois: agathangelus, cxiv. and cxv.; faustus, iii. and iv. 14), i do not hesitate to identify the site of the temples of astishat--mount karke, in face of the great range, taurus--with the immediate surroundings of the present cloister of surb karapet (see vol. ii. p. 177). the view which i shall offer from the terrace of that famous monastery (fig. 157) will be the view which excited the cupidity of the eunuch hair; the ash trees in the foreground may be the descendants of the hatzeatz-drakht or garden of ash trees; finally, the confluence of rivers, overgrown with thick forest, to which the eunuch descended and where he met his death, may be represented by the still wooded banks of the murad in the valley of charbahur. the identification of the scene of the events narrated in the text with the present monastery of surb karapet may be found in the geography attributed to vardan in saint martin (mémoires, etc., vol. ii. p. 431). the baptism of tiridates probably took place on the banks of the upper murad upon the site of another existing cloister of surb karapet, also called uch kilisa, near diadin (see smith and dwight, missionary researches, p. 417). [221] faustus, iii. 3. [222] faustus, iii. 13. [223] ibid. [224] agathangelus, life of st gregory, sec. 158. [225] faustus, iii. 13. [226] faustus, v. 31. "the obsequies of the dead were conducted amid loud lamentations, accompanied by trumpets, guitars and harps. monstrous dances took place, men and women, with bangles on their arms and painted faces, giving themselves up to every kind of abomination." the picture is coloured by malice, but is vivid. [227] agathangelus, life of st. gregory, sec. 169. [228] faustus, iv. 4. [229] faustus, iv. 14. it seems plain from this chapter that these domains had been bestowed upon the family of gregory by tiridates and his successors. [230] faustus, iii. 15 and 19. the profane delinquents were named pap and athenogenes, and the makeshift office-bearers daniel the syrian, pharen and shahak. the two last-named were formally invested with the office and sent to cæsarea to be consecrated. [231] note especially the election of nerses i., a descendant of st. gregory who was loth to accept the office. "the numerous troops of all armenia demanded and proclaimed nerses as katholikos ... the entire assembly commenced to cry with a loud voice, 'it is nerses who must be our pastor.' nerses refused to accept the mandate, of which he professed himself unworthy. nevertheless the assembly persisted in their resolution and continued to cry before the king, 'no one except nerses shall be our pastor; nobody but he shall occupy the holy chair!'" the whole chapter (faustus, iv. 3) is well worth reading, and contains some very vivid portraiture. nerses was a layman and was raised to the pontificate in one day. he was then sent to cæsarea to be formally consecrated. [232] professor gelzer pertinently observes (die anfänge, etc., p. 148) that the armenian kings in pagan times had been in the practice of placing their own near relatives in priestly offices, and quotes strabo to the effect that in the neighbouring provinces of cappadocia and pontus the high priest was deuteros kata timên meta basilea, or second in rank after the king. on the other hand, traces of jewish custom are to be found in the existence of a second priestly house in armenia during the early period of christianity, who in a sense were rivals of the house of the illuminator. i allude to the house of albianus. it must not be forgotten that there were extensive settlements of jews in armenia at this period, brought thither by the armenian king tigranes (faustus, iv. 55). [233] eusebius, hist. eccl. ix. 8. for the date see von gutschmid (kleine schriften, iii. p. 412). [234] the doubts of von gutschmid would perhaps have been removed by the more correct translation given by professor gelzer of the passage relating to the journey in agathangelus and by his editing of the context. the passage should read, "by land and sea they proceeded with haste until they reached the state of the italians and the land of the dalmatians and arrived in the imperial city of the romans." dalmatia is the præfectura per illyricum. the name of the bishop is given in the text of langlois as sylvester, and as eusebius in the greek translation. the best armenian ms. also has eusebius. the name of sylvester appears to have been substituted much later, when the "imperial city of the romans" was very naturally identified with rome and the prelate with the bishop of rome. my friend mr. f. c. conybeare calls my attention to the interesting circumstance that the armenian equivalent for latin is dalmatian. thus in their gospels it is said that the title king of the jews was inscribed on the cross in hebrew, greek, and in dalmatian. [235] and yet the homoousion was not incorporated into the armenian creed! but it does not appear that this omission was intentional. the creed already in use was allowed to stand. i confess to a feeling of astonishment, having regard to the unequivocal language in which the author of the life attests the acceptance of the council; but the canons could not have been much appreciated in armenia at the time if we are to credit koriun's statement that he himself, with ghevond and eznik, brought authentic copies of them to armenia in the fifth century (biography of mesrop in langlois' collection, vol. ii. p. 12). mr. f. c. conybeare informs me that the creed of nice was only communicated to the armenian diaspora in persia and southern mesopotamia by the katholikos papken after the council of dvin, c. 490 a.d. it was rejected by that diaspora as in contradiction with their already established ebionite or adoptionist tenets (see letter-book of the patriarchs, ms. of the armenian father, st. anthony, in stambul). dr. arshak ter-mikelean prints the armenian and nicene creeds side by side and accompanies them with some interesting remarks (die armenische kirche in ihren beziehungen zur byzantinischen, leipzig, 1892, p. 22 seq.). the statement of agathangelus (life of st. gregory), that king tiridates acted in concert with st. gregory in making certain additions to the canons must be received with caution, although such additions do appear to have been actually made (see the note of the mekhitarists to the italian translation of agathangelus, p. 196). his son, chosroes ii., appears to have come to the throne in 314. as neither agathangelus nor faustus gives us dates, and as the most monstrous anachronisms occur in both treatises, one may do pretty well what one likes with the chronology. i should even mistrust them when they assign a given number of years for a particular period. in the east at the present day ten years means more than one and less than twenty years; and i see no reason to credit the old historians with much greater precision of statement. that the armenians took part in the council of nice is attested by agathangelus, faustus, moses of khorene, etc., and also by the list of signatures of participants in the council:--armeniæ majoris aristarces, threnius diosponti (von gutschmid, kleine schriften, iii. 415). but we may reasonably doubt that either tiridates or st. gregory was alive at the time. [236] lazar pharpetzi, chs. x. and xi.; moses of khorene, iii. 36. [237] moses of khorene, iii. 10. the following chronology (which is not that of moses) is taken from saint martin (apud lebeau, hist. du bas-empire). i attach to it a parallel list of the contemporary greek emperors and a similar column for the sasanian monarchs, which is proudly filled by a single name. the date of sapor ii. rests on the authority of th. nöldeke. armenian arsakid kings. chosroes ii. (the little) 314-322 tiran 322-337 arshak 338-367 pap 369-374 roman emperors. death of constantine 337 constantius 337-361 julian 361-363 valens 364-378 theodosius (the great) 379-395 persian sasanian kings. shapur ii. (succeeds as an infant) 310-379 [238] faustus wrote c. a.d. 395-416. [239] moses of khorene (iii. 10) places the king at the head of a greek army. the patriotism of faustus was stronger than his veracity, and he maintains a discreet silence upon this circumstance. [240] the first statement in this sentence is all that we learn from faustus; the two last rest on the authority of moses of khorene, who assigns the death of verthanes to the third year of tiran. aristakes, the younger son of st. gregory, and his successor in the functions of the pontifical office during the closing years of the life of the saint, was assassinated, apparently by a roman prefect, at an uncertain date. [241] in a.d. 339-340, according to th. nöldeke (article persia: sasanians, in ency. brit.). [242] the peace of a.d. 363. [243] agathangelus, life of st. gregory, sec. 154. [244] faustus, iv. 3. [245] mr. f. c. conybeare has kindly communicated to me the following interesting note to this passage:--"these communities were really cities of refuge, imitated from the old jewish legislation; and the armenian monarch's aim was a wise one, namely, to set limits to the blood-feuds and vendettas of his subjects." [246] i adopt the ingenious suggestion of professor gelzer (die anfänge, etc., p. 155) that the dioceses of korduk and aghdznik were included in the provinces ceded to persia under jovian's treaty in 363. their bishops would have taken refuge in the dominions of the king and be receiving his support. the sequence of events in faustus is against this hypothesis; but that is not of much account. [247] we know from ammianus marcellinus (xxx. 1) that king pap himself died in 374. [248] professor gelzer, whose admirable essay i have freely used in the composition of this paragraph, adduces evidence from the correspondence of basil to show that the advisers of king pap proceeded cautiously along the path which they had chosen. [249] such is the translation given by professor gelzer of the passage in faustus iv. 14. [250] i am indebted to mr. f. c. conybeare for the following note to this passage:--the armenian alphabet was imposed on sahak (isaac the great) by the persian government as a political device to estrange the armenians both from greeks and from syrians. the only historical account is that of anania of shirak (unedited chronicle in an uncial ms. at mush), who relates that the twenty-nine consonants were "arranged in order" by daniel, a syrian philosopher, and sent (during the reign of theodosius the less) to the armenian satrap vakortsh by viram shapu the king by hand of the elder abel. the seven vowels were still wanted, and mesrop received these from hayek, a noble of taron. stephanus, a scribe of samosata, incorporated these seven vowels among the consonants. [251] nor at the councils of constantinople and of ephesus. [252] it appears that this formula was added to the trisagion by the synod of vagharshapat (ter-mikelean, die armenische kirche, etc., p. 47). [253] the subject is fully discussed by ter-mikelean (op. cit. pp. 52 seq., and cp. pp. 70 and 89). [254] my reader may consider that i have been dealing too largely in ancient history. my excuse is that the position remains much the same at the present day. the differences between the armenian and the greek churches are well summarised in a note by the mekhitarists to the famous address delivered by nerses of lambron in the twelfth century to the council assembled at romkla (orazione sinodale di s. nierses lampronense, venice, 1812, p. 188). the greek church demanded that the armenian church should:--1. anathematise all those who assert that christ has one nature. 2. confess jesus christ in two natures. 3. not address the trisagion to the second person of the trinity. 4. celebrate the dominical feasts in conformity with the greek church. 5. prepare the chrism or holy oil with oil alone. 6. celebrate the holy communion with leavened bread and with water in the wine. 8. receive the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh oecumenical councils. 9. receive the nomination of the armenian patriarch from the greek emperor. the attitude of the two churches towards one another is regretfully but most pithily summed up by the same nerses of lambron. the greeks thanked god that they were not like the armenians; and the armenians thanked god that they were not like the greeks. it has been generally supposed that the armenians subscribed the councils of constantinople and ephesus; but i must repeat that this does not appear to have actually been the case (see ter-mikelean, op. cit.). apart from dogma and ritual, the traveller notices a conspicuous difference between the greek and the armenian church at the present day. you will not find eikons in armenian houses, while no russian house is without them. as regards the church of rome, the dogmatic breach is even wider than with the greek church; in common with the latter the armenian church rejects the filioque. and of course it denies the infallibility of the pope. [255] see especially tournefort, voyage du levant, paris, 1717, vol. ii. p. 335; parrot, reise zum ararat, p. 83, and passim. the ingenious botanist, tournefort, was tickled by the question--suggested by the tobacco fields through which he passed--whether the fragrant weed was included among the plants of the terrestrial paradise. owing to the absence of olive trees in this region, he is puzzled by the story of the dove and the olive branch. [256] for the intercourse of the armenians with the jews i would refer my reader to ritter, erdkunde, vol. x. pp. 586 seq. [257] dubois, voyage autour du caucase, vol. iii. p. 448. [258] ibid. p. 419; and compare the account of this city given by moses of khorene. [259] see ouseley's travels, vol. iii. p. 450; ker porter's travels, vol. ii. p. 640; dubois, op. cit. vol. iii. p. 446. ouseley and ker porter thought that they were the remains of armavir. dubois probably goes astray in assigning them to tigranocerta. [260] dubois, op. cit. vol. iii. p. 435 seq. on a hill at the confluence of the arpa chai with the araxes, and on the western side of the former river, this traveller found relics of the ancient fortress of ervandakert. it communicated with the araxes by a subterranean passage. ervandashat was situated on the eastern bank, a little higher up the stream. [261] at ervandakert and at karakala, according to the testimony of dubois. see also ker porter (loc. cit.) for the relics of the bridge at the latter place. [262] dubois, op. cit. vol. iii. pp. 421 and 449. compare also von behagel's account (apud parrot, op. cit.). [263] probably sembat ii. (a.d. 977-89), the monarch who laid the foundations of the cathedral at ani. [264] ker porter, op. cit. vol. i. p. 178; ritter, erdkunde, vol. x. p. 449. [265] john katholikos. he has been translated by saint-martin (paris, 1841, a posthumous work). his history, which for a large part is a history of his own times, does not quite bring us down to the constitution of ani into a royal residence. [266] the vanity of the byzantine court denied them the actual title of king; and the imperial author, constantine porphyrogenitus, translates the persian distinction which they afterwards acquired, that of shahanshah, by the term archôn archontôn. [267] for the artsruni and the bagratuni i will refer my reader to saint-martin (mémoires sur l'arménie, paris, 1818, vol. i. pp. 418 seq.); for the georgian bagratuni to brosset (histoire de la géorgie, histoire ancienne, st. petersburg, 1849, addition ix.). [268] dulaurier (recherches sur la chronologie arménienne, paris, 1859, pp. 227 seq.). [269] sparapet. this and the other armenian titles of the age had come down from arsakid times, having survived the destruction of monarchy. a family retained its title even when the functions which it designated were no longer capable of fulfilment (saint-martin, mémoires, vol. i. p. 420). [270] the dates which i have taken from chamchean's history of armenia i have labelled c. some are taken from the original work in armenian; others from the abridged edition translated into english and entitled history of armenia by father michael chamich, translated by j. avdall, calcutta, 1827, 2 vols. 8vo. those marked d. have been fixed by dulaurier (op. cit.). saint-martin is my authority for some dates. [271] thomas artsruni specifies the length of the various stages in the career of ashot. see dulaurier (op. cit. pp. 266 seq.). the date 861 corresponds with the last year of the caliph mutawakil and the first of the reign of muntasir. lane poole, mohammedan dynasties, london, 1894. [272] kirakos, quoted by dulaurier (op. cit.). [273] for discussions of the site of bagaran (pakaran) see ritter (erdkunde, vol. x. p. 449), and also abich (aus kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1896, p. 203). [274] chamchean and saint-martin place the death of ashot in a.d. 889. but see dulaurier (op. cit. p. 365). [275] the tahirids became practically independent in khorasan a.d. 820-872; they were dispossessed by the saffarids of fars and seistan, a.d. 867-903. [276] azerbaijan is, of course, the frontier province of persia on the side of armenia, having for capital the city of tabriz. [277] saint-martin, following chamchean, attributes another motive to this embassy. sembat was desirous of severing his connection with the governor of azerbaijan and of dealing directly with the caliph. saint-martin adds that the caliph muktafi, who had just succeeded (a.d. 902), granted the request. [278] eugène boré (correspondance et mémoires, paris, 1840, vol. ii. p. 28). the place is situated in the neighbourhood of the town of erzinjan, and the historian mentions the adjacent village of tortan, which still appears to exist and to be known under that name. i have not been able to trace it upon any map; but the monastery of surb lusavorich and mount sepuh, the modern kohanam dagh, will be found indicated upon my map, accompanying this work. [279] chamchean accounts for this change of policy towards the legitimate king by supposing that yusuf wished to conciliate him prior to revolting from the caliph. [280] i adopt the colouring of john katholikos. among the many opprobrious terms under which he alludes to yusuf are the following: second pharaoh, prince of wild beasts, man-eater, astute serpent, satan, foul-breathed basilisk. such is the language of clerical writers in every age. [281] john katholikos, ch. clxxxv. [282] ibid. ch. clxxxvii. [283] samuel of ani, in migne, patrologiæ cursus completus, series græca, vol. xix. p. 718. [284] matthew of edessa, translated by dulaurier (paris, 1858). [285] samuel of ani ap. migne, op. cit. vol. xix. p. 718. [286] matthew of edessa (op. cit. iii. p. 2) gives the date as a.d. 959-960. he makes the event contemporary with the expedition of the imperial forces against crete, which started in 960 and was continued during 961. saint-martin (op. cit. vol. i. p. 364) assigns the armenian victory to the latter year, and chamchean to the year 962. [287] matthew of edessa, op. cit. pp. 14 seq. [288] vardan. see brosset, ruines d'ani, st. petersburg, 1860, p. 102. [289] samuel of ani ap. migne, op. cit. p. 721. [290] ibid. [291] matthew of edessa, chs. xxii. and xxiii.; and asoghik, iii. 38, quoted by dulaurier. [292] samuel of ani ap. migne, op. cit. p. 723. [293] samuel of ani (ibid.) and asoghik. [294] samuel of ani (ibid.). [295] samuel of ani (ibid. p. 720) and chamchean. according to samuel of ani, it was in a.d. 971 that the patriarch established the seat of his spiritual government at arghina. [296] aristakes of lastivert (op. cit. ii. pp. 358 seq.) and matthew of edessa (op. cit. viii. p. 6). [297] matthew of edessa, op. cit. x. p. 8. [298] matthew of edessa and aristakes of lastivert. [299] when senekerim of van ceded his kingdom in a.d. 1021 it had been harried for twenty-two years. such is the statement of samuel of ani (op. cit. p. 723). it is true he attributes these incursions to the "saracens"; but he must mean the turks, unless we are to discredit altogether the detailed statement of matthew of edessa (ch. xxxviii.), that it was a horde of turks that defeated the forces of senekerim. i shall not attempt to reconcile the armenian accounts with the information which we have received from other sources concerning the early incursions of the seljuks. the byzantine writers do not appear to mention the invasions of 1021 and preceding years, or the invasion of 1042 (brosset ap. lebeau, hist. du bas empire, vol. xiv. p. 353). [300] matthew of edessa and aristakes of lastivert. [301] samuel of ani, thomas artsruni (quoted by dulaurier, recherches sur la chronologie arménienne, pp. 282 seq.), and chamchean. i prefer to translate oppida by villages and urbes by towns in the latin version of samuel of ani, feeling sure that these terms, as understood in modern times, will be more in accordance with the facts. [302] vardan (quoted by dulaurier, notes to matthew of edessa, op. cit. p. 378), and matthew of edessa, ch. xi. if toghrul bey was over seventy years old when he died in a.h. 455, he would be in the flower of his age at the time of this expedition. [303] matthew of edessa, ch. lx. p. 71; and chamchean, vol. ii. pp. 127 seq. [304] matthew of edessa, ch. lxix. p. 80. see also lebeau, op. cit. vol. xiv. p. 351. [305] the campaigns of this period are narrated by matthew of edessa (ch. lxxiii. pp. 83 seq.) and aristakes (op. cit. pp. 268-82 and p. 285), as well as by the greek and arab historians. the subject is discussed by saint-martin (mémoires, vol. ii. pp. 201 seq.). [306] matthew of edessa, ch. lxxviii. pp. 98 seq., and aristakes, op. cit. 1863, ch. xvi. p. 289. melazkert owed its deliverance largely to the intrepidity of a frankish adventurer. it did not fall to the turks until a.d. 1069, when it was taken after a siege of a single day by alp arslan (matthew of edessa, ch. cii.). [307] matthew of edessa, ch. lxxxi. p. 109. [308] ibid. pp. 107, 108, and aristakes, op. cit. 1864, ch. xxi. [309] matthew of edessa, ch. lxxxiv. pp. 111 seq. [310] see aristakes, ch. xviii., and matthew of edessa, ch. lxxxvi. [311] we are informed in the history of thomas artsruni that senekerim and the artsrunian princes were accompanied in their emigration by a population of 14,000 males, besides women and children. see dulaurier, recherches, etc., p. 284. chamchean (vol. ii. p. 113) increases this estimate to 400,000 souls, i know not upon what authority. [312] chamchean, vol. ii. p. 104; saint-martin, mémoires, vol. i. p. 366; brosset ap. lebeau, vol. xiv. pp. 184 seq. chamchean and saint-martin place this expedition in a.d. 999, lebeau in 991, while aristakes assigns it to the year 1001. the latter attributes the capture of arjish to nikephorus, the greek governor of vaspurakan appointed by basil. [313] aristakes in op. cit. ch. ii., together with the authorities collected in the accompanying notes by m. prudhomme. chamchean attributes the cession of the kingdom of ani to the terror which had been inspired by the seljuk invasions. basil's policy of taking over the hereditary possessions of the armenian and georgian princes and giving them seats in other parts of the empire was continued by his brother constantine. see aristakes, op. cit., third series, vol. xvi. pp. 51 seq. [314] samuel of ani, op. cit. p. 723; and lebeau, vol. xiv. p. 249. aristakes is our authority for a curious story respecting the adventures of this testament (ch. x.). [315] samuel of ani; matthew of edessa; aristakes; kedrenus. the byzantine historians omit the campaign of 1041, and maintain silence upon the disagreeable topic of the deception practised upon king gagik. [316] aristakes, ch. xvii. [317] matthew of edessa, chs. lxxxiv. and lxxxv. [318] aristakes, ch. xvii. [319] matthew of edessa; samuel of ani; aristakes. the king of kars gave over his realm to the empire shortly after the fall of ani, taking in exchange the fortress of tsamentav near amasia in asia minor (matthew of edessa, ch. lxxxviii.). [320] pp. 337 and 362. [321] kedrenus calls him ruler of tibion (= tivin or dvin) and parts of persarmenia about the river araxes (edit. bekker, vol. ii. pp. 556 seq.). see matthew of edessa (ch. x. with dulaurier's note, and ch. cii. p. 165) and aristakes (ch. x.). for the beni-cheddad see saint-martin (mémoires, vol. i. p. 433; ii. p. 235) and brosset (ruines d'ani, pp. 114 and 126, and hist. de la géorgie, hist. ancienne, p. 343). abulsevar marched with alp arslan in 1069 against the empire (matthew of edessa, ch. cii.). his activity therefore ranges over a considerable period. [322] samuel of ani. [323] samuel of ani; matthew of edessa; the georgian annalist, quoted by brosset (hist. de la géorgie, p. 369). [324] samuel of ani and matthew of edessa. [325] samuel of ani. [326] samuel of ani and matthew of edessa. [327] samuel of ani; the continuation of matthew of edessa; the georgian annalist in brosset (hist. de la géorgie). [328] brosset, ruines d'ani, p. 131, and voyage archéologique, livraison 1, rapport 1, p. 94. [329] the georgian annalist, ap. brosset, hist. de la géorgie. [330] the various emigrations of the inhabitants of ani are exhibited by minas bejeshkean (travels in lehastan (poland) and other countries inhabited by armenian emigrants from ani, venice, 1830 (in armenian)). his account is summarised by brosset (ruines d'ani, pp. 138 seq.) and by ritter (erdkunde, vol. x. pp. 597 seq.). for the code of the armenians of lemberg see sitzungsberichte der phil.-hist. klasse der k. akad. der wissenschaften, vienna, 1862, pp. 255 seq. [331] let me catalogue in this place the works of previous travellers having reference to ani which i have collected. i shall annex the date of visit whenever i have been able to ascertain it. i have purposely omitted works written in russian or in armenian. the full titles will be found in the bibliography attached to vol. ii. (1) 1621, poser (reyse, etc., jena, 1675, 4o). his account is confined to a few sentences. he mentions the existence of 200 churches in ani and the immediate neighbourhood. (2) tavernier (edit. paris, 1679, livre premier, p. 24). a few misleading sentences. (3) 1817, ker porter (travels in georgia, etc., london, 1821-22, vol. i. pp. 169 seq.). a fantastic description. (4) 1836, hamilton (researches in asia minor, etc., london, 1842, vol. i. pp. 197 seq.). the best of these older notices. (5) 1837, wilbraham (travels, etc., london, 1839, pp. 287 seq.). the hasty but vivid impressions of a tourist, from which the following is an extract: "the shapeless mounds of babylon are like the skeleton; but the deserted, yet still standing city (ani) resembles the corpse whose breath has fled, but which still retains the semblance of life." (6) 1837, abbott (notes of a tour, journal r.g.s., 1842, vol. xii. pp. 215 seq.). not important. (7) 1838, eugène boré (corr. et mém., paris, 1840, vol. ii. p. 2) mentions a mémoire in which he was about to resume the results of his seven days' sojourn in ani, during which he copied inscriptions. the mémoire has been lost. (8) 1839, texier (description de l'arménie, etc., paris, 1842, folio, pp. 93-116), with a plan, which is not oriented, and ten fine plates. texier's account is both defective and unsatisfactory; but it is the first detailed description. i must warn my reader against accepting his history; he seems to confuse timur with alp arslan in some places. (9) 1844, herrmann abich (bull. hist.-phil. de l'acad. de sciences de st. pétersbourg, 1845, vol. ii. pp. 369-76, with notice by brosset; aus kaukasischen ländern, reisebriefe, vienna, 1896, pp. 176-200). the distinguished geologist devoted four days to the study of the ruins and drew out a plan of the site. his full account, for which consult the latter of the two references, had not been published, so far as i could ascertain, at the time of my own journey. but brosset had already published the plan, the substantial accuracy of which i was able to test upon the spot (voyage archéologique, st. petersburg, 1849-51, atlas), and the inscriptions copied by abich (in the same work, livr. 1, rapp. 3, pp. 86-111). (10) 1846, muravieff, quoted by khanikoff ap. brosset (voy. arch. livr. 1, rapp. 3, pp. 121-52). (11) 1847, nerses sargisean of the society of the mekhitarists of venice copied a number of the inscriptions. see brosset (ruines d'ani, st. petersburg, 1860, p. 5), and especially brosset's article in the bull. acad. sciences st. p., 1862, vol. iv. pp. 255-67. (12) 1848, khanikoff copied the mussulman inscriptions. see brosset (voy. arch. livr. 1, rapp. 3, pp. 121-52). (13) 1850, kästner (lieut. julius) was commissioned by prince vorontsoff, governor of the caucasus, to explore ani, and spent forty-four days within its walls. he collected fifty inscriptions and made numerous drawings, which have been made use of by brosset (ruines d'ani, pp. 4 seq.). (14) 18--, ussher (journey from london to persepolis, london, 1865, pp. 243-45). a sketchy description. the whole subject has been fully treated, but unfortunately at second hand, by brosset (ruines d'ani, st. pet. 1860, and bull. acad. sciences st. p., 1862, vol. iv. pp. 255-67). the traveller is deeply indebted to brosset for these two valuable treatises. fergusson has devoted a few pages to ani in the first volume of his history of architecture (see pp. 473-75). i ought not to close this list without referring to two works in armenian which are of special value: sargis dgalaleantz (journey in great armenia, tiflis, 1842 and 1858, 8vo), and alishan (description of great armenia, venice, 1855). both these works contain accounts of ani. [332] this ravine is the armenian tsaghkotzadzor or valley of the flower-garden. [333] the moat may have united the waters of the alaja and the arpa chai. see ruines d'ani, p. 60. [334] see brosset, ruines d'ani, pp. 18 and 144. it may belong to the tartar period (mongol) and have reference to the restoration of ani after the earthquake of a.d. 1319. texier (op. cit. p. 94) commits himself to the statement that it is in arabic characters; but see khanikoff, op. cit. p. 135. [335] on the authority of samuel of ani. see supra, p. 354. [336] see brosset, ruines d'ani, pp. 16, 17, 58, 59; and voyage arch., livr. 1, rapp. 3, p. 143. one of these inscriptions indicates that the name of the reigning prince of the beni-cheddad in a.d. 1160, just before the georgian conquest, was phatl (fathlun). several belong to the reign of thamar, and exhibit the name of the georgian ruler, zakare-shahanshah, who is styled "chief of the mandatories" and son of sarkis shahanshah. see brosset (voyage arch., livr. 1, rapp. 1, pp. 92-94, and ruines d'ani, p. 18) for an explanation of this title. two of these inscriptions of zakare belong to the years 1206 and 1215 respectively. [337] ani is said to have contained not less than 100,000 inhabitants in the eleventh century. yet the circumference of the city has been estimated at not more than 3 1/2 miles. i am inclined to think that a large proportion of the population lived without the walls. [338] the conjecture which brosset throws out that the mosque referred to may be the cathedral is not, i think, a happy one. for this minaret see especially khanikoff (op. cit. pp. 135-36), brosset (ruines d'ani, p. 31), and abich (aus kauk. länd. vol. i. p. 191). the inscription describes kei-sultan as "son of mahmud, son of chawir, son of manuchar, cheddadi." kei-sultan is not otherwise known. we must conclude that the beni-cheddad were still powerful in ani as late as the end of the twelfth century. [339] the dimensions of the interior are as follows, according to my measurements:--length, 105 feet 6 in. (viz. 76 feet 6 in. to the daïs of the apse, and 29 feet from the daïs to the extremity of the recess); breadth, 65 feet 6 in.; breadth of apse, 29 feet 7 in. [340] texier reminds us that at the time when this cathedral was built (early eleventh century) the romanesque style was universal in europe (op. cit. p. 112). yet in this building we have the characteristics of a style which might be found in southern europe in the thirteenth century--the pointed arch, the coupled piers. see also fergusson, op. cit. p. 473. [341] i must caution my reader against the drawing of this apse in plate ix. of brosset's atlas to the ruines d'ani. [342] the cathedral has been recently constituted into quite a little museum, all fragments of sculptured stone found at ani being preserved there. i photographed one of the most remarkable, which displays the familiar subject of the eagle and the hare (fig. 75). another contains a bas-relief of three saints and was probably placed above a doorway. [343] brosset, voyage arch. livr. 1, rapp. 3, pp. 93-95, and ruines d'ani, pp. 22-28. [344] siunik was one of the large provinces into which armenia was divided. samuel of ani places the completion of the cathedral in arm. era 457 = a.d. 1008. but he may refer to a stage which was not quite the ultimate one. [345] brosset identifies this aron with the aron-vestes of the byzantines, who was sent to these countries about the year 1042, was commander of the imperial forces, became governor of vaspurakan, ani being attached to his jurisdiction, and was still in possession of his office in 1048 (voyage arch. loc. cit. p. 93). [346] i am not aware that any inscription mentions the name of the architect. sic vos non vobis! but asoghik tells us that it was tirdat or tiridates, an armenian architect who is reputed to have restored st. sophia at constantinople after its partial destruction by an earthquake. [347] my measurements of the interior are:--length, 41 feet (of which 15 feet is occupied by the apse measured from the daïs to the extremity of the recess); breadth, 26 feet. texier mentions an adjacent baptistery (?). [348] see especially texier, muravieff, and abich's aus kauk. länd. vol. i. pp. 198-99. [349] the inscription has been translated by brosset (ruines d'ani, pp. 145-48). [350] brosset (ibid. p. 15). i was able to verify the date, about which brosset expresses some doubt (ibid. p. 148). [351] for these two ruins see also abich, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 196-97. [352] for these inscriptions see brosset, ruines d'ani, pp. 11-13. he reminds us of the importance of the date 1320 (arm. era. 769) as being the year after the great earthquake. i must take this opportunity to caution my reader against accepting the tradition mentioned by muravieff (ap. brosset, voyage arch. livr. 1, rapp. 3, p. 127) that the little chapel was built in a.d. 1000 by king gagik i. i may also mention that we could discover no traces of the guardhouse adjacent to the bridge (ruines d'ani, p. 10). [353] khanikoff ap. brosset, voyage arch. livr. 1, rapp. 3, p. 138. [354] ibid. p. 138, and ruines d'ani, p. 30. [355] ibid. p. 140, and ruines d'ani, p. 31. [356] muravieff ap. brosset, voyage arch. loc. cit. p. 129. [357] mr. marr has published an account of his discoveries of new epigraphical material in armenia in the zapiski of the eastern section of the imp. russian arch. society, vol. viii., 1893, pp. 69-103. he contributes four new inscriptions from ani. i have not been able to find any account of his excavations. [358] the interior of the building which forms the subject of my illustration is given by brosset in plate xiv. of the atlas to the ruines d'ani. the detail and ornament there portrayed do not correspond with reality. the devils are more or less imaginary, and there appears to be only one of them in the actual design, viz. on the south wall, the first pilaster as you enter from the west--in low relief. brosset styles this interior "a hall in the citadel"; but the following considerations are against this view:--1. it is oriented east; 2. it obviously had an apse; 3. above the apse you see the form of a cross sculptured on the face of the arch which still remains. the bas-reliefs are given by brosset, plates xxxv. and xxxvii. the former (representing the archer) was found in the valley of the tsaghkotz with an inscription in armenian, "christ have pity on the lady shushan, thy servant." this personage may be identified with the wife of the pahlavid grigor, mother of vahram. [359] this building must be the subject of plate xiii. in brosset's atlas to the ruines. [360] the rock with the chapel is described by abich (op. cit. vol. i. p. 192). it was strongly fortified. [361] it is not exactly symmetrical, the measurement from west to east being nearly 31 feet. [362] brosset translates, "j'ai construit ce lieu de repos." but it surely cannot refer to the chapel itself, which, as we have seen, has inscriptions of the mother of aplgharib, and must therefore have been in existence before 1040. brosset therefore supposes that the restoration of the church is alluded to (ruines d'ani, pp. 37 and 106). for a more probable version of the inscription see alishan, shirak, p. 53. [363] for the inscriptions see brosset (voyage arch. loc. cit. p. 91, and ruines d'ani, pp. 36 seq.). aplgharib was brother to vahram. i could find no trace of the curious figure found upon one of the windows which brosset refers to (pp. 38 seq.). on the other hand, i was able to identify the two inscriptions last mentioned. [364] kirakos ap. dulaurier, recherches sur la chron. arm. p. 280. [365] asoghik ap. brosset, ruines d'ani, p. 106. [366] abich confuses the sites of these two monuments in his reisebriefe (op. cit.). [367] such is the translation of this inscription given by the editor of aristakes of lastivert. brosset appears to have made a palpable error (ruines d'ani, p. 21, inscription of christaphor). [368] probably the inscription of this same aplgharib given by brosset (ruines d'ani, p. 28) belongs to this chapel. it runs thus:--"under the pontificate of ter petros and the reign of sembat son of gagik shahanshah in the year 485 (a.d. 1036) i, the marzpan aplgharib, son of the prince grigor, grandson of apughamir and brother of vahram and vasak, constructed at great expense this surb-phrkich in the metropolis of ani." this inscription would establish as a fact that the chapel itself was dedicated to the redeemer. [369] a perfect labyrinth of confusion has been brought into existence by the attribution of the east front of the portal of the church of the apostles to this castle or palace (see plate xix. of brosset's atlas). happily i am able to correct the error. it has been instrumental in leading brosset to assign all the inscriptions found in that church to this castle. the name "palace of the pahlavids" is purely imaginary. [370] brosset, ruines d'ani, p. 51, and plate xxxvi. no. 3 of the atlas. it has been wrongly attributed to the castle. [371] abich describes this chapel as "a magnificent church in the form of a greek cross with a central rotunda and four large semicircular niches at the sides" (op. cit. vol. i. p. 190). [372] see brosset (voyage arch. livr. 1, rapp. 3, pp. 86, 100, 101, 106, 109; and ruines d'ani, pp. 48-52). [373] this is the chapel which abich names "kirche der maria verkündigung" (op. cit. vol. i. p. 193). [374] abich, op. cit. vol. i. p. 199. [375] see the georgian annalist translated by brosset (hist. de la géorgie). [376] i should be sorry to have to swear to this statement. [377] voyage arch. livr. 1, rapp. 3, pp. 96, 107, 109-10. [378] telfer, crimea and transcaucasia, vol. i. p. 216. the chamber at geghard is known as the rusukna sanctuary, and was completed in a.d. 1288 (arm. era 737) (ibid.). [379] an inscription of a.d. 1215, much mutilated, seems to infer this (brosset, voyage arch. loc. cit. p. 97). [380] brosset, voyage arch. loc. cit. p. 98. the dimensions of these various apartments are:--no. 1, length, 29 feet 4 inches; breadth, 29 feet; no. 2, 27 feet by 27 feet 2 inches; no. 3, hall of the synod, 18 1/2 paces by 18 paces. the reader will note that the architects avoided exact squares. in this they were governed by a right instinct. [381] brosset, voyage arch. loc. cit. p. 99. another derivation is from the greek word for a priest, iereus (see m. prudhomme, note to aristakes, ch. ii.). [382] asoghik ap. brosset (ruines d'ani, p. 137). [383] ruines d'ani, p. 137. [384] ibid. p. 61. [385] texier (op. cit. p. 112):--"la façade de cette église (the cathedral) construite avec une simplicité remarquable ... peut être regardée comme le type de l'architecture allemande du moyen âge. il est facile d'expliquer comment, dans toute cette contrée, on retrouve le dôme à toit conique particulier à l'architecture arménienne. en effet, après la prise d'ani par les mussulmans, un grand nombre de citoyens abandonnaient la ville...." [386] abich, geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1882, part ii. pp. 47 seq. das plateau von kars. [387] strabo, xi. c. 528. [388] ptolemy, v. 13, pages 135 and 136 of the folio edition. the identification with one of these towns is generally assumed; but in view of the statement of evliya, noted below, that in his time there existed three towns of this name, it cannot be regarded as certain. [389] to kastron to kars, const. porphyr. de adm. imp. cap. 44. [390] see chapter xviii. p. 353 and p. 364; and saint-martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. i. p. iii. tsamentav was the name of the appanage received in exchange. it was situated in the cilician taurus. [391] koch, reise im pontischen gebirge, weimar, 1846, p. 462. [392] travels of evliya, translated by von hammer, vol. ii. p. 181. the passage runs: "eight hours further to the east we reach the frontier fortress of the ottomans, the castle of karss. there are three towns of that name; one is in silefka, the karss of karatashlik; the second the karss of mera'ash, and the last that of dúdemán, which is the present one." i am ignorant of the locality assigned to the first mentioned. [393] the name vanand is said by moses of khorene (ii. 6) to be derived from that of the chieftain of a horde of bulgarians who settled there. now that moses has been assigned to the eighth century of our era the statement need not surprise us. [394] von hammer, geschichte des osm. reiches, vol. viii. p. 58. [395] uschakoff, geschichte der feldzüge, 1828, 1829, leipzig, 1838, part i. p. 194. [396] uschakoff, op. cit. i. pp. 191 seq. [397] sandwith, narrative of the siege of kars, london, 1856; lake, kars and our captivity in russia, london, 1856. [398] according to sandwith (op. cit. p. 286) no less than 6300 russians were buried by the besieged after the grand assault on takhmas. loris melikoff informed the daily news correspondent in 1877 that during the operations of 1855, at which he himself had been present, the russians lost more than 8000 men, killed or disabled. [399] loris melikoff contented himself with making a strong demonstration against the forts on the left bank, and directed his main attack against the karadagh and the forts in the plain. it was completely successful, having been undertaken at night. the turks had concentrated their forces on the heights overlooking the left bank and might probably have gone on holding them after the capture of the town. but the commander lost heart; the cunning armenian who organised the victory left him an open door, and he took to his heels. i think one must regard these heights as practically impregnable, if held by a force well supplied with artillery, provisions, and water. in 1877 the garrison was 26,000 strong, augmented to an even higher figure by the townsmen. the attacking force seems to have been about equal in number. kars fell on the night of the 17th of november. see daily news correspondence, london, 1878; norman, armenia and the campaign of 1877, london, n.d.; étude critique des opérations en turquie d'asie pendant la guerre en 1877-78 d'après des documents officiels, par un officier supérieur turc (constantinople and leipzic, 1896). [400] ussher, journey from london to persepolis, london, 1865, p. 238. [401] ker porter (1819), travels, etc., vol. ii. p. 648. [402] wilbraham, travels, etc., london, 1839, pp. 294, 314; koch, reise im pontischen gebirge, weimar, 1846, p. 460. [403] i may cite brant (1835), hamilton (1836), abbott (1837), consul taylor (1868)--the last being an unpublished report. taylor estimates 2000 houses, of which 200 are christian and the rest moslem. [404] travels of evliya, translated by von hammer, london, 1850, vol. ii. p. 182. [405] samuel of ani, in migne, patrologiae cursus completus, series græca, vol. xix. p. 718. "abasus, sembati filius, mirae magnificentiae templum excitat cathedrale in urbe carsa." [406] brosset, ruines d'ani, p. 8. [407] abich, geologische forschungen in kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1882, vol. ii. p. 145, and map i. he measures from the western foot of the ala dagh below the village of kalabashi in an easterly direction. see also his various measurements (ibid. pp. 376, 377). [408] by my own instruments. [409] the bed of the river at the ford has an elevation of 3900 feet according to my barometers. abich's readings are as follows:--bank of the river below the village of changly, above kagyzman, 3932 feet; below the village of kers, below kagyzman, 3671 feet. the elevation of kagyzman is 4621 feet. evliya, who travelled in the middle of the seventeenth century, furnishes the following account of the place:-"the castle of kaghzemán being situated on the kiblah side of the aras is reckoned to be on the frontier of azerbeiján, but belongs to the ottoman government of karss. it is named after its builder, one of the daughters of núshirván. it was taken out of the hands of uzún hassan by sháh ismail, and then submitted to sultán súleimán. it is the seat of a sanjak beg whose khass amounts to 200,000 aspers, 9 ziámets, 178 timárs: 900 feudal militia, a judge appointed with 150 aspers, and a garrison of 300 men, who are paid by the impost on salt; the salt mines, and a quarry of mill-stones, are on the west side of the castle. the mill-stones of persia and rúm come from kaghzemán; the borax of the goldsmiths, barbers' whetting-stones, and the common whetting-stones are extracted from the mines of kaghzemán; in two places gold and silver are found, but as the product was exceeded by the expenses they were abandoned; there are altogether 11 mines. the castle is a square strong building standing on a hill on the bank of the aras; there are 700 small houses; it is not a commercial town (bender), but a frontier town (serhadd). mount aghrí, which appears to the west, is one of the most praiseworthy mountains in the world; it is near the town, and is the summer abode (yaila) of turcomans. the air is temperate and allows of the cultivation of gardens on some spots; the inhabitants are mild and some of them fair. the levend troops (irregular levies) sing persian songs with harmonious voices. as soon as i entered the town the diván assembled, and notwithstanding the repeated oaths of the members of it, that they had not molested the persian caravan, but only taken their custom duties, i took seven aghás of them with me to prove the truth of what they said, by their presence at erzerúm, whereunto i returned" (the travels of evliya, translated from the turkish by von hammer, london, 1850, vol. i. p. 183). [410] according to the official statistics the population amounts to 3435 souls, of whom the armenians number 1709 and the turks 1578. [411] suess makes the outer iranian arc commence at tank, near dereh ismail khan on the indus (das antlitz der erde, leipzic, 1885, vol. ii. p. 552). [412] such is the view of suess. [413] besides the great work of suess already cited, i may refer my reader to dr. edmund naumann's admirable study: die grundlinien anatoliens und centralasiens, in heltner's geographische zeitschrift, ii. jahrgang, 1896, pp. 7-25, with two maps. also to a paper by the same author in the report of the sixth int. geog. congress, london, 1895, pp. (661)-(670). [414] for a comprehensive account of the salt deserts of persia, extending over 500 miles of country, i may refer my reader to lord curzon's persia, london, 1892, vol. ii. pp. 246 seq. [415] this must be a most interesting approach to armenia from the side of tiflis, and is worth suggesting to the lover of unbeaten tracks. [416] karabagh is portrayed to us from various points of view by smith and dwight, missionary researches in armenia, london, 1834, letters ix.-xiii.; radde, g., karabagh in petermann's mitt., ergänzungsheft no. 100, gotha, 1890; abich, h., op. infra cit., part iii. p. 4; madame b. chantre, à travers l'arménie russe, paris, 1893, chs. iv.-viii. [417] this demarcation has been adopted by herrmann abich, who, however, would include the karadagh. he speaks of the elevation which may be traced from the neighbourhood of ardabil in persia through the volcano of savalan all the way to the mountains south of lake van as the "natural physical frontier between armenia and azerbaijan" and as the "southern border chain of great armenia." but he is pressing the word chain a little unduly. see geologische forschungen in den kauk. ländern, vienna, 1882, part ii., introduction, pp. 10 and 11. [418] karl koch, reise im pontischen gebirge und türkischen armenien, weimar, 1846, pp. 203-4. [419] herrmann abich, geologische forschungen in den kauk. ländern, vienna, 1882 and 1887, part ii. pp. 20-21, part iii. p. 81. [420] abich, op. cit. part iii. p. 18. [421] ibid. part ii. p. 138. [422] ibid. part ii. p. 139. [423] the old armenian province of shirak. [424] an analysis of this earth is given by abich (op. cit. part iii. p. 49). [425] abich, op. cit. part ii. pp. 35-46. [426] karl koch, op. cit. pp. 223 seq. he regards the south-western branch as the most considerable. [427] abich, op. cit. part ii. p. 23. [428] see vol. ii. of the present work, ch. iv. p. 44. [429] abich, op. cit. part ii. pp. 9 and 38. [430] the statistics of 1886 underestimate the population of tiflis town. i have corrected them on the assumption that the population of the city in 1886 was 145,731. see the caucasus calendar for 1893, p. 20. [431] i have substituted the figures of 1891 for those of 1886. the former are given in the caucasus calendar for 1893, p. 43. [432] including 2743 jews, 2150 assyrians, and 1665 germans and swedes. [433] 8 per cent must be added to these figures if it be assumed that the number of females is at least equal to that of the males. [434] this is the official figure. i make approximately the same area measure about 23,000 square miles, allowing for curvature of the earth. [435] see especially ch. iii. p. 68 and ch. iv. pp. 75, 77. [436] consul taylor, an unpublished report. [437] "the manner in which he (tergukasoff) handled his men at taghir on the 16th of june, when, with eight battalions, he thoroughly defeated the twelve which mahomed pasha opposed to him; the stubborn resistance with which he checked mukhtar pasha's onslaught on the 21st at eshek khaliass; the gallant retreat which his half division effected in front of ahmed pasha's twenty-three battalions; and, finally, his dashing flank march from igdyr to bayazid, and the relief of that place in front of two turkish corps, both superior to him in numbers, stamp him a general of division of the first class. had the czar many more like him, this war would have been completed a month ago." c. b. norman (times war correspondent), armenia and the campaign of 1877, london, n.d. p. 247. in most cases when armenians enter the russian service they russianise their names by turning the armenian termination -ean into the russian -off, as melikean into melikoff. armenia travels and studies by h. f. b. lynch nature's vast frame, the web of human things. shelley, alastor. who can foretell our future? spare me the attempt. we are like a harvest reaped by bad husbandmen amidst encircling gloom and cloud. john katholikos armenian historian of the xth century ch. clxxxvii. in two volumes with 197 illustrations, reproduced from photographs and sketches by the author, numerous maps and plans, a bibliography and a map of armenia and adjacent countries vol. ii the turkish provinces longmans, green, and co. london: 39 paternoster row new york and bombay 1901 contents page chapter i descend into turkish territory 1 chapter ii to lake van 11 chapter iii across lake van 25 chapter iv van 38 chapter v from van to bitlis 116 chapter vi bitlis 145 chapter vii from bitlis to mush--mush 160 chapter viii from mush to erzerum 174 chapter ix erzerum 198 chapter x return to the border ranges--thalatta, thalatta! 225 chapter xi revisit armenia 237 chapter xii across the central tableland to khinis 245 chapter xiii from khinis to tutakh 254 chapter xiv down the murad to melazkert 264 chapter xv from melazkert to akhlat 276 chapter xvi akhlat 280 chapter xvii our sojourn in the crater of nimrud 298 chapter xviii round nimrud by lake nazik 314 chapter xix ascent of sipan 326 chapter xx back to the central tableland 340 chapter xxi our sojourn on bingöl 359 chapter xxii home across the border ranges 379 chapter xxiii geographical 383 chapter xxiv statistical and political 408 appendix i national constitution of the armenians in the turkish empire 445 appendix ii chemical constitution of some armenian lakes 468 bibliography 471 index 497 list of plates lake van with sipan from artemid frontispiece plain of alashkert from the slopes of aghri dagh to face page 2 group of kurd hamidiyeh cavalry back to page 4 group of karapapakh hamidiyeh cavalry 5 the kuseh dagh from the plain of alashkert to face page 10 yusuf bey of köshk 16 kurd of köshk in gala dress 17 sipan from the plain of patnotz 19 van from the slopes of mount varag 53 van: interior of the mosque of ulu jami back to page 106 van: frieze in ulu jami 107 van: cuneiform inscription of meher or choban kapusi to face page 112 van: mount varag from the heights of toprak kala 113 akhtamar: church from south-east back to page 130 akhtamar: church from north-west 131 church at akhtamar: sculptures on north wall to face page 132 crater of nimrud as seen on the road from garzik to bitlis 142 bitlis from avel meidan 145 kerkür dagh from the south: nimrud crater in the background 161 young kurd woman at gotni, mush plain 163 well-to-do inhabitant of khaskeui, mush plain 166 monastery of surb karapet from the south back to page 176 church of surb karapet from south-west 177 view south from the terrace at surb karapet to face page 178 the two chapels at surb karapet 180 the akh dagh and the plain of khinis from the south 186 the central tableland, bingöl in the distance, from near kulli 191 kargabazar, across the plain of pasin, from the southern margin of the central tableland 193 erzerum from the roof of the british consulate: the citadel in the middle distance and eyerli dagh in the background 208 erzerum: chifteh minareh to face page 211 looking east-south-east from near the kop pass 230 castle of kalajik, upper kharshut 236 monastery of sumelas 239 tekman and the bingöl dagh from near khedonun 247 khamur from the pass between ali mur and khinis 252 melazkert from the north: sipan in the background 269 akhlat: iki kube--(the kala, or ottoman city, in the background) 285 akhlat: isolated tomb 290 akhlat: the kharab-shehr, or site of the ancient city 292 the nimrud crater from the promontory of kizvag 298 sipan: view from the western summit over the summit region 334 hamidiyeh cavalry at gumgum 357 armenian village of gundemir: bingöl cliffs in the background 359 the bingöl cliffs with the head waters of the bingöl su from the village of chaghelik 360 the so-called crater of bingöl from about the centre of the moraine from kara kala 369 view from the western summit of bingöl 373 panorama from the hill of gugoghlan 373 illustrations in the text caravan on the black sea--tabriz trade route 8 karakilisa from south-west 10 akantz 26 ruins of arjish from the north 28 ruins of arjish from the south 29 our boat on lake van 30 scene on the island of ktutz 33 doorway of the church at ktutz 34 bronze shield from toprak kala 62 bronze fragment from toprak kala (british museum) 63 ornament from toprak kala (british museum) 63 house of an armenian merchant at van 81 interior of haykavank from the east 102 the rock and walled city of van 104 street in the walled city 105 the crag of ak köpri 111 monastery of yedi kilisa (varag) 114 interior of the church at yedi kilisa 115 van on the road to bitlis 116 mountain range along south coast of lake van 119 island of akhtamar 130 promontory of surb (on the left the back of the sheikh ora crater; in the distance nimrud) 140 bitlis: fortified monastery 155 tunnel of semiramis 156 looking down valley of bitlis chai 157 nimrud crater from the volcanic plateau 161 armenian village of khaskeui, mush plain 165 terrace of lava resembling human fortifications 189 looking down the valley of the upper araxes from below mejitli 192 erzerum and its plain from the south 207 armenian youths 215 armenian maidens 216 five generations of an armenian family 221 range north of ashkala 229 on the banks of the chorokh above baiburt 232 armenian cemetery at varzahan 234 kurdish dancing boy at gopal 254 piece of seljuk pottery from akhlat 285 tombstone at akhlat 291 the lake in the crater of nimrud 302 village of uran gazi with sipan 332 grave on the summit of khamur 340 list of maps and plans plan of van to face page 81 bitlis and environs 147 plan of the ancient fortifications of melazkert 271 plan of akhlat 296 interior of the nimrud crater 305 nimrud and surroundings 312 plan of the summit region of sipan 336 the bingöl dagh on the north 366 the bingöl dagh on the south 378 chapter i descend into turkish territory october 24.--the track which we were following winds for some distance along the spine of the range. you cross and cross again from the one to the other watershed, overlooking now the open spaces of the southern landscape, now the narrow and encumbered cañon of the araxes below the adjacent cliffs of the tableland. the rocky parapets and gloomy valleys appear to extend from basin to basin, at right angles to the axis of the chain. west of the crags about us, and isolated from them, rose a shapely mass with black but snow-streaked sides. darkness was falling when we descended from this lofty position into one of the valleys of the southern slopes. in its recesses we came upon a little kurdish settlement, which seemed to promise shelter during the night. kurtler--kurds! no sooner have we crossed the frontier than we find ourselves in their midst. the mountains of kurdistan are more than 100 miles distant; yet these parasites fasten upon the countryside. still their presence is appropriate and is not unwelcome, so long as they are confined to alpine solitudes like those which surround the village of chat. tufts of grass, interspersed with an endless crop of stones, were the only pasture which we had seen for some time. yet the shepherds were in possession of a considerable stock of hay, against the approach of a winter season which can scarcely lack rigour at an elevation of 6700 feet above the sea. their habitations just protrude above the level of the ground; and, once within the doorway, you proceed through narrow passages into the very bowels of the earth. in the darkness you stumble upon the forms of cattle or wake a ragged child. we took up our quarters in one of the largest of the subterranean chambers, lit our candles, and spread our carpet on the bare soil. we were surprised to discover that the roof of the apartment was artificial--layers of mud and straw, held together by laths of wood, and supported by huge beams. the walls, too, were built up of rough stones, plastered together; it was evident that the room was only three-parts buried, and that it communicated directly with the outer air. in fact we could see an aperture, the rude counterpart of a window, above the opening to the winding passage through which we had come. on the side opposite this only entrance a square hole in the face of the wall nourished a smouldering fire. the smoke wreathed upwards to a vent in the roof, or was sucked inwards towards the tunnelled approach. when morning broke we were glad to issue from the fetid atmosphere of this human burrow into the pure mountain air. a few gaunt figures were standing upon the higher stages of the eminence which had provided a suitable site for these underground operations, and which rose like a large ant-hill from the waste of stone. women squatted before the doors of the straggling tenements, weaving the bright rugs for which their race is famed. we proceeded down the glen, along the banks of a little stream. it finds an easy exit from the heart of the mountains, threading the trough of one of the meridional valleys. after riding for an hour and a half, we opened out the southern landscape from some high ground above the village of amat (fig. 108). the great plain of alashkert was outspread before us, bounded on the further side by the snow-capped mountains of the ala dagh, which stretched across the horizon from the east. just before us, this lofty range was seen to recede into the misty background, the outlines bending away towards south-west. but the barrier was resumed at no considerable interval by a chain of hills, less distant, although of humbler proportions, called kilich gedik, or the sharp sword. we could just descry the site of karakilisa, backed by the recess of the ala dagh. we knew that the murad must be flowing through that nebulous passage in the opposite bulwark of the plain. the surface of the ground below us was level as water; the expanse was greatest in the west. in that direction the spurs of the range upon which we stood plunged by a succession of promontories into the floor of the plain. we were reminded of the valley of the araxes in the neighbourhood of erivan. both depressions have the appearance of inland seas at the foot of the mountains, the one on the northern, the other on the southern side. but that of alashkert is much more elevated (5500 feet), and less sheltered; you miss the presence of those extensive stretches of orchard and verdure which soften the landscape through which the araxes flows. the eye wanders out over dim, ochreous tracts, broken by patches of fallow, and seamed by white rivulets. just below the armenian settlement we reached the margin of the level ground, and cantered along, almost on a compass course. we saw several insignificant villages; but the district was wild, the soil for the most part unreclaimed. flocks of duck and geese took wing at our approach; cranes, with their long necks, sailed across the sky. in the course of an hour and a half we reached the street of karakilisa, a distance from amat, measured direct, of 9 miles. a motley crowd collected round us as we enquired for the government quarters; a hundred curious faces were upturned towards us, and our ears were greeted with the cry of ferengi! ferengi! passed like a shuttlecock from mouth to mouth. the little town was full of stir; new shops and houses were in course of erection; it was evident that trade and traffic were on the increase. we had almost crossed it from end to end, when we were ushered into a modest building, of which the hall or outer chamber was thronged with people, for the most part peasants; while an old servitor or usher, with white beard and a flowing robe, was marshalling the rows of slippers by the threshold of an inner door. at our approach he drew aside the quilted curtain which screened this sanctuary, and turned the handle and bade us pass within. the low divan, which on three sides followed the walls of the apartment, was already occupied by a full complement of seated figures; they appeared to be engaged in deliberation when we broke in upon their séance. a little man with vivacious eyes was directing the conversation; he sat on the only chair behind a table covered with faded baize. although we could scarcely doubt that our arrival had been announced beforehand, we seemed to take these notables by surprise. the little man rose from his chair; the assembly huddled together in order to give us place on the divan. compliments were exchanged; coffee and cigarettes were provided; the discussion was adjourned by tacit consent. one by one, after satisfying without displaying their curiosity, the councillors stole from the room. meanwhile the figure at the table--it was the kaimakam, or district governor--had examined our numerous and weighty credentials, and had directed a billet to be provided and prepared. our effects, which arrived later, were not subjected to examination; no excisemen or policemen dogged our steps. such officials are almost unknown in this happy country! so we reflected with a sense of immense relief. the way they worry the people in the neighbouring empire passes the capacity of the uninitiated to realise. the greek poet was certainly wrong when he gave expression to the sentiment that anarchy is the greatest of human ills. here we were, enlightened observers, exchanging order for disorder with rapturous delight! we were free to wander as we willed, to enjoy a british liberty without so much as the restraint of roads and walls. coming from russia, the contrast was indeed startling; independence is far preferable to feeling reasonably certain that you will not be knocked on the head by a kurd. the kaimakam escorted us to the adjacent barracks, in which a whitewashed room had been made ready to receive us. it belonged to the quarters of the superior officer--with the rank of miralai--a turk of great stature and broad shoulders, to whom we were introduced. he wore a dark blue military tunic of european pattern and material; but he had forgotten to fasten the lower buttons of this imposing garment, as well as the upper ones of the trousers beneath. his mouth and ears and nostrils were of unusual proportions; the expression of the face was kind, and denoted a childlike, buoyant nature--de bonne bête humaine, as one might say. in him we found an agreeable and a sensible companion. he bustled about the place, was accustomed to shave each friday; he settled every difficulty with eh, wallah! accompanied by a hearty laugh. from time to time the troops were visited by the liva, or commandant, an aged figure with a beard of snow. he had been at plevna, and had made the campaign of bulgaria; but nothing remained of him now but a worn-out body, made doubly infirm by an inveterate habit of getting drunk. the peculiar care and constant plague of these high officials were the newly-enrolled regiments which, under the name of hamidiyeh, flatter the vanity but sap the throne of the reigning sultan. am i guilty of indiscretion when i say that the prevailing opinion of them in official circles is one of contempt, not unmixed with alarm? your high-placed turk will quote at their expense his favourite proverb, the fish begins to stink from the head. the young men are the sons of their fathers, who are kurds and brigands; the example of the fathers is transmitted to the sons. something might be done, if the process were arrested--if the recruits were removed from their homes. when i objected that the tsar's cossacks presented in some respects a hopeful analogy, i would be met by the reply that the russian autocrat employed strong measures, the like of which the turkish government was too mild to enforce. perhaps my reader is already aware that the hamidiyeh are irregular cavalry, who owe their origin to the endeavour of the sultan abdul hamid to emulate the example which gave to russia her cossack troops. they are recruited for the most part among the kurdish tribes; the name of yeomanry expresses the nature of their military service, but cannot be applied to the class to which they belong. the force is still undergoing the initial process of organisation. at the time of our journey it afforded the principal topic of conversation. yuzbashis, or sergeants, of the regular army were being poured into the country, and distributed among the villages, to instil into the shepherds the rudiments of drill. depots of arms were being established in convenient centres; and it was the intention of the authorities to keep the weapons under lock and key, except when they should be required for the annual trainings in spring. hundreds and thousands of suits of uniform were arriving in the principal towns, loaded on bullock carts. each regiment had been allowed to exercise its own fancy upon the choice of a distinctive garb. the result was an incongruous mixture of the braids and gold lace of europe with the georgian finery of a serried row of silvered cartridge cases, banded across the breast of a skirted coat. how proud they seemed, and how insensible of their ridiculous appearance in our eyes--the long-beaked kurds, the swarthy karapapakhs, masquerading down the street of karakilisa in these strange creations of the tailors of pera or stambul! they did not require pressing to consent to be photographed--a group of kurds (fig. 109), a group of karapapakhs (fig. 110). some of the principal officers of either regiment are represented in my illustrations; and i would beg my reader to observe the seated kurd in the georgian dress--it is eyub pasha with his son and nephew. behind him stands his principal henchman, who, although a kurd, has seen service with regular troops. in the caza, or administrative subdivision, of karakilisa three regiments of hamidiyeh have been enrolled. two are recruited from kurds of the zilanli tribe; the third from karapapakhs. this people--who take their name from their caps of black lambskin--are found on either side of the russo-turkish frontier, and are no doubt related to the tartars of azerbaijan. the kaimakam informed me--but i question whether his statement, even if true, can apply to more than a small number--that the fathers of those among them who inhabit this district were followers of the famous shamyl. according to his account they were at that time settled in daghestan, whence they removed to their present seats. he added that their villages were 8 in number in this caza; that their regiment had a strength of 800 men; and that they had branded no less than 650 horses with the military mark. their chief, ali bey, is a man of hideous features, whom we recognised as the same individual who had been seated in the place of honour, when we broke in upon the deliberations of the kaimakam. i now learnt the purport of their lively discussion; it had been a question of fixing a price for grain. months ago ali bey had made a contract with the kaimakam to supply the cereal for government purposes at a stated price. the time had just arrived for delivering it into the granaries; but the price had risen, almost to famine rates. in the drawer of the green baize table was securely buried the precious document, behind a lock of which alone the kaimakam possessed the key. how great was the dismay of the wretched official to find that it had been abstracted, and to recognise that the robbery might cost him his place! his despoiler felt quite safe behind his hamidiyeh uniform and his paper figures of 800 men-at-arms. but the kaimakam was not the man to go to sleep beneath an injury; he possessed both energy and brains. he and the miralai would each evening repair to our quarters, and discuss the events of the day over coffee and pipes. on one occasion, in company with the miralai, we had awaited to a late hour the arrival of the kaimakam. when at last he made his appearance, his clothes were covered with dust and he was wearing his long top-boots. his eyes were bright with excitement as he narrated in vivid language the story of his day's work. kurds from lake balük had made a foray into his district, and had plundered the village of mangasar, inhabited in equal numbers by armenians and mussulmans. he had proceeded in person to the scene of their depredations, and at the head of his motley followers had forced them to retire after a sanguinary fight. what was the origin of this man whose animated face and supple character contrasted strangely with the wooden figures of officers and notables who attended his divan? he told me he was an albanian; he was, of course, a mohammedan; but his whole appearance stamped him a greek. compared with kurds like eyub pasha, with their resemblance to big birds, he stood on the opposite pole of human development. although in point of years the youngest of the group, he led them all by the nose. a situation had scarcely been stated when he had already discovered the solution; he shared the feelings as well as the thoughts of the individual to whom he was lending his ear. i have no doubt that he was far the superior of ali bey in the successful practice of every kind of deceit. he professed himself my friend; i am sure he took a pleasure in abusing the confidence which i was obliged to affect. we had almost exhausted our stock of money when we arrived in karakilisa; between us and the town of van, where we might hope to replenish it, lay the wildest districts of asiatic turkey. semi-civilised communications are entirely wanting in those regions; it was even impossible to hire a caravan. it was necessary to purchase horses; three days were consumed in finding the animals; having selected four, at an average price of £6 apiece, we were without funds to defray our expenses in the town. the kaimakam might no doubt have advanced the few pounds in perfect safety; but he had cast longing eyes upon my gun. alleging that he had already spent the last instalment of his allowance, he insisted that the usurers, who would supply him with the money, required that i should leave the weapon in his charge. it was arranged that, the moment the debt had been recovered, he would despatch the valuable pledge to erzerum. no sooner had we reached van than i contrived to send him the amount by way of bayazid. weeks later, upon my arrival in the capital of his provincial government, the gun had not yet come to hand. the vali, or governor-general, was recently dead; no successor had been appointed; the fact that i was an englishman was scarcely worth recalling to the petty authorities, daily witnesses of the feebleness of the british government, and full of contempt for the british power. when my property was at last restored to me through the good offices of mr. graves, the whole winter and part of the spring had gone by. the kaimakam had wreaked his revenge; the weapon came in broken pieces, and the barrels bore the marks of heavy blows. i was unable to ascertain with any accuracy the number of the inhabitants, whether of the district or of the town. the kaimakam, although extremely communicative on other subjects, professed to have been forbidden to make them known. according to the most recent official statistics, the caza contains no less than 58 villages, and possesses a population of 5377 mohammedans and 1902 armenians. for the town in particular i have not had access to any information; but i should judge that the residents might be put down at 1500 to 2000, of whom the armenians would be nearly two-thirds. with the exception of the shops, the houses are in general little better than the usual village tenements, half buried beneath the ground. but karakilisa is increasing in importance day by day, being situated on the great avenue of communication between persia and the black sea. strings of camels, with their finery of coloured tassels, were continually passing at a stone's throw from our door (fig. 111). they were bearing the multitudinous wares of europe for distribution among the eastern bazars. they proceed by way of trebizond, erzerum, and bayazid to the city of tabriz. the place has also the advantage of being both a military and an administrative centre; there is always something going on. the fashionable amusement of the day were the hamidiyeh. a luxurious coffee-house had just been built for their delectation; their name was on every tongue. it was whispered in fear and terror by the poor armenians. i visited their bishop, and found him in a state of blank despair. he was afraid to receive me, and sent me excuses--which, however, i refused to accept. after some parley with intermediaries he made his appearance--a stout figure, a thick-lipped, common face. he refused to listen to the simple questions which i addressed to him, and burst out into abuse. europe, and especially england, had played the part of swindlers towards his miserable race. their hopes had been incited by delusive professions, which had only served to alarm the sultan and let loose the kurds. nor could they look to russia, the arch-offender, fanning the agitation for ends of her own. the poor man continued in this strain until he was nearly beside himself; i was obliged to leave him to his rage. his diocese embraces the districts between zeidikan and bayazid, and extends southwards to the borders of the vilayet, or government, of van. his church at karakilisa is little better than four stone walls. an ignorant priest imparts instruction in a wretched little building which can scarcely be dignified by the name of school. one afternoon we made an excursion to the point where the murad changes direction, and flows through the gap towards the south. between the barracks in which we were lodged, on the extreme outskirts of karakilisa, and the river, flowing placidly over the plain, there extends a considerable tract of marshy ground and low covert, the home of plover and innumerable water-birds. we crossed a stream which, coming from aghri dagh, passes just beneath the barracks to join the murad a little further west (kör su), and made across the marsh in the direction of a little armenian village which stands on the left bank of the principal body of water, almost due south of the town. just below this settlement, called küp keran, we forded the murad, which was winding at the foot of a gentle eminence of the southern border through a pebbly and many-channelled bed. either shore was quite a museum of living wildfowl; in especial we admired a beautiful species of golden duck of which the wings were flaked with white bands. avoiding the swamp on the opposite margin, we followed this bank for some distance: and a little later crossed back to the northern side. about a mile and a half below küp keran the river describes a beautiful curve, and enters the spacious passage of the hills. it is pushed southwards by rising ground at the base of the kilich gedik barrier; but the higher outlines of that range, as well as those of the snowy ala dagh in the east, are several miles removed from its shores. it flows towards grassy hills, among which you lose the silver thread which the eye has followed as far as a village, named dombat. the breadth of the murad at the bend, where its errant waters had issued from the marsh, did not appear to us to exceed thirty yards. the intense stillness of the scene was in harmony with the quiet sunset which shed radiance over mountain, river, and plain. from the lofty bulwark of the northern chain, beyond the lake-like surface of the steppe, rose the form of a single summit, overtowering its neighbours--the shapely dome of the kuseh dagh (fig. 112). the fantastic profile of the system was drawn across the horizon in hues of opal to the far east. in that direction we could clearly see the magnificent bastions of ararat, mounting the sky behind these heights. the snowfields were flushed with a delicate madder; we noticed that from this side they appear to gather to a single peak, the eminence upon which we had stood. we remarked the convex modelling of the lower slopes of the system along the opposite margin of the plain. a shorter way was shown us for the return to karakilisa (fig. 113), which leaves the river and crosses the head of the marsh. chapter ii to lake van the principal artery of traffic in turkish armenia crosses the land from west to east. it follows the direction of a series of depressions: the plains of erzerum, of pasin and of alashkert. it consists of a carriageable track, or rough road of unequal quality. the bulk of the transit trade between europe and northern persia is conveyed on the backs of camels along this route. the wall of protective duties which has been reared by the russian government compels this commerce to flow through a turkish port and to adhere to turkish soil. it has been stimulated by the efforts of a series of british consuls, resident at erzerum. robberies have been punished with great severity; and, at the present day, the traffic is seldom, if ever, interrupted, although it passes through the kurd-inhabited districts about bayazid, and the lawless border of the persian and turkish empires. south of this beaten avenue are situated regions which, in spite of the researches of individual travellers, are still but imperfectly known. the lake of van remains a centre of agriculture and primitive industry; yet it lies beyond a zone of feebly governed country which, year by year, is becoming more difficult to cross. the pest of kurds has settled firmly upon these richly favoured territories, destroying agriculture and banishing trade. what caravans there are travel in large bodies, and every man is armed to the teeth. between erzerum and the town of van they choose between two routes according to the season of the year. in summer they cross the mountains behind the northern capital, and proceed by the plain of khinis, crossing the murad at melazkert. during winter they make the round by way of pasin and alashkert, deviating on the confines of the latter district, and passing the river at tutakh. the approach through the town of mush is used only once a year, when the pilgrims journey from erzerum to the cloister of surb karapet. on that occasion the caravan, according to my informants, continues its course as far as van. by the two first routes it is usual to follow the eastern shore of the lake, which is reached near the little town of akantz. [1] we set out from karakilisa on october the 29th, mounted on our newly-purchased horses, and accompanied by a zaptieh or gendarme. our objective was this same akantz; the principal intermediate stations were tutakh and patnotz. i had thought it possible to accomplish the ride in the course of two days; our friends laughed at the idea. i decided therefore to start in the afternoon, with the hope of arriving on the evening of the third day. at a quarter-past three o'clock we were making our way along the marsh to the point where the murad leaves the plain. after reaching the bend, we proceeded down the passage which receives the river, towards dombat and the grassy hills which i have already mentioned. on our left hand, at an interval of about 500 yards from the left bank, rose the first gentle slopes of the ala dagh system; this high land was answered on the right bank, at about a similar distance, by the outworks of the kilich gedik. the murad pursues its course between these two blocks of mountain, and, a little lower down, forces its way through the narrowing gap. near dombat both banks are of considerable elevation, and the ridges appear to cross the direction of the stream. before arriving opposite the village we crossed the sharian su, a tributary which collects the drainage of the western portion of the plain, and which appeared to us to have a volume scarcely less than that of the principal branch. after passing dombat--which was said to be inhabited by kizilbashes--we sank to a valley in which is situated the kurdish village of zado, and ascended the ridge on its opposite side. from the summit we commanded a prospect towards karakilisa, and were impressed by the serpentine course of the river, flowing towards us in a pebbly bed which it threaded by several channels. we were placed at a height of some 250 feet above its waters. on a hillside further south we could now discern our evening station, the little village of avdi. it was signalised by a green patch, due to vegetable gardens; its surroundings were bleak and bare. arriving at half-past five, we selected the best of the fifteen tenements as quarters for the night. we were surprised to find a sergeant of the regular army established in this miserable place. he had come to recruit kurds for the hamidiyeh, and bitterly cursed his fate. next morning we were anxious to reach tutakh before mid-day in order to pass the night at patnotz. at a quarter to eight we were in the saddle; it had rained during the night, and heavy clouds hung over the hills. as we rose up the slope, we caught glimpses of the mountains which bound the plain of alashkert upon the north. the plain itself had long been lost; we were at some distance from the river; we looked across high hills, which engulfed the invisible waters, to the summits of the ala dagh. the doubtful track commenced to wind between grassy slopes, strewn with boulders--a belt of country well adapted to guerilla warfare, and reputed the favourite haunt of kurdish robbers. horsemen would no doubt be completely at their mercy in the blind recesses of these irregular valleys. at a quarter to nine we approached the murad, still high above it; the hills rose from either bank. in another half hour we obtained our first view of the cone of sipan, a gleaming object in the south. some two miles further the landscape opened, and assumed the character of a vast steppe of broken and uneven ground. distant ranges encircled the expanse with dim outlines; sipan alone was clearly defined against the sky. from the kurdish village of köshk we obtained a fine view over this country, with its waving surface featured by shadows from the clouds. we had got behind the barrier of the kilich gedik; and the whole segment of the circle from north-west to south-west was filled by comparatively level land. we observed a prominent shape in the mountains of the furthest distance, which we identified with the khamur dagh. beyond the mussulman village of okhan, the river, which had left us, took a sharp bend, and joined our course. we made our way along it at a rapid trot and reached tutakh a little after eleven o'clock. the little township does not possess more than about a hundred houses; yet it is the seat of a kaimakam whose administrative area includes patnotz, and meets the boundary of the vilayet of van. it stands on rising ground, at some little distance from the bank of the river, facing the lofty hills which rise on the opposite shore, and push the murad towards the west. it is about equidistant from karakilisa and from patnotz, a ride of some twenty-three miles from the first, and of twenty-eight miles from the second. the inhabitants are for the greater part karapapakhs, imported into the district after the last russo-turkish war. they can now boast of some 400 houses in the caza, or a population of about 3000 souls. agriculturists by profession, and by temperament robbers, they appear to be in an extremely prosperous state. their aged chief conversed with me, and imparted several particulars which i had not known before. he told me that they had emigrated from the province of chaldir, being dissatisfied with the russian government, who had not treated them well in the matter of lands. the sultan had received them back, settled them in these fertile regions, and allotted to them as much ground as they required. i questioned him with some care about the original seats of his tribe; he was emphatic that they had always lived in chaldir. [2] taylor tells us that they became possessed of the villages and lands in that province, and in the neighbouring province of kars, which had been abandoned by the armenians who followed the army of marshal paskevich upon his evacuation of turkish territory in 1829. according to the chief, their original possessions in transcaucasia extended from daghestan to chaldir. the tribe supplies a regiment of hamidiyeh for this caza; the head men were resplendent in their new uniforms, of which they seemed very proud. both here and at karakilisa i was impressed by the diversity of type which is found among them. mingled with physiognomies of purely tartar or persian character were faces which, with their lighter hair and fairer complexion, might have belonged to a group of circassians. with the exception of the shops, single-storeyed stone buildings, the houses in tutakh are the usual loose agglomerations of earth and rough stone. the great majority of the population in the caza are kurds; a scattering of armenians are entirely at the mercy of their rapacious mussulman neighbours. our baggage animals, which had started from avdi with us, arrived at one o'clock. they were in charge of a second zaptieh, to whom i had given instructions to find his way to akantz as best he could. a little before two we were again in the saddle, making for the adjacent ford across the murad. the river is fairly broad just opposite the town, having a width at this season of about 100 yards. it had spread beyond its average dimensions in this region, and the water did not reach higher than the horses' knees. we admired the clear, blue current, sweeping past us--a stream neither sluggish nor impetuous, as befits the beginning of a great river. from the opposite bank we proceeded at right angles to its direction, up the side of the line of high hills. at eighteen minutes after two we had wound our way to the summit; we stood on the surface of rolling downs. a little later, when i thought we had reached the highest point of these uplands, i took the reading of my aneroid. we had reached a level of 5800 feet, or of 560 feet above tutakh. the exhilarating air, the easy ground, the magnificent prospects rendered our ride most enjoyable. behind us was the outline of the kilich gedik, running from east to west. we could just see the crest of the kuseh dagh beyond it, the summit of the dome. towards the south rose the irregular mass of the khamur, and the beautiful landmark of sipan. that graceful mountain stood disclosed to three-quarters of its height. such are the rewards which armenia bestows upon the traveller, and which man is powerless to destroy. that insignificant creature lives in squalor amid scenes of desolation which are due to himself alone. the soil is rich and loamy; but it is little cultivated, and lies idle beneath a covering of rough grass. the climate is more propitious than that of the corresponding highlands in the more northerly, or russian portion of the land. the rainfall is probably less; but this disadvantage may be balanced by the earlier maturing of the crops. we rode for an hour without seeing a village, with the heights of the ala dagh following our course away on the left. the first settlement which we passed was milan, inhabited by kurds, which we were careful to avoid. those of their number whom we met were armed with numerous knives, and had rifles slung across their shoulders. a little further i called a halt on the requisition of the zaptieh; he was very anxious that the plan of the journey should be changed. it was half-past three o'clock; we could not reach patnotz before nightfall; if i persisted it was almost certain we should be attacked. in crossing from the territory of the sipkanli tribe to that of the haideranli, we should be obliged to run the gauntlet of the armed parties which scoured the frontier between these two hostile tribes. he pointed to a dot on the grassy plain about us which he identified with the village of köshk. he said that it was the residence of the chief of the sipkanli, who from his official relations with the turkish government would be obliged to shelter us. his counsel was no doubt sound if one could only trust his estimate of our distance from patnotz. for some time we had been passing between two opposite hill ranges, one on our left front, the other on our right. on our point of course, in the middle distance, these outlines approached one another, leaving between them a wide gap. the ridge on the left, a spur of ala dagh, was said to bear the name of gelarash dagh; that on the right was called kartevin dagh. it would be no short ride to the passage between the two; and this gave access, according to the zaptieh, to the plain in which, upon its further confines, was situated patnotz. satisfied by his explanations, i deferred to his judgment, and directed our steps a few points off our true course, towards the village which he had indicated. a shower of soft rain was falling as we entered köshk at four o'clock. i have already introduced my reader to a kurdish village; the description of one may be applied to all. but köshk is distinguished by a single house in the proper sense, a two-storeyed building of stone. it is the abode of yusuf bey, chieftain of the sipkanli, whose portrait i was allowed to take (fig. 114). his followers gathered round us, a throng of kurdish warriors, prepared at any moment for a fight. besides knives, each man carried a rifle; a band of cartridges was fastened across the breast. i examined several weapons; all bore the russian marks and letters. they told me that they were procured from the russian soldiers, probably cossacks, in the frontier districts of kagyzman and erivan. when a little later i questioned the chief about this traffic, he expressed surprise that the soldiers should be able to obtain firearms for the purpose of selling them. after some palaver we were ushered into his presence; he happened to be engaged in prayer. a broad divan followed the bare walls of a spacious apartment, and rugs were spread upon the divan. several tall, lank figures stood on these bright carpets, with stockings on their feet. they faced the window and the light; at the head of one of the two lines was placed an individual whom we easily recognised as the mollah from his humbler stature, stouter person and ampler robes. their backs were turned towards us as we entered; we advanced a little, but not a muscle of the faces moved. then the silence was broken by a deep, gurgling sound, which developed into the expression of a series of labials, half a chant, half a spoken prayer. at certain passages the figures bowed to the ground, or dropped to a seated posture, and were still. to us it seemed an ideal rendering of the solemn relation between man and the universe. the litany completed, our hosts at once turned towards us, with a sudden change of countenance which took us by surprise. yusuf bey extended to us his massive but almost fleshless hand; his cavernous cheeks were lit by a smile. he and his brother are men of more than ordinary proportions, and both are true types of the kurd. he told me that they were in daily expectation of attack from hoseyn pasha of patnotz. this miscreant, although under the ban of justice, had been given the title of pasha by the turkish government, partly in order to recruit their new irregulars among his tribe, and partly as a recompense for his bribes. he had quite recently burnt some villages of the sipkanli, and had reduced the clan to poverty. judging from the finery which was displayed by the inhabitants of köshk (fig. 115), i could only accept the latter part of this statement in a very relative sense. the seats of the sipkanli extend to the territory of bayazid; they supply three regiments to the hamidiyeh. after partaking of supper, we composed ourselves to sleep in the same apartment into which we had been introduced. the night was disturbed by the weird cries which were exchanged at frequent intervals between the patrols in the outskirts and the guard in the village. among the forty tenements which constituted this particular settlement we were astonished to find that six were inhabited by armenians. imagine the condition of these poor people, in the very jaws of their enemy, who just allows them to exist and no more! the turkish authorities, a long way distant, would be quite powerless to assist them, even if they had the desire. a poor stableman told us beneath his breath that their lot was desperate, and that some of his countrymen had contrived to escape to russia. the rawness of the climate in the plain of alashkert had disappeared when we reached köshk. [3] the weather became mild, and the sun shone freely from a sky almost devoid of cloud. when next morning we were again in the saddle at twenty minutes after seven, the mown pastures looked green and fresh after the rain of the preceding evening, and it was a delight to breathe the crisp air. we could still see the distant dome of the kuseh dagh; the ridge on our left hid the lower slopes of sipan. we rode towards the still remote promontory of that grassy ridge, and the gap between the outlines in the hills. at a little after eight we had reached the passage; it appeared to have a width of about a mile. it leads from the undulating plains about köshk to the level plain of patnotz. the ground falls away by a succession of inequalities to a spacious area of flat alluvial land. beyond that lake-like surface rises the fabric of a single mountain, the broad base, the vaulted slopes, the massive crown. sipan was at last exposed from foot to summit, recalling by many a characteristic the majestic ararat. [4] there was the same length of sweep, the same symmetry of structure, the same rounded central form. and if we missed the gardens and the immense expanse of the campagna of erivan, this open plain seemed to repeat the surroundings of ararat on a scale exactly suited to sipan. near the opening we passed the tiny village of burnu bulakh, inhabited by kurds. we doubled the long promontory; it was evident it had been pushing us away from our true course. once rounded, we pursued a south-easterly direction, keeping to the base of the hills to which it belongs. in these solitudes a human figure is an unfamiliar object; great was our surprise to perceive several men running towards us from a recess in the range. stranger still was the discovery that they did not bear arms; we collected together, and awaited their approach. when they had reached speaking distance, they unfolded their story, and begged for protection at our hands. they were turks from the province of kars who had deserted their lands and homes, taking with them all their portable wealth. they said that the russian government treated them very badly, favouring the molokans, and annoying the members of their religion and race. they had resolved to seek new seats beneath the sceptre of the sultan, and had crossed the frontier in pursuit of this end. their journey had until yesterday been uneventful; but last evening, as they were approaching the territory of the haideranli, they had been savagely attacked. the kurds had despoiled them of all their possessions, and had been induced with difficulty to leave them the clothes in which they stood. poor fellows! honest, sturdy peasants, returning to their old allegiance and to the stronghold of islam, only to find the one insulted by robbers and the other a gaping ruin. all we could do was to take them to the prince of the bandits, in the hope that he would be more prudent than his wild bands. inasmuch as they were without horses it was impossible that they should accompany us to the town of akantz. not less eloquent an illustration of the decay of the ottoman empire was the landscape through which we passed. mile after mile, the eye ranged across the floor of the alluvial plain to the lower slopes of the great volcano which, with the hills circling towards them, compose a basin-like area of vast extent. the fertile soil lies idle, as though the waters had lately receded; in the distance some goats and cattle browsed the burnt and scanty grass. nature alone has made the most of exceptional opportunities; and sipan, with this plain on one flank and the lake of van upon the other, is worthy to rank among the most beautiful objects in the natural world (fig. 116). there, can be little difference between the level of the expanse on either side; plain and sea have an elevation of about 5500 feet. the summit of the slowly-rising fabric which divides them attains an altitude of 13,700 feet. the history of the mountain may be studied to advantage from this, the northern side. there can be little doubt that it possessed a central crater, of which the walls have fallen in upon the north. the southern rim still stands, presenting an almost horizontal outline of sharp rock, harbouring drifts of snow. [5] the processes of denudation have been busy with the slopes of this ancient cone, and have broken the surface into knife-like ridges. we stood for half-an-hour in full face of the pile. after crossing two little rivulets which wandered out from the hills behind us, we arrived at half-past ten in patnotz. we found it nothing better than a wretched kurdish village, with some one hundred huts and numerous stacks of dried manure. it is situated at the foot of the hill range which we had been skirting, and which had gradually been circling round towards sipan. it overlooks the plain and the opposite volcano. about thirty of the tenements are occupied by armenian families, and there is a row of shops which rise proudly from the ground. on the further outskirts a large stone building was in process of being erected; the armenian masons were busy with the work. it was to serve as a school and for other purposes, and was due to the policy in favour with the sultan, of educating the kurds. i understood that the funds were provided by the turkish government. we rode up to a group of people assembled before this palace, and enquired for the chief. among them was an individual of heavy build and forbidding features, attired in a long coat of military pattern, and displaying the brass ensign of the hamidiyeh on the sheepskin cap which he wore. it was hoseyn pasha, lord of the haideranli, and ruler of the territory of patnotz. the irregular mouth and nose, and the dull, sparkless eyes correspond with the reputation which he bears. but discontent as well as malice was written upon his countenance; and the situation explained the humour of the man. his followers would no doubt argue that he was assisting at his own destruction; this school was the visible evidence of the ottoman yoke. i have no doubt that he would console them with the assurance of its futility; and i am certain that he would be right. meanwhile he had appropriated the completed apartments as a residence for himself. i waited for him to invite us to be his guests in his new quarters; but he beckoned to an attendant to find us a room in one of the huts. so i dismounted, and myself led the way into the schoolhouse, obliging him either to affront or follow me. he chose the latter course. continuing the same tactics, i bade him take a seat by my side on his own divan. in his company was a fine specimen of the kurdish nation, whose mien contrasted with that of his chief; and a genial turk who had travelled, and was at once a man of the world and a parasite of the lowest type. this gentleman was delighted to have an opportunity of conversing about the affairs of the outside world; it was to him that i addressed the conversation until the sullen temper of the chief relaxed. when i was able to put some questions in return for those which i had answered, the tongue of hoseyn pasha had commenced to flow. he told me he was the titular chief of the hasananli kurds, a tribe of which the haideranli, adamanli, and sipkanli were offshoots or species. this widely-spread genus extended to the persian frontier. i asked him why his people did not cultivate the plain, and augment their wealth and numbers. he replied that in the absence of communications and markets they were not encouraged to take such a course. we lunched off some wretched cheese, inlaid with herbs in kurdish fashion; and, after commending our companions to his sense of responsibility, took leave at a quarter-past eleven o'clock. i am sorry that i am not able to present a better description of the features of the country between patnotz and the lake of van. i hope that some future traveller will be able to ascend the sides of the hills along the trough of which we rode for many miles. i should advise him to devote at least three days to the journey between karakilisa and akantz. the first night would be spent at tutakh, the second at patnotz. hoseyn pasha was astonished to hear of our intention to push on to our destination by a single stage. but the zaptieh knew of no village in which we might safely sojourn, before reaching the territory of akantz. the authority of the turkish government is little better than a name among the valleys of the ala dagh. i was assured that i had formed a wrong conception of the distance, which, measured direct on the map of kiepert, amounts to no more than twenty-one miles. arrived at akantz, i computed that we had covered, from station to station, no less than thirty-six miles. an incident which occurred just after our departure contributed to hasten our steps. a kurd, mounted on a swift arab, cantered ahead of us and was soon lost to sight. the zaptieh was certain it was an emissary of the chief, whose treachery he feared. the word would be given to the bands in the district that helpless travellers were passing their way. i think it more probable that he was bearer of orders not to attack us on any account. from patnotz we proceeded in an easterly direction towards the ridge which bounds the plain upon the east. it connects with the hills which we had so long been skirting, and which hollow inwards beyond the village. a few minutes before twelve we were on the summit of the low pass, and were leaving behind us the landscape of the plain. we entered a broad valley, which, with a grassy hill range on either side, stretched away towards south-east. the range on our right concealed from view the lower slopes of sipan, and was distant about a mile. its elevation above the valley was at first not greater than from 100 to 500 feet; but, as we proceeded, it rose to a more considerable altitude, and, at the same time, came closer up to the track. on our left hand the barrier was more remote and loftier, some five miles off, and some 1000 feet above our heads. the heights were streaked with snow; according to our informants, they belong to the system of the ala dagh. we rode for several hours between these two ridges, the ground rising as we advanced. here and there a little brook threaded the waste soil, flowing towards the west. at one o'clock we came up with a long line of bullock carts, travelling from erzerum to van. we counted no less than seventy of these primitive vehicles, crawling over the ground with creaking wheels. several horsemen accompanied the caravan, their persons bristling with arms of every kind. the leader was a turk of quality and some importance. he told me that the journey occupied eight days, and that the murad was crossed at tutakh. each of the drivers was said to be in possession of weapons, although they did not happen to be wearing them as we passed. three-quarters of an hour later we crossed a nice stream which, according to the zaptieh, flows into the lake. the transparent current pursued for some distance a roughly parallel direction to the south-easterly course upon which we rode. it left us to diverge southwards towards the barrier on our right; but we could not discover at what point it pierced the hills. a few horses were grazing upon its margin, and we wondered to whom they might belong. the track continued to approach the immediate foot of those hills, and they continued to increase in height. but it became evident that the average elevation of the ground had risen, for we were on a level with the higher slopes of the opposite range. at three o'clock we reached the end of the long valley, which narrows towards its head. the hills roll away; you stand on a lofty platform which commands a distant prospect of the lake of van. dismounting on the rough soil, we stood for half-an-hour in contemplation of the scene. all our horses showed signs of fatigue; that of the dragoman was quite exhausted, and his plump rider required to be lifted from the saddle. we had covered, according to estimate, some 18 miles from patnotz and over 33 from köshk. the instruments were uncased, and the elevation taken, which i compute in round numbers at 1000 feet above the level of the lake. below us lay spacious tracts of undulating country--friable soil, modelled into hummock shapes. we could follow the long profile of the hills on our left hand, dying away towards the still remote shore. the waters were scarcely visible beyond the detail of the middle distance--a glimpse of blue in the lap of the expanse. they represent the gulf-like extremity of the inland sea, of which the broad face is hidden from these slopes. but the scale and tendency of the land forms prepared us for such a presence, which they were aptly designed to usher in. we stood on the edge of a great half-circle; the view ranged to some sharp summits, belonging to a ridge on the opposite side of the lake, which must have been some 40 miles away. our zaptieh knew it under the name of besh parmak, or the mountain of the five fingers. the arc of the curve was composed by the heights in that direction, arresting the softness of the vaulted hills and shelving ground. we were shown a long bank which had the appearance of a mound, and was distinguished from similar shapes by its size. it lay in the distant trough of the landscape, and was said to overlook the town of akantz. i placed the dragoman on my own horse, and was obliged to perpetrate the cruelty of riding his jaded animal. we had the benefit of the incline; but the nature of the ground was against us, necessitating long winds. deep gullies obstructed our course; or we were turned aside by rising land. if i have estimated correctly, we were separated from our destination by a space of fifteen miles. we took to the saddle at half-past three; we did not arrive until past seven; and we must have covered some eighteen miles. at half-past four we crossed the first running water, and we were at the first village at a little before five. karakilisa (black church) is well named, for it possesses a little church of black stone, with group of gables and conical dome. it is inhabited by armenians, and has an air of prosperity; we were refreshed by the rare sight of a group of trees. the next settlement, hipsinek, was also armenian; we had emerged from the wild kurdish zone. as we neared the lower levels, the deep silence of the evening was broken by a loud, rumbling sound. it was a river, descending from the mountains, and flowing in a stony bed. they call it the buyuk chai or erishat; we crossed it, and arrived, soon after, at a village which bears the last of these names. it was half-past six o'clock; the light was uncertain; we were near water and on marshy ground. a villager was hailed; he showed us the way with a lantern to the solid land beyond. we proceeded at a walking pace along the foot of a dark cliff to the houses of akantz. chapter iii across lake van the kaimakam of akantz was in the company of his notables when we entered his reception room. along the walls of the bare apartment stretched the usual cushioned seat; a row of figures, serried upon it, lined two sides. it was with difficulty that place was made for us beside him; and several minutes were occupied by the exchange of salutes, each man bowing and raising the hand to the chin and forehead. coffee and warmth revived the drooping person of the dragoman; such was his command both of the turkish and the german languages that it cost him little effort to perform his task. while supper and a lodging were being prepared for us, i was able to discuss plans with the kaimakam. he promised that he would endeavour to procure a trading vessel to take us to van on the following day. he engaged to despatch our horses thither, as soon as they should recover, by way of the southern shore of the lake. unlike his colleague of karakilisa, he proved faithful to his word; but i regret to say that we never saw the dragoman's horse again. that night and the following day i attended him myself; but he appears to have died a few days after we left. [6] it was arranged that on the morrow we should visit the ruins of arjish. i enquired of our host whether he knew of the remains of a city on the table surface of the cliff above akantz. he confirmed the information which is given by vital cuinet, and said that the place was known to the learned under the name of kala-i-zerin. the people call it zernishan. [7] according to the kaimakam there are no less than 500 houses in akantz; but i am inclined to consider this figure excessive. a number among them are well built, with good walls and glass-paned windows; and it was a change to erect our camp beds in a clean and airy room. the population is partly mussulman and partly armenian. i should say that the former have the preponderance, although not in the proportion which was assigned to them by the same authority of four-fifths of the whole. [8] the armenians possess two churches and a school, administered by a priest. several regiments of hamidiyeh have their headquarters in the town. they are recruited among the haideranli and adamanli kurds. their enrolment has been attended by the usual result--a general relaxation of the law. robberies are committed under the eyes of the kaimakam, and stealing is scarcely considered an offence. while our effects were being conveyed to the lake in a little cart, a clever thief made away with the yoke of the oxen. the morning of the next day was devoted to preparations, and the whole afternoon was occupied by our excursion to arjish. the site bears a few points west of a line due south from akantz, at a distance of several miles. but the track across the plain is obstructed by channels of water which compel you to deviate. leaving the town by the south side, we paused to admire the cluster of houses, embowered in trees, and backed by the high cliff (fig. 117). a continuation of the same ridge rises behind the gardens and orchards, which are about a mile away, upon the east. between us and the lake lay a broad zone of alluvial land, of sandy surface broken by green oases. we rode through two considerable villages, hargin and igmal. they are almost buried beneath the foliage of tall poplars and forest trees which are supported by a network of irrigation. the last of these two settlements can scarcely be less distant than an hour's walk from the shore. beyond them the ground is patched with cultivation, which in turn gives place to a desert, cut by dikes. the ruins adjoin the lake, and accentuate the loneliness of the bleak waste from which they rise (fig. 118 from the north, and fig. 119 from the south). little is left above ground of the once important borough of mediæval repute. the crumbling walls of a castle, a ruined chapel, a minaret are the principal monuments still erect. the method of building is that of a more cultured age. a recent fire had converted the brushwood into black patches. we looked across the silvery waters to the opposite shore of the lake, from which a range of hills rise. behind this barrier towers a rocky ridge of serrated outline, which, commencing at a point about east of the ruins, extends westwards and groups together with the magnificent chain on the southern margin of the sea. the arm beside which we stood stretched away by a succession of promontories, to spread towards those distant and snowy peaks in the south. arjish played an important part in the history of the middle ages; and there can be no doubt that these ruins are those of the mediæval city. [9] on the other hand it is quite possible that the name arsissa, under which lake van was known to ptolemy, may be connected with a much more ancient arjish, which may well have stood on the high land overlooking the modern town of akantz. i regretted at the time of my visit, and i have since had reason to deplore more keenly, our inability to protract our stay in the neighbourhood, and to examine the site of the so-called zernak, or zerin, or zernishan, of which i have already spoken. its situation seems to correspond with that of the plateau of karatash or ilantash, where schulz informs us that he discovered traces of the sites of numerous buildings, and at the foot of which, on the north-east, facing the plain, he copied inscriptions in the cuneiform character, which, according to the translation of professor sayce, record the planting of vineyards in this region by the vannic king sarduris iii., who lived in the eighth century before christ (c. 735 b.c.). [10] the inscriptions are found upon a series of three tablets, hewn in the rock, some eight feet above the ground. one of the tablets is without any characters. [11] close by is the cave where a nest of serpents or large lizards are reputed to have lodged since immemorial times, and have been seen by modern travellers. [12] the place is described as being situated about two miles east of akantz near the road to haidar bey. [13] messrs. belck and lehmann, who have visited akantz since i was there, were brought some objects in bronze, of which one represented a serpent, and another contained cuneiform characters. they were found by the natives among the ruins of this zernak. [14] it will be interesting to learn the result of the excavations which they appear to contemplate. in the village of hargin, through which we passed, they have found a large stele, with a cuneiform inscription of argistis ii. (714-c. 690 b.c.). a second monument, containing records of the same monarch, has been discovered by them in the same district. [15] the name arjish agrees so nearly with that of this vannic king that one is tempted to suppose that it is derived from it. and we may be rewarded by the bringing to light of a city of argistis, buried upon the summit of that salubrious plateau of which the cliff backs the houses of akantz. the mediæval city of arjish was sacked by the georgians in a.h. 605, or a.d. 1208-9. the arab historian, ibn-alathir, who chronicles this event, states that its outcome was the desertion of the place by the inhabitants, so that it remained in the ruinous condition to which it had been reduced. [16] but there seems to exist evidence to show that, like ani, arjish struggled on through the centuries during which barbarism was increasing its hold upon the land. [17] it was known to marco polo (thirteenth century) as one of the three greatest cities of armenia; and at the commencement of the sixteenth century it formed one of the seven fortresses which encircled the lake of van. [18] in the summer of 1838 it was still peopled; but in the winter of that year the waters of the lake rose, until in 1841 they had attained an increase of some 10 to 12 feet. the foundations of the houses gave way and the supply of fresh water failed. [19] arjish was evacuated by its reduced population, and is at the present day not tenanted by a single soul. marshes extend on either side of the ruins; that on the east appeared to me to be the more extensive. we had been warned not to linger too long upon the site; the district is inhabited by some kurds of ill repute. one of them had been sighted making off to apprise his friends of our presence. yet darkness had fallen before we were clear of the intricate dikes, among which it would have been easy for an armed man or two to cut off our retreat. the villages lay before us--a mass of gloom in the dimly lighted scene. we were glad to pass within the fringe of their orchards; and a little later we were again in safety at akantz. meanwhile the necessary preparations had been completed, and we were informed that a vessel would be ready to receive us after we had partaken of a meal. we set out at nine o'clock; yet not a single light flickered among the houses of the silent town. the boats station at a point about south-east of the settlement, along the margin of the sandy shore. it was after ten o'clock by the time we reached the lake and our craft, from which the long stage was dropped upon the sand to let us in (fig. 120). the vessel was not decked, and we could spread our carpets within the hollow of her lofty sides. scarcely a breath of air was stirring; but the breeze was expected, and it was decided to await its approach. we composed ourselves to sleep beneath the stars. at midnight we set sail. when i awoke at half-past seven, the sky was blue in the zenith above my eyes. set within that field of brightness, the pale crescent of the moon marked the boundary of a sheet of cirrus cloud. the gauzy tissues deepened as they neared the horizon, and gathered into long banks of heavy vapour, suspended about the summits of the chain of inky mountains which borders the lake upon the south. in that distant and gloomy range i at once recognised the features of the mountains of kurdistan. it was the same chain that i had followed for weeks upon the waters of the tigris, threading the vast plains between diarbekr and the persian gulf. day by day those steep parapets, sharp peaks, and gleaming snows had accompanied the peaceful voyage of my little raft. how well i now recalled the longing i had then experienced to explore the famous lake on their further side! what a thrill of pleasure i now felt to be floating upon its waters, expanding towards those mountains with the proportions of a sea! the reflection of the blue vault above us paled and whitened as the flood approached that long black line. bank upon bank, the clouds were serried upon the peaks, shot by the lights from the snows. here and there the fretted outline of a pearly bed of vapour was drawn across the background of dull opal in the region of the middle slopes; or wreathing forms, like smoke, clinging to the sides of some loftier eminence, broke the horizontal layers. the scene behind us contrasted the softness of a southern landscape with the stern grandeur of the coast above our prow. the northern shores of the lake were bathed in light; and the hummock convexities of the ala dagh, streaked with snow towards the summits, rose against a sky of transparent turquoise, and sank to a surface of more solid substance, but not less pure and not less blue. from these heights, across the long sheet of azure water to dazzling snow in the heaven above our heads, the fabric of sipan mounted slowly to the flat rim of the central crater, and, sweeping past us, declined, with equal majesty of outline, to low ground in the west. the great volcano composes one whole side of the lake, and faces full south. i observed that the snow-line was perceptibly higher than on the occasion when we had approached the mountain from the north. the western limits of the lake were vague, and, in places, invisible; the mass of nimrud, dim and cloud-streaked, had the appearance of a long island, rising on the horizon between the sunny slopes of sipan and the nebulous barrier of the kurdish chain. it is this contrast--no chance effect of light and atmosphere--between the more northerly and the more southerly coasts of the vast basin that gives to the lake of van its own peculiar character and a beauty quite its own. on the one hand, length of sweep in the form, and brilliancy of tone in the colouring--as seen in the curves of the bays, in the profiles of the mountains, in the texture of the soil; on the other, startling steepness, black rocks and deep shadows--one long serration, made more vivid by the snows. here a scene which recalls the luxuriance of the bay of naples; there the features, the austere features, of a norwegian fiord. a fresh north-easterly breeze filled our huge lateen sail; in the hollow of the white fold were painted large in a russet brown the emblems of a crescent and a star. the ship was heading for a low promontory which showed up yellow against the shades of the distance, and ended in a little island rock. that cape conceals the site of the city of van, as you approach it from the east. the answering horn of a wide bay rose from the waters in our wake; we were skirting the eastern shore of the sea, with its gentle hills and delicate hues. on the slopes we could just discern a single small village, the only sign of the presence of man. on we glide, and are soon almost abreast of the promontory, opening the expanse on the further side. the line of the shore curves inwards, and describes a wide half-circle, meeting the base of the stupendous barrier in the south. the whole long range is exposed to view, from foot to cloud-swept summit, from the waters in the west to beyond the waters in the east. the eye is arrested by a strange vision in the middle distance--a bold, black rock, starting from a bed of white mist on the surface of the sea. we learn from the sailors that it is the castled rock of van. when the mist clears, and the object appears in its true proportions, it becomes a speck against the parapet of the great chain. we approach the little island; i decide to land upon it; the water shallows, and assumes a hue of pure cobalt. then the bed of soft white rock shines through the crystal element, and the vessel takes the ground. one steps ashore with the feelings of a greek mariner, come from afar to a strange land. gulls circle round us or rest tamely on the rocks; surely we have sailed across the bosom of the high seas. ktutz is the name of this enchanting spot, a name insulting to a western tongue (fig. 121). [20] we walked across a narrow stretch of grass, strewn with boulders, in the direction of a crag of the same white limestone, weathered yellow, [21] by which the cliff on the opposite shore of the islet falls away before reaching the point. against that crumbling surface rose the conical dome of an ancient church, surmounting a picturesque group of gables, and, below these, a cluster of mud walls. several almond-trees, of great age, spread their stippled foliage along the foot and up the side of the cliff. we observed for the first time one of the primitive structures which the people use for drawing water from their wells. [22] the figure of a priest advanced to meet us; he greeted us kindly, and offered to escort us to the monastery. the finished masonry of the dome, the careful juxtaposition of black with yellow stone in the roof, evinced the culture of a happier age. the church consists of an outer nave and an inner sanctuary, from which the former is separated by a solid wall. as at khosha vank, near ani, this outer building or pronaos is of larger dimensions than the shrine to which it leads. [23] it has probably been added at a later epoch. the nave is accompanied by two broad aisles. the doorway through which you enter the inner chapel is richly carved in the arab style (fig. 122). you look from without the open door across deep shadows to the lofty daïs of sculptured stone which supports the high altar in the apse. the inner chapel must date back to a remote period, in spite of the ogival arches of the two little doorways in the apses of the narrow side aisles. these betray the direct influence of arab architecture, and are a solecism among the pointed arches of which the rest of the edifice is built up. it is disposed in the form of a greek cross; the dome rises from massive piers. the apse on the north contains a chamber in which you are shown the grave of john the baptist, and a girdle which is said to have belonged to the saint. frescos after the taste of the persians cover the smaller spaces--garlands and wreaths of bright leaves. the archways are painted in quiet blues and reds; pictures of saints are suspended from the walls. elaborate altar-pieces adjoin the entrance, one on either side of the door. the floor is carpeted with rugs, and an air of comfort pervades the dimly-lit shrine. this twilight serves to soften the gorgeous decorations which the wear of time has assisted to subdue. neither they nor the interior which they adorn are of striking merit; yet you leave under the impression of a composite charm. we, as englishmen, were much interested by an old standard clock which, to our surprise, bore on its face the name of isaac rogers, london. it ticked away in the heavy quiet, an object so familiar that our guide forgot to point it out. [24] he was a pleasant individual, quite young, extremely ignorant and without ambition to learn. he was called the monk peter, or petros vardapet. eight monks were on the foundation of the cloister; of these only four were in residence on the island. we found them each in his cell, sharing the group of little buildings which cluster at the foot of the church. all appeared to be without work or occupation of any kind. they seemed to have passed their lives upon the cushions of their couches, looking across the tremulous shade of the almond trees to the italian sea and the soaring fabric of sipan. it was half-past twelve when we put off; the wind had dropped, and scarcely enabled us to forge ahead. for several hours we lay becalmed on the bosom of the lake, here at its widest, in full face of the murky chain on the horizon, which was reflected in hues of burnished steel. banks of mist shrouded the landscape, especially in the west, where the mass of nimrud seemed encircled by the sea. a pest of little midges covered our clothes and blackened our papers; then a shower fell, and yet another, and they disappeared. about four o'clock a nice breeze freshened, coming from the shore of low hills upon our left. it brought with it rain; but a little later the sun triumphed, and burst the canopy of clouds in the south and west. a double rainbow of great brilliancy rose from that near shore, revealing the site of a little village. our head was pointed to the rock of van, which, at this distance, shows like an island, even without the assistance of mirage. the long barrier of the kurdish range declines in that direction, and gives way to a less steep and less gloomy ridge; but that outline again rises on the further side of the city, to culminate in a lofty parapet of saw-shaped edge. varag--such is the name of this mass--commands the bay in which van lies from behind a spacious interval of garden and field. in the landscape it strikes the last note of the tumultuous theme which is suggested by the mountains in the south--a final trumpet blast by which the procession marches onwards to the persian plains. in the opposite quarter, across the lake, and against the declining slope of sipan the gardens of adeljivas might just be seen in shades of grey. those of artemid were more distinct--a stretch of softness and verdure along the summit of a low cliff of yellow substance near the foot of the black range. a fragment of rock thrown seawards from those mountains was identified as the isle of akhtamar. but the site of van engrossed us, surpassing our expectations, high as these were. the rock, which had appeared at a distance to be an island, projected almost into the waters from a background of plain and without visible connection on any side. battlements crowned its horizontal outline; while at its foot and along the shore luscious foliage, touched by autumn, covered all the inequalities of the ground. from rock and garden, and from the vague detail of the middle distance the eye was led upwards to the stony slopes of varag; a bed of cloud lay captive upon them; but the jagged parapet stood out from a clear sky. here and there, stray fragments of vapour, flushed by the evening, floated outwards from the dense canopy over the mountains in the south. the veiled snowfields of the range were revealed in fitful glimpses of yellow, unnatural light.... we moored our vessel by the side of a cluster of similar craft at the so-called harbour, and took the direction in which the town was said to lie. it is surrounded by a walled enclosure, and nestles at the foot of the rock. darkness had fallen as we passed down its silent streets, made more gloomy by the shadows from the cliff. the bark of dogs, the sad refrain of an eastern song were the only sounds which broke the stillness of the night. then we entered a broad chaussée which stretches inland to the suburb of gardens which usurps the importance of the fortified town. there are situated the consulates of the european powers, and the residences of the principal citizens. poplars of great height rose from the irrigated ground on either side of the road. side lanes led away from this broad avenue into the park of trees. after a walk which seemed interminable, and which occupied no less than three hours, we arrived at the british consulate at half-past nine o'clock. chapter iv van of the various sites which one might select upon the shores of the lake of van, none would present as great advantages for a populous and self-contained settlement as that of the city from which it derives its name. the great range along the southern coast leaves little respite of even land between the waves and the parapet of rock. the opposite margin of the bosom of waters is filled with the fabrics of those huge volcanoes, nimrud and sipan. sipan, indeed, upon nearer acquaintance, is robbed of some of his apparent extension; and the low outlines on the west and east of the dome-shaped mass upon the horizon will be recognised to belong to a belt of limestone with intrusive igneous rocks which the traveller follows all the way from akhlat to adeljivas, and upon which the volcano has built itself up. but those hills, which from the neighbourhood of van seem to constitute the train of sipan, are at once rugged and approach closely to the shore. arjish alone is backed by a zone of fairly even and fertile country; while, as regards the coast between van and the mouth of the bendimahi chai, i do not know that it has ever harboured a considerable city. on the other hand, the alluvial plain which is confined by mount varag upon the east, and which may be said to extend from a headland near the village of kalajik on the north to the high ground just north of artemid upon the south, affords a considerable area of rich soil, capable under irrigation of producing the choicest fruits of the earth. of the beauty of the site it would not be possible to speak too highly; but i tremble to provoke in my english reader a nausea of descriptive writing. the armenians have a proverb which is often quoted: van in this world and paradise in the next. the comparison might be justified under happier human circumstances, the perversity of man having converted this heaven into a little hell. its aptness may be recognised during the course of a walk in the neighbourhood, or from the standpoint of the rock which supports the citadel. in the north across the waters is outspread an italian landscape--a vesuvius or an etna, with their sinuous surroundings, on an asiatic scale. nearer at hand and fully exposed, the long barrier of the kurdish mountains recalls the wildest scenery of the norwegian coast. from the city herself as from the extremities of the wide basin, the short, sharp ridge of varag is seen with pleasure to the eye, lifted some 4500 feet above the waters, and, at evening, reflecting the sunset in the most varied hues. the lake is not sufficiently large to separate these various objects by distances which preclude under ordinary conditions the simultaneous enjoyment of the beauty of all from a single shore. and it is large enough to spread at their feet with all the qualities of the ocean--the depth and vastness and changing surface of the high seas. i.--the lake of van it is about six times as large as the lake of geneva, having an area of some 1300 square miles. its western shore is erroneously laid down in existing maps; and this necessitated a particular survey of that region during my second journey, the result of which has been to invest the lake with a shape of greater symmetry--a central body with two arms, one on the north-east, the other on the south-west. the remainder of the outline i have borrowed from the best available sources, adapting them to the position of van, of which the latitude and longitude are approximately known, and correcting them as well as possible by sketches, and readings to the principal points from the summit of sipan. if my reader will turn to the map which accompanies this work he will, i think, be able to transfer, with the aid of a few illustrations, the features which are there conventionally delineated into a picture visible by the mind's eye. how strange it seems that at the end of the nineteenth century one should be engaged in exploring and mapping this fine country, one of the fairest and most favoured of the old world! how should we be able to explain, still less to justify, the circumstance to some visitor from another planet? it lies about in the centre of the land area of our hemisphere; the climate is bracing, water is abundant, the sun is warm. yet it is so little known to the more civilised peoples that their travellers journey thither with the aid of a compass through districts which are now deserts, but which are well capable of supporting the races that are highest in the human scale. the case would appear to have been much the same during the period of the expansion of greek culture and of the later and beneficent sway of rome. the knowledge displayed of these regions by representative writers like strabo, pliny and ptolemy is, to say the best of it, vague and fabulous. yet strabo, the contemporary of augustus, was a native of asia minor; the countrymen of pliny had carried the roman eagles to the araxes; and ptolemy wrote during the reign of the emperor hadrian whose statue, commemorating his journey through the interior, looked out upon the waves above trebizond. the first of these authorities plainly confuses the position of lake urmi with that of lake van; but he is well acquainted with the essential characteristics of both sheets of water, different and strongly marked as these are. the former is described as largest in area, and second in size to the sea of azof; its name is interpreted to signify the deep blue (kyanê hermêneutheisa). the water is salt; and there are salt works in the neighbourhood. [25] the peculiar properties which actually distinguish the latter exactly tally with the language of strabo, who, speaking next of the lake arsene or thopitis, says that it is charged with nitre, which word would seem with him to signify carbonate of soda, [26] and that it washes clothes as though they had been scoured. he adds that the water is undrinkable and supports only one kind of fish. and he proceeds to relate a circumstance which is repeated and embroidered by pliny, and which is so curious that i cannot refrain from extracting the whole passage from the work of the last-named writer. [27] "meet also and convenient it is to say somewhat of the river tigris. it begins in the land of armenia the greater, issuing out of a great source; and evident to be seen in the very plaine (fonte conspicuo in planitie). the place beareth the name of elongosine (or elegosine, elosine, elegos). the river it selfe so long as it runs slow and softly is named diglito; but when it begins once to carry a more forcible streame it is called tigris, for the swiftnesse thereof; which in the median language betokens a shaft (sagitta). it runs into the lake arethusa; which beareth up aflote all that is cast into it, suffering nothing to sinke; and the vapors that arise out of it carry the sent of nitre. in this lake there is but one kind of fish, and that entreth not into the chanell of tigris as it passeth through, nor more than any fishes swim out of tigris into the water of the lake. in his course and colour both he is unlike, and as he goes may be discerned from the other: and being once past the lake, and incountreth the great mountain taurus, he loseth himself in a certain cave or hole in the ground, and so runs under the hill, untill on the other side thereof he breaketh forth again, and appeares in his likenesse, in a place called zoroanda. that it is the same river it is evident by this, that he carrieth through with him, and showeth in zoroanda, whatsoever was cast into him before he hid himselfe in the cave aforesaid. after this second spring and rising of his he enters into another lake, and runneth through it likewise, named thospites; and once again takes his way under the earth through certain blind gutters, and 25 miles beyond he putteth forth his head about nymphæum. claudius cæsar reporteth, that in the country arrhene, the river tigris runs so neere the river arsania, that when they both swell, and their waters are out, they joyne both their streams together, yet so, as the water is not mingled: for arsanias being the lighter of the twain, swimmeth and floteth over the other for the space wel-neere of 4 miles: but soon after they part asunder, and arsania turneth his course toward the river euphrates, into which he entreth." we need not discuss in this place the phenomenon last mentioned, except to remark that the story may well have been suggested by the propinquity of the sources of the diarbekr branch of the tigris to the stream of the murad, the ancient arsanias. the country of arrhene is probably the same as that better known as arzanene, which is comprised within the present vilayet of diarbekr. our present interest in the passage lies in the statements relative to the tigris, that it flows through two lakes called arethusa and thospites. strabo, in speaking of the same phenomenon, attributes it to one lake only, namely that of arsene or thopitis. the river, according to him, rises in the niphates mountains, by which name he seems to be referring to the nepat of armenian writers, the modern ala dagh. after flowing through lake thopitis it disappears in a chasm at the corner of the lake. it comes to light again in the province of chalonitis; and, although later on he attributes that province to the zagros, i cannot help thinking that the sense which his informants wished to convey was that it came to light in the mountains of the peripheral region. the mention of two lakes by pliny need not perplex us over-much; for his arethusa no doubt denotes the arjish arm of lake van, and his thospites the principal body of water with the city of van, the dhuspas of the cuneiform inscriptions, upon its eastern shore. ptolemy, on the other hand, entangles the subject still further by separating the lakes of areesa--no doubt the arethusa of pliny--and thospitis by four degrees of longitude. this geographer does not give us any indications as to the properties of the lake waters; but he tells us that the tigris is partly a river of armenia and that its sources constitute lake thospitis. the position which he assigns to the town of artemita--which is probably the modern artemid--is further evidence that in speaking of lake areesa or arsissa he was in fact referring to lake van. one cannot help concluding that his thospitis with the town of thospia was actually the self-same sheet of water. the discrepancy in longitude finds a parallel in the degrees assigned by this writer to lakes sevan and urmi. they are really upon the same degree. yet ptolemy, under the names of lychnitis and martianes, assigns to them the difference of over four degrees. i think it is plain that the names thopitis, thospites, arsene, arethusa, and areesa or arsissa, are all applied to the great basin with the two immemorial cities, dhuspas--the modern van--and arjish. moreover, i should be surprised to learn that any lake exhibiting the same properties had been discovered in the belt of mountains south of lake van in which the present sources of the tigris are found. put together, the scraps of information retailed by the classical geographers go to show that in their days there existed a widely spread belief that the tigris drew its waters from the tableland of armenia, flowed through a lake strongly impregnated with soda, and disappeared in a chasm at its further and narrow extremity (mychos) to come to light again on the further side of the barrier of taurus or, in other words, of the parapet of mountains which are aligned upon the south coast of lake van. the mention of two lakes by pliny and ptolemy may point to a former isolation of the arjish arm. i have taken the trouble to set forth these accounts--though not with all the care that i should desire--because they have an important bearing upon the subject to which i now proceed--a brief notice of some of the peculiarities which distinguish lake van. it may not be out of place to cast one's look a little further so as to include the other great lakes. that of urmi in the persian frontier province of azerbaijan has an area of 1823 square miles. its extreme length from north to south is about 80 miles, and its breadth from east to west 24 miles. it resembles its neighbour on the west in constituting an isolated basin, many rivers flowing in but none out. on the other hand its insignificant depth invests it with the character of a lagoon; the average being probably not more than 20 feet and the maximum some 45 or 50 feet. evaporation must be very rapid over such a sheet of water; and it is at once situated further south than the lake of van and at a level which is lower by 1500 feet (lake urmi, 4100 feet; lake van, 5637 feet). abnormal salinity is the special feature about the waters of lake urmi; and extensive beds of rock salt are found in their vicinity. it has been estimated that they are six times as salt as the ocean, though only three-fifths as heavily charged with saline matter as the waters of the dead sea. viewed from a height they are coloured a deep azure, a characteristic usual with salt lakes. if they are allowed to dry upon the body of the bather it is as though he had been covered with flour, and neither fish nor molluscs can live within them. the shores of the lake, which are in general low, are impregnated with salt; and the margin, upon which are found fragments of fossil coral and shell, shines like a white ribbon by the side of the blue. three boats of not more than 20 tons burden compose the entire fleet of this inland sea. [28] very different is the description which may be given of lake gökcheh (the blue) or sevan--the lychnitis of ptolemy, the lake of gegham or of geghark in armenian literature. it is situated at a level of 6340 feet, and is therefore the most elevated, if also the smallest, of the three great sheets of water upon the surface of the tableland. it lies at a distance of about 130 miles north of the northern shore of lake urmi, and close to the barrier of the mountains of the northern peripheral region. its waters are sweet and support delicious salmon trout; they are said to attain a depth of 360 feet, or, according to another observer, of 425 feet. [29] gökcheh is in fact essentially an alpine lake, lying restfully in the lap of a circle of mountains of which those on the southern shore are of eruptive volcanic origin. it has an outlet on the west to the river zanga, and a portion of its waters find their way through this channel to the araxes. the balance of opinion inclines to the view that this connection is of artificial origin; and when the lake is low, especially in autumn, the stream will be almost dry. [30] but both urmi and gökcheh sink into obscurity when compared to the lake of van. almost as large as the one and perhaps deeper than the other, it at once combines some of the characteristics of either basin and adds others essentially its own. like urmi its waters are heavily charged, though with soda rather than with salt. its great elevation and its juxtaposition to the mountains of the peripheral region recall corresponding features in gökcheh. but like a book which may borrow much from the work of other writers, and yet produce an effect on the reader which is wholly new, so one opens the landscape of lake van with that particular emotion which only very beautiful and original objects can produce. with the wondrous pieces of natural architecture about the margins of this inland sea my reader will become perfectly familiar as this work proceeds. my present object is to fly very low to the ground, and to notice such facts as appeal to the mind rather than to the eye. the extreme length of the lake would seem to measure 78 miles, and the breadth from north to south of the principal body about 32 miles. to all appearance it is very deep except at the north-east and south-west extremities; but no systematic soundings have been taken to my knowledge, though it would be extremely interesting to know whether indications can be traced of the arjish arm having once composed a separate unit. the principal streams enter the easterly portion of the basin; they are the erishat or irshat near akantz, the bendimahi chai, the marmed and the khoshab. several little rivers are collected in the delta below the old akhlat, and quite a nice stream cascades into the lake at the neighbouring village of karmuch, which probably collects a portion of the drainage of the plain between nimrud and lake nazik. no issue of the sea has yet been discovered. none of the copious springs which feed the tigris on the southern side of the parapet of mountain, quite close to the flood washing its northern slopes, has yet been shown to possess any of the strongly marked qualities characteristic of the waters of lake van. one of the most remarkable of these springs is situated near the south-west corner of the lake, at sach in the güzel dere or beauteous valley--a valley with a specially appropriate name. [31] it has been examined by major maunsell, who describes it as issuing from the base of a cliff and immediately constituting a stream 50 yards wide and 18 inches deep. it is quite possible that this source of the tigris may have given colour to the belief of the ancients that the river flowed through the lake and found an exit at its further end by an underground channel. another scarcely less interesting fountain in the neighbourhood is that of norshen at the head of the plain of mush. it rises in a circular pool with a diameter of 105 feet, from which it wells over into a stream which runs to the euphrates. the natives hold that it is in connection with the lake in the crater of nimrud, and relate how a shepherd, whose staff, weighted with a small parcel of coin, had sunk below the surface of that deep mere, had one day been astonished to see the lost object eddying in the current of the pool of norshen. careful scrutiny of the spring during my second journey established the conviction that it affords no outlet to lake van. moreover, its position and the delicious flavour of its water point to its being derived from the limestones of the range on the south of the plain. analysis of the waters of lake van has furnished results which are described as remarkable by the eminent chemist to whom i submitted the sample which i brought home with me, and which i obtained by swimming out from the rocky shore at erkizan, some distance east of the abandoned ottoman fortress of akhlat. the amount of suspended matter has been found to be very trifling; while the proportion of solids in solution, principally carbonates of potassium and sodium, chlorides and sulphates, is very large indeed. it is estimated that the alkalinity is equal to rather more than 3 1/4 ounces of ordinary soda crystal dissolved in a gallon of water. the presence of a little silica accompanies the alkali. the account given by strabo of the cleansing properties of the lake is thus confirmed in a striking manner. indeed, the bather issues from his swim as though his limbs had been rubbed with soap--but with a soap of extremely agreeable quality, leaving a velvety feeling upon the skin. the great buoyancy of the waves enhances the pleasure of such exercise, and they are at once pellucid and sparkling under the ruffle of the breeze. on the other hand they are most unpleasant to the taste. the colour of the sheet of water cannot be given in a single word; and indeed it varies with extraordinary range of scale. a cobalt of great brilliancy is perhaps the most normal hue; but a certain milky paleness is seldom quite absent, becoming invested at morning and evening with an infinite number of delicate tints. [32] only one kind of fish is found in lake van, resembling a large bleak. but, often as i have bathed, i have never seen one gliding through the water, or surprised a shoal while following the shore. it is possible that they adhere to the estuaries of the rivers, up which they make their way in large numbers to spawn during the season of spring freshets. it is then that they are caught in great quantities by means of barriers placed at the mouth of the streams with baskets resting against one side. the fish leap the barrier and fall into the baskets, after which they are dried and salted. seagulls and cormorants haunt the lake, but are not very numerous; nor have i observed a pelican, although these birds are conspicuous on the adjacent lake of nazik together with many varieties of smaller waterfowl. the main body of the sea never freezes over in winter, rigorous as that season is at this high altitude. a feature which has occupied considerable attention, especially among german writers, is the fluctuation in level of these armenian lakes. there can be no doubt that they are all three subject to more or less pronounced periodical changes; and various reasons have been assigned. do these fluctuations arise from the opening or closing of subterraneous issues or from movements of the earth's crust? or may they be accounted for by ordinary climatic conditions, such as the fall of snow and rain and the consequent variation in the volume of the rivers and in the activity of springs? the economic state of the country and the extent of irrigated land within the watershed has been recognised as a factor, but a factor of insufficient importance to produce the recorded results during the period reviewed. in the case of lake van we are precluded from attributing these fluctuations to the agency of subterraneous issues. not a single one of such has yet been discovered. nor am i aware that any such outlets to gökcheh or urmi have been noted by any traveller. the evidence which may be collected in the case of all goes to show that the islands are as much affected as the adjacent shores. it may therefore seem unlikely that the changes arise from movements at the bottom of the lake; for these would lift or depress the islands to some extent. [33] if i venture to join in the discussion i would submit the suggestion that we should for convenience group the phenomena under two heads. temporary variations should be distinguished from any differences of a more permanent nature the existence of which it may be possible to prove. [34] it cannot be expected that we should be able to collect evidence of a satisfactory nature in respect of the changes which would fall within the first category. we have to rely upon the statements and even upon the inferences which may be derived from the writings of travellers. even if we could rest contented with the accuracy and sufficiency of such testimony in the case of lakes which are so much affected by the melting of the winter snows, it would not establish, except in a very approximate manner, the beginnings and ends of the successive phases. still, the subject is so interesting that it is worth while to collate the observations of which record may be found. in the subjoined table i have endeavoured to perform this task; and it has already been undertaken with great diligence by dr. sieger. it will be seen that a certain correspondence may occasionally be traced in the periodical fluctuations which have affected the three sheets of water. [35] perhaps the most remarkable evidence in this sense is that which is furnished by the almost simultaneous observations for 1898. messrs. belck and lehmann for lake gökcheh, mr. günther for lake urmi, and my companion, mr. f. oswald, and myself for lake van, all bear witness to a rise in quite recent years. our own investigations were made during the month of july of that year, and were confined to the westerly inlets of the lake. a prominent feature about these inlets was the tendency of the streams to form shallow lagoons behind a narrow barrier of alluvial sand. on the margin or even in the bed of such lagoons one might often see a group of willows. some had been immersed a foot or two by the rise in the waters; and, while their neighbours on dry land were green and thriving, these were quite dead. the most notable example was observed by oswald within the little broken-down crater on the southern shore opposite akhlat. it receives the lake within its enfolding arms. we have called it sheikh ora after a little village of that name which was discovered in its south-east corner. oswald sailed across to examine this interesting spot while i was busily engaged at akhlat. between the village and the water he came across a small grove of willows upon which the lake had gained. those above the water line were evidently flourishing; but those which stood in the lake had been killed and their bark withered, so that many of the stems were quite gaunt and bare. the average diameter of the trunks of the dead and the living was not appreciably different. it was therefore not a question of an advance of the lake dating back very many years. on the other hand there had been time for the chemical properties of the water to exercise their destructive effect. tabular statement of the evidence of travellers in respect of the fluctuations in level of the three great lakes. =====+=================================+=====+===============================+=====+=========================== year.| lake van. |year.| lake urmi. |year.| lake gökcheh. =====+=================================+=====+===============================+=====+=========================== 1806 |jaubert attests a gradual rise | 1811|morier attests a relapse. | | | in the waters, threatening | | the former island of | | | arjish and the suburbs of | | shahi has become joined | | | van (voyage en arménie, | | to the mainland by a | | | etc., p. 139). | | swampy isthmus during | | | | | the last two or three | | | | | years (second journey, | | | | | p. 287, seq.). | | | | | | | | | 1812|progressive relapse of | | | | to | about 10 feet during this | | | | 1829| period attested by monteith | | | | | (j.r.g.s. 1833, | | | | | vol. iii. p. 56). | | | | | | | 1838 |brant attests a relapse which, | 1834|relapse attested by fraser | | | according to the natives, has | | since his last visit in 1822 | | | effected a gain of one mile | | (travels in kurdistan, | | | in ten years to the plain on | | pp. 47 seq., and narrative | 1830|a low level, perhaps | which arjish stands (journal | | of khorassan, p. 321). | | a minimum, is attested | r.g.s. 1840, x. p. 403). | | | | by monteith. | | | | | the canal to the 1838 |loftus records a rise on native | 1838|autumn. rise attested in | | zanga is an insignifi | authority, commencing during | | general terms by rawlinson | | cant runnel, supplying | the winter. in twelve | | (j.r.g.s. 1840, vol. | | the river with the | months, viz., by the winter | | x. p. 8) and more precisely | | smallest portion of | of 1839, the lake is said to | | in 1839, by perkins | | its waters (j.r.g.s. | have risen nearly 6 feet. in | | on native testimony | | 1833, vol. iii. p. 43). | the next two years, viz., by | | (residence in persia, | | | 1841, it is said to have risen | | andover, 1843, p. 394). | 1856|lieut. owerin of the | altogether 10 to 12 feet, | | rise has been gradual. | | topographical staff | necessitating the evacuation | | | | of the caucasus, | of arjish by the inhabitants, | | | | estimates that nearly | the place becoming an island | | | | 1/8th of the waters of | (quarterly journal geol. | | | | the lake find an | soc. 1855, p. 318). | | | | egress through the | | | | | canal to the zanga 1847 |hommaire de hell attests a | | | | (petermann's mitt. | relapse (voyage en turquie, | | | | 1858, p. 471). other | etc., quoted by sieger, | | | | evidence goes to | schwankungen, p. 6). | | | | show that in the | | | | | forties and fifties 1850 |layard attests a rise "during | | | | the lake was certainly | the last few years." many | | | | higher than in | villages on the margin are | | | | monteith's time. | partly submerged. iskele, | | | | | the port of van, is still in | | | | | habited; but the greater part | | | 1859|relapse during this | of the village is under water | | | to | period is assigned to | (nineveh and babylon, p. | | | 1879| the lake by brandt | 408). [layard was perhaps | | | | (zoologischer anzeiger, | only witnessing the effects of | | | | ii. 523 seq.), | the rise which commenced | | | | from whose observations | 1838.] | | | | we may infer | | | | | a minimum about 1852 |loftus attests a considerable | 1852|a relapse is attested by | | 1879. islands had | relapse during recent years, | | perkins to loftus (quarterly | | formed; these again | said by the natives to have | | journal geol. soc. | | had become a peninsula. | commenced in 1850. arjish | | 1855, p. 307). | | the canal to | is connected by a passable | | | | the zanga seems to | isthmus to the mainland for | 1856|rise may be deduced from | | have been scarcely | eight months in the year | | n. von seidlitz who | | operative at all. | (op. cit. p. 318). | | seems from a distance to | | | | | have seen shahi, an island | | 1863 |strecker records a continuous | | in october (petermann's | 1891|relapse has continued. | rise during the years prece | | mitt. 1858, pp. 228, 230). | | trees planted | ding his writing, as evidenced | | | | thirty years ago | by turkish officials | | | | on the margin of the | of his acquaintance (peter | | | | water at the island | mann's mitt. 1863, pp. 259 | | | | of sevan are now | seq.) | | | | standing some 50 | | | | | feet away, and some 1875 |a maximum at about this | | | | 7 to 10 feet above | period may be inferred from | | | | the lake level. (belck | the accounts given by bishop | | | | in globus, vol. lxv. | poghos of lim to dr. belck | | | | p. 302). | (globus, vol. lxiv. p. 157), | | | | | and by the rev. mr. cole of | | | 1898|rise dating back | bitlis to dr. butyka (globus, | | | | several years is at | vol. lxv. p. 73). from this | | | | tested by belck and | period there appears to have | | | | lehmann. the trees | been a gradual relapse until | 1898|günther chronicles a rise | | alluded to above are | 1892, and possibly later. | | during the last two years | | now standing in the | | | on native evidence | | water (zeitschrift 1898 |evidence of oswald and myself | | (j.r.g.s. november | | für ethnologie, 1898 | infers a rise during the | | 1899, p. 510). | | p. 414). | last few years. | | | | =====+=================================+=====+===============================+=====+=========================== the same phenomenon of a rise in level was apparent on the margin of the large lake in the crater on nimrud. there the brushwood, representing the growth of many years, was submerged; and much had already perished from want of sustenance. all the evidence points to the fact that such changes are of a temporary nature, and that a period of increase is followed by one of decline. the most probable explanation is that they are due to climatic conditions, which, it is well known, are variously operative over cycles of years. in the absence of any observatory in these countries this question is largely a matter of surmise or, at best, of inference. the existence of such periodical fluctuations may be regarded as having been established; it remains to consider the changes of a more permanent order. we must not forget that at a period relatively recent in geological time this lake of van was but a part of an extensive inland sea, which appears gradually to have become divided up into a series of basins. there can be little doubt that down to quite a late geological epoch no such barrier had been constituted between this basin and that of the plain of mush, which immediately adjoins it upon the west. the waters have left their mark upon the rocky boundaries of that plain; and to their action i do not think we should err in attributing the peculiar appearance of the basal slopes of the kerkür dagh, where they face the great depression of mush. to the same period perhaps belong several terraces which may be traced upon the bush-grown face of the southern coast of lake van between garzik and the güzel dere. the highest of these is perhaps the most conspicuous, and may be situated at an elevation of a hundred feet or more above the present level. just as the waters of the plain of mush were drained away through a narrow opening in the mountains which hem it in upon the west, so it is quite likely that a similar vent was offered by the gorge which cuts through the parapet of taurus in the direction of bitlis, and at the present day affords an easy passage to the caravans from the plains of armenia into the defiles of kurdistan. loftus chronicles a tradition that the waters of lake van cover a plain that was once studded with villages and gardens. the streams of arjish and the bendimahi chai--and presumably the khoshab--are said to have met and formed one large river about midway between arjish and bitlis. his informants were under the belief that it had issued from the plain through a hole in the earth; and that when this passage had been closed up by a sudden convulsion the present lake formed. [36] this story is at least not lacking in verisimilitude, so far as the existence of a former river is concerned. this river would have probably flowed to the tigris, of which it would have been the principal branch. the cause of its being dammed up was perhaps the outpouring of lavas from nimrud, which have formed the plateau between tadvan and the head of the plain of mush--a plateau which rises to a height of 680 feet above the lake, and, extending across from nimrud to the face of taurus in the south, chokes the entrance to the bitlis gorge. it is this barrier which actually maintains the lake of van. no eruptions on this scale are recorded during the historical period; and, of course, it is not impossible that they were originally submarine. these phenomena, which are partly attested by the ancient lake terraces and in part suggested by the general structure of the country, belong to an epoch which, if quite modern from the standpoint of the geologist, probably lies beyond the range of the archæologist as well as of the historian. much the same conditions as at the present day appear to have prevailed during the historical period--a vast sheet of water, deep and translucent, dammed up by the volcanic barrier at its westerly extremity. i think there can be no doubt that the permanent tendency of this sheet of water has been to rise in level. moreover, all the evidence is to the effect that this tendency has been operative in the case of the other two seas. dr. belck has recorded that in the year 1890 during the month of july he came across a little lake at the eastern end of lake gökcheh, separated from it by a tongue of land scarcely more than 55 yards broad, and connected with it by a stream descending from the mountains and piercing through the isthmus. on the margin of this shallow lagoon, near the outflow of the stream, he discovered an ancient armenian graveyard of which the stones were under water. when he returned in august of the following year they were only just dry. his visit coincided with the latest stage of a period of decline; and it seems certain that since the time when the cemetery was constituted the norm about which the fluctuations oscillate had risen in a marked degree. the same traveller draws our attention to the interesting circumstance that the three last lines of the cuneiform inscription of rusas the first (c. 730-714 b.c.), cut in the face of the rock overlooking that same northern lake, have been almost completely destroyed by the erosion of the waters, although placed just above their level in 1891. it seems incredible that the vannic king should have engraved his memorial in a situation where it would be exposed to the periodical floods. [37] as regards lake urmi i need only recall the important discovery of mr. günther in 1898. in the islands of that sea he found many species of living animals which could not have crossed the stretch of salt water, amounting to a distance of some 10 miles, that at present separates their homes from the shore. in his opinion the zoology affords conclusive testimony of these islands having been joined to the mainland at no very distant date. upon one of them he found the skeleton of a wild sheep. [38] the evidence which may be collected upon the shores of lake van all points in the same direction of a progressive upward tendency. strecker has thrown out the suggestion that this process may be accountable for the junction of the arjish arm to the main body; and that we may therefore attach some credence to the statements of pliny that in his time there were two lakes. [39] however this may be, we are not dependent upon such hypotheses, or upon the stories current of submerged causeways or bridges. the three old fortresses of akhlat, adeljivas and arjish all bear testimony to a considerable rise in the level of the lake since the days when they were built. the walls of the first two on the side of the water have either fallen in or are being slowly undermined. arjish has been permanently abandoned by its inhabitants. immemorial villages, like that of kizvag between akhlat and tadvan, are being menaced by the latest periodical increase, which seems to have commenced about 1895. nature herself speaks eloquently in the same sense. an ancient walnut-tree which stands on the rocky bank of the lake in the gardens of erkizan, a quarter of akhlat, had already been deprived of a great portion of its foothold when we encamped beneath its boughs in 1898. in the sheikh ora crater a giant mulberry, which may have been some 500 years old, was standing with half its roots in the water and was already doomed. the most obvious explanation of this gradual rise in the norm of the lake level is furnished by a cause, which must be constantly operative, namely the increase of sediment deposited upon the bottom. but whether this factor by itself be sufficient to have produced such important changes is a question upon which i am not qualified to pronounce an opinion. [40] ii.--the ancient empire of van deep in the curve of the bay, which with minor indentations extends from the promontory and island of ktutz to artemid, lies the isolated rock with the mediæval city at its southern foot and the long line of gardens stretching eastwards across the plain towards the slopes of mount varag. these various features are disclosed or suggested in my illustration (fig. 123), which was taken from those distant slopes. but before i invite my reader to explore the ancient township, something must be said upon a topic which here fascinates the traveller's interest equally with the characteristics of the strange lake beside which he sojourns. i have already on several occasions remarked upon the insignificance of the human element in these armenian landscapes. at van for the first time we become sensible of a different impression, derived, not indeed from the peoples who now inhabit the country, but from the monuments of a remote civilisation which abound in the neighbourhood, and of which the spirit is wafted towards us across the ages. here the massive substructures of an aqueduct, there the cyclopean masonry of the fragment of a wall tell the tale of man's mastery over nature, and insensibly conjure the vision of the plains crossed by great roads, the rivers spanned by bridges, the fertilising waters brought from afar. our curiosity is enhanced by the inscriptions in the cuneiform character which are deeply incised in the hard stone of the various works. but it rises to the degree of fervour when we survey the rock of van, clearly recognised as the very navel of this old polity. its precipitous sides are quite a library of inscriptions, carved upon their face in spaces polished by human hands. square-cut shadows disclose the entrances of chambers hewn into the calcareous mass at a considerable height above the level of the plain. and something in the spirit of the works and in the choice of situation at once distinguishes them from the rock dwellings, such as those at vardzia near akhalkalaki, with which we have become familiar during the course of our journey south. it is evident that in their original purpose they were only a feature of a large design which mocks the scale of the existing fortifications. by what people were they inscribed, these regular lines of elegant characters; and who were the kings who sojourned upon this delightful platform, which seems to have been raised by a freak of nature in the midst of the plain with its westerly extremity almost reaching into the lake? armenians, persians, arabs, seljuks, tartars, turkomans, turks--all have come and passed or stayed, and none have been able to return an answer to the question invited by the writings on the citadel. they have had recourse to the resources of oriental legend, or have been content with the explanation that these inscriptions are talismans, sealing treasures long since buried in the heart of the rock. the fame of the place is widely spread over all the surrounding country, forming as it does the kernel of a populous city on the confines of armenia and kurdistan. it has been described by the national historian of the armenians in terms which in many respects portray the existing features in a singularly faithful manner. moses of khorene attributes the works to an assyrian queen semiramis, and relates on the authority of mar abas katina and from chaldæan sources the story of her fruitless passion for the reigning king of armenia, ara, and of the death of that monarch while resisting her endeavours to obtain his person by force. the queen is said to have accompanied her armies to the northern kingdom, and to have founded the city as a summer residence for her luxurious court. the tale is beset by incidents which reveal its fabulous nature; and the historian informs us that several such legends relating to semiramis were current among his own countrymen. [41] at the same time he deplores the lack of culture among his ancestors, to which he ascribes the absence of native annals. [42] it has been reserved for our own age to penetrate the mystery, which, indeed, is only now as i write being dispelled. quite early in the nineteenth century, while the future excavators of the assyrian cities were either unborn or were still in their nurseries, a young french student, jean antoine saint martin, the son of a tradesman in paris, was fired by the account of the inscriptions at van contained in the pages of moses of khorene. [43] mainly through his efforts the french government--always solicitous of the interests of culture--were induced to despatch a mission to armenia in 1827, engaging the services of a young german professor, friedrich eduard schulz. the first report of the explorer was published by saint martin in 1828. [44] by a piece of misfortune, happily rare in the annals of travel in these countries, schulz was murdered by the kurds in 1829. but his papers were recovered and brought to paris, where they seem to have awaited in obscurity the awakening of interest in oriental antiquities which was consequent upon the discoveries of burnouf, of lassen, and of rawlinson. an instructive memoir, together with copies of forty-two inscriptions at van and in the neighbourhood, appeared under his name in 1840 in the pages of the journal asiatique. schulz's copies have been found to be in the main remarkably accurate, although he had not the smallest knowledge of the language in which they were composed. little by little the contents of the tablets in a similar character which are spread over persia yielded up the secrets which they had so long maintained; and the excavations in mesopotamia furnished orientalists with the necessary material to enable them to understand the languages of the cuneiform inscriptions furnished in such profusion by the buried cities of the plains. but with the exception of the great tablet in three columns and as many tongues which is such a conspicuous object on the southern face of the rock of van (schulz, nos. ix., x., and xi.), and an inscription on a stone in the remains of a wall at its base (schulz, no. i.), none of the vannic records agreed with the syllabaries already discovered, or could be translated into any known language. schulz had indeed perceived that the first of these monuments contained the names and titles of xerxes, son of darius; and when layard visited van and took new copies in 1850, it had come to be recognised that this tablet of xerxes resembled other achæmenian inscriptions, and was very nearly word for word the same as those of this persian monarch at hamadan and persepolis. [45] the characters upon the stone in the wall were exactly the same as those of assyrian writings; and, although the inscription had not been satisfactorily deciphered when layard's book was published, that investigator was able to discern that the language also was assyrian, while that of all the remainder, in spite of the similarity in character, was peculiar to van, and baffled decipherment. in the meanwhile other equally perplexing inscriptions had been discovered in districts of the tableland remote from the city of semiramis; and a partially successful endeavour had been made by the english orientalist hincks to read the mysterious texts. [46] but the problem remained unsolved for very many years, while the stock of inscriptions collected by travellers in various parts of armenia was continually increasing. a great step forward was made by the discovery by m. stanislas guyard, announced in 1880, [47] that the phrase at the conclusion of many of the vannic texts represented the imprecatory formula found in the same place in their assyrian and achæmenian counterparts; and this enabled professor sayce of oxford to proceed rapidly with their decipherment, upon which he had been engaged for some years. [48] mainly as the result of his labours we are now enabled to gather their meaning, and to add a new language and a new people to the museum of the ancient oriental world. since he has written, the number of known vannic texts has been doubled by the german scholars and travellers, professor lehmann and dr. belck. they have also, in a series of most instructive articles, called up the vanished civilisation from the grave. [49] we now know who built van and by whom these tablets were engraved upon the face of the citadel. as the horizon opens with each advance in our acquisition of the vocabulary and with each addition to the catalogues of texts, we are introduced to no obscure dynasty which slept secure behind the mountains, but to a splendid monarchy which for at least two centuries rivalled the claims of assyria to the dominion of the ancient world. the native designation of the imperial people was that of khaldians or children of khaldis, just as the assyrians reflect the name of their god, assur. the constitution of the state was that of a theocracy in which khaldis occupied the supreme place. the company of the remaining deities were spoken of as his ministers, and the whole land appears to have borne his name. [50] it was the wrath of khaldis that was invoked against whosoever should destroy the tablets; and with him were coupled in a kind of trinity the god of the air and the sun-god. the seat of khaldis was the city of dhuspas, the modern van; and all conquests were made by the king in his name. dhuspas was the capital of the territory of biaina, from which the king derived his title. we can readily trace through literature the corruption of the word biaina into the existing form, van; it figures in the shape of buana in the writings of ptolemy and in that of iban as late as cedrenus. [51] in the course of time it had come to be applied to the city; while the name of the city was transferred to the province in which it was placed, and became the dosp or tosp of armenian writers. [52] the contemporaries and rivals of the vannic monarchs, the rulers of assyria, styled the northern kingdom urardhu or urarthu; and this is the same name that appears in the bible in the familiar form of ararat. they make no mention of the local appellation of biaina; although it seems possible that the district called bitanu or bitani in the assyrian inscriptions may be connected with the latter name. [53] on the other hand there can be little doubt that the turuspa of the assyrian annals is the dhuspas of the monuments of van. the khaldians take their place in this new chapter of history at least as early as the latter half of the ninth century before christ. their language was neither semitic nor indo-european; and it is therefore impossible to connect them either with the assyrians, who were semites, or with the armenians, who belong to the indo-european family. they ruled over the tableland which is now armenia before the armenians had appeared upon the scene; and it was the movement of races with which was connected the armenian immigration that seems ultimately to have occasioned their dispersal and the overthrow of their power. their dominion appears to have been due in no small degree to the happy choice of van as their capital. assyrian history ranges beyond the probable date of that foundation, to a period when urardhu was perhaps an obscure province in the neighbourhood of the modern rowanduz in kurdistan. the assyrian armies in their marches northwards were opposed by a confederacy of petty princes whose country is called nairi in the assyrian inscriptions. that loose term evidently embraced a considerable portion of the armenian tableland; for it was in the plain of melazkert that the assyrian king, tiglath-pileser i. (c. 1100 b.c.), [54] overthrew the united forces of the kings of nairi and erected a memorial tablet which has been preserved to the present day. [55] in a restricted sense the name nairi was applied by the assyrians to the province about the middle and upper course of the great zab; and the lakes of van and urmi, between which that territory was situated, were both known as the upper seas or seas of the land of nairi, lake van being sometimes distinguished as the upper sea of the west, and lake urmi as the eastern or even as the lower sea. [56] the kingdom of urardhu is for the first time mentioned by the assyrians in the reign of ashur-nasir-pal (885-860 b.c.); but it is not before the ensuing reign of shalmaneser ii. (860-825 b.c.) that we have certain evidence of an assyrian army marching into armenia to attack the territories not of a league of nairi princes but of a monarch of urardhu. this prince, of whom no records have been discovered in armenia, is called arame. his capital, of which the site is at present unknown, but which certainly lay to the north of lake van, bears the name of arzasku. arame was signally defeated in 857 or 856 b.c. and abandoned his capital. his cities as far as the sources of the euphrates (murad?) were taken by shalmaneser in 845 or 844 b.c. when next we hear of a king of urardhu we are able to recognise in his name the earliest of the rulers who appear in the vannic texts. and this monarch, sarduris the first, the contemporary of the same shalmaneser and his antagonist about 833 b.c., was the founder of the fortress of van. no better position for a stronghold against a power operating from the lowlands in the south could have been discovered by the builders of an empire on the armenian plains. in the later phases of the history of armenia the movements of empires and peoples have generally proceeded between the east and the west. against such currents the city of van composes a minor obstacle, which they avoid on their more normal and northerly course. always secure with a fleet on the lake and the passes of mount varag fortified, the true military value of the place only advances into first-rate importance when the centres of the hostile forces lie in mesopotamia. it is screened in that direction by perhaps the most impenetrable section of the entire outer or iranian arc of the peripheral mountains which support the tableland. [57] moreover, the circumstance that the arc has snapped and sent out a splinter into the districts on the north, represented by the mountains in which the great zab has its source, and, further north, by the elevated but not impassable waterparting between the basin of lake van and that of the araxes, has had the effect of concealing van within the fork of a twofold parapet where it reposes with its back against the complex barrier and defies attack from the south or south-east. the approach from the west along the southern shore of the lake is interrupted by the spurs of the great range; and the assyrian armies were compelled to make the détour by the plain of melazkert, gaining the plateau by one of the passes north of diarbekr and leaving it upon their return home through one of the passages east of rowanduz where the sea of mountains settles down to a regular course. such an immense circuit through a hostile country necessitated resources on a vast scale, the existence of which among the assyrians fills the mind with admiration when we contemplate the squalor of the oriental empires of the present day. but there can be no doubt that all the advantages lay on the side of their northern adversaries, to whom was offered a reasonable chance of annihilating their hosts, or, in the event of defeat, the secure alternative of shutting themselves up in their capital and there awaiting the passing over of the storm. these considerations serve to explain the comparative immunity and the rapid development of the empire of the successors of sarduris the first; at a time, too, when assyria was governed by such warlike monarchs as shamshi-ramman and ramman-nirari. [58] it was reserved for tiglath-pileser the third to beard the lion in his den, and to appear before the walls of van. but even this gigantic figure failed to capture the citadel, although he appears to have destroyed the garden town at its feet (735 b.c.). [59] the ultimate effects of his campaign may be measured by the fact that the inveterate and sometimes successful adversary of sargon (722-705 b.c.) was the vannic king rusas the first. and the northern empire is still a force with which the assyrians have to reckon as late as ashur-bani-pal, the sardanapalus of the greeks (668-626 b.c.). so far as our knowledge at present extends we may regard sarduris the first as the initiator of a remarkable and far-reaching revolution among the peoples of the tableland. the title which this monarch bears, that of king of nairi, as compared with that of his successors, kings of biaina, [60] connects him with the earlier period of the confederacy of nairi princes which his dynasty under the ægis of the god khaldis was destined to supplant. his son, ispuinis, and his grandson menuas at once extended the empire and added to the works upon the citadel of van; and the latter was the principal author of that magnificent canal which to the present day under the fanciful name of shamiram-su, or river of semiramis, conducts the waters of the khoshab to the suburbs of van. [61] menuas may, therefore, be considered as the founder of the garden town; although at that time it is probable that it was situated south of the citadel rather than, as is now the case, at some distance to the east. [62] during the reign of the successor of menuas, argistis the first, the vannic dynasty reached the zenith of its power. the kinglets of the valley of the araxes had been dispossessed of their fertile territories, and the great city which was afterwards known as armavir rose from the banks of the river in honour of the god of van. the whole extent of the armenian tableland, such as it is described in the present work, with the possible exception of some of the most northerly districts, was subject to the rulers residing on the shore of the great lake; and their inscriptions recording conquests are found as far east as the province south of lake urmi and as far west as the euphrates near malatia. in that direction they came in contact with the hittites; while their neighbours on the east were none other than the minni of scripture, residing in the more southerly portion of the urmi basin and the adjacent districts. [63] the inscriptions on the rock of van enumerate the feats of arms of argistis the first and sarduris the second. no records have yet been found further north than lake gökcheh, kanlija, near alexandropol, and hasan kala, near erzerum. south of their capital the wild districts of shatakh, norduz and mukus have been scoured by travellers in quest of such monuments, but hitherto without result. with one exception no systematic excavations have yet been made upon any of the sites of the cities and strongholds of the vannic kings. when these shall have been undertaken we may expect to have drawn an impressive picture of the attainments of their people in the arts. the single instance of such efforts--and it is not one of which we need be proud [64]--has been directed to the low limestone hills which overlook the gardens of van upon the north, and which in their neighbourhood bear the name of toprak kala. in or about the years 1879 and 1880 operations were conducted upon this eminence under the direction, as i have gathered, of captain clayton, then our consul at van, and of mr. hormuzd rassam. [65] tunnels were opened into that part of the site which disclosed the buried remains of an ancient settlement, and which was found to have been covered with buildings composed for the most part of sun-dried bricks. the most important result of the enterprise was the laying bare of a temple, still containing quite a number of bronze shields with cuneiform inscriptions, embossed and chased with ornamental designs and the figures of animals. some of these may be seen in the british museum and others in the museum at berlin. they represent votive offerings on the part of the kings, and were suspended upon the walls in the manner shown by an existing bas-relief from the palace of sargon at khorsabad. indeed that sculpture portrays the destruction by the assyrians of the temple of khaldis in the city of mutsatsir, not very far from the present town of rowanduz. the dimensions of the edifice were small, only 69 feet by 44 feet, measured at the foundations. but the walls were built of great blocks of hewn stone, and traces of a pavement in a kind of mosaic were found. the doors appear to have been of bronze. outside the entrance stood a block of marble which was hollowed out and was probably used for sacrifices. at the time of my visit little was to be seen of this interesting structure, for the vandal townspeople had removed its masonry for building purposes. large faced blocks, taken thence and perhaps from other edifices, were being rolled down the hillside. only a fraction of the objects found was brought away by messrs. clayton and rassam; their workmen abstracted the remainder, from whose hands some portions have filtered into europe. toprak kala has quite recently (1898) been the scene of further excavations, this time on the part of messrs. belck and lehmann. they have dug out the substructures of the temple to its foundations, cleared away the rubbish which obstructed a long subterraneous passage, debouching into a large chamber which may have served as a reservoir, and which was fed by an artificial duct deriving its water from a neighbouring spring; and discovered a wine-cellar containing colossal vats, some engraved with vannic writing and one with a persian cuneiform inscription. we also owe to their labours the discovery not far from the temple of a space which seems to have been set apart to receive the bones of the sacrificial animals and of the human beings, captives of war, who had been offered up to the god. they have acquired numerous objects, of silver as well as of bronze and iron, including weapons and ornaments of various kinds. but the principal service which they have rendered is the identification of toprak kala with the city of rusas mentioned in the stele near keshish göl on the slopes of mount varag. the inscription on that monument, if rightly deciphered, leaves little doubt that king rusas, probably the first of that name, made use of that little lake as a partly natural and partly artificial reservoir, and conducted its waters along the foot of the toprak kala heights to the region occupied by the present site of the garden town. the earliest ruler mentioned on the shields is rusas the second; while we know from their contents that the temple was built or restored by rusas the third in honour of the god khaldis. all the indications favour the assumption that in consequence of the depredations of tiglath-pileser the third some change was made in the disposition of the city. the heights of toprak kala seem in some degree to have usurped the importance of the citadel, and to have been used as defences for the extension of the gardens in that direction. [66] the culture of the vannic kingdom was perhaps borrowed from the assyrians and was certainly derived from the mesopotamian plains. the legend of the passion of the queen of assyria, the consort of the eponymous hero ninus, for an armenian king who suffers death at her hands and is restored to life, [67] contains, so far as it expresses the intercourse of the pre-armenian peoples, a considerable kernel of truth. ara and semiramis are none other than tammuz and istar, the adonis and the aphrodite of the hellenic myth; and the advent from assyria of the voluptuous queen in quest of a beautiful but reluctant lover may be connected with the introduction from abroad of the worship of istar. [68] however this may be, it is certain that the earliest inscriptions found at van are in the assyrian language and character; while those of the successors of sarduris the first, although composed in the vannic tongue, show but slight deviations from the cuneiform writing as practised at nineveh. there is evidence to show that long after the disappearance of the empire of the khaldians assyrian influences lingered on in the land. i shall have occasion to remark these traces in the study of the architecture of the church at akhtamar; and they compose a factor which should never be quite absent from the mind when examining the masterpieces of armenian mediæval art. the vannic dynasty are not the symbol of resistance on the part of rude mountaineers to the approach of civilisation moving up from its immemorial seats. far rather do they represent the beneficent spread of arts and letters over the armenian plains. the favourite sites of their cities are not the recesses of the mountains of the tableland, but some small eminence from a wide extent of level and fertile ground, as typically embodied by the rock of van and the mound of armavir. they are builders of canals to irrigate the land, of roads to traverse even the scarcely passable ridges of the peripheral region, of bridges to span the great rivers. if we are still in the dark with respect to their ethnic affinities, we need harbour no doubts upon the character of the civilisation which they contributed to diffuse. like adonis they have been carried down the stream of time, and over them the eddy has long since closed. the spade of the archæologist reveals the charred remains of their later stronghold on the heights of toprak kala overlooking the gardens of van. but by what people and at what date were they stricken to the ground, and their temples and palaces given to the flames? it is the disadvantage of a history which is derived from inscriptions, that issues as well as origins must remain obscure. i am not aware that any certain answer can be given to the first part of the question, and the date of the supreme catastrophe which must have overtaken the city can only be approximately fixed. the vannic records differ in one important respect from those of assyria; they do not contain a single date. the chronology is therefore dependent upon the mention in them of an assyrian monarch or by the assyrians of a contemporary ruler of urardhu. the latest inscriptions hitherto discovered belonging to the northern kingdom are those of rusas the third, the son of erimenas, who lived in the time of ashur-bani-pal. but a successor of this prince is mentioned in the assyrian annals as having sent an embassy to nineveh about 644 b.c. his name is the familiar one of sarduris, and he takes his place as the third king of that name. it would appear likely that at the time of his embassy he had only just begun to reign; and we should probably be justified in protracting the span covered by the vannic dynasty at least as late as the death of ashur-bani-pal (c. 626 b.c.). this date brings us down to the dawn of oriental history as contained in the works of greek writers. in the pages of herodotus the armenian tableland as well as assyria form portions of the great empire of darius (521-486 b.c.) and xerxes (485-465 b.c.), which had succeeded the loose rule of the scythians. and this new era has left behind it one of the most impressive of the monuments upon the rock of van. on its southern face, in full view of the walled town at its base, is inscribed the trilingual record of the persian conquest. "a great god is ormazd, who is the greatest of gods, who has created this earth, who has created that heaven, who has created mankind, who has given happiness to man, who has made xerxes king, sole king of many kings, sole lord of many. i am xerxes the great king, the king of kings, the king of the provinces with many languages, the king of this great earth far and near, son of king darius the achæmenian. says xerxes the king: darius the king, my father, did many works through the protection of ormazd, and on this hill he commanded to make his tablet and an image; yet an inscription he did not make. afterwards i ordered this inscription to be written. may ormazd, along with all the gods, protect me and my kingdom and my work. [69] years before this noble pronouncement was engraved in its imperishable arrowheads the empire of assyria had come to an end. nineveh was laid desolate in 606 b.c. by her babylonian subjects assisted by the hordes of the scythian king. [70] within a very brief period of the history of these countries ethnic changes on a vast scale had taken place. new nations had appeared upon the scene. the cimmerian nomads, followed closely by the wild tribes of scythia, had penetrated southwards from the countries on the north of caucasus and swarmed over the settled lands. ancient kingdoms tottered and fell into the human surge. it is just at this period that we come to hear of the armenians. all the evidence points to the conclusion that they entered their historical seats from the west, [71] as a branch of a considerable immigration of indo-european peoples crossing the straits from europe into asia minor and perhaps originally coming from homes in the steppes north of the black sea. just as their kinsmen, invading europe, drove the old races before them, such as the etruscans, the ligurians, and the basques, so the armenians seem to have filled the void which may have been created by the ravages of the scythians and to have supplanted the subjects of the old khaldian dynasty in the possession of the plains of the tableland. that this revolution was not accomplished until at least as late as the fifth century before christ may be gathered from the pages of herodotus. the armenians are known to this father of historians as inhabiting the mountainous country about the sources of the halys and those of the tigris, extending round towards the mediterranean in the neighbourhood of cilicia, their boundary on this side being the euphrates. [72] on the other hand the khaldians or urardhians have not already disappeared, although they have obviously declined to a subordinate position. they are mentioned under the name of alarodians, [73] and they are joined with the matienians and saspeires or sapeires in the eighteenth satrapy of the persian empire. [74] herodotus leaves us in the dark as to the exact localities in which they lived, although he indicates that the seats of the saspeires lay to the south of the kolchians, who inhabited the southern shore of the black sea in the neighbourhood of the phasis. [75] he informs us that alarodians and saspeires were both armed like the kolchians, and the fact that the satrapies were organised with a view to ethnic affinities suggests the possibility that the two names first mentioned had come to be applied to one and the same race. other considerations seem to point in the same direction. down to a comparatively recent period we find a people called chaldians (as written in the greek character) or chaldæans occupying the mountains between trebizond and batum. there can be little doubt that they represented the remnants of the vannic people, and they were almost certainly the same as the alarodians of herodotus and probably the same as the saspeires, who have perhaps left their name to the present town of ispir. [76] when the armenians had expelled the ancient inhabitants from the settled country we know from a most interesting chapter in the cyropædeia of xenophon that the latter took refuge in the mountains. they fortified inaccessible peaks and lived by plunder, raiding down upon the plains. [77] our knowledge of the geography may at this point assist our historical investigations; and we may be reasonably sure that we shall find the relics of the dispossessed khaldians inhabiting the fastnesses of the peripheral ranges which border armenia upon the north and south. that this was the case in the northern region is proved by the long survival of the name chaldia (= khaldia) among those inhospitable heights. professor lehmann has collected with a thoroughness of which his countrymen alone seem capable, a catalogue of passages in greek and byzantine writers making mention either of the chaldian people or of the province to which they gave their name. [78] that people are sometimes called chaldæans in classical authors. but that this was an error seems sufficiently proved by the name of the province--chaldia; by the survival side by side of the variant form--chaldians, and by the practice of armenian writers to distinguish between the name of the tribe on their northern frontiers and that of the chaldæans. chaldia with the capital trebizond formed one of the military themes of the byzantine empire; and i should like to add yet another reference to the lists of professor lehmann, this one taken from the travels of the castilian ambassador, don ruy gonzalez clavigo, in the year 1404. setting out from trebizond on his way to erzinjan, we find him travelling on the third day out through the snowy mountains of the province of chaldia to the castle of tzanich which stood on a crag; and on the morrow, in the evening, he arrives at the castle of the duke of chaldia, where all caravans pay toll. the territory formed a part of the empire of the grand comneni; and the name has survived to the present day as that of a diocese of the greek church with the capital gümüshkhaneh on the road from trebizond to baiburt. [79] it is not so easy to trace the remnants of this ancient people in the southern zone of mountains. their presence there is attested by the march of xenophon with the relics of the ten thousand. a body of chaldæan or, more properly, of chaldian mercenaries oppose his passage of the bohtan branch of the tigris. [80] they are described as of independent spirit and warlike nature, and, like the karduchi, the modern kurds, as still maintaining their political freedom. one is tempted to enquire whether the present so-called chaldæan or assyrian christians, who are spread about the districts in the neighbourhood of julamerik watered by the great zab, may not supply the necessary and missing link. but here we approach a thorny and difficult question, upon which the limitations of the present enquiry forbid us to touch. [81] it will be better capable of discussion when some unanimity shall have been attained upon the origin and ethnic affinities of the subjects of the old vannic kings. the chaldæan christians are reputed to have fled into the mountains from mesopotamia as late as the era of timur. baghdad and then mosul would seem to have been the earlier seats of their patriarchate. the name chaldæan is not one which they apply to themselves, although they believe in their "assyrian" origin. there is held by some scholars to be the widest etymological and original difference between the name of the people who were called after the god khaldis and that of the babylonian chaldees or chaldæans. but the question of a possible racial or cultural link between them cannot at present be regarded as already negatived. [82] although the whole subject of the vannic kingdom has scarcely yet arrived beyond its infantile stages, the knowledge already attained serves to throw quite a flood of light upon the early history of armenia and of the armenians. in a former chapter [83] i had occasion to remark the obscurity of armenian chronicles prior to the advent of their arsakid dynasty. the people known as armenians to darius and to classical writers have always been accustomed to prefer the name of their reputed progenitor, hayk, the son of togarmah, great-grandson of japhet. they call themselves the hayk or children of hayk. they believe that their ancestor emigrated from babylon in a north-westerly direction and ultimately arrived upon the shores of lake van. they style the line of their primeval kings the haykian dynasty, and they relate in a fabulous manner the early struggles of this dynasty with the assyrian power. their historians admit that for this period they are destitute of native annals, and they deplore the illiterateness of their forefathers. it would almost seem as if they had presented us with a darkened and legendary account of the history of their predecessors, possibly mingled with the experiences of their own race. that the people of the vannic kings were not armenians is proved by the distinctive character of their language. that their empire continued to exist until at least as late as the latter half of the seventh century before christ is a fact which is beyond doubt. nothing which we might be inclined to attribute to the armenians has been found at toprak kala. on the other hand, we may gather from xenophon that after a period of mutual distrust the armenians intermarried with the khaldians whom they had dispossessed. [84] to this extent they may inherit the blood of that ancient people which gave to armenia a degree of civilisation which in many respects it has not been privileged since to enjoy. the armenians, like all capable and conquering races, borrowed much from the and attainments of the older inhabitants. their most ancient cities--van, armavir, and perhaps melazkert and arjish--were foundations of the vannic kings. the city of hayk, as it has long been called, in the hayotz-dzor, south-east of van, has disclosed to the first essays of the modern archæologist the familiar features of a khaldian settlement. [85] but persian influences left upon them a more visible impression; and their supreme god during the pre-christian era was not the khaldis of the vannic texts but the ormazd of the inscription of xerxes, "who has created this earth, who has created that heaven, who has created mankind." [86] sequence of the vannic kings. [87] arame.--no inscriptions. known only through those of the assyrian king, in which he is styled king of urardhu. attacked in 860 or 859 b.c. by shalmaneser ii. and again in 857 or 856 b.c. in his capital, arzasku (site?). [88] his cities as far as the sources of the euphrates were taken by the same monarch in 845 or 844 b.c. 1. sarduris i.--son of lutipris. three inscriptions (zeitschrift für assyriologie, 1899, p. 315) on massive blocks of stone, forming part of a wall which extended from the western extremity of the rock of van roughly in a northerly direction towards the harbour across the plain (verhandlungen der berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, etc., 1897, p. 305). appears to have been the initiator of the fortifications of the rock of van. bore the title: "king of the world (sar kissati), king of nairi." attacked about 833 b.c. by the general of shalmaneser ii.; styled king of urardhu in the assyrian inscriptions. 2. ispuinis.--his son. several inscriptions, in which he is more commonly associated with his son menuas. the inscriptions are found as far apart as the kelishin pass between rowanduz and ushnei, the hill of ashrut-darga, east of the village of salekhane, east of van and the van region, and patnotz, north of sipan. his title is given in the vannic text of the kelishin stele as: king of nairi, king of suras (i.e. of northern syria [89]), inhabiting the city of dhuspas; and in the inscription of ashrut darga as: king of biaina, inhabiting the city of dhuspas. is probably the uspina from whom the general of the assyrian king shamshi-ramman iii. (825-812 b.c.) captured 11 forts and 200 villages during his campaign against nairi. his newly-discovered inscription near the tabriz gate at van appears to ascribe the construction of the works upon the citadel to himself, his father sarduris, his son menuas and his grandson inuspuas (v. anth. 1898, p. 575). 3. menuas.--his son, associated with his father in the government, and afterwards with his own son, inuspuas. to this king belong the largest number of the inscriptions yet discovered, ranging from the kelishin pass and the rock of tashtepe, near the southern shore of lake urmi (sayce, j.r.a.s. vol. xiv. p. 386; belck, z. assyr. 1899, p. 313), the latter of which commemorates his conquests in the kingdom of minni (v. anth. 1894, p. 481) in the east, to palu on the lower murad in the west; and from van and the van regions in the south to hasan-kala, near erzerum, in the north. perhaps his most important conquest was that of a great portion of the valley of the araxes on the northern side of the ararat system. menuas may be regarded as the founder of the original garden city of van, which probably occupied a somewhat different position than at the present day, and extended to the borders of the lake, where it received the waters of the canal since called the shamiram su, coming through artemid--a work on a great scale, which we now know to have been constructed principally by this monarch, and which provided the volume of irrigation necessary for an extensive settlement. records his conquests. extensively restored melazkert (z. assyr. 1892, p. 262; v. anth. 1898, pp. 569 seq.) and founded arzwapert, north-east of arjish. his title is: the great king, the king of biaina, inhabiting the city of dhuspas. 4. argistis i.--his son. numerous inscriptions which show that he extended the conquests of menuas, especially towards the north. these inscriptions are found as far north as kanlija, near alexandropol, and sarikamish, on the road from kars to erzerum, by which route he probably advanced or retired from the districts north of the ararat system. from those at van, which are in fact detailed annals of his conquests, we learn that he met and overcame the armies of assyria on more than one occasion in the regions south-east of lake urmi. his reign represents the culminating point of vannic empire. he ascribes to himself works upon the rock and in the city of van; and he was the founder of the city of armavir in the valley of the araxes (v. anth. 1896, p. 313). he bore the title of: the great king, the king of biaina, inhabiting the city of dhuspas. 5. sarduris ii.--his son. numerous inscriptions, distributed over a large area of country, one being found in the south-east corner of lake gökcheh, another (discovered by us) near the western summit of the bingöl dagh, [90] and yet another as far west as the euphrates near malatia in asia minor. the first and last record conquests in those countries. ascribes to himself works upon the rock and in the city of van, and gives a list of his conquests, including some over the assyrian monarch ashur-nirari ii., 754-745 b.c. (v. anth. 1898, pp. 570-77). but these successes were followed by disasters which dealt a severe blow at the vannic kingdom. with the accession of tiglath-pileser iii. of assyria (745-727 b.c.) a new area is initiated in the relations of these two great powers of the day. the clash seems to have come in the year 743 and in connection with the endeavour of tiglath-pileser to possess himself of the strong place of arpad between the present towns of aleppo and killis, the key of northern syria, a country over which the vannic kings had for several reigns upheld pretensions. sarduris headed the league against the assyrians and drew off the king from the siege of arpad. he was, however, signally defeated "near kistan and khalpi, districts of kummukh" (kommagene), and pursued as far as "the bridge over the euphrates, the boundary of his kingdom." subsequently, in 735 b.c., tiglath-pileser carried the war into the very heart of the vannic country, and at length appeared before the city of van. sarduris was obliged to shut himself up in the impregnable citadel, while his adversary massacred his warriors and his people in the city at its feet, and erected a statue of himself in front of it. he then ravaged the territory of sarduris over a space of some 450 miles, meeting with no opposition anywhere. (for the sequence of these events, made known to us by the assyrian inscriptions, see v. anth. 1896, pp. 321 seq., and smith's assyria, london, s.p.c.k. 1897, pp. 83 seq.). sarduris increased the importance of the city of armavir, and ascribes to himself works upon the citadel and in the city of van. bore the title: king of kings, king of the land of suras, king of biaina, inhabiting the city of dhuspas. styled king of urardhu in the assyrian inscriptions. 6. rusas i.--his son. the author of at least two important extant inscriptions, that of kölani-girlan (alutshalu), on the face of a rock overlooking lake gökcheh, and that of topsanä (sidikan), in the district of rowanduz in kurdistan, discovered by rawlinson and recently examined by dr. belck (zeitschrift für ethnologie, berlin, 1899, pp. 99-132). the first records conquests and the restoration of a palace; the second, which has, however, not yet been published, conveys noteworthy facts bearing upon the relations with assyria. we know from the assyrian inscriptions that the vannic kingdom was by no means crushed by the campaign of tiglath-pileser; for the son of sarduris, this rusas the first, displayed great activity in inciting the neighbouring principalities against the successor of the conqueror, sargon (722-705 b.c.), among which may be specially mentioned the kingdom of minni, south-east of lake urmi, and the almost impregnable territory of mutsatsir or ardinis near rowanduz. sargon tells us how, in 714 b.c., he penetrated into mutsatsir, which contained a temple of the god khaldis, the god of the vannic kingdom; how its king urzana fled, and how he plundered and burnt the city, rifled the temple and carried off the statues of the gods. he relates that ursa, king of urardhu (i.e. rusas i.), upon hearing of this disaster to his ally and of the carrying off of the god, committed suicide. the contents of the inscription of topsanä throw doubt upon this latter statement. they are to the effect that rusas restored urzana to his kingdom, led his armies as far as "the mountains of assyria," and restored the offerings to khaldis in mutsatsir. if, as seems probable, the rusas of the shattered stele of keshish göl near van be this first king of that name, then we must ascribe to this monarch the various works which are mentioned in that inscription (sayce, no. lxxix.), and which, as messrs. belck and lehmann have conclusively shown, should be referred to toprak kala, an eminence from the plain some little distance east of the rock of van and close to the present garden town. these works appear to have been: the constitution of the keshish göl into a reservoir, the conduct of its waters to the rusahina, or city of rusas, as distinct from dhuspas; the laying out of this new city, with numerous vineyards and gardens, and the building of a palace there. rusas i. may therefore be regarded as the author of the transference of the site of the garden town from the south to the east of the rock of van, where it was protected by the heights of toprak kala. the necessary irrigation was drawn from the keshish göl instead of or in addition to that derived from the canal of menuas. the change was probably made in consequence of the destruction by tiglath-pileser of the old town, although he was unable to effect the capture of the citadel or rock of van (z. ethnologie, 1892, pp. 141 seq.; v. anth. 1893, p. 220; z. assyr. 1894, pp. 349 seq.; deutsche rundschau, christmas 1894, pp. 411 seq.; v. anth. 1898, p. 576; z. assyr. 1899, p. 320). rusas i. is styled ursa, king of urardhu, in the assyrian inscriptions. those of the vannic monarchy, hitherto published, do not furnish a title. 7. argistis ii.--his son. the mention of this ruler in a vannic text was discovered by messrs. belck and lehmann in an inscription on a shield from the temple at toprak kala, now in the british museum (z. assyr. 1894, pp. 82-99; cp. z. assyr. 1892, pp. 263 seq.; v. anth. 1895, p. 595); and two of his own inscriptions have recently been found by these investigators in the neighbourhood of arjish (v. anth. 1898, p. 573). they have not yet been published. this prince is alluded to in the assyrian annals. he appears to have endeavoured to repeat the tactics of sarduris iii. against tiglath-pileser iii., and to have succeeded in inciting the king of kummukh (kommagene) against sargon. but his efforts only resulted in the subjugation of kummukh by the assyrian monarch in 708 b.c. (smith's assyria, 1897, p. 116). 8. rusas ii.--his son. so known to us from the inscription on the shield above mentioned (z. assyr. 1894, pp. 82-99, and 339 seq.; v. anth. 1895, p. 596). two new inscriptions of this king have been found by dr. belck at adeljivas (v. anth. 1898, p. 573), in which he is stated to have conquered the hittites and moschians. he is also mentioned on a clay tablet discovered by messrs. belck and lehmann at toprak kala (van). he was the contemporary of esarhaddon of assyria (681-668 b.c.), and is mentioned in an assyrian inscription of that reign (h. winckler, altorientalische forschungen, 2nd ser. vol. i. 1898, p. 41; and see z. assyr. 1894, p. 341). 9. erimenas.--known only from an inscription on a shield from the temple at toprak kala, now in the british museum, as being the father of rusas iii. 10. rusas iii.--his son. rebuilt the temple of khaldis on toprak kala (shield inscriptions in the british museum published by prof. sayce, no. lii. in j.r.a.s. 1882, pp. 653 seq. for tuprak kilissa read toprak kala, van, and cp. z. assyr. 1892, p. 266; z. assyr. 1894, p. 97 and pp. 339 seq.; v. anth. 1895, p. 595). an inscription of this king has been found at armavir (sayce, lxxxv.). sent an embassy to ashur-bani-pal of assyria about 655 b.c. (z. assyr. 1894, p. 342). bore the title: the great king, inhabiting the city of dhuspas. 11. sarduris iii.--known through the assyrian inscriptions as having sent an embassy to ashur-bani-pal about 644 b.c. (z. assyr. 1894, p. 342). iii.--van towards the close of the nineteenth century with the single exception of the remains of a mosque enriched with traceries and arabic legends in a style worthy of the best traditions of saracenic art, there remains no vestige in van of any period of prosperity and splendour subsequent to the era of the pre-armenian kings. it is true that the whole region is subject to seismic influences, and that many of the monuments of later ages may have succumbed through this cause. there exists a tradition that the isolation of the rock of van itself is due to an earthquake in very ancient times, resulting in its severance from the heights adjacent on the east. several visitations of considerable severity have probably occurred during the historical period; thus we learn that in the year 1648 of the christian era one-half of the wall of the fortified city, as well as churches, mosques and private houses, were shattered by successive shocks and fell to the ground. [91] but it is at least doubtful whether posterity has been deprived of many treasures by this agency or by the scourge of such a destroyer as timur. van must have occupied a subordinate position among the capitals of the achæmenian empire; and her ancient temples, together with the structures of her former magnificence, appear to have been demolished at a very early date. a restoration is ascribed to an armenian king of the haykian dynasty, who is said to have lived a little prior to the asiatic conquests of alexander the great. but the very fact that this monarch is named van, and is related to have rechristened the city of semiramis after himself, invests the story with a fabulous character. [92] greater credit may be attached to the statement of moses of khorene that the place was rebuilt by the first ruler of the armenian line of the arsakid or parthian kings. [93] a colony of jews, with the high priest of their nation, were settled in van by one of his successors, the contemporary of king mithridates of pontus and his ally against the roman power. [94] these jewish captives appear to have prospered in their new seats; and about the middle of the fourth century of our era they are said to have numbered 18,000 families, who were again transported into captivity, this time into persia, by the ruler of the new empire which had arisen in asia, the sasanian king shapur. [95] neither arsakids nor sasanians appear to have laid much store by the city; and, indeed, the centres of political gravity in the asiatic world had undergone a marked change since assyrian times. the tableland of persia had become incorporated into the imperial systems of asia, giving ready access into the armenian highlands. europe had already appeared upon the changing scene of oriental despotisms, and the real struggle was between the east and the west. when the mohammedan empire of the caliphs had supplanted that of the sasanian fire-worshippers, persia and armenia formed parts of the new structure. with the decay of the edifice it might appear that a fresh era had dawned for the christian armenians, supported on the west by their co-religionists of the byzantine dominions, and capable of fortifying van against the assaults of the arabs operating from baghdad and the lowlands in the south. in such circumstances was born the armenian kingdom of vaspurakan, which flourished for awhile during the middle ages, and of which this city was the capital. we have already glanced at its history while pursuing the annals of its contemporary at ani, and have had to deplore the lack of cohesion among the armenians at that period, which precluded them from playing a part of first-rate importance in the world movements of the time. we have seen the kinglets of van bowing the head to the seljuk invasion and creeping for safety into the bosom of the byzantine empire. [96] perhaps we have not overlooked the picturesque interest of the pact they concluded, under which the heirs of the romans took over the city of sarduris and menuas as an outpost of the civilised world. after the byzantines had been carried away by the storm of barbarism the annals of van, in so far as it is possible to follow them, are of scarcely more than local interest. the place must have settled down to that long spell of half-conscious existence under which it sleeps and heaves and moans at the present day. its garrison of turkomans offered a prolonged resistance to the armies of timur; and, if the citadel was indeed virgin after the lapse of ages, to the savage tartar belongs the boast of having torn her defences away. when van was visited by a european traveller at the commencement of the sixteenth century, the persian shahs of the safavid dynasty were in nominal ownership and a kurdish chieftain in real possession of the fortress. this individual went so far as to coin money with his own stamp; but he was ejected after a prolonged siege by the general of shah ismail the first (a.d. 1502-24) and the inhabitants brought over to persian allegiance. [97] in the year 1534 the keys of the city were brought to the vizier of the ottoman sultan, suleyman the first. [98] the ottoman turks thus became masters of a fortress on the side of persia which they converted into one of the strongest places in their empire. in the seventeenth century it is said to have fallen to shah abbas i., [99] but it was recovered by the turks. their rule has perpetuated the abuses of the kurds; and in the forties of the nineteenth century van was again in the tender keeping of a rebellious chief of that turbulent people, khan mahmud. in spite of all these revolutions the armenian people still maintain themselves in large numerical preponderance in the city and neighbourhood of van. it was about the shores of this lake that, according to their traditions, their ancestor, hayk, established some of their earliest seats. for at least 2500 years they have kept their hold upon them, and have become accustomed and inured to see the empires come and pass, reaping their harvest of tears from the armenian peasantry. since the impressions which i am about to record were committed to paper a fresh massacre has decimated their community. and now, as i put them together, comes a piteous appeal from the american missionaries, despairing of preserving the lives of the famished survivors who have lost their livelihood, but begging for help on behalf of their crowded orphanages. the perspective of history helps to correct the sentiment of blank despondency engendered by the contemporary condition of the armenian inhabitants. at the time of my visit they numbered two-thirds of the population of the town and gardens of van. this proportion has no doubt been reduced by recent events; but it is almost equally certain to be redressed. the fecundity of this people is not less remarkable than their persistency; and their presence is needed by the officials who exploit the land. it would seem that the armenian inhabitants of van have been increasing during the present century. there can be little doubt that the proportion which their numbers bear to those of the mussulmans has been tending to become greater. consul brant records that in the year 1838 van contained not less than 7000 families, of which only 2000 are ascribed by him to the armenians. [100] this estimate represents a population of about 35,000 souls, of whom 25,000 would be mussulmans and 10,000 armenians. the total agrees approximately with the most reliable statistics which i was able to obtain. at the time of my visit the town, including the gardens, was believed to be inhabited by 30,000 people; but the mussulmans numbered only 10,000 to the 20,000 of the armenians. i received the impression that these figures were correct in respect of the proportion of the armenian and the mussulman element. in the aggregate they appeared to be a little too low. if we include the population of the caza or neighbourhood of van, we shall probably not err much in arriving at a total of at least 64,000, made up of 47,000 armenians and 17,000 mussulmans. consul taylor in 1868 reckoned the inhabitants "of van and the neighbourhood," by which he would appear to mean of the town and caza, at 17,000 mussulmans and 42,000 christians. for christians one might almost write armenians. [101] when one contemplates the vast extent of the garden suburbs and the closely-packed quarters of the walled town, it is difficult to believe that not more than 30,000 people inhabit so imposing a place. let my reader refer to the plan which accompanies this chapter. i based it originally on one published in the fine book of m. müller-simonis, [102] and i filled it in during my daily rides. it at once enables me to dispense with a tedious topographical narrative, and serves to show the distribution of armenians and mussulmans. on the left of the paper is represented the rock of van with the cuneiform inscriptions and the city or fortified town at its southern base. on the right extends the hill ridge of toprak kala, commencing on the west with the bold crag of ak köpri, and making a bay towards the gardens as it stretches in an easterly direction, presenting the side of what is actually a nearly meridional mass. between the two lies the plain--a bower of leafy gardens, most dense along a line drawn south of ak köpri, but continuing westwards from the southerly outskirts of those thickly-planted quarters to the district of shamiram or semiramis, south of the citadel. mussulmans and armenians are distributed over the area of these suburbs, and they share between them the population of the walled town. some quarters in the gardens are peopled exclusively by armenians, some by mussulmans, and some by both alike. the names which i have placed upon the plan are in some cases those of quarters, and in others of blocks of houses and enclosures. the citadel or rock of van is occupied by the garrison alone, and none of the townsmen are permitted to ascend that delicious platform. the tall poplars and luxuriant undergrowth hide the houses of the suburbs as you approach van from the plain in the south. but penetrate within the foliage and you will find clusters of habitations which grow in frequency and importance as the central avenue is reached. along that well-trodden thoroughfare--filled at morning or in the evening by a stream of pedestrians and riders, wearing the fez and more rarely the turban, some in flowing oriental robes, others attired in european dress--a number of stately residences abut on the road with their gardens around them, and dissemble the squalor which for the most part reigns within. extremely picturesque are some of these lofty houses, with verandahs disposed in various and fanciful manners, as may be seen in my illustration of the dwelling of a wealthy armenian inside the precincts of the walled city (fig. 127). the fact that a large number of the inhabitants of the garden town proceed daily to their different places of business in the city partly accounts for the paradoxical smallness of the population, which ebbs and flows between the two. here in the gardens are the private residences of the vali or governor of van and of the principal officials. most of the rich armenian merchants have their dwellings among these quarters, where are also situated the various european consulates. it is here that are housed the principal schools, and are located the most considerable of the churches. it is therefore scarcely correct to speak of the garden town as a suburb; far rather does it bear to the narrow and crowded streets at the base of the citadel a relation analogous to that of the west end of london towards the city and the strand. among these groves we spent a pleasant and fairly restful fortnight, housed in the empty apartments of the british consulate near the cross-roads of khach-poghan. there, in the great room containing the safe, and the scroll enumerating the consular fees payable by the only two subjects of her britannic majesty who, besides the consul, are resident at van, my companions erected their camp beds. mine was placed in a little chamber on the further side of the spacious landing, which was open to the air. here i could receive visits and read and write. my windows, paned with glass, looked out upon a sylvan scene of fairy-like character. all this verdure is produced by irrigation; and it is the peculiar quality of such artificial sustenance that plants and trees preserve the perfection which in northern latitudes can only be admired in a conservatory. the storm clouds, dissolving in rain, do not disturb this southern climate and play havoc with the leaves. moss and mildew are unknown beneath this dry, continental atmosphere and the rays of this brilliant sun. the air is saturated with light, streaming from a heaven which is always blue. into the liquid canopy start the needle forms of the poplars, forced from the soaking earth with wand-like stems. apples and peaches and pomegranates--all the hardier fruits which can withstand cold winters--attain a beauty of form and an excellence of flavour which would do credit to better gardeners. here at van they grow much as they please. melons and cucumbers find just the conditions under which they thrive. all this pulsing and exuberance extends unchecked through the long summer; and when the autumn is at length at hand, towards the end of october, the change is only marked by the gradual passing over of shades of green into shades of gold. the leaves remain on their branches until the withered stalks can hold no longer; but of violence there is rarely a trace. the sky becomes black and rumbles; some showers fall, and sipan is clothed in white to his lower slopes. but the passing darkness of the day only enhances the goldness of a foliage which awaits the first coming of the snows. such were the phases of the year, which, towards the middle of november, were silently being accomplished before our windows. these cross-roads, khach-poghan, are situated almost in the centre of the most thickly-populated districts of the garden town. on the whole it is a painful impression which one receives from daily intercourse with one's fellow-creatures at van. the salient feature of the situation is the war between two opposite elements--the one of restless energy, measured almost by a european standard; the other passive, suspicious, fitfully aflame. neither is endowed with the capacity of government; and the least numerous and least capable rule. the armenian subject majority spend lives which are certainly laborious and create whatever wealth the city possesses. the mussulman dominant minority grow fat in the mostly highly-paid sinecures, or employ the most keen-witted among the christians to devise ingenious schemes for robbing the public or the public funds. over all presides an imported official of little ability and no education; and a few troops, under the orders of an independent commander, who is a centre for intrigue, redress the balance in favour of the least enlightened and most corrupt. things are in the habit of going on in this haphazard manner, jolting and creaking along. but within the last decade or two a new spirit has been born, which my reader knows under the name of the armenian movement. here at van, no less than elsewhere, it has been a clumsy birth, as might be expected from its parentage. it springs from the two elements above indicated, and flourishes most in the circumstances described. in its ultimate origin it is at once a product of economical conditions and a reflection of the spirit of the times. it causes the old elements to ferment beyond recognition and to assume the most incongruous shapes. the phenomenon is most remarkable in the case of the turks. one may remark, by way of parenthesis, that there does not appear to be any evidence of an actual settlement of turks in van or the neighbourhood. among the mussulman inhabitants of the town about six families or clans, comprising each on the average some fifty persons, may be classed as of turkish descent. of these the most prominent are the timur oglu; then the jamusji oglu, or sons of the buffalo driver, and the topchi oglu, or sons of the artilleryman. from their ranks was formed a kind of oligarchy, which ruled the city in former times, and, as was natural, developed a fine taste for faction and had its counterparts of guelphs and ghibellines. the passion for intrigue has survived among them longer than the ability to indulge it in methods of their own choosing. their power has been much curtailed by the progressive centralisation of all government at constantinople. but they still maintain their hold upon much of the machinery of the administration, filling the offices which are not under the direct patronage of the imperial authorities, such as the presidencies of the municipality, the administrative council, and the judicial courts. with the exception of these families there are very few real turks in van; and in the country districts the mussulman population are probably for the most part of kurdish origin. they speak both turkish and kurdish. the more peaceable among them, who are accustomed to settled pursuits, disown the name of kurds and affect that of osmanli, or turks of the ruling race. they do not belong to any kurdish tribe. their sympathies are on the whole on the side of law and order; and their aversion to the turbulence of the tribal kurds counteracts and perhaps outweighs their jealousy of their christian neighbours. an enlightened government would seize upon these points of union and forge from them strong links to connect society in defence of common interests against the excesses of the kurds. van is situated upon the threshold of the kurdish mountains, close to the immemorial strongholds of kurdish chieftains, whence they descend with their motley followers into the plains. no sooner had the centralising tendencies in the ottoman empire come near to establishing upon a permanent basis the unquestioned supremacy of ottoman rule in these remote districts, than the armenian movement commenced to make itself felt. the truth is that those tendencies were of impure origin. the officials at constantinople were concerned with nothing less than the extension of good government. but they were clever enough to perceive that such modern inventions, as, for instance, the telegraph, gave them the means of controlling for their own purposes distant territories which in former times had been left more or less to themselves. the telegraph substituted the authority of a clique in the palace at constantinople for the rough-and-ready but often honest and, on the whole, well-meaning methods of a turkish pasha of the old school. it is quite possible that the good old pashas would have brought about the ruin of the country, which, indeed, was in effect ruined long before they appeared on the scene. but things might have gone on longer; their rule could not have cost one quarter the existing misery; and the travelled person would at least have preferred spending his life in their shadow than within reach of the wings of the eagle of russia and the quills of her bureaucrats. from one cause or another the whole character of mussulman government has undergone a marked change within recent years. it is scarcely possible to recognise in the ruling circles of such a city as van the turkey of our fathers. fear and suspicion are written upon every face. these passions are transmitted to the rank and file of their co-religionists; the air is full of rumours of armenian plots. in the old days there would have been a riot and quite possibly a massacre; and everything would settle down. at present a swarm of spies, under the direction of emissaries from the palace, keep the old sores open and daily discover new opportunities for inflicting wounds. all the vices of the russian bureaucracy have been copied by willing disciples in the capital, and sent down to the provinces to serve as a model. one may assert without exaggeration that life is quite intolerable for an inhabitant of this paradise of van. the spies smell out a so-called plot and denounce its authors to the governor, who, poor man, is tired to death with their reports. if he fail to follow it up, he is accused at constantinople, and runs the risk of losing his post. if he interfere, his action may quite well lead to bloodshed at a time when his efforts at pacification were commencing to bear fruit. i gathered that a certain vali of bitlis had discovered a working solution of the difficulty. his principle was to go one better than the informers, and himself to organise a huge plot against himself. when this sedition had been quelled by his soldiers just at the time that suited him best, his zeal would be rewarded by the despatch of a decoration from the palace, and he would be left in peace for some time. of course the power of the kurds is daily on the increase in such circumstances as these. the palace leans towards them; their petty leaders are taken to the capital and invested with high orders. the wretched puppet of a governor does not dare to overawe them, as even his slender resources would well enable him to do. on the other hand, the former docile, cringing spirit of the armenians has given place to a different temper. partly they are goaded by the spies into so-called rebellion; and, in part, they have been aroused to a consciousness of their own real miseries by the persecution of the most respected of their clerical leaders and by the spread of education. the armenian movement has had the effect of resolving their community at van into two distinct parties. the one is animated by the spirit of the present katholikos, his holiness mekertich khrimean. the memory of his noble life, spent so largely among them, outlives his long absence from their midst. the evidence of his work and example is spread over the city, and may readily be recognised in the demeanour of those who have shared his thoughts and aims. his last period of residence in this, his native place, would appear to have come to an end in 1885. at that time he was bishop of van as well as abbot of varag. his labours were directed to the education of his countrymen; "educate, educate"--the girls no less than the boys--may be said to have been his watchword. his personal influence and the power of the pulpit, when occupied by such a preacher, were thrown into the endeavour to awake those dormant feelings which few human beings, however much their spirit may have been broken, are entirely without. to realise their manhood, and what they owed to themselves and their race was the constant exhortation which ran through his sermons and penetrated to the inmost selves of his flock. schools sprang up in abundance beneath the magic of his individuality, and teachers were imbued with that enthusiasm for their high calling without which their profession savours of drudgery and tends to produce a similar impression upon their pupils. but the spirit of truth is too often akin to the spirit of revolution, and there are bonds from without as well as from within. when the scales fell from the eyes of this downtrodden people, the naked ugliness of their lot as helots was revealed. their native energies were transferred from the domain of money-making to that of social improvement and political emancipation. the craft of their minds, abnormally quickened by the long habit of oblique methods, exchanged the sphere of commerce for that of politics. what wonder if they infused their politics with a character at which your superior european would sometimes frown and more often smile? he has been trained by a long spell of comparatively pure government; while the armenians have been a subject race for over nine centuries, are honeycombed with the little vices inherent in such a status, and are quite unused and as yet unfit to govern themselves. so the old armenian nature underwent and is still experiencing a process of fermentation and change. at the same time it threw off some of the characteristics which had been hitherto among the most pronounced. rashness and contempt for calculation took the place of the old qualities of servility and time-serving. in the domain of the community these discarded qualities were represented by individuals and by a party. the watchword of this party has been submission to the powers that are, and the solid argument which underlies the counsels of those who inspire it is based upon the apparent hopelessness of resistance and the tragic failures which such resistance has already involved. but the sympathy of the impartial spectator can scarcely be enlisted on their side, even if his judgment incline to their views. they are not the new armenians, chastened by sorrow and sobered by reflection, but, for the most part, the very dregs of the old. their leader in van is the bishop of lim, commonly known as bishop poghos. this prelate has long been resident in the city. his talents have been employed to counteract the influence of the present katholikos; and he has stood at the head of his opponents. when khrimean departed from his see he named bishop poghos his vekil or deputy, it would seem in the hope of promoting peace. but the inhabitants do not appear to have favoured this solution, and the bishop has not held the office for the last several years. he did me the honour of coming to see me--a man of great bulk of body and in advanced years. his features are of the blunt order characteristic of so many armenians; and one might doubt whether he could ever have understood the personality of such a man as khrimean. such, perhaps, is not an unfair analysis of society at van and of the transformation which the principal elements have been undergoing. several massacres of the armenians have done less to exasperate them than the importation of russian methods into their daily life. the place swarms with secret police. should a mussulman harbour a grudge against an armenian, he endeavours to excite the suspicions of one of these agents; the house is entered and searched from roof to cellar. perhaps some harmless effusion of patriotic sentiment is found in the desk of a son of the house, a student. the poem is seized and the youth thrown into prison. arms are said to be concealed, and a pistol may be discovered. the whole family is at once rendered suspect. one might multiply these instances almost to any extent; but my object is not to excite resentment against the turkish authorities, only to show the folly of their procedure. if they would only return to their old traditions and try to govern less, the situation would be immensely improved. i feel sure that such counsel would be appreciated and even tendered by the pasha if he were consulted by those from whom he takes his orders. but it would have been in doubtful taste to speak one's mind out to him, the intercourse between us having been confined to the courtesy of an exchange of visits. nor was he the man to enter usefully into a discussion of the subject. he had come to van in the pursuit of his profession of governor some twenty months ago. a mussulman georgian of good family, whose ancestral estates lie in russian territory, not far from the coast of the black sea, he could probably lay better claim to a preference for straight over crooked dealing than to any of the more special qualities of a statesman. the mohammedans who emigrate from the russian provinces into the dominions of the sultan are most often those who are unable to sustain competition with stronger elements, given fuller economical play under russian rule. the vali of van, notwithstanding his name and a certain dignity of presence, could scarcely hope to occupy a position of equal importance in the empire of the tsar. i found in him a man of little or no education, about fifty years of age. tall and of large frame, his features were almost handsome, except, perhaps, the mouth. he habitually wore a smile upon his face. there he would sit in his long, bare room from morning until evening, sipping coffee with his visitors and puffing cigarettes. he appeared to encounter all kinds of difficulties in the vicarious management of his property in russia; but one could not doubt that the comely beard would grow white in the turkish service, and the groves of kolchis know him no more. we spoke of the kurds and of the redoubtable hamidiyeh regiments, of which, he assured me, no less than twenty had been instituted in his vilayet, including the mountainous region of hakkiari. he stated that their horses had already been branded, and that the prescribed strength of each regiment was from 600 to 700 men. passing from this magnificent topic to the sphere of prose and of reality, he lamented the want of communications in the country, ascribing most of the troubles of the time to this cause. but when i enquired whether it would be permissible to organise a service of transport on the lake, bringing out a steamer or two and the necessary craft, he replied, as i expected, that one must apply at constantinople, and that he had no authority to sanction the possession even of a pleasure launch. he had himself embarked upon the enterprise of constructing a road to bitlis along the southern shore of the lake. but it did not appear to have yet got further than the village of artemid, less than a half day's stage. the vali called my attention to the peculiar hardness of the walls in van, although built of nothing better than mud. they remain intact for years and years. he also sang the praises of a coal mine, a short way distant, which he hoped would be exploited some day. commerce and industry find in the armenian population of van a soil in which they would flourish to imposing proportions under better circumstances. the city is not situated upon any artery of through traffic, and a trade with the russian provinces can scarcely be said to exist. the imports from abroad are carried in bullock carts or on the backs of pack horses by stages of almost endless number. perhaps the bulk of them are derived from the port of trebizond, travelling through erzerum. from that provincial capital there are two main tracks, the one, which is used in summer, by way of tekman or the plain of pasin, passing through kulli and melazkert; the other, frequented in winter, making the detour along the plain of alashkert and crossing the murad at tutakh. the journey from that township is not without danger as far as akantz on lake van. the caravans are accompanied by armed men, and are constantly on the alert against attack by bands of kurds. communications with persia are conducted principally through the town of kotur, and, more rarely, through bashkala. on the south the territory of van is separated by almost impenetrable mountains from the lowlands of mesopotamia. but some cotton goods find their way up from the mediterranean and through aleppo and diarbekr along the passage of bitlis and the southern shore of the lake. i was informed of a more direct route which, after leaving bashkala, passes by way of gever, shemzinar (shemdinan?) and rowanduz to erbil and so to baghdad. but it was represented as encountering considerable natural difficulties between shemzinar and rowanduz. native industries, such as the production of various kinds of textiles, as well as a number of small handicrafts, are necessarily confined within very humble limits, owing to the poverty of the country. wages are low, and the price of bread is apt to become high under a system of commercial rings which involves the government officials in the artificial production of a famine. at the time of my visit wheat stood at an almost prohibitive figure; yet large quantities of the cereal were reputed to be stored, and no additional supplies were encouraged to come in. many of my readers will be familiar with the circular wafers, resembling pancakes, which take the place of our loaves of bread throughout the east. never very palatable, as i think, they are really unwholesome, besides being nasty, in the paradise of van. they appeared to be compounded of a gritty mud with an admixture of dough. we endeavoured in vain to procure some white bread; the bakeries were said to be forbidden to supply such a luxury to any but the vali's table. the wretched bakers are a class subject to constant persecution; the officials have the right and even the duty of inspection; and this is tantamount to asserting that the bread is sure to be bad and its producers at their wits' end to squeeze from the staple the necessary bribes. corruption has wormed its way into every department of the administration. i enquired of a prominent citizen, who impressed me as a man of parts, and to whose house i was obliged to wade through mud which lay ankle deep upon the central avenue of the garden town, whether a municipality were an institution unknown to van. he replied that, on the contrary, they possessed an elaborate machinery for the regulation of municipal affairs. were christians excluded from the body?--by no manner of means.--then what prevented him and those of equal calibre with him from attending to such important affairs? the answer came that those armenians who served upon the board were mere robbers or abettors of robbery. no honest man with a reputation to lose could consent to co-operate; should he make the endeavour he would rapidly be edged out. such is the manner in which the paper reforms which tickle europe are in practice transferred to the category of grave abuses. there must exist a trace of light in every gloomy picture; and at van the ray falls upon a little band of artisans and craftsmen as well as upon a few of the tradesmen and merchants. these elect are without exception armenians. our money matters were adjusted with a promptitude and a spirit of honesty which revealed capacities that came as a surprise after our experiences in russian territory. yet there is here no bank in the proper sense of the term. we were in want of warm overcoats, and gave a light cape as a model; it was repeated in a thick cloth imported from european turkey with a skill which would not disgrace a west-end tailor. my van coat has since that day been my constant companion; no wet has ever penetrated the coarse but cunning texture, and not a stitch has given way. work in metal is produced with a sleight of hand and sureness of eye which are nothing less than extraordinary. the jewellers bring you objects which, although fanciful rather than artistic, are little wonders in their way. and from the background of such brighter memories shine the eyes of the great van cats--as large as terriers, with magnificent tails and long fur, with the gait and fearlessness of dogs. if you could only forget the shadows or wipe them away like a picture-restorer, there would not be absent other elements of light and hope. but a very long vision would be necessary for their discernment, and senses in other respects keen. for one thing--in spite of the spies, and all the miserable stories of armenian brides carried off by kurds who go scot-free--a larger atmosphere seems to surround the immediate political environment, disclosing vistas into freedom. there is none of that feeling of quite irremovable pressure, which in the russian provinces is already sealing the springs of human activity as a noxious climate sits upon the lungs. freaks there are, and wicked freaks on the part of government; nor does there exist any security for life and property. officials and public bodies are woefully ignorant and hopelessly corrupt. in spite of these real miseries i should not hesitate to consent to endure them, were the alternative the lot of an armenian in russia. but this is, perhaps, a purely personal impression which i need not expect my readers to share. some acquaintance with the outside world is derived by the citizens as a result of the immemorial custom among the male armenian inhabitants of migrating for a number of years to constantinople and returning home when they have amassed a certain competence. married men leave their families behind. visits from europeans are naturally few and far between; but two or three political consuls are generally in residence, and there is a fairly numerous american mission. the americans are under the protection of the british consul; and it is pleasant to recognise these two elements working silently and unseen together in the van of humanity and civilisation. the british consul deserves a special measure of esteem and sympathy. he fights the same battles as the devoted missionaries; but he has no public, however much limited, to applaud his efforts and stimulate him with their enthusiasm upon his return home. he corresponds with an ambassador entirely ignorant of the local conditions; his reports moulder in the pigeon-holes of an impalpable foreign office; and the least show of zeal is often rewarded by one of those snubs which your british official, and especially the younger diplomatists, have a natural talent for inflicting. the quality lacking to the average englishman of a heart permeating manners is possessed in a marked degree by the americans. their mission on the extreme eastern outskirts of the garden town is an oasis of human kindliness and light and love. it was presided over by mr. greene, assisted by mr. allen and by dr. raynolds, who was on leave of absence at the time of our visit. the lady workers included dr. grace kimball, with a large medical practice, and miss fraser, a young and charming canadian lady, who was at the head of a staff of armenian teachers in the school for girls attached to the institution. in their society it was my privilege to spend several pleasant and profitable evenings, making drafts upon the varied experiences of dr. kimball, and realising what a blank is presented by social life in mussulman countries, where freedom of intercourse with women would be regarded as a crime and where cultured women in the true sense are almost unknown. i received abundant testimony to the morality of armenian women, even under circumstances which may be regarded as distinctly unfair. although husbands leave their brides behind when they migrate to constantinople, infidelity is uncommon. were it otherwise, the fact could scarcely escape the observation of a lady practitioner. it often happens that a widow, about to marry again, will bring her young child to the feet of the missionaries, beseeching them to bring it up and educate it in her place, as their monument--for so she puts it--before god. but it never occurs that they are offered illegitimate offspring. for this reason, if for no other, they are disinclined to believe the aspersions which are usually cast by the authorities upon the character of armenian women abducted by the kurds. a less bright side of the armenian character was, they said, their inveterate treachery towards members of their own race. in this respect, as well as in the domain of personal chastity, there appears to exist a rough analogy between the armenians and the celtic population of ireland. but one must be careful not to press the resemblance too closely, the two peoples being fundamentally unlike. the gruesome stories, which we find it difficult to credit in europe, of the miseries endured by the inmates of turkish prisons were abundantly confirmed upon unimpeachable evidence. the most ordinary sanitary precautions are neglected, until the cells attain an unspeakable condition. mussulmans are often able to obtain certain relaxations in the rigidity of their confinement. they plead that it is impossible for them to worship allah upon floors which are in this state. perhaps they will be accorded permission to emerge for a time into the open air. christians are seldom favoured with similar indulgences; and it often happens that an unhappy youth, immured upon mere suspicion, will be sent home in a dying condition, suffering from poisoning of the blood. the american mission at van is only one of the many establishments which have been spread over the face of asiatic turkey by the pious enterprise of the protestant inhabitants of the new world. it is an established etiquette between the various societies of the same faith, although not necessarily of the same nation, to avoid overlapping into one another's spheres; and from an early date in the present century the americans entered this field and made it their own, working their way into asia minor and thence into mesopotamia. their society is supported by the congregational church of america; and this particular mission was founded as late as 1871. their activities are practically confined to the armenian population professing the gregorian religion. but i understand that the making of proselytes is no special or paramount object of the teaching which they dispense. if, perchance, these lines should reach an american public, i would venture to entreat the supporters of the mission to emphasise rather than to check this wholesome spirit of abnegation among the devoted men and women who serve their interests so well. the church is at the present day the only stable institution which the armenian people possess. no armenian of education--whether priest or layman--doubts that it is in need of reform. reform will come from within as the result of the growing enlightenment which the church herself is engaged in propagating under extraordinary difficulties among her scattered communities. to wean her children from her, while she is still in the stress of a noble purpose, would be to promote that cruel spirit which lurks in all religions when they are assailed in their instincts of maternity from without. such an endeavour would be at once in a high degree impolitic, and alien to the highest principles of christianity--mutual tolerance, humility, love. the circumstances are not the same as when luther reared the standard of rebellion; nor are americans sons of the armenian church. their true mission is to compose rather than to accentuate the internal differences which the strong wine of their personality can scarcely fail to elicit among the congregations with whom they are brought in touch. the armenians are scarcely less protestant than themselves in their attitude towards the church of rome. i should hesitate to expound such arguments in a manner so didactic were i not convinced that they are recognised in their full force by the thinking minds who influence the aims of the mission. throughout the extensive field which is worked from this centre only seventy-five adults have been received into the protestant church. but the standard of wholesome living has been incalculably raised both in the material and in the moral sphere. the sick receive skilled treatment; schools are opened in the most needy villages; the alms of europe, as well as of america, are distributed among the necessitous poor. the effect of a massacre is somewhat softened by the institution of numerous orphanages. such are some of the results of over twenty years of labour, upon which the society may look back with unmixed pride. in the eyes of the traveller they are likely to outvalue the long roll of converts which some of the constituents of the mission might desire to possess. there is always a certain element of selfishness in proselytism which is peculiarly repugnant to the ordinary visitor to distant lands. the healthy absence or subordination of such an element among the americans has contributed in no small measure to their success. the missionaries live on good terms with the armenian clergy, and are sometimes invited to preach in their churches. they are loud in their praise of the tolerance of the armenian hierarchy. they assured me that no attempt is made in their schools to convert the pupils from their ancestral religion. an early opportunity was afforded me of visiting these schools. they are two in number, one in the gardens and the other in the walled city. to both are attached companion institutions for girls. the school in the gardens was attended by 110 boys and 115 girls. that in the city had only a third of this number. the better-to-do among the people pay a small yearly fee, ranging, according to the standard of education which they may be receiving, from 15 to 60 piastres. [103] the highest class are expected to pay the last-named sum. boys enter the school at seven years of age, and some remain as late as their sixteenth year or even into their eighteenth. the course consists of primary, intermediary and high-school classes; and to each class it would be usual to devote three years. the curriculum of the highest class consists of english and french among foreign languages, algebra and geometry in the domain of mathematics, and physics and physiology in that of natural science. history is taught under certain drawbacks. i saw a copy of xenophon's anabasis which had been abstracted from the trunk of a teacher, and in which the name of armenia had been erased with a penknife from the map! indeed, one of the greatest difficulties under which they labour within recent years consists in the enforced mimicry of russian methods by the little turkish officials. their books are stopped on the road or sent back. restrictions are placed upon the choice of books; and both milton and shakespeare are suspect. the bible comes through; and a very handsome bible it is, printed by the society in modern armenian. they sell it for a small sum. the armenian clergy prefer the old, classical bible, which, however, few of their flock quite understand. the enterprise of the missionaries has also produced a testament in the kurdish language, which they dispense to those armenians living in the recesses of the peripheral region who have forgotten their native tongue. mr. greene was of opinion that the sons of parents who possess some education are not inferior in natural abilities to the average american boy. in the english class i listened to some very fair reading, certainly as good as in the russian seminary at erivan. some very practical theses were expounded; why, for instance, should one sleep in a bed and not on the floor? for four reasons: a floor is cold, dirt collects upon the floor, gases hang to the floor, damp affects the floor. there can be little doubt that the armenian schools are greatly benefited by competition with the less fashionable american institutions. they at least receive a certain stimulus and some new ideas. this is notably the case in respect of their schools for girls, which owe their development to the american example. during the course of our stay in van i visited every school both in the city and the garden town. in no better and surer way is the traveller enabled to gauge the attainments of the community among whom he sojourns. the armenians possess no less than eleven such institutions, each dispensing both primary and secondary education, and counting as many as 2180 pupils in all, of whom about 800 are girls. the majority, namely six, are purely ecclesiastical foundations, that is to say, they are attached to the churches and largely supported by church funds. but four are owned and managed by private individuals, attracting to them the children of the wealthier parents. the single remaining unit is contributed by a school for girls which is due to the munificence of a wealthy russian armenian, the late m. sanasarean. it has received the name of sandukhtean. in numbers it is surpassed by the church school of hankusner, which has a roll of 250 maidens. these attend in the private residence of the present katholikos, the author and patron of the college. the four private schools number about 400 scholars, of whom over 100 are of the female sex. all these schools, with the single exception of yisusean, are situated among the gardens. this last, of which the name signifies that it is dedicated to jesus, is attached to the ancient churches of tiramayr and surb paulos in the walled city and close to the foot of the rock. [104] the ecclesiastical schools are housed in buildings adjoining the several churches to which they are attached. but they do not necessarily bear the same name as the church. coming from russia, it is curious to hear the loud grumblings which are called forth among the armenians by their obligation to pay to government a tax of two per cent upon their incomes towards the expenses of education. government pockets the money but fails to provide a christian school. in russia they do not complain of the imposition of the corresponding tax, but would be eager to throw away at least double the amount in consideration of being permitted to retain and develop their own unassisted schools. what the armenians would desire above all things both in russia and in turkey is the refund by government under certain conditions of the tax levied upon them for education. taking into account the efficiency of their schools, the purely political nature of the opposition they encounter, and all the peculiar circumstances of the case, one is inclined to come to the conclusion that both empires would be well advised to accede to the wishes of their armenian subjects upon this point. at least those wishes are likely to enlist the sympathies of impartial men. except for the protection which is afforded in their relations with government by the close connection with the ecclesiastical organisation, the armenian schools display a detachment from hierarchical influences which no friend of true education can fail to admire. the teachers are almost without exception laymen; and knowledge is allowed to pursue its own salvation. formerly there existed in van an institution for preparing teachers; but it was closed by government for political reasons some years ago. its place might probably be taken by the sanasarean college at erzerum; yet i only met one master who had been equipped by that wealthy foundation, and the fact deserves remark. the rest had been chosen from the ranks of the best-educated citizens; and, in the absence of any other but a commercial career for young men thus qualified, the teaching staff attracts a fairly high class. no limits are placed by government upon the standard of instruction--the sentence sounds strange; and one requires to have come from russia to appreciate the magnanimity of the concession. but russian methods have crept in within recent years, and the private schools have already been regulated. in all schools gymnastics are rigidly prohibited, on the ground that the boys might be drilled and might rebel! such puerilities are balanced on the other side by the comparative latitude which on the whole the schools enjoy. text-books, translated or compiled from european sources, are supplied by the printing presses of the mekhitarist order in venice and vienna. i enquired why the bible had not been issued in modern armenian by the organisers of the church schools. the reply came that the difference between the ancient and modern tongues was not so great as between latin and italian; and that it was desirable that armenians should be familiar with their best literature, written in the same classical speech. the curriculum comprises, besides the armenian language, religion and literature, a fairly thorough study of the turkish tongue, both written and spoken. french is also taught; and two of the masters at yisusean conversed in fluent french. the natural science course includes astronomy and physical geography; while mathematics, anatomy, geography and general history figure in the routine of one or other of the grades. leaving out of account the primary course, most of the schools have a higher as well as an intermediary grade. in both a pupil remains some three to four years. he might complete the course in about his sixteenth year. but the majority are much too poor to be able to remain more than half this term; and in the school of arakh, the largest in van, i counted only sixteen youths attending classes in the highest grade. only five were in the last year. about one-half were competent to contribute a small payment, the highest sum being a couple of mejidiehs or 40 piastres a year. the oldest of these schools are yisusean and arakh, both founded nearly fifty years ago. the latter may perhaps serve as a typical example of the scholastic institutions attached to the churches. its proper name is the somewhat cacophonous one of thargmanchatz, or the school of the translators--sahak, mesrop and their companions. it is situated in the arakh quarter of the gardens and in the same enclosure with the church. you are shown into a reception-room of moderate proportions with a coarse divan at one end and a few chairs. upon the walls are suspended a photograph or two, displaying the features of well-known ecclesiastics. a single priest and a bevy of lay teachers will be assembled to do the honours. on the occasion of our visit there were not less than twenty people present, and we were addressed in passable english by one of the teachers who had come from the american school. coffee was served and cigarettes. no matter what the subject of conversation might happen to be, a certain middle-aged and sour-faced individual who sat in a corner would always insist upon putting in his say. to the remonstrances of his companions he would retort with much vehemence that his only privilege left in life was freedom of speech. in that cause he had withered in prison, from which he had only just been set free, and to which he was likely soon to return. then he proceeded to heap curses upon the turks and their government, until i was obliged to say that one of us two must leave the room. as a guest in a turkish city, it would ill become me to listen to treason against hospitable and considerate hosts. the strange thing about this incident was the fact that these teachers should be willing to harbour such a suspicious character. he did not belong to the school. the reputation of the place was jeopardised by his presence. what children--so one reflected--these people are! the younger pupils in the primary class will be collected in one vast room, seated on benches or on the floor. they are attired in nondescript and ragged cotton garments; and few even of the older scholars are possessed of suits in cloth. a number of smaller classrooms, with forms and blackboards, are approached from a long passage. although the windows are all open, an unpleasant odour pervades the air; this is a characteristic which we deplored to our cost in every school at van. it was evident that not even the american missionaries had yet succeeded in inculcating personal cleanliness. perhaps some of the young people display the jewish type--a relic probably of the colony settled in van by the arsakid king and said to have been removed into persia by shapur. these are by far the most favoured. the vast majority, however, have the less pronounced and more irregular features common among the youth of europe. but their eyes are all very dark and very bright, shining like big beads. they look extremely intelligent. the little girls did not impress me as being very attractive; though, again, among the older maidens some beautiful biblical types may be seen. these betray semitic blood. the teachers in the girls' schools were all very plain--broad as galleons, with round faces, straight hair and crooked eyes; what was wanting in their busts seemed to have been added below the waist. van, at the time of our visit, was the proud possessor of no less a dignitary than a director of public instruction. whatever may have been his full turkish title, he was always addressed by the less ornate style of mudir. by origin he was an albanian, by religion a mussulman; he spoke french well, and impressed me strongly as a zealous and capable man. it is a pity, and indeed a shame, that such material is not employed to fill the higher administrative posts. although the turkish schools fell more particularly within his province, to him was assigned the regulation of the armenian private schools. they were constrained to submit their syllabus for his approval, and also their text-books. changes or additions to their teaching staff were subject to the same sanction. i am not quite sure that these rules did not equally apply to the church schools; but, however that may have been, they were in practice mildly enforced. the turkish scholastic system, as it is operative in van, comprises three grades. there is first the primary; then the secondary, which is termed rushdiyeh; and last the college or lycée, called idadiyeh. of official primary schools not one existed prior to the arrival of the mudir, only a few months before ourselves. the mussulmans were in the habit of sending their children to small schools attached to the mosques. this practice had only partially been discontinued since the institution by the new functionary of six primary schools, numbering altogether some 240 boys. of these fresh foundations i was only invited to visit one. secondary education was dispensed in three institutions of the rushdiyeh class to about 350 students in all. the mudir was in hopes of opening an idadiyeh during the following summer; and it was also his ambition that christians as well as mussulmans should attend the course. the bringing together of the two elements would certainly work to their mutual advantage; and the experiment might succeed if it were tried on social and educational grounds, and not as a political thrust against the armenian schools. of the three secondary institutions only two deserve remark, the third being apparently in an inchoate state. both are situated on the great avenue leading from the walled town and forming the artery of the gardens. so far as i could ascertain, neither dated more than a few years back. the spacious buildings in which they are housed, the fine classrooms, the dress of the pupils--everything contrasts to their advantage in external matters with the comparative squalor of the armenian schools. we did not see a single untidy youth; the air was sweet, the floors scrupulously clean. scholars and teachers, with the exception of a mollah or two, were attired in a distinctive uniform. such, indeed, was the case in both institutions; but it was a more noticeable feature in the more numerously attended of the two, popularly known as the military school. the mudir was careful to explain that it was not in fact a military school; that it so appeared was due to the circumstance that they had been unable to obtain good civilian teachers, and had been obliged to have recourse to the military academy at constantinople. i was the more inclined to give implicit credit to this statement after making the acquaintance of the staff of the purely civilian school. it was evident, however, that the instructors in the companion establishment had not abandoned any of their military methods. they wore their uniforms, and all their pupils, even the youngest, had been drilled. here again we were introduced to a copy of russian institutions; and we might almost have been visiting the russian high school at erivan. the curriculum included the french, persian and arabic languages. the boys had evidently learnt by rote, but had learned well. they could draw maps of the countries of europe on the blackboard. one of their number stood up and answered all geographical questions with an accuracy which no german boy could excel. the outline of england was rapidly sketched in from memory; and, when i enquired the situations of even greenwich and gravesend, they were each assigned their proper place. the population of london was correctly given. most of the faces one saw around one were extremely intelligent; and only in a few instances were those dull, stupid features conspicuous which are not rare among the settled mussulman population. all, without exception, were mohammedans, and the majority the sons of officials. unlike the armenian boys, most of whom wear a shapeless cap, every youth had a clean fez with tassel upon his head. in the evening they would canter off on richly caparisoned horses; but, to sum up the relative merits of the armenian and the turkish schools, while the first contemplate knowledge, the second pursue her image, heedless of the resentment which the sensitive goddess keeps in store. while one is walking through the gardens, paying visits to the various schools, the attention will often be distracted to the very interesting churches, of a type which i have not seen in any other armenian town. it might not be inappropriate to call them log churches, although the outer walls are built of stone. the oldest is no doubt that of haykavank, situated in the quarter of the same name. i was unable to ascertain its age. but it represents a transition form from the usual stone edifice to the style of the other four churches in the gardens, in which the columns of the nave, the roofs and the interior fittings are exclusively of wood. the exteriors of all are featureless and plain. in haykavank the nave is separated from the aisles by four stone piers as well as by sixteen wooden shafts, eight on each side. the face of the daïs supporting the altar is also of stone. light is thrown upon the interior through three box-shaped structures in the roof, each containing four windows (fig. 128). the shafts are in every church mere trunks of trees with the bark lopped off them; and at the west end, seen in the background of my illustration, will always be situated a wooden gallery for the women. the floors are carpeted. the most attractive of the five is norashen, remarkable for its two octagonal domes in wood. the largest is arakh, with a length inside of 135 feet and a breadth of a little over 56 feet. it appears to have been built as late as 1884 on the site of a smaller edifice. nor is norashen said to have been constructed more than about fifty years ago. it is remarkable that of these five churches of the gardens--the remainder are known respectively as hankusner and yakob--all, with the exception of the last, are dedicated to the virgin. the same may be said of two out of six in the walled town. the fact would seem to point to something approaching a cult of the virgin, though plainly not for the reason for which, according to voltaire, she was worshipped in old france. one may be disposed to linger awhile in two of these churches--haykavank and hankusner. the first is filled with the musty memories of the dark ages, and the second with the vivid magnetism of a personality which has not yet been removed from our midst. the ancient stone crosses inlaid into the daïs of haykavank, the painted reliefs of angels in the screen of the altar, and a most barbarous carved panel of the last supper are so many survivals of pure mediævalism. the dingy logs and the rickety boxes in the roof, through the little windows of which the sweet light falls, are in harmony with the stiff figures, overlaid with gaudy but faded colours, which turn towards one from the shrine. from an adjoining apartment comes the sound of a chant by the choir at practice--a graceless music, sung through the nose. during a respite from this discord you hear the tick of an old standard clock; and, moving towards it, read the name of its english maker years ago--markwick markham of the city of london. it has a companion of its own kind in this same church. here they have stood and ticked in company for, i wonder, how many years! the colleague is by michael paieff of vienna, and has a song chime, so sweet and clear and pure.... hankusner, on the other hand, if devoid of any antiquities, is associated with a name which should always be honoured in armenian history, and with a spirit which calls to the church to throw off her mediæval fetters and look into the light of the day. it was in that humble structure across the river, beneath the cliff of toprak kala, that mekertich khrimean was for many years accustomed to address his countrymen, standing upon the low daïs by the altar beneath the roof of logs. his humble residence is situated on the van side of the stream. you knock, and a man in the garb of a peasant steps forth and holds your reins as you dismount. yet he is the nephew of the supreme pontiff of the armenians. he informs you that this was the house in which the hayrik was born. it is now tenanted by the girls' school. the rooms are neatly maintained, but their walls of mud are neither plastered nor papered. that which used to serve as his sleeping apartment contains a couple of wooden divans, used as seats by day and couches by night. two pictures, one in oil and the other a crayon, portray the familiar face in youth as well as in age. what a handsome type, with the magnificent features and silky black beard! the remaining frames, most, no doubt, due to the piety of his relations, display by the side of armenian texts the title page of a journal upon which figures in all his splendour the eagle of vaspurakan. it is quite a ride from the heart of the gardens to the walled city. the central avenue leads through great open spaces some time before the gate in the east wall is reached. on the left hand, across the fields, lie the less dense plantations of the quarter of shamiram. the main entrance adjoins the rock which supports the battlements of the citadel, and is called the gate of tabriz. extremely picturesque is the appearance from this side of the precipitous ridge, with the long serration of the mediæval wall sharply outlined against the sky, and the ponderous towers crowning the hump of the mass (fig. 129). it forms the northern side of the irregular parallelogram which is described by the walls of the city at its southern base. the area thus enclosed is of very moderate size, and the central and southern quarters seem pressed for room. these constitute the busy portion of the town, containing the bazars and the mosques. the former are, as usual in the east, thronged with motley figures; and quite a crowd collected as i set up the camera inside a booth upon which were spread out a variety of cheap comestibles (fig. 130). the mosques, of which there are three besides smaller places of prayer, are not, i think, worthy of remark. only two, kaia chellaby and khusrevieh, are at present frequented by the faithful. the third, topchi oglu, in the more northerly quarter, is now no longer used. its minaret may be seen on the right side of my illustration depicting the house of a rich armenian in this district (fig. 127). in addition, there is at least one mosque in the garden suburb, known as the hafizieh. khusrevieh deserves attention for its cuneiform slab, built into the pavement upon the threshold of the building. it was swimming in mud when we elbowed our way towards it through a friday's assembly of not too friendly bystanders. i had been informed of the existence of a second tablet, but could not discover its whereabouts. [105] but there exists in the city a ruined mosque which mocks these turkish edifices and is really a noteworthy example of arab art. it is strange that it does not appear to have been mentioned by any traveller. the ulu jami, or great mosque, is situated in the western quarter, under the precipice of the citadel rock, which is here at its highest, and of which the sheer escarpments tower into the sky. the rareness and humility of the adjoining houses permit the view to wander from the remains of this beautiful building along the face of the upstanding limestone to the great tablet with the inscription of xerxes some little distance east of where you stand. two great periods of world history are embodied in these two monuments; and, as we gazed upon them, the rock and tablet were bathed in the yellow light of evening, while the mosque was in shade. no one could tell us by whom it had been constructed, nor when it fell into decay. the pigeons build their nests in the crannies of the kiln-burnt bricks of which it is composed. in the centre rises a pillar, seen on the left of my illustration; the angles are filled with the stalactite architecture dear to the arabs (fig. 131). the clay traceries upon the walls are as hard as stone and as delicate as ivory (fig. 132). the armenian churches are in general situated in the close vicinity of the overhanging parapet from which the works of the citadel frown. although for the most part of considerable antiquity, none has any claim to architectural pretensions, such as one might expect in the capital of the mediæval kingdom of vaspurakan. indeed in their original form they are small and quite plain stone chapels; and the church proper has probably been added at a much later period, being furnished with the log pillars and plank boxes in the roof characteristic of the churches in the gardens. access to the chapel is gained through an opening in the daïs at the east end of the church. the entrance will usually be closed by a door with double folds. in some churches or on some occasions this door will be thrown open when service is being held. the priest will then stand with his back to the congregation upon the step on the threshold of the chapel. on the other hand, i have also attended when one would scarcely divine the existence of such an inner sanctuary. the priest performed his functions upon the daïs of the church before an altar of the usual gaudy order. it is therefore evident that the uses of the larger building oscillate between those of a mere pronaos and a church in the proper sense. these edifices are six in number: surb tiramayr (the mother of the master, i.e. jesus christ), surb vardan, surb paulos, surb neshan or the token, so called from a relic of the cross, surb sahak, surb tsiranavor. the last is of almost tiny proportions, and is named after the virgin with the purple robes. a seventh chapel, close to surb paulos, bears the name of surb petros, or st. peter, but was severely shaken by an earthquake a few years ago, and has been partially destroyed to prevent it collapsing. high mud walls, such as may be seen on the left of the photograph of the house in van (fig. 127), enclose the courts in which the churches are built. you enter through a low door of great weight after hammering with a ponderous knocker. the most interesting of all is certainly surb paulos; and the teachers in yisusean, who accompanied me on my visit, were inclined to ascribe it to the times of st. thaddeus. i see no reason to doubt that certain parts of the chapel date back to an epoch before the advent of st. gregory, when christianity must have flourished in vaspurakan. surb paulos seems to have served as a model to the other churches; and the chapel is approached through the usual pronaos or church proper. the inside dimensions of the chapel are 57 feet by 27 1/2 feet; and the thickness of the stone wall on the west side, where it is capable of being measured, is not less than 7 feet. of rectangular shape, the disposition of the interior is not abnormal. you have an apse on the east side, preceded by a daïs or raised stage in stone; and the roof centres in a conical dome of great depth and admirable masonry, in which a row of loophole apertures admit a scanty light. the dome is supported by piers adhering to the walls. there is not a trace of plaster or ornament in the place; and the dark hue of the naked stone enhances the gloom. we observed three blocks which had been built into the walls and were inscribed with cuneiform characters. but they appeared to have been hewn without any regard to the inscriptions, which must have suffered considerable mutilation. better treatment had evidently befallen a large inscribed slab which had been used as a lintel or upper stone, roofing a niche in a recess of the south wall. the arrowhead writing was well preserved. in this same wall we admired a most beautiful armenian cross, carved in bold relief upon a stone panel 5 feet high and 4 feet broad. we seemed to be able to read a date--409 of the armenian era or a.d. 960. my reader is already familiar with these crosses (fig. 59, vol. i. p. 271); but i regret that the light in the sanctuary was much too dim to enable me to photograph the most artistic specimen of this form of ornament which i remember to have seen. [106] the citadel crowns the summit of the isolated ridge which forms the northern side of the fortified town. this is the famous rock of van (fig. 129). it rises to the height of about 300 feet from level land on all sides. the ridge is narrow in proportion to its length, and has a direction a few points north of an east-west line. in shape it has been compared to the back of a camel, the citadel occupying the hump. the sides of the mass, which is composed of a limestone so hard that it resists a knife, are most precipitous on the south. they are most amenable at the western and eastern extremities. the remains of an ancient wall with inscriptions of sarduris the first may be discovered at the western end. the wall was probably protracted to the lake in the neighbourhood of the present harbour. there are no houses on the north side. the ground in that direction is waste or disposed for pasture; and a little marsh adjoins in one part the base of the rock. we tried our best, but in vain, to obtain permission to visit the citadel. the pasha was powerless and the commandant obdurate. the majority of modern travellers have met with the same refusal, due, no doubt, to a desire to hide the nakedness of the place. the blandishments of schulz, as well, perhaps, as the hopes he held out of discovering treasure, were successful in effecting a temporary breach in the tradition of official obstinacy. he was admitted within the gate of the inmost fortress, to find it occupied by a garrison of two living creatures--an old janissary and a tame bear. later visitors, more privileged than ourselves, tell of a few obsolete cannon. the disappointment which is engendered by the attitude of the authorities may be appreciated by the fact that the caves of khorkhor and other antiquities are included within the fortified area. i have endeavoured in the accompanying note [107] to offer some description of them, largely at second hand. the general impression which we may receive is that the ancient works upon the ridge belie the hopes excited by the account contained in the pages of moses of khorene. they do not amount to much more than a few groups of chambers excavated in the rock. the purpose which these caves served was almost certainly that of tombs; though they may also have been used as refuges in time of war. it must, however, be remembered that all the ancient structures upon the rock have long since been destroyed. the same fate has befallen even the staircases. some of the recesses appear to have been destined to receive bas-reliefs; and if such may have been the case, these images have been demolished. yet enough remains, especially the elegant characters of the many inscriptions, to fill the mind with admiration of that old race and vanished culture. they were certainly not lacking in the instincts of imagination; and, year by year, they must have taken pleasure in gazing out upon the landscape from the grottos constructed to receive them when they died. a people of cyclopean walls, embossed shields and chariots, they would almost seem to have belonged to the race of giants, preceding the evolution of fox-like man. i must not close this chapter and dismiss the memories of the paradise of van without bestowing some little space upon the surroundings of the city, which abundantly justify the armenian proverb. the governing feature of the nearer landscape is the lofty parapet of mount varag, distant from the citadel some eight miles in an easterly direction and nearly ten miles from the margin of the lake. the plain rises gradually beyond the limits of field and garden to meet and mingle with those slopes. spurs connect the mountain with the irregular hill mass on the north of the suburbs, which in its totality appears to be known under the name of zemzem dagh. like varag itself, these hills are composed of a hard limestone; and their south-westerly extremity is signalised by a very bold, detached crag, standing forth like a sentinel (fig. 133, and see the plan). this portion of the mass is known as ak köpri, which means in turkish "the white bridge." that is the name of a straggling quarter, inhabited by mussulmans, on the north side of the little river and close to the crag. [108] the stream itself is also called ak köpri; and, coming from van gardens, we crossed it by a little bridge. standing close to the crag, which we reached after a short ride, the view ranged widely in all directions except that of the cliffs at our back. looking west and south we had the great plain before us, bounded only at an interval of many miles by low hills circling from varag into the lake in front of the distant barrier of the kurdish mountains. turning round, we commanded a view of uncultivated flats, extending several miles to another line of bare hills ending on the west in a crag, called kalajik. the only trace of verdure in that landscape were the gardens of the village of shahbagh. but the outlines of the promontories, the blue lake, the distant fabrics of nimrud and sipan, composed into a picture it would be difficult to forget. the level ground in the direction of kalajik forms the first of two extensions of the plain of van, properly called. retracing our steps for a short distance, we soon turned off in an easterly direction, and rounded the bluff of ak köpri. we found ourselves in the bay of cliffs which faces van gardens; and we were soon standing in front of the great cuneiform inscription, which contains such an interesting list of the gods worshipped by the vannic people, and of the sacrifices which were appointed for each god. [109] the tablet is hewn into the rocky slope of the cliff, about 50 feet above the level and cultivated ground (fig. 134). some 10 feet below it is a shallow cave. three successive jambs recess inwards to the face of the tablet from that of the rock, which has been flattened on either side. the depth of the recess is 4 feet 2 inches. the dimensions of the tablet or polished surface containing the inscription are a breadth of 6 feet 5 inches and a height of about 17 feet 6 inches. from a distance the recessed slab has all the appearance of a door giving access to a grotto behind. after continuing our direction for no great space we mounted to the summit of the cliff. it may be some 200 feet high. but the flat top rises at its southerly extremity to a level of about double that altitude above the gardens of van. these are the heights of toprak kala. from a cleft in the mass we opened out the upper valley of the ak köpri su, the second of the extensions of the plain of van of which i have spoken (fig. 135). the mountain in the background of my photograph is varag. the monastery of yedi kilisa, situated on the slopes of that mountain, is the most frequented of the numerous cloisters in the neighbourhood; and thither we made our way on a fine november day. the first snowstorm of the coming winter had raged during the night; and the snow was lying in spite of a brilliant sun. a ride of some seven miles along the windings of the track brought us to the door of the enclosure. we had passed over rising ground, in places furrowed by the plough, but, except for the oasis of the village and monastery of shushantz, entirely devoid of trees. a mere fleck upon the white canopy of the hills on our right hand had been named to us as the cloister of surb khach. our armenian friends in van were fond of speaking of these foundations as centres of light and learning in the older and happier times. they have been scattered with a liberal hand over this magnificent landscape; yet how they have fallen from their estate! two poor monks, who lived on gritty bread and salted cheese inlaid with herbs, received us at the gate. one was the abbot, or rather the deputy of the abbot; for that office is still held by the present katholikos, the hayrik or little father of the armenians. daniel vardapet--for so he was addressed--is a type of the better-educated priest. a delicate man some fifty years of age, his features were those of a casaubon. i am afraid his attainments would not compare with those of that scholar; yet he had the suavity and the speech of a cultivated man. his assistant was a monk of the peasant class. some fifteen youths were housed in the cloister--the remnant of the school founded there years ago by khrimean. a cloud of unusual gloom enveloped the destinies of the ancient place; and one might doubt whether the gentle daniel had ever experienced so many calamities during the thirty-five years which he had passed within these walls. the most severely felt of all the blows which the turkish government had been raining upon them was the loss of their printing press. some short while back the officials appeared and walked off with the precious instrument, of which the voice had been mute for many years. they erected it in van, and, having kidnapped an armenian compositor, used it to publish an official gazette. in company with the mudir i had happened to pass the building where it was lodged; and my companion remarked to me that he was looking forward to obtaining some money for his schools with the proceeds of the sale of the paper. [110] the site of the monastery is a dip or pass upon the outline of gentle hills which stretch from the more southerly slopes of the mountain to confine the plain upon the south (fig. 136). from its windows only a vista of the lake is obtained. the church consists of a larger pronaos with the usual conical dome, communicating on the east by a richly moulded and spacious doorway with a chapel or sanctuary. [111] the interior of this chapel recalls features in st. ripsime at edgmiatsin. it has four apses or recesses, one on each wall, separated from one another by deep niches. the whole is surmounted by a conical dome (fig. 137). in the floor of the pronaos are seen three stone slabs with inscriptions. they cover the remains of king senekerim, of the armenian mediæval dynasty, his queen khoshkhosh and the katholikos petros. the frame of an altar erected upon the site of these slabs has been stripped of all its ornaments. this act appears to have been committed by the hayrik, and out of anger against senekerim. [112] the mild features of daniel vardapet contracted as we spoke of that monarch; and he assured me with some vehemence that he would dig out his bones and cast them on the rocks were it not for his title of king of armenia. the chapel of yedi kilisa is most interesting to the student of architecture, and is no doubt a work of considerable antiquity. a ruined chapel on the south of the building contains a much-effaced inscription to the effect that it was constructed by the lady khoshkhosh, daughter of gagik and queen of senekerim. [113] chapter v from van to bitlis the journey from van to bitlis may be performed in four days; it is a ride of about a hundred miles. but no traveller will desire to omit a visit to the isle of akhtamar, which will occupy another day. nor is it well to press in haste through a country of such manifold interest, and along a coast which for beauty of feature and grandeur of surroundings can scarcely have an equal in the world. it was at van that, for the first time since setting foot upon armenian soil, we had been introduced to a civilisation in any sense comparable to the scale and dignity of the landscapes through which we passed; and, although the monuments of that vanished culture belong to a remote antiquity, they are well calculated to divert our minds from the contemplation of the works of nature, or at least to recall us to a sense of the power of man. the spirit of that race of iron which held in check the assyrians still lingers over the scene of their exploits. you leave the ancient city with an added element of interest in a country which was the home of so great a people, and which still retains the memorial of their sway. but that country was also the centre of a mediæval kingdom, the contemporary and sometimes the rival of the dynasty which has left us ani as an example of their craft and taste; and, such is the concern of the modern armenian in the history of his nation, that long before you will reach van you will be familiar with the name and arms of the kingdom of vaspurakan. [114] it was therefore with curiosity that we set out upon our journey, and with regret that we were obliged by the season to narrow the sphere of our wanderings to the regular stages of our prescribed route to erzerum. [115] at a little before noon on the 16th of november we mounted our horses in the court of the american mission, whither we had proceeded to take leave of our friends. we passed by the church of arakh, and emerged from the zone of gardens upon the surface of the bare plain. the usual stoppages in connection with the baggage, which seldom fails to begin by slipping from the horse's back to beneath his girth, enabled us to fill our eyes with the vision of the bay and beauteous city which we might never contemplate again (fig. 138). we had purchased two new horses, one for the dragoman and the other to carry our effects. you require a good animal for the last of these purposes, who will trot along by himself. but throughout our journey we experienced the greatest difficulty in obtaining serviceable beasts at any price. even at van my choice was narrowed by the various ailments of the other candidates to a sturdy four-year-old who had not known work. this youngster, an iron grey, was no sooner set at large than he set off at full gallop across the plain. his career was cut short by the rapid overthrow of his load, which dragged him panting to the ground. but we trained him to perfection before reaching the northern capital, and i sold him at a profit in trebizond. worse fortune attended our second purchase, that of a seasoned horse of milk-white hue. i noticed that he was limping about an hour out of van; and, to my surprise, when i came to examine him closer, he proved to be an ingenious substitute for the one i had bought. the colour was the same, and also the appearance; but not the points which had influenced my selection, although they would not appeal to the dragoman's eye. the knave of an armenian who had concluded the sale with me had abstracted his former property from my stable, and had put in his place this unsound hack. i sent him back in charge of the zaptieh with a letter to mr. devey; but i do not know whether our consul ever recovered my stolen steed. he most kindly sent me on a fine horse of his own, which reached us safely at vostan. such are the tricks of these subtle armenians, whom long centuries of oppression have ingrained with every kind of turpitude. as we rode along this shore, one regretted god's covenant, that he would be patient with the hopeless race of man. to overwhelm them in these waters and people afresh the scene of their crimes, would, it seemed to us, be the kindest and wisest plan. the weather was delightful--a climate mild as spring, made fresh by the expanse of sea. the rays of a hot sun flashed through a crystal-clear atmosphere, which disclosed wide prospects over lake and land. fragments of white cloud floated above the outline of the kurdish mountains, less gloomy beneath the newly-fallen snows (fig. 139). in the west, nimrud was faithful to its appearance of an island, separated by a strait from the train of sipan. but to-day we could see the walls of the vast crater--a caldron of which the rim appeared commensurate with the area of the island, rising in a robe of white from the waves. we were pointing towards the high land in the direction of artemid, the southern limit of the spacious plain of van. when near the village, we struck a road which the pasha was building, with the avowed intention of extending it to bitlis. workmen were busy upon it, and there was quite a stream of little bullock carts, conveying stones and soil. it follows the margin of the lake, and the drive along it to artemid will be a treat such as few cities can bestow. the castled rock, backed by the fabric of the great volcano beyond the distant headland of the bay; the noble lake, intensely blue, expanding to the distant nimrud, yet plashing tamely with tiny wavelets on the sand--these are answered in the opposite direction, across the poplars which hide the village, by the precipitous walls, sharp edges and deep shadows, characteristic of the stupendous barrier in the south. although the distance between van and artemid does not exceed eight miles, it was after two before we arrived. we mounted the side of the hill ridge which meets the lake at this point in a bold and high cliff. gardens decline along the easier levels towards the invisible margin of the shore. you look across the foliage to the fabric of sipan, no longer covered by the horn of the bay (frontispiece). artemid! the greek name, and the memorials in the neighbourhood of that early civilisation which is revealed by the inscriptions of van, suggest, no less than the striking site, the possibility of further discoveries, when the place shall have been thoroughly explored. [116] a hasty examination would have been of small service, and we were anxious to reach vostan. so we rode, without halting, through the straggling settlement, and did not draw rein until we had reached a point some two miles beyond it, where it was decided to rest our horses and take lunch. we were still crossing the barrier of hills which support the gardens of artemid; our situation was elevated, and the view superb. we were able to follow on the horizon the outline of the ala dagh, although those mountains were over sixty miles away. they were loftiest on a bearing a few degrees east of north; and in that direction there was a fine peak, overtopping the neighbouring summits which fretted the edge of the long wall of snow-clad heights. a little further west we could see those heights receding towards the south, to the passage of the murad. in the ridges which bordered the gap we well recognised the outworks which the river pierces between karakilisa and tutakh--the same ridges which, from our standpoint on the slopes of the ararat system, had composed a distant parapet, so faintly seen that we questioned the impression, between the two blocks of mountain on the southerly margin of the plain of alashkert. [117] the landscape south of ala dagh was now outspread before us; it was indeed an instructive view. whatever eminences broke the expanse were comparatively humble; a zone of plains or vast steppes would appear to be interposed between that barrier and the lake of van. recalling the prospects about tutakh, we arrived at the conclusion that those steppes are continued towards the west; and subsequent travel established the fact that they extend from the foot of the plateau of bingöl dagh towards the longitude of bayazid in the east. the only object which arrested the eye in the direction of ala dagh was a high hill on the southern shore of the arm of the lake, with a village and gardens at its base. it was said to be the village of alur. ararat was not visible; but for the first time we discerned land between sipan and the crater of nimrud. the two mountains appeared to be joined by some low hills. proceeding at four o'clock, we commenced to descend after half an hour from the range of hills which we had now crossed. in the plain before us, bordering the lake, we could see a winding river which our zaptieh knew under the name of anguil su, but which, i believe, is more correctly spelt enghil su (brant's anjel su). it comes from the territory of mahmudia, where it is called the khoshab. [118] but we had not yet reached the floor of the valley before we were confronted by a swift stream which, fortunately for us, happened to be spanned by a bridge. it was the famous shamiram su, flowing towards artemid along the slopes of the hills. i was informed that it has its source in some springs about two hours distant, near the village of upper mechinkert, and that a portion of its waters find their way into the anguil su at the neighbouring settlement of lower mechinkert. after irrigating the orchards of artemid, it pursues its course to the gardens of van, in which it is said to become absorbed. [119] there can be no doubt that it is an artificial conduit; left to itself it would join the lake at the foot of this plain. my informant attributed to semiramis the conducting of it as far as artemid. we remarked the exceptional pureness of the current. soon after crossing it, we reached the right bank of the anguil su at a convenient bridge. the basin proper of the river may have a width of some two miles, and it is a distance of three or four miles from the bridge to the lake. looking up the valley, we could follow the outline of the kurdish mountains as they circled round towards varag; that ridge itself was concealed by the hills behind artemid; but, although the range beyond had diminished in height after leaving the lake, it was still the same range of bold parapets and snowy peaks. the most elevated portion lay in the direction of akhtamar, where there was a lofty mass, known as mount ardos. the stream, which had a greenish hue, was not more than some thirty feet wide; a number of rivulets, driving flour-mills, come in on the left bank. we had left that bank before opening out the village of anguil or enghil; it lies below the bridge, on the further side of the river, and consists of some sixty or seventy neat houses, inhabited by armenians and a few kurds. on the same shore, about a mile lower down, is situated the village of mesgeldek. some high ground separated us from the plain of vostan; but it dies away before reaching the lake. gaining the summit of this moderate eminence, we looked across some flats and marshes to a hillside which projects from the foot of the mountains, and forms a promontory of the shore. the foliage which softened the lower slopes of the headland belonged to the gardens of vostan. we followed the bay of higher land, and reached the village of atanon after over an hour's ride from the enghil su. just beyond this armenian settlement the zone of orchards commences; in the plain below a swift stream flows. an isolated house on its right bank was indicated to us as the residence of the kaimakam of vostan. we reached this edifice at ten minutes before seven, having covered a distance from artemid of about fifteen miles. in the place of the official, who happened to be absent, we were received with great kindness by his brother. we were invited to pass the night in the room of audience; and quilted coverlets, filled with cotton, were spread on takhts or wooden couches, after the manner of the east. after supper and conversation we enveloped ourselves in them, and were not long in falling asleep. when morning came i commenced to explore and realise our surroundings. vostan is no town, nor even a village, but is a district or zone of gardens at the foot of the kurdish mountains about the spurs of mount ardos. on the east it extends to the village of atanon, and on the west to the promontory. the orchards keep to the high land about the base of the range; between them and the lake there is an extensive strip of alluvial soil which, in the neighbourhood of our quarters, had a width of about two miles. i was assured on all sides that there were four or five hundred houses within the limits of the district of vostan; but people get confused when dealing with an area of this description, and with the dispersed units of which such a settlement is composed. i doubt whether there could be found more than half that number. the armenian families have emigrated; their room, but not their place, has been filled up, at least in part, by kurds. as a natural consequence, it is impossible to obtain the bare necessaries of a little corn, or a shoe for a horse. a small church still remains, a memorial of better times, which is said to have existed for many centuries. we could see its plain four walls and small conical dome to the east of the kaimakam's house. we were told that it is still attended by a priest. it is only on the neighbouring slope of the bold promontory that vostan can be said to assume a concrete existence; and, even there, the group of buildings which feature the hillside are but the remains of the ancient town. you see the relics of an old castle, the ruins of a church, and a mosque where the faithful still pray. on the margin of the lake, below the headland, a little mausoleum of yellow stone still rises above the grassy soil. i set out on foot to visit the site, in the company of the doctor of law for the caza of kavach. my companion--a man of middle age and intelligent face--bore the name of mustapha remzi effendi, and was known as the hakim. after jumping many ditches, which often compelled us to deviate, we arrived at the mausoleum standing among the debris of an ancient cemetery, on rising ground, at an interval of a few hundred yards from the peaceful waters of the lake. it is indeed a charming monument, of highly-finished masonry, fresh and clean as on the day when it was completed. in shape it is dodecagonal, and it has an inside diameter of 15 feet 8 inches. the surface of the roof of stone--in form a cone with twelve sides--is relieved by a moulding of geometrical pattern; a sculptured frieze and a long inscription in arabic character runs round the walls, just below the roof. a familiar feature are the niches with stalactite vaulting; a small doorway, surmounted by a moulding in this character, gives access to the interior from the side of the lake. the hakim read to me an arabic inscription which is placed above this entrance; it was translated for me in the following sense. "this mausoleum belongs to the daughter of the ruler here in vostan, sheikh ibrahim." according to my companion, the name of the lady was halimeh. i doubt whether her remains still repose within the enclosure of this jewel which is her tomb. the door is gone, and the vault yawns as though it were unoccupied, except by a heap of rubbish and debris. one admires the taste of the architect, who refrained from decorating the interior and left intact the restful influence of the spaces of wall. from this cemetery we proceeded up the face of the hillside which juts out from south to north and meets the lake. the remains of the castle are situated upon the summit; the mosque and the ruins of the church lie beneath it, upon the middle slopes. the castle has no pretensions to architectural merit, and very little is left of the church. some stones engraved with crosses in the old armenian fashion could still be seen in the masonry of the last of these buildings, a mere chapel rather than a church. but the mosque is an edifice of respectable proportions, having inside dimensions of 65 feet 7 inches by 64 feet 4 inches. from the outside it is nothing more than four walls of hewn stone, surmounted by a dome of clay. but when you enter the spacious chamber the eye is pleased by the vaulted ceilings, and by the double series of open arches which support the roof. these arches are three in number in each series, and between each there is a space of wall veil. in this manner one may say that there are a nave and two aisles; but these aisles are of greatest length in the opposite direction to that of the altar, which faces the entrance door. in fact the arrangement is that usual in a christian church, except for the position of the altar. the ceilings are built of plain kiln-burnt bricks, and neither they nor the walls are decorated in any way. a fine feature is the dome, in the aisle furthest from the door. the membair, or pulpit, on the right of the altar is a richly-wrought structure of wood. an inscription records that it was the gift of khosrov pasha, and that the donor restored the mosque in the year of the hegira 850 (a.d. 1446). i have almost forgotten to mention that between this mosque and the castle is placed a little building with three windows, said to be the tomb of sheikh ibrahim. who was sheikh ibrahim, who was khosrov pasha? the answers which i received to these questions did not go far to dispel my ignorance. the hakim called them arabs, and connected them with the caliphate; yet he admitted that they were a branch of the family which reigned in konieh, that is to say, of the dynasty of seljuk turks. to sheikh ibrahim he attributed the foundation of both mosque and church, with the intention of inducing his moslem and his christian subjects to tolerate and respect each other's creed. he added that the last of this line of rulers was one izzeddin shir bey. we returned to the house of the kaimakam, where i joined the remainder of my party. all were in the saddle by ten minutes to four o'clock. we mounted the slope of the hill which forms the promontory, and which we found to be a spur of mount ardos. it is crossed at a point behind, or on the south of the castle; the ascent is steep and the decline none too short. nearing the strip of shore on the opposite side of the barrier, we were impressed by the outcrops of red granitic rock and green serpentine, the beds lying side by side. at half-past four we gained the level, and proceeded at the foot of some hills which are interposed between the range and the shore. these recede after some distance, and circle away from the lake, leaving a spacious bay of low and, in places, marshy ground. on the further horn of the shore we were shown a group of trees and slowly-rising wreaths of smoke. it was akhavank, known to the turks as iskele (the port), the residence on the mainland of the katholikos of akhtamar. although the sand on the border of the water was rather powdery, we found it better than the broken ground inland. it was pleasant too to ride by the side of the crystal water, and look down into the blue depths. several little villages could be seen at the foot of the hills; they appeared more clearly from the lake next day. we reached akhavank at ten minutes to six, and i estimate the distance from vostan at about eight miles. a two-storeyed white-faced house, an upper room, built out, like a verandah, with large windows overlooking the lake; stables and appurtenances of various application--the whole relieved against a background of poplars and fruit trees--such is akhavank, the residence of his holiness the katholikos khachatur (given to the cross) of akhtamar. the house was full of people, and the stables of horses; it so happened that the kaimakam of vostan was on a visit, accompanied by a numerous retinue. the interior of the building was bare and uncomfortable, rooms and passages alike. full decadence was written large on the squalid furniture and cheerless walls. i was ushered into a long apartment, facing the bay, and composing one side of the first floor. a fetid smell of garlic, and the want of ventilation, almost overpowered me. at the further end of the room, on a kurdish rug, spread on the floor at the foot of the divan, sat or squatted a fat priest, attired in a black robe edged with sable, and wearing the usual black silk cowl of conical form, to which a cross of dim rose diamonds was attached. his back rested on quite a little nest of cushions; a few papers and a little bag lay at his side. on the adjacent couch beside the wall were seated several persons of various types of physiognomy and styles of dress. i saluted, and received the salute of the figure on the floor; it was the katholikos of akhtamar. he spoke of his advanced age and growing infirmities; he was seventy-four years old, and had been possessed of his dignity for no less than thirty years. his tomb was already built; nothing remained but to spend the interval and descend into the grave. this touching sentiment is often used as a becoming pretext for idleness by better people than khachatur. but, as he spoke, the tongue lolled heavily from side to side, and the voice seemed to struggle with an advanced asthmatic affection. in reply to my enquiry why he did not reside in the island, i received the answer that at akhavank he was in a better position to receive his guests and satisfy their wants. it is, no doubt, a paying business to keep such a monastery, provided always that you manage it well. you must personally superintend the arrangements for the picnic, or others of lesser station will abstract your clients. you must be careful to keep well with the government officials, or pilgrims will be afraid to come. so the katholikos of akhtamar discards his pomp, is seen and eats with his guests in the same room round the same tray. on this occasion he was the centre of what was certainly a curious party, assembled against the evening meal. servants entered with a circular platter on which were arrayed the various viands, and placed it before his holiness. requested to seat myself on the right of our host, i endeavoured, as best i might, to fold my legs beneath my body on a carpet by his side. opposite me sat a kurd, an old man who was still a giant, with bony hands more than proportionate to his size. from his sunken cheeks projected the beak of a vulture between small and deeply-caverned eyes. one of the pupils had almost entirely disappeared, leaving a patch of red within the hollow of the contracted eyelid, from which a mucous fluid was discharged over the parchment skin. of such a face smiling could scarcely be expected; my neighbour remained grave, taking his fill of each dish, and fixing me with his single eye. on my right was the kaimakam, a little man of no particular characteristics, wearing a fez and european dress. although a georgian and a relation of the pasha of van, you would take him for a turk. towards myself he was profuse of compliments and attentions, expressing his regret that he had not been present in vostan to receive us, and blaming the british consul for not having written to announce our stay. an officer of zaptiehs whom i had brought from vostan with me--a mad fellow who had lathered his pony by the wildest manoeuvres as we rode along the sands--and some of the principal attendants of the turkish official, completed the company who were privileged to share the meal of the katholikos and sit at his pewter tray. but on that tray my eyes discerned with ill-concealed fright a spectre invisible to my fellow-guests. the shade of hunger floated over the messes of meat and unpalatable vegetables, swimming in oil or ghee. [120] i could not eat the gritty pancake bread, or the salt cheese inlaid with pieces of green straw. nor was i able with success to emulate the politeness of julius cæsar; a sickness came over me when i tried. the old priest was at liberty to dip his fingers into my dishes and pick the choicest bits. i could scarcely swallow a few morsels; but my host was much too stupid to see through the excuses which i made. i felt that the cross might have joy of khachatur, and left his presence when the dishes had been removed. on my guard against the prejudice of a bad dinner, i reflected that at varag the pangs had been the same; yet what pleasant recollections remained of that visit and of the companionship of the quiet daniel vardapet! i sought out the steward of his holiness, and of him enquired for a sleeping-place. zadò was the name of this personage; he was an armenian, but looked like a kurd. he was the most influential of the clerical officials, and certainly smelt the worst. with him came avò, the trustiest of his henchmen, proud of his antecedents as crossing-sweeper in stambul. we were by them desired to spread our blankets in the draughty antechamber; but i made them surrender a large, unoccupied room. we were astonished to find within it a stack of cane-seated chairs, and puzzled our heads to discover the purpose for which they were used. zadò informed us that they were arrayed on great occasions; but nobody was aware that they were objects of necessity to a european or even that they had come from europe to these wilds. dawn had not yet broken when the boatmen we had ordered entered our apartment, and summoned us to avail ourselves of the breeze. in spite of our entreaties over night, the tea and eggs were not forthcoming; hungry we went on board the little bark. the sun rose above the horizon before we put off--a bright and joyous morning, the colours starting from land and sea, and the still waters of the lake becoming every moment more transparent and more blue. a light air, moving from the shore, just ruffled their even surface. the plank was drawn inwards, the broad square-sail set, and we glided easily away. the crag of akhtamar lay before us; behind us the sinuous shore at the foot of the parapet of the kurdish range. who would expect that these crystal depths should contain such nauseous elements, like a beautiful but poisonous flower? the water of lake van is charged with chemical matter, and is briny and putrid to the taste. you remark the absence of fish, and recall the contrast of the teeming inlets of a lake geneva or a lake lucerne. nor are the coasts alive with boats and the expanse with white-winged vessels; you rarely find a shallop within the numerous creeks, although at times you may discover quite a fleet of lateen-sailed craft crossing the broad sheet of sea. they are manned almost exclusively by armenian sailors; and when i asked the eldest among our crew whether there were any of different nationality, he said that with the exception of about five kurds, only armenians pursued this calling. they are simple, hardy fellows, easy to get on with; they conduct a small coasting trade. those who had taken us from arjish were at akhavank when we arrived, and were full of joy, kissing our hands, to see us again. i had asked them to convey us to akhtamar; but they told me it was impossible, as their ship was loading and, besides, it was not their turn. the island is distant about two miles from the nearest shore and more from akhavank. at its westerly extremity a bold cliff of hard grey limestone rises to a height of about eighty feet above the waters, in face of the monastic buildings on the mainland. from this crag the ground declines towards the east, and affords a level site for the church and cloister. the bight, where the vessels moor, is situated on the southern coast, not far from the bluff on the west (fig. 140). within the space of an hour we were nearing the inlet, and, a little later, stepped ashore. besides the cliff and the tiny bay there is not much of akhtamar; yet the little church looks small, even among such surroundings, the work of a jeweller rather than of an architect. in our company were two young clerics, deputed by his holiness to escort us, the one a priest of the peasant type and with the ignorance of a peasant, the other a deacon who had been educated at constantinople and who affected to despise his colleagues and superiors. in spite of his pale face, this second khachatur (given to the cross) was not less stupid or less indolent than the rest. two more priests were in residence upon the island; but neither belonged to a higher social or intellectual grade. none among them knew more about the place and its history than a few stereotyped words, learnt by heart. press them further, and they would burst into an inane giggle, the vardapet of akhavank giving the cue. how one regretted the society of the well-read monks of edgmiatsin, from which community and spiritual government this monastery became dissociated during the religious quarrels of the twelfth century. [121] we walked to the cloister on the south side of the church; the low mud wall joins the outer wall of the narthex on the west, and is produced so as to form a court. there is nothing interesting in the residence of the monks or in the apartments of the katholikos. but the edifice which they face is indeed a remarkable monument and, so far as my experience extends, unique. its dimensions are not large: a length of 48 feet 6 inches and a breadth of 38 feet (interior measurements). the characteristics which impress the eye, accustomed to the beauties of armenian architecture, are the height of the composition with its lofty walls and central tower, and the elaborate mural decorations. as usual, the effect is marred by the additions of a later age. on the south side a belfry and portico, giving entrance to the interior, are due to the misplaced piety of a katholikos of the eighteenth century; and the same personage contributed the spacious narthex or pronaos which adjoins the church upon the west. [122] the eye is obliged to remove these later excrescences before it is enabled to seize the merits of the design. my reader will recognise the first of these features in the illustration taken from the south-east (fig. 141). the companion picture from the north-west corner exhibits the low narthex coming forward beyond the side of the church (fig. 142). a work of the first quarter of the tenth century is disclosed in all the freshness of its original appearance. [123] some of the figures which project from the walls have suffered partial fracture; but the rich friezes are almost intact. beginning at the base, we have first a broad space of plain masonry, enhancing the value of the sculptures above, from which it is separated by a band of deeply chiselled stone. this band, like the friezes, is both continuous round the building and in emphasised relief. it consists of a spiral geometrical pattern, representing the vine. life-size human figures, interspersed with the forms of animals, compose a series of pictures rather than a procession, and rest upon the moulding just described. they are also in relief, and stare out at the visitor with all the naïveté of the early middle ages. subjects from bible history succeed one another, varied by the gaunt figures of christian saints. here you remark the colossal figure of goliath, armed with club and shield (fig. 141); there it is adam and eve, standing naked beside the tree of life, and, a little further, the serpent tempting eve (figs. 142 and 143). the treatment of the human form is primitive and almost barbarous, recalling the romanesque. one is impressed with the combination of naturalism, nay of realism, subdued, and at times checked by hieratic convention. these sculptures pass over into a restful region of unworked stone, and are succeeded by a row of heads, the heads of animals and birds, jutting out at irregular intervals from the face of the building. above them, again, you admire the freedom and extraordinary intricacy of the most elaborate of the friezes. hunters and wild animals and strange birds are represented, woven together by branches of vine with clusters of grapes. higher still another band is drawn along the eaves of the roofs, except on the north and south sides of the apse. rampant animals are the principal subject; but on the north side of the western arm you observe a row of human heads. a somewhat similar frieze is seen below the roofing of the central tower or dome. it may perhaps be found that this exterior discloses elements which, blended together, are of high importance to the study of art. the form of the church, the geometrical ornaments are byzantine in character; on the other hand, of all the churches which we visited during our wanderings none other was decorated with bas-reliefs of human figures after the manner of this edifice. such treatment would be repugnant to the chaster spirit of the architects of ani, and may denote that the standard of culture in the southern principality was not so high as in shirak. the friezes partake of the nature of those with which we are already familiar; but they are more daring and much more freely drawn. they may constitute an important link between the art of the ancient assyrians and the art of the arabs and the byzantines. layard, who visited akhtamar, has most pertinently drawn our attention to the resemblance between the principal frieze and the embossed designs on some bronze dishes which were discovered at nimrud (banks of the tigris); but he has not noticed that the bulls' heads which adorned the ends of the arms of the king's throne at nimrud are almost exactly reproduced in some of the stone ornaments which project from the face of this church. [124] i have said that a narthex of later origin adjoins the building upon the west; it was from that side that we entered the interior. the façade of this narthex is as bald and plain as its inner walls and the rude flagstones of the floor. the ceiling is low; in the centre a shallow vaulting rests upon four arches and piers. it has a length of 32 feet 11 inches, and a breadth, from north to south, of 36 feet 5 inches. it does not contain an altar, and the only object which you remark within it is a large block of stone. our companions informed me that it is placed over the grave of one abdul miseh, a king, as they supposed, of the artsruni dynasty. if this block be the same as that upon which layard saw some cuneiform characters, their abdul miseh may be a corruption of the name of the great king menuas, revealed by the researches of western scholars. [125] four steps lead up from the narthex to the little, undecorated doorway by which we entered the principal building. the interior may perhaps be described as consisting of four apses, the whole surmounted by the lofty dome. a feature are the deep recesses, narrow at the entrance, which are placed one on either side of each apse, and are seen from the outside between the arms of the cruciform figure. the apses on the west and east are deeper than those on the north and south; the most southerly contains a gallery of which the face is adorned with images, two heads of bulls and two of rams, the head of an elephant and of a tiger, carved in full relief out of the stone. in this gallery we were informed that king gagik had been wont to pray. the walls had been adorned by rich frescos; but little of these remained. the apse on the north communicates with a vaulted chamber and a little chapel, where is preserved the holy oil. a cemetery surrounds the church, from the south-east corner to the north side. issuing by the portico on the south, we stopped to remark an ambitious tomb of which the stone was fresh from the chiseller's tool. on the sides of the recumbent portion were represented the figures of apostles--a frieze which had probably been copied from some rude work of the middle ages, and which was coloured in gaudy reds and greens and blues. upon the upper surface of the slab was engraved a long inscription, and beneath the inscription the grand emblem of the double-headed eagle, with cross and mitre, the eagle of vaspurakan. the headstone was adorned with the portrait of a katholikos, wearing the cross of diamonds on his cowl. the features were those of our host; it was the tomb of khachatur, into which he had told us that he was preparing to step. the legend set forth that the grave had been dedicated on september 12, 1893. following this announcement, came a farewell message from his holiness, conceived in the following terms:-i approach thee, o fair grave, with a greeting; my secrets to tell i have no tongue, because they were lost before i came to speak with thee. the generations of my people i grieve to relinquish; i khachatur, given to the cross, will obey the cross (es khachatur i khachis ku-pakchim). when i come to thee, all the manifold memories will have vanished. whatever i may leave behind me--the holy oils, the library, the cowl, the stole, the staff--i leave them to serve as a memory of me for my successors. lastly i approach my people and entreat them to be loyal to sultan hamid, the illustrious, because during my whole life i have found help from him and from his high officers. my soul will be protected by the weekly prayer of my pupils; pray for me weekly for a while and forget me not. on the east of the building there is a little chapel, now in ruins. i was informed by the katholikos that it is even older than the church. returning to the monastic quarters, we asked to be shown the library, and were ushered into a small, whitewashed room. five little shelves, occupying a single side of the apartment, hold all the manuscripts and books which the monks possess. neither the vardapet nor the deacon was conversant with their contents; but the manuscripts, so far as we were able to examine them, were all concerned with biblical subjects. two stones, engraved with cuneiform inscriptions, are kept in this room. [126] the treasure was carried off by the kurds years ago; [127] but our companions were able to produce several mitres and some rich embroideries, of which one piece, worked with the device of the double-headed eagle, appeared to be of considerable age. after a last look at the remarkable church, with its many faces of fresh pink sandstone, mottled by the subtle reliefs with light and shade, our little party retraced its steps to the peaceful harbour, and embarked on the homeward voyage. the breeze had veered for our convenience to the opposite direction, and wafted us towards the mainland. we passed close to the bold crag, and to the tiny islet which, crowned by the remains of a fort and a diminutive chapel, juts out from the south-westerly extremity of the sea-girt cliffs. before us lay the horn of the bay on the west of akhavank, and in the foreground, a second islet, the rock of arter, which, like its fellow, supports a little shrine. sipan was seen in all his majesty, sweeping across the horizon, until the outline of the base was covered by the outline of the promontory. from that headland three little barks were stealing towards us, specks of white on the expanse of blue. in the south the snows of ardos streamed with sunlight above horizontal layers of cloud. i could hear the heavy breathing of my fellow-passengers; the water eddied softly in our wake. in the space of about an hour the plank was again lowered and the stern allowed to graze the sand. the kaimakam and his retinue were assembled on the shore--the high officers mentioned in the message on the tomb. i received their greetings and good wishes, and, promising to rejoin them, passed with the dragoman to the apartment of the katholikos. i found his holiness seated on the same rug at the foot of the divan, in the same posture and attired in the same ceremonious dress as when he had received us the preceding day. the same cowl with the diamond cross enveloped the forehead, which, judging from the thick lips, flat nose and little eyes, was better hidden than revealed. he beckoned his people to withdraw; we were alone with the patriarch; turkish contempt still shrinks from converting the chamber of a christian prelate into a permanent lodging for a kaimakam. so our host was free to answer the questions which i addressed to him without fear of being reported by malevolent tongues. he informed me that his patriarchate was quite independent, both of edgmiatsin and of constantinople. but he was in the habit of consulting with the patriarch of constantinople in respect of such church matters in which collaboration was mutually useful. artemid is the easterly limit of his spiritual kingdom, and is included within its area. on the west it comprises a portion of garchigan, but does not extend as far as kindirantz. on the south, the cazas of mukus and shatakh are either its boundaries or contribute constituent districts. the practice of their religion he assured me was quite free, emphatically he repeated, "quite free." the political troubles which convulsed the country were caused by scamps (chapkiner) on the side of the armenians, and by bad kaimakams. i questioned him closely as to whether, when he was young, the armenian population was not much more numerous along this shore. he answered that the country on the south was at that time inhabited by them in far greater numbers than now; but there was no perceptible difference along the coast. he admitted, however, that during his youth there were armenians residing at vostan. at this point in the conversation my host pronounced the name of zadò; and forthwith divine fragrance announced the presence of the major-domo, attentive to the faintest call. obedient to his master's behests, he proceeded to unlock a large wooden box, and to lay out upon the floor a number of tawdry state orders and firmans of investiture. es khachatur i khachis ku-pakchim! some of these objects the katholikos regarded with especial reverence, devoutly pressing them to his lips. religion has become a trade with such as this prelate, and they themselves hotel-keepers and show-mongers. each pilgrim leaves the equivalent of double what he costs. placing a suitable present in the hands of his holiness, which he accepted after many protestations, i took leave of khachatur for ever. resuming our journey at four o'clock, we crossed the high land on the west of akhavank, and again descended to a strip of plain, bordering the shore. on the opposite side of the deep inlet, which was now disclosed to its furthest recesses, lay the arm of the long promontory which encloses the landscape in the neighbourhood of akhtamar. about halfway in, along that coast, we saw a considerable village, said to be an armenian settlement, called mirabet. [128] further inland, at the head of the gulf, is situated the armenian village of norkeui; while on the rising ground, at the extremity of the plain, a little to the east of norkeui, the kurdish hamlet of sarik receives the torrent of a long cascade, descending precipitous cliffs. we turned our backs to the lake and passed between the two last-named settlements, towards an opening of the hills on the opposite shore. a stream or little river issues from the cleft and flows towards norkeui. a single telegraph wire, taken across the plain, followed us on our left hand. at half-past five we were in the fork, entering a long and stony valley, with a main direction from south-east to north-west. it is well watered, and what soil there is has been rendered productive by artificial channels. the swirling current swept past us at the foot of a sparse grove of golden-leaved forest trees. the vista backwards was closed by the broad-shouldered ardos, with gleaming snows and precipitous sides. our destination was enzakh, an armenian hamlet of some dozen burrows, in a lofty situation at the head of this valley. it was nearly seven when we arrived, having covered a distance of some thirteen miles, and attained an elevation of about 6900 feet. when we issued from our fetid quarters on the following morning (november 19), a frost lay on the ground. at nine o'clock we were in the saddle, proceeding in a westerly direction in order to cross the wall of the valley. it is lofty, and is scaled by a precipitous path. before taking the main ascent, we passed by a lonely chapel, surrounded by a stone enclosure. it is known to the armenians under the name of surb yakob (or agop), and to the kurds under that of gubudgokh. the interior consists of a dome, resting on four arches, and a deep apse. the priest was not forthcoming, having left his eyrie to purchase bread. it was nearly ten o'clock when we reached the summit of the ridge at an altitude of about 7600 feet. although the ground was flecked with snow in the immediate neighbourhood of where we stood, the sun had already warmed the mountain air. we halted for half-an-hour in order to realise our position. we had come a little south of a westerly course from enzakh. our ridge appeared to be a spur from the barrier in the south; but it increased in height as it approached the invisible lake. the mass of rock in that direction was called by our guides ak kul; they knew nothing of kiepert's mount gubudgokh. these heights compose the promontory on the west of akhtamar, and, in a country of railways, would no doubt be pierced by a tunnel. in the east we could discern the summit of varag; a succession of ridges lined the west, pursuing an almost meridional direction, the most distant covered with snow. continuing our march at the back of ak kul, i counted no less than six of these parapets, without including those of lesser significance. they appeared to be inclined a few points towards the east. i hammered off a fragment of the characteristic strata, a mica-schist, weathered a pale reddish hue. for over an hour we were involved in this sea of mountains, our course being clearly indicated by a line of telegraph posts, dipping and rising to the troughs and up the crests. but at a quarter before twelve we emerged from this wild and uninhabited district, and again overlooked the lake. we were approaching the easterly end of the beautiful bay of baghmesheh (garden of oak), and were about to follow the upper slopes of the lofty block of hills which confine the narrow respite of the shore. our present position was about two miles distant from the calm water, and at a considerable elevation above its level. we rode for half-an-hour along these slopes, through a bush of oak which nowhere attains the proportions of trees. a few boats were moored against the sand, and we could descry a few huts. zenith and sea were intensely blue; but grey vapours came floating towards us, concealing all but the shining summit of sipan. from the further extremity of the bay we again saw the isle of akhtamar, and, behind it, dimly perceived, the rock of van. it cost us little effort to ascend from our track on the hillside to the summit of the ridge which forms a headland on the west. the view from that eminence in a westerly direction recalled none of the landscapes through which we had passed. at our feet lay a plain of perfectly level surface, enclosed on all sides by hills. on the side of the lake a line of heights shut out this plain from the shore, resembling a huge dam. after a descent of half-an-hour we reached the floor of the formation, which is a little more elevated than the surface of the lake. under this eastern wall lies the armenian hamlet of göli, while, on an opposite slope, at the head of the valley into which the plain narrows, is situated the village of kindirantz. we rode for half-an-hour from the first to the last of these settlements, deviating south of our direct course. i was anxious to visit in his capital the kaimakam of garchigan. for kindirantz is no less a place than the seat of government for that caza, although it cannot boast of more than thirty houses. [129] we arrived before two o'clock, having completed a distance of some seventeen miles from enzakh. the kaimakam was at his post and delighted to receive us. we found in him an official who did honour to his country, active and strenuous in spite of his white hair. he had built himself a house with solid walls of masonry, a rare luxury in these wilds. it had of course been erected by armenian workmen; but he complained of the backwardness and laziness of the armenians inhabiting his administrative district. he told me that it comprised no less than seventy-six villages, of which only twelve were peopled by that race. but i noted that of the five settlements in the plain of kindirantz, three, including his place of residence, were armenian. the largest village in his caza was, he said, kordikran, inhabited by kurds. but it was not so well situated for purposes of administration as kindirantz. the kurds in his district were all settled on the land, and formed the large majority of the population. they sent recruits to the nizam or regular army. he assured me that since his arrival in the country complete security for life and property prevailed. i have no reason to doubt his word. kindirantz must be five or six miles distant from the lake, and the plain may have a length from north to south of five miles, with an average breadth of about two miles. a nice stream descends from the hills in the neighbourhood of the little town. in connection with this plain i may mention a natural phenomenon which repeats itself every year. when the snows melt in spring and the torrents rush down from the mountains, the plain becomes completely submerged. the line of heights on the side of the lake prevent the egress of the waters, which attain in places a depth of about ten feet. the flood ultimately escapes through three principal subterraneous passages, besides several minor outlets. the water rushes through these natural tunnels in the dam formed by the cliffs, but it takes a considerable time for it all to disappear. when the land is again revealed, the peasants sow their crops, which, in some years, yield an excellent harvest. but it often happens that they are withered by the fierce sun of summer, which has already commenced by the time that the lake has run out. to this cause the kaimakam attributed the poverty of the neighbouring villages. i have no doubt that the little stream, if properly utilised, would go far towards irrigating their lands; and if a proper tunnel were cut, and reservoirs constructed, the soil might be made as fertile as any in the world. we proceeded on our journey at four o'clock, accompanied by the kaimakam, who rode a fiery grey horse. his saddle rested on a light blue cloth, bordered with a yellow fringe; the trappings and bridle were adorned with yellow tassels. he himself was attired in the civil dress of europe, and wore the fez. he could not control his steed, although a good horseman; the youngster who carried our baggage became enlivened by the example, and set off at a canter with his load. the kaimakam galloped after him; but our colt was in condition, and showed him his heels until he was arrested at an adjacent village. this escapade cost us time, and it was nearly half-past five before we had scaled the heights on the west of the plain. at our feet lay the lake, about two miles away. it is the peculiar favour of this fascinating seaboard that, often hidden, it is always new and always fair. not a patch of ragged coast disturbs the impression of ideal beauty, resuming and blending the choicest features of other shores. our landscape of this evening embraced the westerly extremities of the white, unruffled expanse (fig. 144). the sun was declining beyond the colossal crater of nimrud, a true caldron rising from the lake on the opposite margin. deep shadows clothed the promontories between our standpoint and the mountain, among which a bold headland, seen on the left of my illustration, jutted out in the form of a peninsula. it was named to us after a neighbouring village, the cape of vanik. during my second journey it was found to conceal a small crater. in the foreground we overlooked the soft foliage of the village of surb, with fertile fields and a little bay of u-shaped curve. it caught the light from the western sky, and reflected the tender tints on the very threshold of the pale water and gloomy rocks. i was informed that it is inhabited by armenians and moslems. we left it on our right hand as we descended by a precipitous path. west of surb the mountains descend to the immediate border of the lake, and the track is taken at no great height above the water along their steep and rocky sides. it follows every bend in the outline of the shore. this characteristic was new to us, a crowning variety of the manifold features which rendered memorable our journey along the coast. as we advanced along this path we opened out the majestic sipan, seen from foot to summit in the failing light. night was closing when we arrived at a recess in the barrier, harbouring some fine chestnut trees. there is situated the village of garzik, with thirty small tenements, of which twenty are inhabited by armenians and ten by kurds. the kaimakam had sent forward a horseman, and our arrival was expected; a stable of unusual loftiness had been prepared. hay had been laid on crates, and rugs spread upon this primitive mattress, destined to be our bed. our horses rested near us, my colt and the kaimakam's show-horse munching peacefully side by side. our kind friend of kindirantz related stories to us, while we watched the smoke wreathing upwards to the central aperture in the roof of logs. one of these stories was suggested by a question which i put to him, whether monogamy was strictly practised by the christians. he told me--and his statement was confirmed from christian sources--that the possession of several wives was not an infrequent occurrence among them, in spite of the ban of the church. not that the priests were a model of chastity according to his experience, which agreed with the conclusion arrived at by a bishop of rumelia, his friend and countryman. that prelate had told him that four wives were allotted to a mohammedan, one to a christian and all to a bishop. i asked whether the armenians intermarried with the kurds in a village of mixed population like garzik. his answer, which was in the negative, explains the stories of abduction which make such a show in our blue-books. a kurd sees a pretty armenian girl of his own village, and, as often as not, a mutual passion arises between them. the lady is not always an unwilling victim, as our armenian friends would lead us to suppose. we slept soundly in spite of the fleas which made a meal upon us, and were again in the saddle at a quarter before eight. after taking leave of the kaimakam, who returned to kindirantz, we continued our journey along the path on the mountain-side. for three-quarters of an hour we made our way beneath the precipices, until we again emerged upon a strip of plain. vanik it is called, after an armenian village; it has a depth of about a mile. we crossed it in a quarter of an hour, and entered a natural passage between a promontory of the lake and the main range. this passage became a valley of bleak and rugged aspect, and we did not see the lake again. at half-past nine we left the telegraph wires, which we had been following for some distance; they stretched away on our right hand. they are taken by elmali to tadvan and bitlis by a more northerly and less direct course. the prospect opened towards the north; we were in face of the mass of nimrud, no longer separated by an arm of the sea (fig. 145). a little later we arrived upon the banks of a stream which flowed along with us for some way. we crossed it by a ford near an ancient bridge of hewn stone which had been allowed to fall into ruin. pursuing a westerly course, we passed through a considerable village, inhabited by settled kurds. it is called gotok, and is distinguished by some caves, adjoining the track, with artificial niches and chambers. it contains no less than seventy tenements, and is included within the limits of the vilayet of bitlis. it seems a prosperous place. our stream, which they named sapor, now flowed off upon our right towards lake van. we ourselves took an almost south-westerly direction, while our rugged valley became more spacious and more fair. it assumed the form of a strip of plain, between opposite ridges, stretching away to snow-clad mountains in the south. it is known as the güzel dere, or beautiful valley; we thought it deserved the name. we met and saluted a shepherd at the head of his flock; as usual in the neighbourhood of bitlis, he was armed with a rifle. at half-past eleven we entered a side valley, almost at right angles, on a course a little north of west. we could see our track, climbing the side of a lofty ridge of mountain at the head of this opening. the güzel dere was lost to view, extending towards the spine of the chain. a ride of a quarter of an hour brought us to the armenian village of sach, situated at the upper end of this side valley. it is composed of fifty houses and possesses a church; but its inhabitants are extremely poor. they subsist on cakes of millet seed, and have little corn or barley, although the soil in these valleys is extremely rich. when i upbraided them with their indolence, i received the answer that labour was useless so long as the peasant was not permitted to enjoy the fruits of his toil. we halted in this village for three-quarters of an hour, and then commenced the ascent of the ridge. the pass has an elevation of about 1900 feet above lake van; and one can readily appreciate the reasons which have influenced traffic to prefer the easier if somewhat lengthier route by way of elmali. the actual scaling of the parapet occupied half-an-hour; patches of snow clung to the rocks about the summit. it is called the pass of bor, from an armenian village in the opposite valley. we reached that settlement at three o'clock; it lies in the watershed of the tigris, to which a stream flowed from the further side of the ridge we had crossed, a tributary of the bitlis chai. the people of bor appeared to us to be on the verge of starvation; the women had for the most part been reduced to mere skeletons. it is a place of some size, and i afterwards heard of some interesting tombstones which were said to belong to this township. this upper portion of the valley has a breadth of three-quarters of a mile, and expands as you proceed. we pursued a westerly course, and arrived at the junction with the road from tadvan. the telegraph wires are carried across the heights on the north of the valley, which at this point are insignificant. we stopped to visit an ancient khan, built of hewn stone and of considerable size. beside it is a new bridge, also of finished masonry, recalling the grand old days. i was informed that it had been constructed by the present vali of bitlis, though, heaven knows! he has no excuse for such lavishness. the stream which it crosses and which flows in a deep gorge is spanned by a less presumptuous structure which might suffice for all ordinary needs. further evidence of this childish but truly oriental habit of embellishing your capital while your kingdom is quaking about you was furnished by a metalled road which commences at this point and puts the traveller in a good mood. after passing a second bridge, traversing the chasm of a torrent which came towards us on our right hand, we turned with the valley to a south-westerly direction, which was maintained for about 1 1/2 miles. we then defiled into the deep recesses of the network of valleys in which repose the castle and town of bitlis. it was after four o'clock, and i estimate the distance from garzik at 27 miles. between kindirantz and that village we covered about 9 miles, which gives a total of just under 100 miles from van. chapter vi bitlis not far south of the line of junction of the volcanic plateau west of lake van with the first outworks of the main taurus range, where the level spaces of the elevated tableland of armenia break away to the crest and trough of kurdistan, there, within the threshold of the chain but at the very head of the mountainous country, lies the picturesque town of bitlis. coming from the north, the traveller is impressed by a change of scene which is at once sudden and complete. in place of the great plains, divided by irregular mountain masses of eruptive volcanic origin, he is introduced to the regular sequence of ridge upon ridge and valley after valley, which are in fact the steps, or succession of mountain terraces with stratified formation, leading down to the burning lowlands of mesopotamia. the clouds no longer float in tranquil, feathery beds, but sail across the sky, grazing the peaks. the rivers hiss in the gorges and are white with foam instead of winding with sluggish current over the flats. the glare of the open and treeless landscape is succeeded by the gloom of overhanging parapets; and, while the margin of the streams will be overgrown by willows and poplars, the forest trees, among which the walnut and the elm are conspicuous, flourish upon each oasis of deeper soil. even the kurdish shepherds have failed to destroy a vegetation favoured by moisture and shade. it is a place of beginning and ending, of ways radiating outwards, of ways closing in. south of the town the valleys collect together; slope approaches slope, increasing in acclivity and holding the united waters as in a vice. about the site itself the walls of mountain recede, forming an amphitheatre of commanding heights upon the north. passages thread their way within the folds of that landscape, following side valleys of which the pleasant spaces caress the eye until they are lost to view in a turn of the fold. the sense of imprisonment, which soon outweighs the romance of a sojourn among the mountains, is a feeling foreign to the genius of these surroundings. far rather is one diverted by the variety of the expanses which preclude the palling of this essentially alpine scene. yet, in spite of the comparative openness of such a situation, you do not see bitlis until you are well within her precincts. the body of the town--the mediæval castle, the minarets and the bazars--lies in the trough of a deep gorge. the river which threads the valley is composed by the union of two main streams, the one coming from the north through a direct passage from the plains of the tableland, the other from the east, the direction of the güzel dere and the road to van. the waters meet at some little distance above the settlement, to bury themselves on a south-westerly course in a ravine or cañon with a depth of about 100 feet. from either side of the ravine rise the slopes of the mountains, leaving no great interval of level ground. the road is taken along the right bank upon the summit of the cliff; and after a few winds reaches the commencement of the houses. they cluster on the cliffs on both sides of the stream and mount the first acclivities of the mountain walls. of a sudden the valley opens and the river changes direction, settling down to a southerly course. two side valleys with confluent streams enlarge the views. tier upon tier the flat-roofed dwellings are terraced up the slopes, and are seen extending into the recesses of the hills. it will be about a quarter of a mile from where you reached the first buildings; and still the castle and the bazars are hidden from sight. it is not until that venerable pile is already passed that the banks of the river flatten. it grazes the eastern side of the platform of rock supporting the battlements, and is soon joined by the tributary to the right bank. these are the most densely-built quarters. stone bridges with a single span of arched masonry present the most charming prospects up the labyrinth of houses to the castled rock of which the figure is that of a wedge with the broad side facing south. the water bubbles over the boulders in its bed, which is not more than thirty or forty feet wide. from its margin rise the slender stems of willows or poplars. a little lower down the second tributary rustles in, this one to the left bank. but the river soon resumes its burrowing and boring tendency, and compels the houses again to take refuge up the slopes on either side. the expanse narrows and assumes the form of a single trough in the mountains, threaded by a thin line of foam. the most comprehensive view of the city may be obtained from these southern limits, just before the entrance of the affluent from the east. it forms the subject of my illustration, which was taken from a position in the avel meidan (fig. 146)--the quarter in which is situated the american mission, and where, since the date of my visit, has been established the british consulate, the pioneer of the political and commercial intercourse of the states of the west with this remote oriental town. i have endeavoured to portray the principal features in the topography of bitlis on the little plan--hastily executed upon the spot--which accompanies this chapter. [130] the old castle in the well of the expanse, towards which the valleys converge, suggests the appearance, when seen from a standpoint on one of the adjacent heights, of a gigantic starfish. the long feelers of the creature, represented by the valleys covered with houses, straddle somewhat about its slender body. abundance of water and the shade of trees favour the place as a residence; but these advantages are balanced by the heats which prevail in summer and by the quantities of snow which collect in winter. the southern aspect of the site makes it a trap for the fiery sun; while its elevation of 5200 feet above sea-level enables the snow to lie during the winter months, when it accumulates to a great depth, as in a natural reservoir. on the other hand the houses are the best built in this part of asia, and their solid walls are almost proof against extremes of temperature. it is quite a pleasure to observe their substantial masonry after the habitual rubble or plastered mud of eastern dwellings. here at bitlis they are composed of blocks of hewn stone, broken by a layer or two of thick beams, to equalise the shock in case of earthquake. the walls are double, and the stone is faced on the side of the interior as well as upon that of the garden or the street. a layer of mud and rubble is sandwiched between the two walls. very little mortar is used to bind the blocks together, which consist of a yellow lava weathering to a warm grey. this lava is found in abundance in the troughs of the valleys, having presumably flooded down them from the volcanic plateau on the north. a quarry of white marble in the western valley, some three miles distant, supplies ornamental material. window glass is brought from europe and extensively employed. there are only wanting our open fireplaces and groups of stone chimneys to complete the resemblance to an english west-country town. in bitlis the rooms are warmed most usually by braziers and more rarely by european stoves. the importance of the situation can readily be appreciated when we reflect upon the geographical conditions. the entire section of the tauric barrier between the great zab on the east and this valley of the bitlis su upon the west is composed of quite a network of lofty mountains, extremely difficult to cross. to these natural obstacles, which have played an important part in the history of these countries, are added dangers to traffic arising out of the lawlessness of regions which it has never been easy to police. bitlis commands the approach to the first important natural passage between the districts about lake van and the mesopotamian plains. the avenue of communication is taken down the valley of the bitlis su, and, crossing thence into that of the keser su, to the town of sert, a distance of about forty miles. although this route has not as yet been rendered passable to wheeled traffic, it is well adapted to caravans. at sert you are already upon the fringe of the lowlands and in a different climate. on your one hand lies diarbekr, with its ready access to the mediterranean, and on the other mosul, upon the navigable waterway of the tigris, whence in any other country but asiatic turkey a service of first-rate steamers would afford quick access to the persian gulf. west of bitlis there are several passages, the routes converging upon diarbekr; but they are for the most part less accessible to the great plains of the tableland. it is therefore towards this avenue that the traffic is directed between widely distant centres of the plateau country and aleppo or baghdad. it is not so very long ago that this door between highlands and lowlands was in the keeping of a line of kurdish princes. the merchant in persia, who travelled in the early portion of the sixteenth century, describes bitlis as a town of no great size, ruled by a kurd in only nominal allegiance to the shah of persia, and named in the peculiar jargon of these early adventurers sarasbec. the castle, with its spacious area, high walls, turrets and towers, was occupied by this petty feudal sovereign. [131] a century later the bey of bitlis impressed tavernier with his show of power; he could place in the field no less than 20,000 to 25,000 horsemen besides a quantity of good infantry. he resided in the castle, approached by three successive drawbridges; and his private apartments were situated in the last and smallest of three courts through which the visitor made his way on foot to audience. the bey acknowledged neither the sultan of turkey nor the shah of persia, and was courted by both on account of the strategical value of his city, barring the communications between aleppo and tabriz. [132] when the jesuits founded a mission in bitlis in the year 1685 they were kindly received by the ruling bey. but that prince was in nominal subjection to the sultan, each successive ruler paying to the porte a small present as a matter of form upon the occasion of his accession. [133] in the eighteenth century the padre maurizio garzoni, who sojourned for eighteen years among the kurds in the interests of the propaganda at rome, speaks of the dynasty of bitlis as one of the five considerable principalities which divided between them the kurdistan of his day. the remainder were respectively located at jezireh, amadia, julamerik and sulimanieh. [134] the last of this old order of princes at bitlis was a man of many-sided and remarkable character, whose romantic history one peruses with breathless excitement in the dry reports and correspondence of consul brant, the eye and ear of the famous stratford canning. his name was sherif bey; and he built a fortified palace on the heights which confine the valley on the east. the site of his residence i have indicated on the plan, although it has long ago been razed to the ground. after a life of chequered fortune and fox-like resistance to the turkish power he was finally overwhelmed by the operations of reshid pasha and taken a prisoner to constantinople in 1849. it appears to have been this prince who first deserted the ancient castle, which has now fallen into complete ruin. since his overthrow bitlis has been governed by a turkish pasha, and it forms the capital of a vilayet bearing its name. the derivation of that name does not appear to be known, although it was prevalent in the time of the arab geographers. [135] the place seems to have borne the earlier appellation of baghesh, and to have belonged to the armenian province of beznuni. [136] local tradition ascribes the origin of the castle to the campaigns of alexander--a persistent belief which has no foundation upon any known facts. a laughable story is gravely related in this connection. the king of macedon was impressed by the advantages of the site as he journeyed past it at the head of his army. detaching one of his generals who was called lais, or lis, he ordered him to erect a stronghold at the junction of the two streams and to endeavour to complete it against the return of the royal forces. the general executed these commands to the very letter; and when the king retraced his steps to the valley which had excited his admiration, he found it defended against his entry by a formidable fortress. after in vain employing all the arts known to the besiegers of his day, he contrived to possess himself of the person of his revolted subject. when that rebel was introduced to the royal presence, he defended his action against the vehement reproaches of his master in the following brief speech. "my lord ordered me to build him a strong castle, the strongest which should yet have been constructed. how could i better convince my lord of the obedience of his servant than by successfully resisting in that castle the greatest warrior of the world?" alexander was pleased by the words, but playfully observed in the persian language that lis was a very naughty man, bad lis. the epithet adhered to the name of the general and survives in that of the town to the present day. this is a good example of an oriental yarn. the connection of bitlis with alexander is probably apocryphal; but the number of greek coins that are dug up and offered for sale to the traveller argue the extension of the later hellenic culture into the recesses of this distant valley. during my stay at akhlat in the course of my second journey several of these pieces in silver, derived from bitlis and the neighbourhood, were brought into my tent. one of them, a coin of antiochus the sixth of syria, lies before me as i write. greek inscriptions, perhaps of the roman period, are said to be forthcoming in the vicinity. but such hearsay should be received with considerable caution; and the same remark will apply to the statement made to shiel by an aged native that there had existed an inscription on the wall of the castle ascribing its foundation to a date 300 years before the prophet mohammed. [137] the arabic writings seen on the ruins, but unfortunately not copied or translated by modern travellers, have most likely, almost without exception, disappeared. the population of the town appears to have increased during the present century. in 1814 it was believed to consist of not more than 12,000 souls, one-half mussulman, and the remainder armenian. [138] brant computed the number of families in 1838 at 3000, or from 15,000 to 18,000 souls. of these, two-thirds were mussulman, and one-third armenian, besides 50 families belonging to the jacobite persuasion. [139] in 1868 consul taylor speaks of 4000 families, of which 1500 were christian, that is to say armenian. [140] at the time of my visit the population of the town probably amounted to close on 30,000 souls, 10,000 armenians, 300 syrians or jacobites, and the rest mussulman kurd. the official figures for the town and caza, comprising tadvan and the head of mush plain, showed a total of just over 44,000 inhabitants, including about 15,500 armenians. if we would equalise the number of the females to that of the males, 15 per cent must be added to these figures. [141] bitlis owes its somewhat flourishing state mainly to its position as a provincial centre; but it does a trade in gall-nuts and gum, collected in the surrounding country, as well as in loupes or whorls found on the trunks of the walnut trees and exported to france for veneering purposes. the nuts of these trees furnish an oil which is also marketable, and madder root is found in the district and used for dyeing purposes. from the leaves of the oak and other trees, the villagers in the neighbourhood collect manna -an old-world practice still in vogue in kurdistan. i would now invite my reader to accompany me in a ride through the town. our starting-point will be a fine house on the heights of bash mahalla, immediately adjoining the road from van. a stone bridge crosses the road from the precincts of the mansion to the dwelling of the ladies of the family, surrounded by a pleasant garden. the best rooms of the salamlik or larger residence had been placed at our disposal by one of the notables of bitlis, by name shemseddin bey. adjoining this quarter are the open spaces of the gök meidan, where you may admire an old medresseh, now used as a military store--a fine square building in hewn stone with four turrets at the corners, and a rich façade in the arab style on the south side. the place is overgrown with weeds. ancient elm trees spread their shade over the ruins of a mosque not many feet away. adjacent is a cemetery with numerous headstones and two considerable mausolea. in this same district, not far from the residence of the pasha, is situated the small mosque called meidan jamisi. a mollah dispenses instruction to some twenty little boys in a small den of a room close by. descending the cliff-side to the main valley by a paved way, we pass the little mosque of dort sanduk, and the armenian church of karmirak. the latter, although presided over by the bishop of bitlis, is an unpretentious building of four plain stone walls, with two rows of three stone pillars in the interior and crowned by a small dome. the bishop--poor fellow--will probably be in prison; that was his residence on the occasion of our sojourn. attached to the church is a school with four teachers and over a hundred pupils, who certainly impressed us as better-to-do than at van. quite a number were wearing cloth clothes. the prison, full of armenians, frowns out from the edge of the cliff. we make our way down the trough of the valley and past the castle. it is nothing better than a shell, the inner structures having fallen in or yielded their masonry to serve as material for other buildings. on an eminence, overlooking the pile, is placed the turkish high school or rushdiyeh, with seventy scholars and four instructors. our visit was expected, but no preparations could conceal the squalor and general decrepitude of the institution. most of the pupils were quite small boys. where was the mudir or director of public instruction? it transpired that he too, although a mussulman, was in prison. he had been complaining to constantinople that the military authorities had turned him out of the building destined to serve as a high school, and had converted it into a store. the officers retaliated by locking him up. [142] the syrian church is situated in the same quarter--that of kizil mejid, or the red mejid. mejid is said to be a proper name. a plain little whitewashed chapel nestles under the cliff, and here the service is read in the syriac language, and a syriac bible lies upon the desk. not that any of the congregation understand that tongue; they speak armenian and are familiar with turkish. the bible is expounded to them in armenian, which may be said to be their native tongue. when we reflect that the services of the early armenian church were celebrated in the syriac or the greek languages, this transformation in the old order of things is not without interest. the attendant priest, a charming man who had come from diarbekr, seemed half aware of the irony of the situation. he went so far as to say that the armenians had usurped the syrian religion and then set up a separate church. but the differences between the churches amounts to little more than a divergence in the preparation of the consecrated bread. the syrians use leavened bread. there was sadness in his voice when he related the fortunes of the jacobite community. in old days he maintained that they had been much more numerous; and he believed that the principal mosque in bitlis had originally been a syrian church. some had emigrated; the greater number had become armenians. a jacobite marries an armenian wife whom he leaves a widow; the woman brings up the children in the armenian faith. i enquired why the faithful remnant spoke armenian to the exclusion of any syrian dialect. he replied, "because this earth is hayasdan (armenia)." he added that there were some 1500 syrians in the sanjak of sert, mostly in the districts of sert and shirvan. their spiritual ruler is the patriarch of mardin. the armenian catholics are a mere handful among the inhabitants of bitlis, amounting to not more than fifteen families, of which only three or four represent the converts of the former jesuit mission, founded here in 1685. the remainder have become catholics during quite recent years. persecution and schism have dealt hard blows at the catholic community. in 1838 they did not number more than fifty citizens, and their priest had been taken a prisoner by the gregorian armenians and cruelly beaten at the monastery of surb karapet above mush plain. [143] in the eighties that well-informed and genial ecclesiastic, father rhétoré of van, speaks of them as the most neglected and disorganised body in bitlis, which had dwindled during the kupelianist movement and from other causes from thirty to nine families. [144] the advent of an energetic pastor, who had studied in the jesuit college of beyrut, has infused new life into the flock. he speaks french fluently, has travelled widely, and is an accomplished man. a school has been recently opened. the catholics of bitlis have had good reason to resent their treatment at the hands of the gregorians; but their spiritual leader displayed an antipathy towards the armenians of the national persuasion in which religious hatred had overcome the bonds of race. very different is the attitude of the american protestant missionaries, whose flourishing establishment is situated in the avel meidan within the angle formed by the confluence of the stream from the eastern valley with the main bitlis river. if their conversions excite the jealousy of the gregorian hierarchy, their proselytes display no tendency to divest themselves of their nationality, but, on the contrary, remain armenians to the core. this fact does not increase the goodwill of the turkish official classes towards the americans. founded in 1858, their mission encountered the same opposition on the part of the armenian clergy as had formerly been experienced by the catholics. it was not until after the lapse of seven years that a nucleus of five professed protestants was formed; and, once a start had been made, progress was rapid. of late years the labours of the missionaries have been wisely directed to the extension of their schools rather than to the propagation of protestant doctrine. debarred from working among the mussulmans, they have supplied the armenians with priceless advantages in the shape of a college in the provincial capital, and no less than fifteen schools in the smaller towns and villages comprised within the limits of the vilayet. about one-half of the attendants are and remain gregorian. the college dispenses three grades of education: the high school, the intermediate and the primary grades. at the time of our visit twenty scholars were included in the first of these categories, fifty in the second, and about sixty in the third. there were fifteen boarders living on the premises. the teachers numbered four, besides the missionaries, the principal teacher having graduated at the important american institution in kharput. some eighty girls, some of them boarders, were receiving instruction. of these the residents were in most cases inhabitants of bitlis, parents preferring that their daughters should avoid passing to and fro in the streets. the majority pay for their maintenance in kind. they impressed me as being very neat and clean. the mission was under the direction of messrs. g. c. knapp, r. m. cole, and george knapp--all zealous, experienced, and amiable men. their board have constructed a large church in the quarter, the community supplying a small portion of the funds. there are about 100 professed protestants in bitlis, and about three times this number of attendants at service. the protestants of the whole vilayet may be counted at 1200, including those who have made no public profession. the valley which stretches eastwards from the quarter of the missionaries is only sparsely built over. the houses belong to the avekh ward. fields of cabbage occupy a considerable portion of the level area, which is dotted over by poplars and other trees. at a distance of about two miles from the confluence of the stream is situated among lonely surroundings the armenian monastery of astvatsatsin and an adjacent church which belongs to the jacobite community. the buildings of the cloister have fallen into ruin, and are tenanted by a single priest wearing the dress of a peasant and not distinguishable in other respects from the lowest of the peasant class. when we alighted at the entrance, a figure stepped forth to hold our horses, whose full, round face, large eyes and sturdy limbs, clad in loose trousers, impressed us as belonging to a good-looking youth. but the shirt, happening to open, displayed the bosom of a maiden. the church was so little lighted, one could scarcely discern the architecture; but one may say in general of the monastic churches on the outskirts of bitlis that they are well-built stone structures, with four plain walls on the exterior, unbroken by any projection on the side of the apse. the interiors display features typical of armenian architecture--the lofty dome, supported upon arches rising from detached pillars, and the stone daïs at the eastern end in front of the apse upon which the altar is reared. their peculiarity is a partiality for arab stalactite ornament, as seen in the capitals of the pillars and in the altar pieces. the most remarkable is surb joannes, belonging to the monastery of amelort in the western valley, or koms mahalla. other examples are astvatsatsin, in the village of koms at the head of that valley, and the church of the fortified cloister of this same name among the hills bordering the main stream upon the east. a track from van and the güzel dere, leaving the village of bor on the north, comes in over the hills at the extremity of the eastern valley. issuing again from this minor trough and regaining the principal artery, we may extend our ride to the fortress enclosure of the monastery last mentioned--a curious receptacle for a sanctuary dedicated to the mother of christ (fig. 147). in spite of its massive walls, it was rifled by kurds during the last russo-turkish war; and you may still see the imprints of the large stones which they hurled at the door communicating with the treasury adjoining the apse of the church. the ignorant peasant who was priest in charge informed us that the cloister had been in possession of charms wherewith to raise the dead to life; with these, too, the marauders had made off. a sheep was bleating in the yard; his fat tail had been bitten off by a wolf, while he grazed upon the sward outside. wolves enter the streets of the town during winter and have been known to carry away the dogs. returning by the right bank of the bitlis river, we may thread our way through the crowded bazars. they are nothing better than roofed passages, narrow and low. an old khan with a fine doorway in the arab style, adorned with the figures of two snarling lions, varies the monotony of the shabby booths. the arab façade with inlays of marble of the sherifieh mosque adjoins the masonry of the bridge over the western confluent. we were unable to penetrate within the walls of the principal mosque, at the foot of the castle; but it did not appear to offer interesting features. there is a persistent tradition that several of the mosques in bitlis were formerly christian churches. a question of still greater interest, but which i regret i have failed to elucidate, attaches to the age of the various edifices. one cannot help remarking a strong family resemblance between them, all being markedly under the influence of the arab style. they are evidently the outcome of a period or periods of building activity, which i have been unable to locate in the history of the city. not the least interesting among the experiences of a sojourn at bitlis will be the excursion to the so-called tunnel of semiramis. you follow the course of the river for a distance of some four miles below the castle along the avenue of communication with sert. a metalled road has been constructed for some portion of the way, representing the abortive attempts to connect the two centres by a carriageable chaussée. it breaks off within 1 1/2 miles of the tunnel, to be succeeded by sporadic patches of levelled inclines. these fitful reminders of the puny civilisation of the present day struggle forward for no great space into the alpine scene. limestones on the heights above, dark lavas in the trough below accompany your course. mineral springs well up in abundance along the path. the tunnel is an artificial work, attributed to the assyrian queen, which pierces a wall of rock blocking the narrow valley and completely cutting off the path (fig. 148). the barrier has been formed by deposits of lime and other ingredients left by a spring bubbling in a basin some 150 feet above the track and over 300 feet above the right bank of the river. the water in the pool is clear as crystal to the eye, but it tastes strongly of iron. iron rust reddens portions of the surface of the rock, and is conspicuous on the huge boulders in the bed of the river, detached by the hissing torrent from the base of the parapet. the tunnel has a depth of 22 feet and a height of about 18 feet. it seemed to constitute the only egress from the gorge. the view from this standpoint, looking down the passage of the mountains, is in the sternest vein of alpine landscapes (fig. 149). bitlis, like van, was in the throes of a reign of terror when we were guests within her precincts. the storm was then brewing which was to burst in the sasun massacre, the forerunner of the whole series of butcheries. the town was full of tales relating to a notorious armenian conspirator, who not many months ago had been captured in the sasun region, some said by treachery and others at the hands of a kurd disguised as an armenian. his name is damadean, and he was lodged in the jail at the time of our visit. sasun is comprised within a section of the same zone of mountains as those which rise about the site of bitlis. in other words, it is a district of the southern peripheral ranges of the armenian tableland, and it lies to the south of the plain and town of mush. the armenians who inhabit it are on terms of subjection to the kurdish chiefs, to whom they pay sums fixed by custom for protection against other kurdish tribes. each chief has his own armenian dependants, who are in possession of arms. being a race of mountaineers they are noted for their courage and stubbornness; and there can be little doubt that armenian political agitators, such as damadean, fixed upon them as suitable material for a conflagration. the object of these men is to keep the armenian cause alive by lighting a flame here and there and calling: fire! the cry is taken up in the european press; and when people run to look there are sure to be some turkish officials drawn into the trap and committing abominations. on this occasion the scene of the trouble had been the village of talori or talvorik--the same village which played a part in the later tragedies. its inhabitants earn a livelihood by the primitive exploitation of mines of iron, and there is sufficient wood in the neighbourhood for smelting purposes. damadean had for some time been busy in the district, and he had endeavoured to effect a coalition between kurds and armenians to resist the levy of taxes for government. at the same time the vali of bitlis, tahsin pasha, happened to be on bad terms with the authorities at constantinople. it was said in bitlis that he was delighted to be afforded an opportunity of recovering favour by suppressing a so-called rebellion. the result of these opposite tendencies was a little piece of warfare, in which turkish troops, accompanied by the vali in person, appeared before talori. taxes were demanded and refused. the villagers, who had fled to a strong place in the vicinity--where they had already successfully resisted two tribes of kurds friendly to the government--stated to the official envoy with much reason that they could not afford to pay a double set of taxes, one to government and the other to kurds. if they yielded to the present demand, was it likely that the chiefs would forego payment when the turkish force had turned their backs upon sasun? the vali appears so far to have acted with good sense, that he avoided bloodshed. he recovered the cattle which had been carried off by his kurdish allies and liquidated his claims from the proceeds of their sale. his services were rewarded by a decoration from constantinople; and he was able to pose as the restorer of the authority of government, the ringleader being in his hands. these events occurred in the month of june. damadean is a good type of the armenian revolutionary. he received a sound education in the school of the mekhitarists at venice, and he is said to speak both the french and the english languages. some ten years before our visit he came to mush as a teacher in one of the armenian schools. the real miseries attendant upon the social and political lot of his countrymen are nowhere more eloquent than in that remote town. they spoke to the soul of an armenian who had tasted the liberties of europe without succumbing to the vices on the surface of european life. the actions of such a neophyte are in so far misguided that they operate upon much too low a plane. they produce disturbance rather than wholesome change. the despairing usher shook off the dust of mush from his feet; and, when he returned after a protracted absence to pursue his old vocation, the profession was only a cloak to the designs he had matured in constantinople as a petty conspirator and correspondent of european newspapers. when his plans were sufficiently ripe, he exchanged the dress of his office for that of a peasant in sasun; and the disguise enabled him to pass to and fro between the town and the adjacent mountains in the capacity of a seller of firewood. disposing of his logs in the houses of the principal officials, he had ready access to their confidential servants. no move was made of which he had not been apprised. his career was cut short in the doubtful manner already indicated; but it was not calculated to accomplish abiding results. chapter vii from bitlis to mush--mush at twenty minutes past eight o'clock on the morning of the 25th of november we set out for the neighbouring town of mush. it is the capital of a sanjak, or larger administrative division, belonging to the vilayet of bitlis. it is situated on the further side of the wall of mountains which divide the watersheds of the tigris and the euphrates, and at a distance by road from the provincial capital of rather over fifty miles. you retrace your steps towards the valley of bor and the telegraph wires, in order to cross by an easy and almost imperceptible ascent to the volcanic plateau on the western side of lake van. the lavas from nimrud, and perhaps from lesser volcanic fissures near the base of the kerkür dagh, have levelled the inequalities of the ground in this direction, and have risen, as it were, to the rim of the basin in which the tributaries of the tigris have their source. indeed, as you diverge from the valley on a northerly course through a side valley or opening in the hills, you skirt the margin of a shallow stream, an affluent of the bitlis chai, which has its origin on the very lip of the volcanic plateau. we made our way up the current babbling over the rocks, through a bleak but comparatively open scene. on our right was an ancient khan in a ruinous condition, of lesser dimensions than the one on the road from van to bitlis which we had already passed. in its neighbourhood the track bifurcates, one branch maintaining a northerly direction, and the other inclining a little eastwards in the direction of tadvan. sipan now came in view on our right front, seen from the summit to the middle slopes above the outline of the plateau. a little later, we stood upon the actual floor of this table surface, at an elevation of 800 feet above the higher quarters of the town of bitlis. it was ten o'clock. i called a halt, and took a photograph of the kerkür dagh, which rose in front of us, hiding nimrud (fig. 150). you just obtain a peep of the crater of the giant volcano on the west of that bold elevation. we could not discover traces of a crater on kerkür, which appeared to compose an isolated mass. the level ground upon which we stood extended in both directions, towards the west and towards the east; but the configuration of this high land was such as to conceal completely the waters of lake van. we now commenced a more westerly course, and in another hour had passed the kerkür dagh and were in full face of nimrud (fig. 151). the heights of the kerkür are seen on the extreme right of my illustration, descending by bold bastions to the steppe. after a second halt we arrived upon the edge of the plateau, where it overhangs the great plain of mush. we had been walking or trotting along for a space of nearly an hour, excluding stoppages, from the point at which my first photograph was taken. the prospect from this position was at once far-reaching and instructive. on our right hand, a few miles off, rose the caldron of nimrud from the table surface upon which we stood. behind us there was nothing but the undulating steppe. our barometers were now sensible of a slight decline in elevation--a decline of about 350 feet. we were placed at a level of 5500 feet; abruptly before our eyes the ground fell away to the head of the plain, 1000 feet below. the appearance of the plain of mush recalled our view from the slopes of aghri dagh over the district of alashkert. both depressions are in fact the beds of former lakes, to which the mountains descend in bold promontories. on that occasion we were overlooking the breadth of an even area; to-day we were commanding the length. and what a curious commencement of the plain that feeds the euphrates, this colossal dam, 1000 feet in height and several miles across! the boundaries of the depression are, on the north, the train of nimrud, which extends for a short distance towards the west. further on, the line is continued by a range of lofty hills, which, as we looked, extended across the horizon, their summits topped with snow. the kurdish chain contributes the southern and continuous barrier. our course was indicated by a distant headland of that southern border, bearing about west-north-west. the descent to the plain occupied nearly an hour, and it was one o'clock before we were again on level ground. the first steps of the declivity led us past a little village, and along a torrent which contributes its waters to the euphrates. the name of morkh is applied both to the hamlet and to the stream. looking backward, we observed a little conical crater on the flank of nimrud, resembling a boil, and facing the kerkür. eruptive volcanic stones were strewn upon our path. lower down we threaded our way through some low bush of oak. when we reached the head of the plain, a hill mass of no great height, and evidently of volcanic origin, rose between us and the descending train of nimrud. we could see the trees of the kurdish village of norshen, beneath the mountains of the southern border, and scarcely more than half-a-mile away. in less than half-an-hour we arrived at a handsome mausoleum, standing in the midst of an ancient cemetery, and now fallen into a ruinous state. it was circular in shape. i was not aware at the time of the existence in this neighbourhood of the spring of which mr. ainsworth speaks. [145] but at erzerum i learnt that i had passed by it, and was made acquainted with an interesting theory of its origin. it is said that a shepherd, pasturing his flocks on the slopes of nimrud, happened to lose his staff, which was weighted with a purse, in the waters that collect in the caldron of that great volcanic mass. a little later the same staff was found on the bank of the stream which issues from this well. such an occurrence is not improbable on a priori grounds. it is only necessary to recall the connection generally accepted as subsisting between the pool on the summit of the little ararat and the sirdar's well in the valley at its feet. while in erzerum i was also given a copy of the arabic inscription on the mausoleum just described. it records that it is the tomb of a certain emir, karanlai agha, who died in the year of the hegira 689, or of our era 1290. [146] our mid-day stage was the kurdish village of gotni, which we reached at two o'clock. it is situated at the foot of the southern border range. with the greatest difficulty we obtained some hay for the horses and a little milk for ourselves. my swiss had gone in pursuit of the grey colt with the baggage and provisions, and had ended by losing his way. he did not appear before we were all very anxious about him; but the dutch cheese and white loaves, a present from the missionaries, were not less relished because they arrived after our scanty meal. this was the first village inhabited by mohammedans in which i was allowed to photograph the women. i obtained this favour by dint of considerable cajolery and judicious presents to the elders and to the ladies themselves. but my success cost me dear during the subsequent journey, and was one of the causes of our bad treatment at mush. one of my models was a damsel of no little beauty--a full-blooded, strapping girl. it was evident that she was the belle of the whole settlement, and she was certainly an exception and a contrast to the lank creatures who were her comrades (fig. 152). [147] the zaptiehs spoke of the women of gotni as little addicted to prudery, and, indeed, as amiable sinners. they told me that in exchange for a mirror or kerchief, purchased for ten paras in the bazars, they were in the habit of receiving the supreme favours of these fair ones; and, once contracted, the alliance could always be resumed. a feature of the bargain, upon which they did not fail to lay emphasis, was that their companion provided them with food during their stay. proceeding at four o'clock, we arrived in half-an-hour at the promontory which had been our point of course. we were obliged to cross the neck of this rocky cape, in order to avoid a marsh. nor was the surface of the plain less boggy to which we descended--such is the neglect or inability on the part of the natives to profit by the natural advantages so lavishly bestowed. we were obliged to hug the headlands of the southern barrier for some considerable time. when at last we struck into the open plain on a more north-westerly course, the village which was our goal proved to be completely destitute both of barley and of hay. we were therefore escorted by a peasant to a neighbouring settlement, in the recesses of the spurs. it consisted of some thirty miserable tenements, of which ten belonged to armenian families and twenty to kurds. no grain was possessed by this village, but, after much wrangling, a little barley was produced. this sufficed to feed the horses, and we decided to spend the night there; the name of the place was zirket. but which of these underground hovels was the least repugnant as a lodging for the night? the first i entered displayed the flicker of a fire of dried manure, and was almost filled by the dim forms of cattle. but i could hear a human cough and the wheezing of sick people; and, as i advanced, i stumbled upon a prostrate figure. it was muffled in a ragged shawl, and i could not see the features; when i touched it on the bare feet it did not move. no better fortune attended a visit to a neighbouring hut; it was more lofty, but it was tenanted by a huddled group of women, one of whom was unable to move from the ground. returning to my first choice, i ordered the cattle to be ejected, and the sleeper to be taken to an adjacent stable. we slept beside our horses and were attacked in force during the night by a formidable army of minute enemies. the ride to mush on the following day occupied four-and-a-half marching hours. our average course was a little north of west. the plain in the neighbourhood of our station was some five to six miles broad, and villages became both larger and more frequent. the same line of high hills still composed the northern barrier, and the kurdish mountains that on the south. ice lay upon the puddles during the early morning, but was soon melted by the sun. the marshes continued but were less obstructive; they afford food to large flocks of wild geese. the villages in the plain appeared to be for the most part armenian, but some armenian villages are in part inhabited by kurds. [148] we halted for a meal in one of the largest of these, the armenian settlement of khaskeui (fig. 153). it is a typical armenian dwelling-place, resembling a series of ant-hills; but my illustration does not comprise the knot of venerable trees which adjoin it, an unwonted landmark in the expanse. in khaskeui there are no less than 300 houses and 2 churches, besides ruins of more ancient sanctuaries. but the school had been closed by order of government, and only one per cent of the peasants could read or write. i found the priest an ignorant man;--poor fellow, he had been lately imprisoned on a summons for withholding taxes. if only armenian patriots would see to the reform of the rural clergy, what an inestimable harvest the race would reap! the inhabitants of this village were a good example of armenian peasantry--such broad shoulders, and massive hips! they were fairly well-to-do, some in easy circumstances (fig. 154). one is impressed by their resolute look. khaskeui has an open site on the floor of the spacious plain, while mush nestles under the wall of the southern range. our course was again directed to one of the headlands of the barrier, bearing about west-north-west. proceeding at a rapid trot, we reached our landmark in three-quarters of an hour, and, after doubling it, turned due west. we were riding across the fork of one of the deepest and most spacious of the valleys formed by the spurs descending from the chain. high up on the hillside above the head of this opening we admired the position of the famous cloister of arakelotz vank--a walled enclosure surmounted by a conical dome. [149] the windows of that eyrie must command an immense prospect, for the chain of hills had declined to less significant proportions on the opposite margin of the plain. we ourselves could see the shining summit of sipan above their long outline. they almost die away at a point about due north of this position, but are soon succeeded by a still more lofty and snow-capped range. the valley is dotted with several villages, and gives issue to a stream called the arakh. where we crossed it, the water was trickling over a stony bed which must have been nearly a quarter-mile broad. as we closed the view of this valley, we passed the large armenian village of tirkavank, on the side of the hill. but this recess was no sooner passed than it was succeeded by another inlet of this coast of hills, backed by snow-clad heights. scarcely less spacious and not less fair than the valley of the arakh, that of the garni chai is enclosed by two protecting promontories, opening towards the expanse of plain. at the head of the western arm, a rocky spur projects into the bay at an angle from the promontory. increasing in height as it proceeds, it takes the appearance of a rounded hill, rising isolated from the floor of the valley. screened by the headlands from the winds, yet in full possession of the plain, it is indeed an enviable site. the hill is encircled by tiers of houses--horizontal lines of flat mud roofs--which lead up the eye, like steps, to the vaulted summit. in former times a castle rose from that proud eminence--probably a work of the armenian middle ages. it has been razed to the ground, and the simple houses usurp the space once embellished by the city's crown. we were soon within the precincts of the town of mush. it was evident that our arrival had been expected. groups of people were collected in the street up which we passed, and were occupying posts of vantage along the route. i have little doubt that their interest in us was due to the attitude of the authorities towards our visit, rather than to curiosity on the part of such semi-animate individuals to see a european enter their town. the presence of the chief of the police, attired in a new greatcoat, from the brass buttons of which flashed the device of the crescent, was alone sufficient to attract a crowd. he stood in front of his office, facing the main street, and saluted us gravely as we wound up the steep ascent over an irregular pavement towards the central bazar. in the foreground of the picture before our eyes rose a massive minaret with a spacious gallery; and we admired the rambling design, composed of the admixture of yellow and brown blocks of stone, which varied the surface of the circular column of masonry. it belongs to the mosque of aladdin bey. the humble houses straggle down the side valleys, from which the stalk-like trunks of poplars rise. looking backwards, the eye rests upon the green of tobacco fields in the main valley; and we noticed that the large leaves had already been gathered, leaving the stems of the plant almost bare. the gaunt sticks were preparing to wither under the first severe frost. little foliage remained upon the trees in the gardens, and the poplars were already stripped of leaves. the dwellings are constructed of rubble-stone, faced with mud. some are whitewashed; but in the case of the greater number lapses of the mud coating reveal the rudeness of the structure behind. the flagstones in the bazar were swimming in filth of every description as we picked our way through the accumulation of heterogeneous objects--bullock carts, piles of straw, the skins of slaughtered animals with the entrails gathered up within the skin. the bazar of mush is a mere aggregate of miserable open booths, clustering about the base of the minaret. the richest merchant--an armenian--owned a stall which was not much larger than that of a costermonger. in this booth we observed the figure of a general in blazing uniform, squatted on the boards and gossiping with the shopman. it was none other than the commandant of the troops. the place was crammed with sightseers, clad in red and blue cottons; their loose shirts, open to the waist, revealed the breasts of the men and the bosoms of the women, in whom bad diet, unwholesome tenements, and ceaseless toil had destroyed the graces natural to their sex. it was painful to see such a collection of miserable human beings; and the lank features and dishevelled locks of the old women haunted us for many a day. from the bazar we were escorted to the government house, in order to be received by the mutesarrif or chief civil official of the sanjak of mush. a wooden staircase, reeking with filth and scattered with the debris of the tumble-down edifice, gave access to the first floor. a vagrant, nondescript crowd thronged the stairs and landing, from which a thick curtain, drawn aside, allowed us to pass into an inner apartment. seated on the divan before us were several figures, to one of which--a fat old man with a fez and a shabby european coat--we were introduced as being the mutesarrif. his coarse features, abnormally large ears, and the heavy lobes of the wrinkled under-lids of his dull eyes, prepossessed us against him at first sight. his stomach had become distended with continual sitting, and the scanty hair upon his head was quite white. a smart young man, wearing a fez, was seated upon his left hand, and a mollah with a white turban and dark robes upon his right. the first was his secretary; and the second--a thin-featured, little man, who never moved a muscle during the whole interview--was no less a dignitary than the mufti of mush. on either side of this central group were serried the other notables, members of the mejlis. even the mutesarrif himself appeared afraid to utter a word. no topic of conversation would unloose their tongues. why had we come? what untowardness would result from our visit?--that was the question buried in those gloomy souls. i elicited the interesting fact that not one of them had ever heard of the code of napoleon. when i mildly remarked that it was said to be the civil law of turkey, the mutesarrif broke in with the observation that he now remembered to have been told that there was such a code. bystanders eyed us curiously as we issued from this visit, and i quite expected to be escorted to the jail. we were agreeably surprised to be conducted to the best house in the place--standing by itself in a sunny situation overlooking the valley on the east. i expressed a desire to go to the bath. the answer was that in a couple of hours it would be at our disposal. when we arrived, there was not a single soul within the building except a couple of attendants. incense had been burnt in the really spacious and comfortable chambers, which were newly swept and fragrant and clean. we were ministered to by an armenian boy of unusual comeliness--the curves about his sash made it difficult to distinguish him from a girl. when we stepped forth into the night we were awaited by a muffled policeman, who took us home and joined in the circle of our visitors until we retired to rest. the chief commissary of police with the new coat and the brass buttons--office and uniform modelled on a russian pattern--had a busy time during our stay. happily he was by nature an agreeable man; but he was fresh from constantinople. his poor brain had been crammed with all those irksome regulations which have been spread over the russian empire and a great part of europe, presumably from a prussian source. an englishman, it is true, should perhaps endure them with complacency; for does he not owe his wealth and his colonies to the prevalence of this cancer among his neighbours, and to his own complete freedom from the disease? passports were examined at mush for the first time since our arrival in turkey--a country in which the traditionally liberal treatment of travellers is gradually giving place to measures of exclusion. my letters of introduction were read with mingled feelings--disappointment that they rendered necessary very special and delicate treatment, and relief that they clearly placed the responsibility for our visit upon officials in a high place. we were rarely left alone--not even in our own apartment; for we slept and ate in the principal room of the residence allotted us, from which it was impossible to exclude the master of the house and his companions; and the presence of a single visitor was always accompanied by the entrance of the commissary or his adjutant. one of the two was never absent from our side. the anxiety of such a novel charge sat heavily upon both of them; both looked quite worn out by the time we were ready to depart. early on the morning following our arrival we were quite ready to sally forth; but the lesser official was already astir, and besought us to postpone our walk until he should have apprised his chief. the commissary was not long in coming, his toilette half completed; and no sooner had he saluted us than his sleepy eyes fell on the camera case, and he enquired what it might contain. a camera! had we received an iradeh from the sultan to take photographs of what we saw? all photography was forbidden unless such a permit were forthcoming. so we abandoned the camera with good grace. well, whither shall we direct our steps? let it be to the rushdiyeh--the turkish official school. we are informed that the building is under repair. it is actually in a ruinous condition, and no such institution really exists. then to the remains of the old castle.--there is no such thing as an old castle.--well, to the site upon which it stood. the climb through the town is really quite worth while. the view from the summit of the hill is extremely pleasing--the bold walls of the valley expanding to the level plain, the mountainous background soaring upwards and white with snow, and in the folds of this expanse the little hill of mush--a mere button upon which you stand. the neck which connects this eminence with the arm of the main valley is dotted over with the headstones of deserted graveyards, seeming from a distance like bleaching bones. you look down into the glen between the two elevations through which trickles the garni chai. in its lap lies a white edifice which is indicated as the barrack, and towards its head you admire the form of a second minaret, resembling its companion in the bazar. the summit of the hill is flat; and, although the houses rise up to the margin, the platform itself is still bare. the debris of the old castle are strewn upon the grass, but not one stone remains upon another. most have been taken away as building material. let us proceed to the school of the armenian catholics.--yes, certainly, if such be our desire.--we wind down the town towards the valley on the east, and arrive before the enclosure of a newly-erected church. that is the catholic church;--but where is the school? it is situated just opposite;--oh! but it is closed.--certainly, the school is closed.--the church at least is open; let us pass in.--certainly, and we enter the building. the first to enter is the commissary, followed by four policemen in military dress. the bleak walls of the brand-new edifice echo the clank of their boots. a single figure is present--the black-robed figure of a priest; and it crouches on the high altar, visibly trembling, such as we may imagine some male hypatia of olden times. while i greet the priest from the doorway, a soldier walks across, and dares the wretched creature to address a word to us. on our part there is nothing to be done but to keep our tempers. a very interesting church!--now let us visit the remaining churches. that building close by is the principal church of the gregorian armenians; it is withal a very poor place. the door is open; we have been expected; not a soul is present. pursuing our way, we meet an armenian priest--a young, broad-shouldered, open-faced man. he seems inclined to speak, so we ask him how many churches there may be in mush. he answers, seven; but the commissary had said four. a soldier addresses him in kurdish; the poor fellow turns pale, and remarks that he was mistaken in saying seven; there cannot be more than four. i turn to the commissary and ask him to take us to the teacher in the school of the united armenians--a philanthropic institution with some schools in the provinces and headquarters in the capital. the reply comes that he is absent from town. the school is enjoying a holiday. there can be no doubt that they have all received orders to close their schools; but it is not probable that many schools remain in such a place. the protestants have closed theirs. such are a few of our experiences during our short sojourn at mush. we were not merely shadowed by the police, but prevented from enjoying any of the profit and pleasure which a traveller seeks in return for all his trouble and expense. to protest to the mutesarrif would have been worse than useless; and the policy of the british foreign office is so weak in these countries that we lose the advantages of our consular system. when i called upon the chief official to take farewell, i congratulated him upon the possession of such an energetic commissary, and begged that he would recommend him in the despatch which no doubt he was preparing for a suitable reward. his efforts had, indeed, been completely successful; we had scarcely communicated with a single soul in mush. i thanked him for the politeness with which our seclusion had been effected; and the old man rose, and accompanied me to the door.... what iniquities had they been committing and were desirous of screening? terror, the most abject terror, was in the air. we drank it in from the very atmosphere about us--a consuming passion, like that of jealousy--a haunting, exhausting spectre, which sits like a blight upon life. such a settled state of terror is one of the most awful of human phenomena. the air holds ghosts, all joy is dead; the sun is black, the mouth parched, the mind rent and in tatters. mush is the most mis-governed town in the ottoman empire. ever since the inauguration of closer relations between europe and these countries, the testimony of the few europeans who have realised and noted such facts bears out this judgment almost to the letter. it is less easy to assign any definite cause. the disease has become chronic; and its symptoms are so familiar that the inhabitants have grown callous to their condition. it is only damadeans, and such imported members of the community, that such deeply-rooted evils impress. the mussulman majority are probably almost all of kurdish origin; and since the enrolment of the hamidiyeh irregular cavalry they openly profess the name of kurd. the slopes of the hills around mush are covered with vineyards and gardens; and in each garden there is a small, two-storeyed house, resembling from a distance a scattering of bathing-machines. the mussulmans retire to these gardens during summer, and superintend their cultivation. the whole winter through they sit idle in mush. there they consume a great quantity of tobacco; and all this tobacco is contraband. it is their custom to buy their wives, the best-looking and best-born women sometimes fetching not less than a hundred pounds. all are obstinate in their belief that it was the prussians who enabled the russians to conquer turkey in the last war. their hope is that this assistance will not be forthcoming in the future, and they are therefore confident of success in the conflict which they foresee. and they pit their hamidiyeh against the cossacks. the armenian minority are artisans, smiths, makers of everything that is manufactured in mush. they are carpenters, plasterers, builders. all the keepers of booths which we passed in the bazar plainly belonged to this race. i am unable to supply any reliable statistics for the town itself; but my impression was that the population was certainly less than 20,000 souls. in the cloister of surb karapet it was believed that mush contained nearly 7000 houses, of which 5000 were occupied by mussulman and 1800 by armenian families. although this estimate is certainly too high, it would appear that the population has been increasing. in 1838 consul brant speaks of 700 mussulman families and 500 armenian, which would give a total of not more than some 6000 or 7000 souls. [150] thirty years later, consul taylor, who also visited the place, computed the inhabitants of mush and the vicinity, not including the plain, as numbering 13,000 souls, 6000 armenians and the rest mussulmans. [151] in the plain of mush the armenians are in a large majority, the official figures for the caza allowing them a total of 35,300, as against 21,250 mussulmans. some 2500 of their number are catholics and about 500 protestants. [152] the origin of the name of mush is wrapped in obscurity. [153] it formed the capital of the old armenian province of taron under the rule of the princely family of the mamikoneans. [154] at the present day it contains two considerable mosques with minarets, four churches of the gregorian armenians and one of the catholics. the gregorian churches are named surb marineh, surb kirakos, surb avetaranotz, and surb stephanos. none are of any size or of much interest. there are three fine khans in the neighbourhood of the bazar. our host informed us that not less than thirty-six hamidiyeh regiments had been enrolled in the sanjak; but he added that none had yet been constituted in the sanjaks of bitlis, sert and genj. these four sanjaks compose the vilayet of bitlis. the first portion of his statement was almost certainly false, even on a nominal basis. chapter viii from mush to erzerum in travelling from mush to erzerum, you cross the block of the armenian highlands from their southern margin almost to their northern verge. should the season be that of summer, it is possible to perform the passage on a course nearly as straight as a bee-line. for the mountains which face the traveller from the depressions of this region are, for the most part, but the sides of a higher table surface over which he may ride for miles without drawing rein. but this higher surface is much too elevated to render the journey pleasant, or even safe, at the commencement or during the progress of an armenian winter. it is more prudent to adhere to the great plains at a lower level, through which the tributaries to the murad wind their way; and from these to cross to the deeply-eroded bed of the upper araxes, which affords a luxurious approach to the northern districts. this route once adopted, two deviations are suggested which will not lengthen the journey by many miles. the first is a visit to the ancient cloister of surb karapet (john the baptist), on the northern border range of mush plain; the second, a short sojourn in the ancient burgh of hasan kala, not far from erzerum. the northern capital will be reached by convenient stages in six travelling days, the distance covered being about 160 miles. [155] it was the 29th of november, just after half-past nine in the morning, when our party of four europeans and four turkish soldiers defiled into the plain from the hill of mush. the iron-grey colt was being led by one of our new companions, the more docile that he anticipated release. were we prisoners and these our jailers? i asked the question of the principal man, who was a sergeant with the name of mevlud chaoush. a black shawl, reaching to the shoulders, was wound about his head as a protection from the weather. his irregular and forbidding features never broke into a smile, nor did his lips move except to utter a command. we passed several deserted burying fields, with fallen headstones, and forded the garni chai, a mere torrent in a wide bed. more than half-an-hour had passed before we doubled the western promontory, and struck our true course across the plain. we skirted or could see several hamlets--dots in the expanse, which had the appearance, usual in this country, of a sea. no hedges or artificial boundaries parcel the ground; no leafy trees blend in the distance to a soft, grey mass. the harvest had been gathered, and you could scarcely tell the difference between the cultivated and the unreclaimed soil. marshes, instead of a network of irrigation channels, received the waters babbling down from the southern range. after several halts, rendered necessary by the freaks and misfortunes of the baggage horse, we reached at half-past twelve the considerable armenian village of sheikh alan, near the ford of the murad. about a mile beyond the village we approached the margin of the noble river which we had followed from karakilisa to tutakh. it appeared to be flowing in two channels through a bed having a width of 200 yards or more. after fording the first of these branches, which was about 30 yards across, we made our way over a beach to the second branch. it was some 100 yards in breadth, the water reaching to the horses' knees. when we had gained the opposite bank, which was firm and well-defined, we prepared to say good-bye to the murad. what was our surprise to meet a third and magnificent river, sweeping towards us in an independent bed! it was buffeting its high left bank, at the extremity of a beautiful curve, and the flood was much too deep to venture in. so we followed the current until the bluff sent it swirling to the opposite margin, diffused over a wider space. even at this point the passage was not without risk; but an experienced villager piloted us safely to the further side. from bank to bank was a distance of about 80 yards, and the wavelets wetted our horses' flanks. the confluence of the kara su, the stream which collects the drainage of the plain of mush, is situated some little distance above the ford. [156] following with the eye the course of the river, we searched in vain for a gap in the mountains among which it disappeared. these describe a bold half-circle at the western extremity of the plain, not many miles from where we stood. the heights on the north join hands with the heights upon the south, and appear to prevent all issue from the plain. from the ford we proceeded in a north-westerly direction to the village of ziaret. it is an armenian settlement with 150 tenements, and possesses a church but no school. the kiaya, [157] or head of the village, was quite a civilised individual; and such was his politeness that he sent his own son with me, to wait on me during my sojourn at surb karapet. he informed me--the usual story--that there had been a teacher in the village, but that last year he had left (euphemism), and his place had not since been filled. after a stay in this settlement of an hour and three-quarters, we continued our journey at a quarter before four. our course was about the same, and we reached the foot of the northern barrier at half-past four o'clock. although the level of the ground had risen, the ascent to the monastery occupied over an hour. it is situated among the uppermost recesses of the wall of mountain, at an elevation of about 6400 feet, or of 2200 feet above the trough of the plain. [158] we wound our way up a cleft in the face of the rock, through a bush of low oak. the temperature fell, and we became enveloped in banks of cloud. a drizzling rain turned to snow before we reached the cloister, and next morning the adjacent slopes were cloaked in white. the monks informed us that it was the first fall of snow which they had experienced during the course of this brilliant autumn. a walled enclosure, like that of a fortress, a massive door on grating hinges--such is your first impression of this lonely fane (fig. 155). my illustration shows the long line of monastic buildings on the south; the gateway is on the west. you enter a spacious court, and face a handsome belfry and porch, the façade inlaid with slabs of white marble with bas-reliefs (fig. 156). we were conducted to a long chamber, with walls of prodigious thickness, recalling our norman refectories. it was nearly six o'clock; the monks received us without surprise, and had probably been forewarned by the mutesarrif. when i asked for a separate room, it was pleaded that none was vacant; and the preparations of mevlud to sleep by our side in the long chamber convinced me that resistance would as yet be vain. with the best humour we joined in a meal of extreme frugality, which was spread upon trays and partaken of by all the monks. of these there were six in residence and six absent, one being confined in a turkish prison. four deacons were also of the company; but conversation was difficult in the presence of the silent mevlud. our hosts were superior people, judged by the standards in this country; and after supper, over the glow of a number of braziers, we were drawn together by common sympathies. in particular i was attracted to a well-read monk of quiet demeanour, whose personality and name i hesitate to disclose. the morning broke serene and clear; a brilliant sun embraced the landscape which from the terrace outside the walls, where is situated a little cemetery, was outspread at our feet (fig. 157). the eye sank to the floor of the plain or was lifted to the summits of the mountains, which were seen in all the variety of their many forms and myriad facets above beds of vapour, clinging captive to the middle slopes. this sea of clouds concealed the river where it issues from the expanse to be buried in the amphitheatre of heights. but my companion, the mild-tempered monk, told me they could sometimes hear from this terrace the hissing of the waters as they enter the passage. they call the place gurgur, a name imitative of the sound which, when the air is heavy with cloud towards the end of winter, is loud and long-maintained. then they say that spring is near at hand. he added that the ruins of an armenian fortress may still be seen within the gorge. its ancient name was haykaberd. i must regret the loss of a great portion of my notes, made during the course of this day. the monastery is one of the oldest in armenia, and was certainly founded by the illuminator himself. he came hither after his famous conversion of king tiridates, when many of the princes of the land had espoused his religion and his sacred cause. but that cause and religion had become divested of their peaceful character; and it was rather with torch and sword than with the lamp of the teacher and the staff of the missionary that the christian saint appeared on the threshold of this beauteous plain. he had been apprised of the existence of two heathen temples, standing on the spot where now the cloister stands. they were an object of especial reverence by a colony of hindu refugees, long since established under the sceptre of the armenian kings. they worshipped two idols, which were made of brass, with colossal proportions, and were known in the country under the names of demeter and kisane. these interesting figures, with the ancient cult which they represented, were doomed to destruction at the hands of the christians. the attendant priests raised the alarm among their lay brethren, and st. gregory and his friends were obliged to reckon with a hostile force. but the hindu warriors with their armenian allies were defeated in two battles, and their sanctuaries were razed to the ground. a christian church was erected upon the site which they had occupied; and the body of st. john the baptist, translated from cæsarea, took the place of demeter and kisane. these events are related by the syrian zenobius, an eye-witness and a lieutenant of the saint. i had perused his narrative overnight in the pages of ritter, and i was anxious to know whether it were known to my companion. i found him conversant with every particular of the story, and he expressed his conviction that these heathens were hindus. he was equally certain that the gypsies, who may still be met with in the country, were descendants of this colony. he told me that their language was known as sanskrit among the armenians. [159] he led me within the enclosure, and showed me a little chapel situated upon the west of the church. in that chapel he assured me that st. gregory had said his first mass, and it stood on the site of the temple of kisane. that of demeter had been, he said, the larger of the two shrines. [160] what portion, if any, of the present edifice is the work of that remote age, i am unable to pronounce. my impression is that earthquakes are held to have destroyed the original structure. the two chapels on the east, with their polygonal towers and conical roofs, are probably the earliest in date of the existing buildings. i reproduce them on a larger scale, my picture having been taken from the gallery of the monastic buildings on the south (fig. 158). the body of the church immediately adjoins them; it is spacious, but not remarkable for architectural beauty or richness of ornament. it is in the character of a large conventicle, and the roof is flat. slabs, inlaid in the floor, cover the graves of princes and warriors, of whom we read in the pages of armenian historians. the bloody wars against the sasanians are recalled by the tombs of mushegh, of vahan the wolf and of sembat. the grave of vahan is denoted by a slab of black stone, before the entrance to the more southerly of the two chapels. that of sembat is said to be situated near the threshold of the companion sanctuary, which is dedicated to st. stephen. near the wall on the south repose the remains of vahan kamsarakan. [161] slabs are wanting in the case of the two graves last mentioned. inscriptions are found, i believe, on some. the porch and belfry on the west are of no great antiquity, as the reader can see for himself. what with the kurds and the suspicions of the turkish government this once flourishing monastery has been stripped of much of its glamour; indeed the monks are little better than prisoners of state. the new buildings on the west, erected by bishop mampre, have never yet been used. they were destined to receive the printing press, and the relics of the library. but the printing press--the wings of knowledge, said my companion--was placed under the ban of government as early as in 1874. the library was pillaged by kurds during the first half of the present century, and its contents burnt or littered about the courts. nor is it possible for the community to pursue their studies, since any book which deals with the history of their nation is confiscated by the authorities. i think i have already mentioned that the same officials seize and burn our milton and our shakespeare. and yet the ambassadors of europe dally on the bosphorus, powerless to redress these wrongs and avenge these insults. it is because in russia they practise similar iniquities, and because europe stoops to sit at russia's feet. upon such matters we conversed when the air was a little clearer, after a fierce encounter between mevlud and myself. that sinister personage had presumed to accompany me to my host's room; but i peremptorily ordered him out. i told him that if he ventured to invade the privacy of a priest's apartment i would undertake to have both the mutesarrif and himself dismissed. we left the cloister--which is generally known under the name of changalli, from its bells, heard in the plains from afar [162]--on the morning of the first day of december, a little before noon. snow lay thickly upon the ground; but the thermometer at eleven o'clock stood at four degrees (fahrenheit) above freezing point. the atmosphere was free of vapour, and a kind sun shone. we made our way to the heights behind the monastery, and kept zigzagging up and along them for over two hours. when the process had been completed after a tedious ride to the pass, during which the horses would often flounder in the snow, we had not ascended to a difference of level of more than 1500 feet, nor had we progressed more than 3 1/2 miles. the better course, i feel sure, would have been to proceed in an easterly direction along the level terrace or open valley in which the cloister stands, leaving the neighbouring hamlet of pazu just on our right hand. we could then have climbed the parapet which shelters these lofty uplands; or we might have scaled it in the immediate vicinity of changalli. the black chaoush and his three myrmidons were indifferent guides. [163] because the pass is no pass in the ordinary sense; it is merely the edge of a tableland. mile after mile towards the north stretched the undulating snow-field, swept by the winds, pierced by spinous blades of grass. we stood at an elevation of nearly 8000 feet. below us, infinitely deep, lay the magnificent plain of mush, bounded on the further side by the barrier of the kurdish mountains, crossing the landscape from the invisible waters of lake van. in one continuous wall they swept across the horizon, serrated, sharply chiselled above the deep valleys opening transverse to the line of the wall. taurus they call the range, adopting a nomenclature which the west must have borrowed from the east. taurus was very high where the murad dives into the mountains; nor did the peaks appear less lofty on its right bank. we saw them circling towards the river from behind the plateau upon which we stood; but i was unable to trace the origin of this northern chain. it formed a marked exception to the outlines north of taurus, which were vaulted or horizontal. nimrud was seen to join the two contrasting landscapes, placed across the head of the plain. the neighbouring kerkür looked more rounded than when we had first observed it, while, north of the nimrud caldron, the swelling contours of the sipan fabric were doubly soft in a robe of recent snow. this was our last complete prospect over that great depression which is known as the plain of mush. [164] we proceeded at half-past two, and rode at a trot over the plateau, first on a northerly and then on a north-easterly course. the rock appeared to be of an eruptive volcanic description. by half-past four we arrived upon the opposite margin, where the ground abruptly sank to a wide trough of broken country, with a small plain, level as water, at its western end. we ascertained that this fresh depression had an elevation of about 5000 feet, or a difference in height of 3000 feet from the pass at which we measured that of the plateau. on the further side rose a cliff of such gigantic proportions that, when we reached the middle slopes of the descent into the hollow, it reminded me of the landscape in the narrows of the araxes, with those cliffs raised to double their size. from a distance we had wondered at the strange appearance of this flat-edged mass, which seemed to embrace us in a wide segment with precipitous sides. a nearer view disclosed the direction it was pursuing, and enabled us to trace, although in a most imperfect manner, its connection with the orography of the eastern districts. that direction was approximately latitudinal, but inclined a little towards the south. the further east the mass proceeded, the more it lost its cliff-like character, the nearer it approached to the characteristics of a mountain range. in this form it was protracted to dimly visible limits, joining the distant outlines of sipan. i had read many accounts of the famous bingöl dagh, the parent mountain of the araxes and of the principal tributaries of the euphrates, and, in some sense, the roof of western asia. none had prepared me for the vision before our eyes. the actual walls of the crater were not, i imagine, visible; but those cliffs had no doubt been covered by deep beds of lava which had added to their height. the greatest eminence on the extinct volcano is that of demir-kala, which must be situated not far from the edge of the cliff. it has an elevation of 10,770 feet. [165] but the mountain proper is but a wart on the face of the lofty tableland from which it rises, and which it has contributed to shape. i tried to examine the relation of this tableland to the plateau which we had crossed, but was prevented by the lie of the land upon the west. while descending into the plain, we passed through a kurdish village of some size, called randuli. we now opened out the whole extent of the even surface--a floor at the foot of towering cliffs. the plain may have a length, from west to east, of about three miles and a breadth of two miles or less. water serpents through it in all directions, to collect in a little river which our people knew under the name of dodan chai, but which is apparently more generally known as the bingöl su. [166] four villages of some importance are situated in the plain--baskan, gundemir, diyadin and dodan. the last-mentioned is placed at its eastern extremity and close to the river which bears its name. all four are inhabited by armenians. having gained the level, we forded the stream above the village, and at six o'clock rode through dodan. night was falling; we followed a track which had been made by the bullock-carts, at some little distance from the left bank of the river. we were skirting on an easterly course the base of the northern heights, along the trough of irregular surface which we had overlooked. the soil was deep and black, covered in places by a crop of stones. it seemed as if the valley were choked by the shapes of hills. we were over two hours in reaching gumgum. the village or little town--for it is the capital of a caza, the caza of varto, belonging to the sanjak of mush--is situated in the long valley of which i have been speaking, between the bingöl and the block of mountain on the north of mush. a small river flows below it at some little distance, which joins the bingöl su some two or three miles south of the town. the united waters issue into the murad or eastern euphrates about eight miles south-east of gumgum. the direct road to mush is taken along the murad, which, after the confluence, finds a passage through the hills. it reaches the plain at the village of sikava. we were received by the kaimakam, who lodged us in his room of audience, a chamber of which the stone walls were daubed with whitewash, while the massive logs of the ceiling were left bare. a single window, with panes of greased paper, diffused a dim light by day. a little lamp revealed the burly figure of our host, seated on the divan. beside him, but in shadow, we might just discern a face and features which were recognised as familiar to us. we identified this pleasant countenance and chiselled lineaments with those of the silent chess-player at mush. it was in fact the hakim effendi, learned in the law; though for what purpose he had travelled to these unruly wilds we were unable to ascertain. he had brought his law books with him in a khurjin, or little saddle-bag, which was placed by his side on the couch. so he travels from place to place, the name and shadow of a dispensation which he has not the power to enforce. even under the eyes of the kaimakam cases of theft, and even of robbery, are of daily occurrence and go for the most part unredressed. entering the stable allotted to our horses, i was met by an armenian woman, a poor old hag with bare feet and in rags. she moaned and wrung her hands, explaining, in answer to my enquiry, that her cows had been displaced to make room for us. she would never see them again--and, in fact, next morning i was grieved to learn that two had been stolen. the town occupies a fairly high site in the valley, having an elevation of about 4800 feet. a few houses, in the more proper sense of the word, serve to magnify the appearance of the place. but the tenements are for the most part the usual ant-hill burrows; and i do not think that in all there can be more than eighty dwellings, of which ten may be inhabited by armenians. the kurds have a large preponderance in the caza; they are, for the most part, of the jibranli tribe. this tribe furnishes three regiments of hamidiyeh cavalry, recruited in varto. the tribesmen spend the summer on the pastures of the bingöl dagh, and the winter in villages of their own in the plains. they travel as far as diarbekr, and even aleppo, taking their vast flocks to those markets. or they sell the sheep to middlemen who travel from all parts of turkey, and establish their headquarters in khinis. during the night it froze hard; but on the following morning the air was warmed by a brilliant sun, shining in a clear sky. the thermometer stood at 37° before we again set out. leaving at a little after eleven, we proceeded on an easterly course, towards the heights which rise behind gumgum. i was unable to ascertain the exact connection of these hills with the block of the bingöl; but, whereas we could still perceive that distant outline in the west, it was lost to view as it came towards us, stretching east. the northern barrier was now composed by the hill range already mentioned, which, at this point, appeared to be inclined towards south-east. after crossing a considerable stream, flowing down to the trough of the valley, we commenced at twelve o'clock the ascent of these hills. looking backward, one was impressed by the uneven character of the ground from which we rose. the valley is choked with hills, especially on the south-east, and it may have a width of about eight miles. the soil is covered with tufted grass, which must afford fine pasture in spring and early summer. the southern border consists of the mass of mountain which we had crossed from changalli; but it had sensibly declined and was still declining in height. beyond its sheet of snow the peaks of taurus commenced to be visible; and when we reached the pass, before one o'clock, we could see the broad ribbon of the murad lying in the plain of mush. the river had passed the gap in the barrier on the north of that plain, which, it was evident, becomes much lower at the point where the passage is effected, the outlines sinking towards either bank. we were standing in snow, at an elevation of 6600 feet. on our left front rose the cliffs of the bingöl plateau, that mighty presence which for awhile had been concealed. they were still stretching from west to east, but were seen to turn towards north-east, in the direction of where we knew khinis to lie. the eye pursued their long perspective into the distance, where, at a point about north-north-east, they broke away into a range of mountains, the range which bounds the plain of khinis on the north. i was still unable to define the relation of the heights upon which we were placed to the mass from which they appeared to come; but they must contribute to compose the long line of heights which we had seen extending from the bingöl towards sipan. how great a part has been performed by the action of water in shaping the relief of this land may be realised by the frequent occurrence of perfectly flat depressions between the masses of higher ground. thousands of feet below those levels lie these sheltered spaces, rendered fertile by winding streams. such was the nature of the little plain to which we descended, appearing land-locked on every side. it is known as the bashkent ova, or plain of bashkent, from a kurdish hamlet through which we presently passed. [167] it is situated at the comparatively lofty level of about 6000 feet. on the east it is enclosed by that irregular lump of mountain which we had first seen on the furthest horizon from before tutakh. khamur it is called. the ridge was some miles distant; but its outworks, a succession of sand-like convexities, rose from the margin of the plain. the western limit were the cliffs of bingöl, frowning above the ova, and sending out a spur towards the khamur on its northern verge. towards that spur we made our way across the plain, on a north-easterly course. the flat surface has a length of about 3 1/2 miles, and is covered with marshes or rank weeds. besides bashkent we could only see a single other hamlet, said to be inhabited by kizilbash kurds. we reached the summit of the rounded and opposite heights at half-past two o'clock. they may be described as flanking outworks of the bingöl plateau, and they have an elevation of about 6550 feet. a little later, while still following along the side of these slopes, we came to a halt and partook of a scanty meal. at a quarter-past three we were again in the saddle. our course remained easterly, at about the same level; and at half-past three we were on the top of one of those bulging spurs which project from the side of the cliffs. the horizontal edge of the lofty tableland was now just above us; and, inasmuch as we were now able to pursue a north-north-easterly direction, it is evident that the mass must recede towards the north. indeed it is probable that it describes a curve, concave to the plain of khinis; we seemed to get behind the cliffs. on our right hand we were followed by the deformed shape of khamur, now many miles away. the horizon was fretted by the long outline of the akh dagh--a fine, bold range with connections circling towards khamur. in a short time this mountain landscape was seen in fuller significance; a vast expanse of level depression was opened out. the black chaoush and his three myrmidons had taken their departure at gumgum; and i was able to unpack the camera. i directed the lens to north-east, towards the plain and the distant akh dagh (fig. 159); and next to south-east, upon the khamur. [168] we reached the level at about five o'clock, after crossing a spur of the plateau, strewn with volcanic stones. khinis was seen, a speck in the lap of the plain, towards which we rode at a rapid trot. at a quarter to six we arrived upon the deeply-eroded banks of the river of khinis, which we forded and entered the town. by directions of the kaimakam we were lodged in his own office; he made his appearance early on the following day. a burly old man, with a head of great size and a massive forehead, with huge dimensions below the waist. this habit of body, which seemed to aggravate an advanced asthmatic affection, was due to continued sitting rather than to intemperance of diet. our conversation was soon directed to the condition of the country--a subject upon which he held strong views. the people of his caza were, he said, almost without exception, liars, rogues and thieves. the government did what it could; but the officials were not competent, being ignorant men like his humble self. schools? there was supposed to be a rushdiyeh in khinis, but it was a rushdiyeh only in name. as for the kurds, they were the plague of his existence; you reaped them where you had not sown. five houses here, there fifty people--impossible to count or to bring to count. if you wished to get anything out of them, you must borrow a stick from a bear-tamer and beat them about the head. he proceeded to inform me that the town was the principal centre of the trade in sheep, fattened upon the pastures of the bingöl dagh. merchants come from the great cities, notably from damascus, and make their arrangements in erzerum. they bring their own shepherds, whom they send to khinis when their agents there have concluded the purchase and received the flocks. it is at about the present season--that of early winter--that the trade is at its height. the sheep are driven across the mountains to diarbekr, whence they are despatched through the plains to the syrian centre. my host added that it was no very easy matter to get them safely through the snow to the head of the mesopotamian plains. to me it seems a most remarkable feat. i asked the kaimakam whether he could tell me the number of the inhabitants; and, forthwith, he most kindly consulted his registers. according to his figures there are 387 houses in khinis, besides numerous shops. of the dwellings 250 are inhabited by mohammedans and 137 by armenians. the former are censused at 1350 and the latter at 586. but there is a large discrepancy between males and females in the case of both denominations in favour of the males. he was of opinion that the figures for the armenians were too low; they evade the census in order to avoid the military tax. small and large, he put the total of villages in his caza at 287. it forms part of the vilayet of erzerum, and its borders march with those of the caza of erzerum. [169] he knew of no yezidis within the limits of his district; but gypsies wander through it in summer. of kizilbash kurds he believed there to be about fifteen villages. the principal tribes in the neighbourhood are the haideranli and zirkanli, besides about eight villages of jibranli kurds. four battalions of hamidiyeh are said to be enrolled in the caza. i am sensible of the defective standpoint of my photograph of khinis, taken, to avoid suspicions, before entering the town. [170] but it clearly shows the mingling rivers, with their cavernous beds, sunk into the volcanic soil. it shows the castle--of which the ruins display a face of hewn stone upon a structure of agglomerate rubble--and, in the background, behind the picturesque disorder of the clambering township, the distant terrace of the bingöl plateau. at eleven o'clock on the 3rd of december we were winding our way in the shadowed gorges, about to issue upon the plain on the north. the day was fine, with a warm sun and a blue sky; the air was fresh and strong. before us, and on every side, stretched the undulating surface, of rich and friable brown loam. it is subjected to primitive methods of cultivation; but at this season it was difficult to trace the hand of man. we saw no villages; what there are must be hidden in laps of the ground; and nature, a kind and bountiful nature, is allowed to revolve her seasons almost in vain. bright streams come bubbling down from the distant framework of mountains, and wind on a south-easterly course to the far murad. we passed no less than three of these tributaries to the river of khinis. the first was flowing between high banks of volcanic rock, and sheltered a beautiful church in the old armenian style, called kilisa deresi, or the church in the valley. around this monument were grouped the tall headstones of a disused cemetery, some engraved with the elaborate crosses which were so dear to the ancestors of the unhappy people, now the bondsmen of parasite kurds. even as we stood in admiration of this charming building, an active kurd in a showy dress stepped into the path. he vaulted upon the back of a graceful chestnut arab, which was being led to and fro. we saw him cantering off to the neighbouring armenian village, and we wondered upon what errand he was bent. at a quarter-past one we commenced to ascend to a passage of the hills which confine the plain upon the north. in the space of half-an-hour we had reached an elevation of over 6000 feet. we stopped for some little time to fully realise the scene which we were now about to leave behind. the terraces of the bingöl plateau had been following our steps at some distance on our left hand. we had come in a northerly direction from khinis; and the heights we were preparing to cross were an immediate spur from that table surface, linking it to the long range on the north of the plain. both that spur, or connecting ridge, and the range which it joined, tended to incline south-west from a latitudinal course. the plateau itself was now close up; indeed it rose immediately above us, on the west of our winding track. it is therefore plain that it must have pursued a north-north-easterly direction, since it had formed a distant background to the town. i turned the camera upon the flanking ridge (fig. 160), and then mounted to an adjacent eminence, almost on a level with the surface of the plateau. my illustration shows a formation characteristic of the edge of the terraces, great blocks of stone welded together as if by a human hand. the surface is flat and is covered with rough grass, of which the higher stalks pierced the covering of recent snow. so little interest is taken by the people in their surroundings that even the kaimakam was unable to tell me the name of this adjacent range, which forms a lofty barrier to the plain. he was of opinion that it was called the akh dagh (white mountain) or tekman dagh; to some it was known as the kozli dagh. i prefer to retain the name which i heard the most often, that of akh dagh. east of these linking hills it assumes lofty proportions; but it appears to die away in the remote south-east. in the south, far away, rose the mass of khamur, with hill ranges circling round the plain. above those humble outlines was revealed the whole fabric of sipan, some seventy miles distant from where we stood. such is the extension of these vast depressions; you cannot define their limit; they render easy the traffic of peace or the passage of war. and we may reconstruct in fancy the remote period, when many of these bold landmarks were wreathed in smoke and reflected fires, and thundered with the energy of the globe. proceeding at two o'clock, we reached the pass in twenty minutes; it is just under 7000 feet. we were now in the basin of the upper araxes, approaching the districts on the north. the passage into a new sphere could scarcely have been accentuated with more emphasis than on this day. we dived into a dense fog; the cold was intense; and, whereas not a single flake had hitherto lain on the track, it was now all strewn with snow. nor was the change of a merely local application; it was the commencement of a new order of things. we rode on a northerly course through beds of vapour over lofty uplands at an elevation of more than 6000 feet. the track had been worn by traffic, tracing upon the snow-fields winding furrows of rich brown soil. a kurdish village was passed, where our zaptiehs changed with others; and, a little later, we overlooked a considerable depression of the surface--the wide valley of a river it appeared to be. it was clothed with snow and wreathed with mist. we descended into this valley, said to belong to the district of tekman, and crossed the river, called the bingöl or pasin su. it was flowing due north, and had a breadth of about 15 yards. on the opposite margin of the depression is placed the kurdish village of kulli, where we arrived at a quarter-past four. it is situated at a level of about 6000 feet; and, whereas at khinis (5540 feet) we had enjoyed a temperature of 32° at 10 p.m., the thermometer now registered at 7 p.m. no less than 7° of frost (fahrenheit). the settlement consists of about fifty tenements, of which six or seven belong to the zirkanli tribe and the remainder to sedentary kurds. [171] these latter are liable to service in the regular army. a single house is conspicuous among the huts of mud and stone; it is used as a receptacle for travellers. we found it in the occupation of a detachment of turkish soldiers, on their way from melazkert to erzinjan. horses and men alike were quartered in the building; but, after some parley, room was found for us. we joined in the circle of officers collected round the open fireplace, in which cakes of tezek glowed. among other things i learnt that four regiments of hamidiyeh are enrolled in the caza of melazkert. they are furnished by the hasananli tribe. next morning before eight we continued our journey, the temperature registering 14° of frost. mist still hung over the valley; but we soon were raised above it, again ascending to the table surface which borders the depression on either side. full sunlight streamed upon the undulating snow-field, and was reflected in tiny rays from a thousand little crystals, placed, like diamonds, on the heads of encrusted flowers. it was, indeed, over the face of an immense block of elevated country that our course was directed for some little time. here and there, especially in the north, it appeared to be broken by chains of mountain; but the closer you approached such an apparent barrier, the more it assumed the familiar features--the flat edges, and the fanciful castles with their cyclopean walls. at half-past nine we obtained a view of the bingöl dagh itself, in the furthest horizon of the south (fig. 161). we stood at a level of 7130 feet. at ten o'clock we turned off eastwards to the bed of mist suspended above the river, which lies in a deep trough. following for awhile along the sides of the lofty cliffs which confine it, we admired the play of the vapours, wreathing like jets of steam. from the edge of the cliffs on either bank, the table surface of the higher levels was seen to stretch east and west, and back to the peaks of the akh dagh--a sheet of snow, only broken by the gorge. the bingöl su was pursuing a north-north-easterly direction, which became more northerly as we progressed. the fog lifted and disappeared; we descended into the bottom of the gulf, which opened on either side the further we rode. at a quarter to twelve we arrived in the kurdish hamlet of mejitli, where we decided to make our mid-day halt. we had come a distance of about 13 miles from kulli. the river, which had a breadth of about 20 or 30 yards, was flowing some 50 feet below the village, with a rapid current, flashing over the rocks. the site of the village is a little plain on the left bank of the stream having an elevation of about 5800 feet. it has already been said that the valley of the bingöl su, or upper araxes, offers an easy approach to the districts on the north. the river pierces a wintry region of the table surface, and traffic is carried along its bed. but some 2 1/2 miles below the village of mejitli it enters a deep and impassable gorge. you mount to the summit of the lofty precipices which overtower its serpentine course. again in the saddle at half-past one, we reached this commanding eminence at a quarter-past two. nor did we descend afresh into the trough of the stream, which proceeded to thread a chaos of mountains in the east. the view from any point was one of savage beauty (fig. 162). by slow degrees the flat surface of the elevated plateau was becoming riven and broken up. you could still discern the level snow-fields, burying the stream in the south, and coming towards you on either bank. but the cloak of winter had not yet hidden the yellow grass on the adjacent slopes; while in the east the scene was changing to a wild landscape of hill and mountain, upon which the snow had not yet effected a hold. a few miles further these features increased in definition. the layers of lava gave place to hard limestones, forming peaks which had weathered a soft white. masses of rock, of a hue which was green as the rust of copper, or red like that of iron, were exposed on the sides of the hills. from a foreground of tufted herbage, sown with yellow immortelles, we looked across this troubled region in which the river wound its way--a ribbon of changing colours, skirting the foot of sweeping hillsides or confined in narrow clefts of stupendous depth. in the far east we caught a glimpse of the snowy dome of the kuseh dagh, which overlooks the plain of alashkert. at four o'clock the track diverged, and led us over the undulating plateau which still continued, but with less regularity, in the west. a short turn towards north-west brought us almost to the threshold of the broad depression of pasin. the ground fell away by a succession of convexities to a level surface, deeply seated at our feet (fig. 163). but far in the north, on its opposite margin, again appeared the cliffs of a plateau, exalted thousands of feet above the plain. it represents the extreme extension of the tablelands of armenia, to be succeeded by the peripheral ranges in the north. it was carried west and east, across the horizon. in this neighbourhood it is known as kargabazar. we descended into one of the long valleys by which the heights we were leaving meet the plain. if erzerum be the next objective, you cross to its western side and proceed by way of ertev. our own point was hasan kala, a more northerly course, leading through the village of ketivan. that considerable mohammedan settlement is situated at the end of the valley, whence you issue upon the spacious expanse. we rode at a rapid trot from this southern verge of the plain to the opposite margin, upon which is placed the castle and town. it formed a welcome landmark, which we reached in just an hour, arriving beneath the dusk at half-past six. the town, which has a population of several thousands, clusters at the foot of a long ridge of volcanic rock which projects from the towering background of mountain into the floor of the plain. the southerly extremity of that precipitous ridge is crowned by lines of battlements, a work ascribed to the genoese. [172] but the present masters of the country have neglected the fortifications, and have fallen back upon erzerum. pasin lies at the mercy of their good neighbours, the russians, who already hold its doors. after fording the river of upper pasin, the kala su, as it is called--a sluggish stream, flowing in a divided channel--we passed through a feudal gateway within a wall which was in ruins, and groped our way through irregular lanes heaped with filth. quarters were at last discovered in a new and well-kept coffee-house--a room of some size, with a wooden stage or daïs erected around the bare walls. upon this stage, behind the half-screen of an open balustrade, a number of loungers in various dress, some wearing the turban, others the fez, others again the persian lambskin cap, [173] were gathered in groups, sipping coffee from delicious little cups, and drawing the fragrant fumes of the persian tobacco from hubble-bubble or kaleon. in a further corner, away from the light, one could not mistake some tall, lean figures, and features of big birds of prey; we were indeed in the presence of some officers of hamidiyeh, conspicuous by the brass ensigns on their lambskin caps. they were spreading their coverlets for the night, or were turned towards the wall, bowing the head and then the body in prayer. we slept in an inner room of this clean little tavern, and resumed our journey at eleven o'clock on the following day. the streets were alive with people, a motley band of human beings--for hasan kala, with its warm baths and numerous khans and shops, lies on the main road to tabriz. it is lifted a little above the face of the plain and has an elevation of about 5600 feet. you look back upon its crumbling walls with a certain sympathy for its fallen greatness, and wonder whether it will again rise, like kars, from its fallen station under a further advance of the russian empire towards the mediterranean. behind this deserted fortress--which, nevertheless, i was forbidden to photograph--we admired the huge bulwark of the mountain barrier, mocking the works of man. there was the same flat edge, which had so often excited our wonder, to those formidable cliffs. east and west, in a long and horizontal outline, they were drawn beyond the range of sight. the corresponding features on the south of the plain were less emphasised, the long valleys softening the abruptness of the higher ground. pasin--the reader may remember--is one of the principal links of the chain of depressions which connect the extremities of western asia, and facilitate intercourse between east and west. from the narrows of khorasan to the fantastic parapet of the deveh boyun, it has a length of no less than forty-four miles. our way to erzerum led us along this spacious avenue, and, after crossing the humble barrier which i have just mentioned, debouched upon the city on the opposite side. we were able to ride at leisure, along a course direct as an arrow, free to observe the stream of traffic on the highway. an element of special interest were a number of bullock-carts, laden pell-mell with heaps of hamidiyeh uniforms, destined for the rank and file. they slowly made their way towards hasan kala, groaning and creaking as they went. long strings of bactrian camels--huge, large-humped, shaggy animals--defiled with a lulling symmetry of movement and measured, noiseless tread. by their side walked the drivers, tartars with skins of parchment, their features scarcely visible beneath their sheepskin caps. of wayfarers there were many, and of the most divergent types. some were mounted on little hacks, here and there a whole family--turbaned mussulmans, astride of their overhanging mattresses, to which were attached a jangling cluster of cooking pots. a led horse would be encumbered by a still more formless bundle, which, as you approached, displayed a pair of human feet. brawny armenian peasants, a scattering of thick-set lazes, a kurdish horseman or two swelled the throng. there are several large villages in the plain of pasin; but to what race or mixture of races do the mohammedan inhabitants belong? i was impressed by the difference in the physiognomy of these people, which was quite unlike the type prevailing among settled kurds. the question of the racial composition of the non-kurdish element, inhabiting the districts on the north, remains a subject for further research. the armenians are in a decided minority in pasin. [174] a broad chaussée with flanking ditches is carried along the plain, almost in a straight line. but many of the culverts have fallen in, forcing vehicles off the road into the soft soil on either side. still our horses liked the change, wearied by their long journey and much clambering over rocks. the ground was free of snow, even on this fifth day of december, and the air was comparatively mild. [175] the further we proceeded, the more the expanse narrowed and the perspective of the two long barriers closed. from afar we fixed our eyes on what appeared to be an artificial earthwork, thrown across the narrow head of the plain. at half-past one we were at the foot of this apparent fortification, with broken ground on either hand. the muzzles of cannon were turned towards us from the flat top of the colossal mound, and from two hills which rose on the south of the road. indeed we seemed to face a completely impregnable position, impossible to circumvent. and from a distance one would think that the meeting walls of mountain were joined together by a transverse dam. approaching closer, the road is seen to find a passage between the hills on the south and the adjacent flat-topped mass. the width of this passage may be about half-a-mile. once within the answering horns you cross a spacious amphitheatre, in which the secret of the formation is revealed. the two hills belong to the southern wall of mountain, but so also does the mound. and a line of heights circle inwards from behind the two hills, to protract the circle outwards to the horn of the mound. hills and mound are left behind before those heights are breasted; or, to continue the figure, you scale the tiers of the amphitheatre at the point most remote from the narrow opening on its eastern side. such is the position which, due not to man, but to a freak of nature, arrests the flow of traffic or the tide of battle. the linking heights--the opposite curve of the circle--are widely known through the literature of travel and of asiatic warfare as the deveh boyun, or the camel's neck. the humps and head are represented, the first by the two hills, and the second by the mound. the pass, to which the road climbs, is situated on the neck of the camel; but a second ridge must be surmounted, which is a little higher, and has an elevation of about 6850 feet. from the deveh boyun to erzerum must be a distance of several miles, since, although we rode at a rapid trot, we did not reach the city in less than fifty minutes. two facts, which were unexpected, became clear as we proceeded. in the first place, the position is by no means so strong as it might appear, even to a near view, from the eastern side. there is at least one, and there are probably more than one passage between the mound and the northern wall of the plain. this circumstance, and the peculiar character of the ground on the west of the barrier, which is broken up into precipitous heights, are in favour of the attack, in so far as they necessitate the employment of a considerable defensive force. the second surprise was perhaps more personal; i had formed the conception of a transverse parapet leading immediately into the plain of erzerum. but the parapet is succeeded by the broken ground of which i have spoken, and of which the heights are crowned with batteries. the road is taken along the face and among the recesses of the southern barrier; and you are already above the picturesque site of the famous fortress before you overlook the full expanse of the level land. we arrived within the enclosure of the circumvallation at a few minutes before three. [176] chapter ix erzerum we rode through empty spaces, littered with ruin and refuse, haunted by miserable and filthy dogs, to a street of some width, bordered by substantial stone houses, down the incline of which we checked the pace of our mounts. it leads to the north-eastern quarter of the city--a quarter which is numerously inhabited by christians, and where are situated the consulates of the european powers, notably those of great britain, france and russia. the british consulate is housed in a small but comfortable residence at the northerly extremity of the street. there we were received with emotion by the principal dragoman--an armenian with a handsome, frank and engaging face, whose curly black hair had become tinged with grey. i had not seen the excellent yusuf for many a long year, not since the time when he used to delight the fancy of childhood with dainty boxes, or the figures of various animals, which he would fashion with exquisite skill in a kind of silver wire--an art practised by the silversmiths of the east. what tales he would tell us in england of this distant erzerum! we used, as children, to try and realise the features of the scenes of which he spoke--the great mesopotamian deserts, the encampments of the arabs, the khans on the roads to the highlands in which the traveller rested, the mountains and the snow-clad plains. alas! for the powers of description; how different it all looked, when after many years these various landscapes were successively unfolded before the eyes! yet they spoke to the very soul of the child grown to manhood, perhaps reviving hidden germs in the lengthy process of heredity, or recalling those early efforts to make pictures of them, or appealing in virtue of none of these causes, but by the magnetic power inherent in themselves. and here at last was erzerum, with yusuf standing before the door and running forward with open arms! my reader will, i feel, pardon this little personal digression, embodying, as it does, one of my most permanent memories of the northern capital. another link of a not less personal nature must be mentioned in order to explain the length of the sojourn which the present writer made in erzerum. it extended from the commencement of the really cold weather to the approach of spring. wesson and rudolph were committed to the kind offices of the russian consul, m. maximoff, who furnished them with the necessary facilities for returning home through russian territory by way of sarikamish and batum. the swiss had been experiencing the discomforts of home-sickness; and the resourceful wesson, who would make a most excellent campaigner, was obliged for private reasons to abandon a nomad life and resume his habits as a londoner. it was my intention to work up my material in erzerum, and to devote a fortnight or more to this end. our consul, mr. r. w. graves, most kindly placed two rooms at my disposal, and insisted upon my being his guest. a friendship sprang up between us, born of similar age and many common tastes; and, speaking for myself, i may say that our solitude à deux in this corner of asia formed one of the most agreeable experiences of my life. i do not remember having spent a single dull hour. his conversation, charm of manner and kindliness of disposition were a resource which was never wanting to revive one's intelligence after long hours devoted to writing and to books. i was so happy and he so hospitable that the weeks had become months before all the excuses which waved away the round of duties in england had one by one become exhausted, and i tore myself from his side. this lengthy stay, followed as it was by two subsequent visits, has made me feel quite at home with the subject of this chapter. and the fact that i have approached erzerum from the three directions in which it is most accessible, from the east, from the west and from the south, enables me to speak, in so far as a civilian traveller may judge such a question, of the strategical importance of a city which is probably destined to play a leading part in any future struggle between the russian and the ottoman empires. for an englishman this side of the subject has a special interest; since the possession by russia of this strong place would mean her control of the head waters of the euphrates, which issues in the persian gulf. it is a maxim of peculiar appropriateness to such a country as asia that he who is master of the sources of a river is master of the lands through which it flows. on the other hand, such an event would closely affect all europe; for there would then exist no important barrier between the asiatic provinces of russia and the shores of the bosphorus. indeed erzerum resumes in herself the importance of turkish armenia as a factor in the world movements of the near future. mistress of this spot of ground, russia is mistress of these vast provinces. it is plainly the duty of a writer who has enjoyed the advantages which i have mentioned, not indeed to pander to the feeling of blind animosity against russia, but to place his readers in possession of the essential facts, in the hope that at least they may not be taken unawares by any advance of the northern empire in this direction. our large map will, i hope, make clear and preclude the necessity of minutely describing the topography of the site with its surroundings far and near. what the basin of lake van and the plain of mush are to the southern districts of turkish armenia, that are the plains of pasin and erzerum to those on the north. they represent depressions of the surface of the tableland and constitute arteries of communication between east and west. the northerly is separated from the southern string of depressions by a block of elevated plateau country, which is most compact and continuous on a line between mush and erzerum, and more broken into irregular lines of heights with intervening plains between the northern shore of lake van and pasin. an invader coming from the east and desirous of forcing his way westwards will find all his roads converging on either one or other of the two strings of depressions. the block of lofty tableland, seared by the action of ice and water, and covered for the greater part of the year with snow, causes them to be deflected as by an impassable obstacle, though it is in fact by no means impervious to an army during summer, when the principal difficulty would be the absence of supplies. the geographical position of russia is decisively in favour of an advance by the most northerly of the two main avenues. she might detach a column to move upon bitlis; but the objective of this force would be the lowlands of mesopotamia rather than asia minor west of the euphrates. there can be little doubt that the weight of her onset would be thrown into the northerly channel; and pasin would fall without a blow being struck. at that moment she would be confronted by the defences of the deveh boyun--an impregnable barrier if only held by a sufficient force. we have seen at the close of the last chapter that the deveh boyun consists of a composite ridge, thrown across a narrow portion of the northerly depression, and dividing it into two. it is due to an outbreak of lava--a hard trachyte--which has pursued a direction almost at right angles to the general structure of the country, its elevation being nearly meridional. similar outbreaks are readily recognisable in the northern border heights of the plain of pasin; but those ridges are of little geographical importance, losing themselves on the confines of the plain. on the other hand the deveh boyun, the most westerly of the series, determines the drainage of the great basin. from its eastern slopes the waters flow to the araxes, and from those on the west to the euphrates. on the one hand lies pasin, and on the other the plain of erzerum. the height of the pass over the parapet is not more than some 500 to 800 feet above the level of the adjacent plains. but the ridge is defended by a line of modern forts; and, if these were captured, the invading army would find itself enclosed within a space which, while it can scarcely exceed a width of about four miles, can be swept by the fire from heights on the north and heights on the south. these positions, which have all been fortified since the last russo-turkish war, rest against the slopes of the parallel walls of mountain, confining the depression on either side. there does exist, i believe, a narrow passage through an irregular valley between the deveh boyun main ridge and the northern wall. but this approach by the flank is commanded by some of the forts already mentioned. nor would the fate of erzerum be necessarily determined if both the ridge and the works which protect it had been occupied by the enemy after a series of frontal attacks and great loss of life. there would remain the defences of the top dagh, a hill mass, or, as they would say in south africa, a series of kopjes, separated from the deveh boyun by the valley of a small tributary to the euphrates derived from the wall of mountain on the south. the top dagh bristles with forts, of which the most conspicuous are forts mejidieh and azizieh. it immediately abuts on the enceinte of the city which it screens from attack from the east. the city lies with its head upon the talus or accumulated rubble which fans out from the heights on the south. its feet touch the floor of the plain. under modern conditions erzerum is by far the most important strategical position throughout the length and breadth of the country described in this work. the heights confining the plain on the south are in fact the edge of the great block of tableland interposed between the plain of mush and the northern capital. although the ground mass of that lofty stage is composed of stratified and old igneous rocks, yet more recent eruptive volcanic action has played an important part in its configuration. to this agency are due the bold mountains along its northern edge which constitute such a noble background to the town. the most conspicuous peak is that of the eyerli dagh, or saddle mountain, so called from the shape of its summit. the loftiest is situated a few miles further east, and stands a little back from the line of heights. it has an elevation of 10,690 feet above the sea, or of 4500 feet above the city. it bears the same name as that of the steep ascent to the plateau, and is known as the palandöken, or saddle shifter. between these two commanding peaks is placed a cirque or huge basin from which the detritus is emptied into the plain. it has been supposed that the peaks are only the upstanding sides of a huge broken-down crater represented by the cirque. it seems more probable, however, that this great hollow is due to erosive agencies, and it may originally have been commenced by glacial action. standing on the roof of your house in erzerum, you can scarcely conceive the approach of an invader by a turning movement across those heights. it is, indeed, no easy matter to discover any natural passage; but there are in fact four. the most easterly is aghzi achik (his mouth is open--though i cannot agree that such is the case.) it leads over to some villages in tekman. further west is the valley called abdurrahman gazi after a holy man, reputed to have been the standard-bearer of the prophet, whose tomb is a favourite resort in summer. next comes the palandöken, grazing the peak upon its western slopes after finding a way along the eastern declivities of the cirque. the fourth and most westerly is that of kirk deïrmen, or the forty mills. of these the only approach of any importance is that of palandöken. it constitutes the summer route to the districts on the south. the pass, just west of the peak, has an elevation of 9780 feet, and is commanded on either side by two modern forts. a metalled road, constructed during recent years, at once connects these important outposts with the city and affords tolerable gradients to caravans. as you examine the ground in this direction you observe a fortified hill on the south-west of the enceinte; it is called the keremitlu dagh. the wall on the north of the plain is scarcely less impenetrable, though nature has cloven it almost through by the defile known as the gurgi boghaz, or georgian gates, down which flows the infant stream of the euphrates and is carried the road from olti. but the portion of the russian possessions from which it leads are mountainous and poor in supplies, and the narrows are blocked on the turkish side by modern fortifications. in a geographical and geological sense this northern barrier corresponds to that on the south of the depression. a plateau-like character is not one of its least pronounced features--a feature which is presented with startling fidelity in the outline on the north of the plain of pasin, where the heights are called kargabazar (fig. 163, p. 193). west of the gurgi boghaz they are broken into peaks, of which the most symmetrical is the beautiful cone of sheikhjik--a constant source of admiration to an inhabitant of erzerum. it consists of a mass of trachyte which has welled up from the middle of a crater. [177] as these heights extend westwards they have been less subjected to eruptive disturbances; and the fine landmarks of the akhbaba dagh, the jejen dagh and the kop dagh are composed of non-volcanic rocks. but these eminences serve to accentuate the prevailing flatness of the outline, which remains the outline of a block of tableland. of little comparative width, this mass declines upon the north to the valley of the chorokh. erzerum, it will have been seen, is almost as difficult to get round as it should be impossible to take by direct assault from the east. if only turkey were a naval power, able to cope with her adversary by sea, it would be a long time before this bulwark of her asiatic empire could be broken down by a russian attack. herein lies the value to turkey of help from a first-rate naval power and the hopelessness of her position should it not be forthcoming. with her fleet in undisputed possession of the black sea, russia might laugh at the irresistible defences of erzerum. it would only be necessary to hold the garrison by an advance on the side of pasin; and the real attack, if it were ever made, would come from the west, the vulnerable side, delivered by a column which should have been landed at the port of trebizond, and which there would be nothing to prevent marching to erzerum along the chaussée. sevastopol and odessa rather than kars and erivan are the storm centres from which will be let loose the forces that will sweep the ottoman empire out of asia, when we shall be confronted with a brand-new set of barriers, precluding for the second time in history the entrance of commerce and enlightenment into these magnificent territories. in taking leave of this part of the subject, i must not omit to mention the route which a russian army might be expected to follow in its progress westwards after the fall of erzerum. as far as erzinjan the course of the euphrates would in general be followed, when the northern border heights would be crossed and the entry to asia minor effected by way of karahisar. there are no difficulties to traffic along this avenue. on the other hand, an advance from mush, the side of the southern depression, could only be undertaken by mountain paths above the course of the murad, which have never been touched by an engineer. it is therefore probable that the tide of war would be diverted for some time to the lowlands, when it might threaten the south-eastern districts of asia minor from the side of diarbekr. on three occasions, all during the course of the present century, erzerum has been at the mercy of russian armies. in 1829 it was actually taken by marshal paskevich, whose troops penetrated as far north as gümüshkhaneh and to within eighteen miles of trebizond. [178] recovered by turkey at the ensuing peace, it was threatened by a similar fate after the fall of kars in november 1855. it was only saved by the russian reverses in other quarters and by the early termination of the war (treaty of paris, march 1856). in 1877 the russians forced the deveh boyun barrier, which in those days was unprovided with proper defences; but they met with a serious repulse in an attempt to storm the forts on the eastern flank of the enceinte. the investment was not completed until the month of january 1878; and, although the place was held by their armies as a material guarantee during the negotiations for peace, it was retained by the sultan under the terms of the treaties of san stefano (march 1878) and berlin (july 1878). since the conclusion of that campaign the advantages of the position have for the first time been turned to proper account; and, if in the future the system of forts should be found provided with the most modern ordnance and held by a sufficient garrison, erzerum may still earn the glory of owing her preservation to the sword rather than to the pen. but not only is this fortress the key to turkish armenia; it also defends the most important of her trade routes. the principal avenue of the commerce between europe and northern persia passes through erzerum. this traffic, which is conducted by means of numerous strings of camels, was originally founded by the genoese. its flourishing condition long after the disappearance of these great merchants is attested by the jesuit missionaries in the latter half of the seventeenth century. [179] as early as the year 1690 we hear of a british commercial agent residing in the city. [180] in those days even a portion of the trade with india found its way through erzerum. after the initiation of a service of steamers on the black sea in the year 1836, the land routes between the provincial capital and constantinople or the mediterranean ports gradually fell into disuse. on the other hand, the trade itself received a great impulse, and has continued to increase year by year to the present day. in place of the almost endless stages of land carriage through asia minor, european steamers discharge their goods at the port of trebizond, whence they are conveyed on the backs of camels through erzerum and along a series of plains to the persian city of tabriz. in the year 1842 it was ascertained that the number of packages disembarked at trebizond in transit for persia was about 32,000. in 1898 this trade had increased to over 5000 tons; and in a normal year the value of the imports into persia is about £600,000. about two-thirds of this trade belongs to great britain. it is to be hoped that the trunk railway which already exists in asia minor will be extended to erzerum, where it should be joined by a branch line from rizeh or trebizond. from erzerum it could be continued without the intervention of any natural obstacle through bayazid to tabriz; and from tabriz it would proceed through teheran and ispahan until it effected a junction with the indian railways. the capital to construct this railway should be subscribed in europe generally; and a certain percentage of interest should be guaranteed on the revenues of turkish armenia as a provincial unit, as well as on the revenues of persia. the population of erzerum, especially the armenian element, has undergone a remarkable oscillation during the nineteenth century. in 1827 it appears to have numbered as many as 130,000 souls. [181] another but lower estimate gives a total at that period of 16,378 families, or from 80,000 to 100,000 souls. of these 3950 families, or from 19,000 to 24,000 people, were armenians of the national religion. [182] the russian occupation of the city in 1829 was followed in 1830 by a general emigration of the armenian inhabitants, who followed the russian armies upon its evacuation. those were the days when russia was assisted to her conquests by armenians and hailed by them as a deliverer. numbers of their countrymen--it is said by armenians not less than 40,000--had already emigrated into the russian provinces from the frontier districts of persia in the train of the russian army when it retired from tabriz at the peace of turkomanchai (1828). [183] what with the exodus of armenians both from the city and the plain--which before those times was probably inhabited by an armenian majority--and the various calamities of a disastrous war, the population of erzerum had declined to a total of not more than 15,000 souls in 1835. [184] only 120 armenian families are said to have remained behind. [185] at the time of my first visit the inhabitants numbered about 40,000, exclusive of a garrison of 5000 or 6000 men. the official figures assigned some 10,500 to the armenians, 26,500 to the mussulmans, 1400 to the persians and strangers, and about 500 to the greeks. of the armenians some 500 succumbed in the great massacre of 1898. it is evident, however, that the town has been returning to its former condition; and there can be no doubt that with the most moderate instalment of tolerable government the older figures would be soon surpassed. i was informed by the persian consul that some 30,000 to 40,000 head of camel were yearly counted as having passed through the city. the money spent by their owners for provisions and sundries in erzerum amounts to about £t90,000 or, in sterling, £81,000 a year. such is the value to the city of the persian trade. the aspect of erzerum, when seen from without, is sombre and unattractive. this impression is principally due to the colour of the stone of which it is built and to the scarcity of trees. i am tempted to offer my reader two illustrations of the place, the one taken from the higher ground on the south, and displaying the features of the great plain with the city in the foreground and in the distance the lofty outline of the northern heights (fig. 164); the other looking south-west from the roof of the british consulate, with the castle in relief against the slopes of the eyerli dagh on the right of the picture (fig. 165). this view does not comprise the peak of palandöken, situated a little further to the left. the eminence in the centre is a nameless mass, intermediate between the two greater mountains and screening the cirque from the plain. a curious feature in the landscape of the city, when seen from very near, are the chimneys, which look like rows of dove-cots. the smoke escapes at the sides. it is strange that the inhabitants display so little love of verdure, for the sun is always brilliant and productive of glaring lights, while during two or three months of the year its rays are fierce. the few gardens that there are grow quantities of lilac, of a perfection of bloom and colouring and perfume which surpasses any examples i have seen elsewhere. abundance of delicious water flows down from the heights on the north; and under happier circumstances the slopes and the plain outside the city would be dotted with dwellings embowered in trees. at the present day, when once you have passed outside the enceinte, you feel like a ship which has taken to the open sea. not a hedgerow, no oasis of foliage diversifies and softens the naked and vast expanse. you steer your course whither you will. for at least five months in the year the ground is covered with snow--an unbroken sheet spread over mountain and plain. little specks in the landscape are recognised as villages; and now and again a gliding object--it might be a boat on the ocean--moves swiftly towards the city and, approaching nearer, is seen to be a sledge. the climate of erzerum has been compared to that of st. petersburg, but the comparison is most unhappy and in many respects fallacious. sun and sky belong essentially to the south. it is only the great altitude of over 6000 feet above sea-level that produces the rigour of winter and the crispness of the summer nights. my daily observations of temperature during the months of december and january supply the following results. in december the highest reading at 9 a.m. was 37° fahrenheit, or 5° above freezing-point; and the lowest at the same time of the day was 8°, or 24° of frost. during january the maximum at 10 a.m. was 30° fahrenheit, and the minimum at the same hour was -19 1/2° centigrade, or 3° below zero of fahrenheit. double windows and german stoves are necessaries in such a climate; and, as you take your ride of an afternoon and gallop over the powdery snow, it is necessary to protect the ears against frost-bite. on the other hand, it is not easy to realise the severity of the weather, so brilliant are the rays of the sun. and the warmth of walking exercise completes the illusion of a snowfall in summer, while your spaniel ranges widely over the endless white surface, intent upon his forbidden pursuit of the larks. the charm of the place--and it has a charm which must appeal to all sensitive minds--consists in the grandiose scale of the surroundings--the sculpturesque beauties of the parallel lines of mountain which meet in the perspective of the west; the subtle effects of light and tint, which are those of some summit in the mountains transferred to the habitable earth. the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon reflect the originality of such conditions. the plain itself must be close upon 6000 feet high; it has a length, from west to east, of eighteen miles, and it is not less than some ten miles across. [186] in its trough lies the infant stream of the western euphrates, which, rising on the slopes of the dümlü dagh, [187] a mountain of the northern border, is for some little distance lost in a zone of marshes, almost opposite the city but not less than about five miles away. these marshes are quite an aviary of all kinds of wildfowl, which, besides supplying eggs to the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, afford most excellent opportunities to the sportsman. the enceinte, or circumvallation of erzerum was constructed during the period between the war of 1855 and that of 1877. it consists of a rampart or ramparts of earth with ditches, and resembles the enceinte of paris. cannons are mounted upon it at intervals. it embraces an area of about three square miles, and is furnished with four principal gates. that on the west is called the gate of erzinjan, and the one on the east the gate of tabriz. the gates on the north and south-west are named respectively the olti and kharput gates. each gate is guarded by sentries. the space enclosed within this rampart is only partially covered by buildings, the town occupying not more than about a square mile of ground. down to comparatively recent times erzerum consisted of a citadel and walled city, with suburbs lying outside the walls. these walls, which dated back to the byzantine period, were double and defended by sixty-two towers. they were further protected by a moat. their circumference appears to have been not less than three or four miles, and no christian was allowed to reside within them. they were provided with four gates, bearing the same names as those in the present enceinte. texier, who visited erzerum in 1839, records that greek characters were to be seen upon the gates, and crosses incised in the stones of the walls. both features were evidently of byzantine origin. his authoritative testimony is supported by at least two of his predecessors, hamilton (1836) and poser (1621). the last-mentioned traveller describes a marble bas-relief and greek inscription which he saw upon one of the gates. i have little doubt that this bas-relief is the same of which yusuf spoke to me as having been copied by consul taylor in the sixties and taken to the british museum. the document is, however, not forthcoming in our national treasure-house, and the original has disappeared. only in the central and more southerly quarters of erzerum did i observe a few remnants of the old walls. the citadel is still in existence, crowning the highest ground in the city, and it still contains the famous old tower. it seems to have served as a watch-tower, and was provided with a clock which the russians carried away in 1830. in old days the captain of the janissaries resided in the citadel; and the only occasion upon which a pasha of erzerum would enter that sanctuary was if he came to have his head cut off. [188] not many ancient buildings remain in the city, which has not seldom been visited by severe earthquakes. one of the most violent occurred in the month of june 1859, destroying or seriously damaging 4500 houses, overturning several portions of the old walls and levelling nine minarets with the ground. [189] the most pretentious edifice is the old medresseh or college, called [chifteh minareh.] chifteh minareh or the double minaret (fig. 166). my illustration is from a photograph taken many years ago, before the caps of both minarets had fallen away. i was unable to obtain permission to enter the edifice, which was being used as a military store. it has been described at some length by more than one of my predecessors, and it is, i believe, an architectural solecism. [190] the façade of hewn stone with elaborate traceries contrasts with the brickwork of the pair of circular towers which rise from stone piers on either side. the circumference of each tower is diversified by eighteen small shafts, morticed into the main mass. the space between each pair of shafts is filled by a triangular moulding, of which the edge or narrow side faces outwards. shafts and moulding are built of reddish kiln-burnt bricks, inlaid with small blue bricks. at the base of either pier is a large panel, framing an elaborate ornament in sculptured stone. between the uppermost sprays of a bunch of foliage or feathers rests the device of a double-headed eagle. the stalks or quills of the garland rest in the hollow of a small semicircle, which is supported by the interlaced forms of two dragons. the question is suggested whether this double-headed eagle be the well-known emblem of the roman empire over east and west. but we know that the emblem was adopted by the seljuk dynasty of the ortukids and by their successors the ayubids; [191] and, indeed, if one were left to one's own judgment, one might well suppose that this was a monument of the seljuk period. on the other hand, a cufic inscription, communicated to professor koch in the forties by the dragoman of the british consulate, is to the effect that this building and an adjacent mosque were founded by a nameless benefactor during the caliphate of malek khan and in the year of the hegira 351 (a.d. 962). the inscription is described as consisting of two portions, one on either tower. [192] personally i could not discover any trace of cufic writing, nor, so far as i am aware, has such been observed upon this monument by any of my predecessors. adjoining the building on the south side is a circular tomb in hewn stone, resembling the mausolea at akhlat, which are works of the thirteenth century. tradition ascribes the tomb to a sultan of persia. [193] [ulu jami.] the large mosque of ulu jami is not more than a few steps distant from the entrance to chifteh minareh. it has rather a vast interior with several vaulted aisles; but it is devoid of architectural pretensions. i was shown an ancient paper belonging to this mosque, in which it was stated that it had been built by the head of the government and religion, mohammed el-fateh, in a.h. 575 or a.d. 1179. the most pleasing situation in the city is that which is presented by the disposition of the buildings as you make your way southwards up an irregular ravine or gully, down which trickles a little stream. on your right hand the high ground is crowned by the bastions of the citadel; while to your front, on the same heights a little south of these grim walls, rise the slender towers of chifteh minareh. the slopes on the east are much gentler, and are covered with houses, terraced up the incline. here and there you may discern a pile of stones, or a block of masonry abutting on a house. these fragments are the [relics of the old walls.] relics of the old walls, which formerly separated the great mosque, the chifteh minareh and the citadel from the suburbs with which these buildings are now continuous. one may turn aside among the houses to visit a [holy well.] holy well, which is frequented by both mussulmans and armenians. the former assert that it is situated on the spot where the successor of sheikh abdul kader of baghdad is said to have met his death. the latter attribute its origin to a miracle, by which the water welled up from the ground upon which was shed the blood of two of their martyrs, the brothers isaac and joseph. they met their fate in a.d. 796. [194] the spring rises from the mud floor of a humble little house, and is quite tepid to the touch. [churches.] i need not detain my reader with any description of the churches, because erzerum has always differed from other armenian centres in not possessing any remarkable armenian temples. the early travellers speak of two insignificant chapels, and one of these still remains. during the forties the armenian inhabitants set about building a more spacious edifice; and curzon tells an interesting story in connection with the enterprise, which may explain the origin of the number of old sculptured stones which are such a feature in the walls of many an armenian church. the priests, he says, urged their flock to bring in the tombstones of their ancestors; and the response was so warm that there was quite a rush of able-bodied armenians, carrying tombstones from the graves of their families on their backs. many were unable to obtain a place in the walls or windows for their contribution to the structure of the house of god. [195] i do not know whether the edifice of which this traveller speaks is the same as the present cathedral. in addition to the little chapel of which i have spoken, this is the only church of the gregorian community of erzerum. the city is the centre of one of their dioceses and was inhabited by a bishop at the time of my stay. monsignor shishmanean--such was the name and title under which i was introduced to this prelate--received me with some show of state, being attended by all the members of his lay council. he conversed quite fluently in the french language. [sanasarean school.] the popular basis of the armenian church is one of its most remarkable features, and, with the rapid spread of education which is now in process among the community, ought before long to be productive of far-reaching reforms. this lay council consists of notables chosen by the people; and, in a vacancy of the see, the patriarch at constantinople submits to them the names of candidates among whom to choose a successor to their late bishop. in erzerum this lay body is an operative factor in the life of the community; but i doubt whether its counterpart could be discovered in such centres as bitlis or mush. it exercises considerable influence in the government of the sanasarean school, to a brief account of which i now proceed. the origin of this institution--designed to dispense a higher standard of education than that which obtains in other armenian schools in turkish armenia--goes back to 1881. in that year mr. madatean, one of the three existing directors, visited the provincial centres at the invitation of a wealthy armenian gentleman, the late mr. sanasarean. he returned to erzerum with several pupils, chosen among the poorer class. in 1883 the school entered upon its present premises, which have been considerably enlarged since. its patron, mr. sanasarean, died in 1890, bequeathing a sum of about £30,000 to his foundation and directing his executors to draw up a constitution. this charge has now been fulfilled. two councils have been appointed--one at constantinople under the presidency of the patriarch, and the other at erzerum under that of the bishop. thus the college is under the protection of the church; and it is with the patriarch or the bishop that government deals. three directors were chosen to preside over the teaching staff, and to dispense instruction themselves. the council of erzerum consists of this triumvirate, who hold office for life, and of three notables, one of whom vacates his charge every year. it has also been provided that, upon the decease of any member of the triumvirate, his colleagues shall take his place until the number shall have been reduced to one, so that eventually there may be only a single director. of the two councils that at constantinople is supreme. they administer the revenues, which have been increased since the death of the founder by the receipt of at least one substantial legacy. the institution has been launched with every promise of success, although it seems likely to be destined to undergo vicissitudes before attaining a full measure of usefulness. the sanasarean college is essentially a boarding college, and day pupils are not encouraged. it has a roll of not more than about eighty inmates, of whom nearly half are the sons of parents in narrow circumstances, and pay nothing for maintenance. about fifteen youths are natives of erzerum, and the rest are derived from the provinces. a few will have journeyed hither all the way from constantinople. it is expected of the gratuitous scholars that they shall all become teachers in the various armenian schools throughout turkey. of the sixty members who had already completed the course at the time of my visit one-half had adopted the scholastic profession. i went carefully over the school, and was delighted with the arrangements. the dormitories are large and kept scrupulously clean, and the same may be said of the classrooms. there are a hospital attached and a playground. the technical school is well provided with lathes and all kinds of implements, and some excellent work is forthcoming from the young handicraftsmen. boys enter the college in about their tenth year, and leave at the age of seventeen or eighteen. the course comprises a preparatory class and six higher classes. the subjects taught are in the first place the armenian and the turkish languages, the former comprising both the ancient and the modern speech. of foreign tongues french and german are included, but neither latin nor greek. the history of the armenian church and nation is imparted under great difficulties and without the aid of books. these would be confiscated by the censor. in mathematics the curriculum provides for algebra and geometry; and in natural science for geography, geology, botany, zoology, astronomy, anatomy, chemistry, and physics. commercial book-keeping can also be learnt. music is studied and practised with much appreciation, and there are several tolerable performers on the violin. the prospectus of studies must by law be submitted to government; but the mudir or local director of public instruction confines his energies to an occasional and friendly visit. most of the text-books are german. the teaching staff numbers twelve members, including the directors; the french master had recently arrived from france. it is desired that the teachers should have passed through this school, and then have completed their studies in europe. a certain portion of the funds have been set aside to meet the expenses of one or two students during their residence abroad. two have already proceeded to st. petersburg, and two more are about to leave for reichenberg in bohemia in order to study in a technical school. i offer my reader a group of the scholars of this institution, with a picture of the founder in their midst (fig. 167). the faces are full of character and determination. nor should i wish to omit a similar group of the comely maidens of armenia, taken at edgmiatsin and showing the national dress (fig. 168). i received the impression that there was something wanting to the vitality of the school, that the pupils were not using their talents to the best advantage. for instance, when i asked them for the result of x + y × x y, they were obliged to make the sum and could not supply the result offhand. personally the directors are charming men, neither self-assertive nor obsequious. all three have studied in germany; but not one of them has taken his doctor's degree. they told me that they had in this obeyed the expressed desire of their patron, m. sanasarean. but, although there can be little doubt that they made excellent use of their opportunities, it is most pernicious to the interests of the school that their example should be made a precedent. by what means can the council ensure that the young men sent abroad to study have really penetrated into the inner circle of european scholarship? only by requiring that they should not return without obtaining its badge. it also seemed to me strange that the pupils passed from class to class by length of residence rather than by merit. other drawbacks, the first of which might be easily remedied, were the absence of sports and games as a prominent feature of school life, the want of touch with the armenian schools in the russian provinces, and the unreality of the diplomas granted by the institution, which have not as yet become the key to a variety of careers. the fact, too, that the minds of the directors have been filled with the pedagogic lore of germany militates against success. that so-called science betrays the weaknesses of the powerful german intellect. in germany its pedantic influence is counteracted by military service; but this wholesome corrective is wanting to the armenian youth of erzerum. [armenian catholics of erzerum.] in addition to the sanasarean college, the gregorian community possess no less than six ordinary schools. of these the principal is attached to the cathedral and is named artsenean. it is attended by about 200 day scholars, and corresponds to an armenian school of two classes in russia. the school for girls, called ripsimean, appeared to be well administered; it has a roll of 350 maidens. the armenian catholics of erzerum province number several thousands of souls; and the city is the seat of one of their bishops. their school, which is conducted by four french priests, is considered one of the best in the town. it is attended by over 100 pupils, of whom nearly one-third are gregorians. a little boy of three did the honours of his class, when i availed myself of the kind invitation of the frères. he addressed me in the following speech, delivered with the most graceful gestures:--"monsieur! soyez le bienvenu; que le ciel vous protège, cher monsieur!" [american missionaries.] the american missionaries have a large establishment with schools in erzerum. their mission was founded in 1839. it was presided over during my residence by the rev. w. n. chambers, a man in the prime of life with fine physique and a face of great beauty, which corresponds to the nobility and sweetness of his character. his wife and worthy companion--one of the most charming and refined of women--was perpetually busy with her girls' school. one reflected upon the value to the womanhood of the armenian race of such an example as hers. in taking leave of the american missions, it is pleasant to dwell upon this memory, which, indeed, illustrates the kind of benefits which they confer upon the country better than all the figures in their reports. they raise the standard of life, and diffuse an atmosphere of wholesome living. i ought to add that their missions are conducted by quite exceptional men and women--of a type and perhaps of a class far higher than one would expect. one admires in them a broad tolerance and entire absence of all cant. one says farewell from the depth of the heart. [rushdiyeh. idadiyeh.] education is provided for the mussulman population by a single but well-appointed institution. it combines the courses of a rushdiyeh, or high school, with that of an idadiyeh or lycée. it is housed in a spacious new building in the centre of the town, and i found it occupied by 130 pupils, of whom 45 were boarders. youths enter the school between their eleventh and fifteenth years, and stay seven years. of this period three years are spent in the lower and four in the higher course. there are about eight teachers. the majority of the scholars were attired in a quasi-military uniform; the rest were in civil dress. all looked in excellent health. the dormitories were provided with brass bedsteads; and i noticed that the linen was scrupulously clean. shining napkins were spread out upon the table of the dining-room, which was lined with a row of chairs and provided with crockery. adjoining the school is a small hospital. the course comprises the same subjects as those in the curricula of the van schools; and, although this school professes to dispense a much higher standard, it is in fact less advanced than the so-called military school at van. this is the only idadiyeh in turkish armenia; and the admirable official who acts as coadjutor to an invisible director of public instruction informed me that in the year preceding my visit a government order had been issued, to the effect that all candidates for subordinate posts in the civil service should be required to produce a diploma from an idadiyeh. i learnt on the same authority that there existed a rushdiyeh in each caza of the vilayet of erzerum with the exception of the caza of terjan. we found erzerum in a condition verging upon famine. during my residence several people died of inanition, and the poorer classes were only just alive. i was informed that there was no lack of grain in the place; but it was all in the hands of merchants, and they refused to sell except at famine prices. a short harvest in 1892 had been followed by insufficient sowing, owing to the consumption of the seed for food. grain was said to be lying at trebizond on government account; but the officials pleaded that they were unable to obtain transport. some of them, if not all, were no doubt confederates of the corn ring. the same state of things was prevalent at van; and throughout our journey we had great difficulty in obtaining barley for our horses, even when offering exorbitant prices. one may present some conception of the acuteness of the sufferings of the townspeople by recording some particulars of prices and wages. wheat was selling at 50 piasters a kilé, or about 2 1/2 piasters an oke (2 3/4 lbs.). the price of bread was 2 piasters an oke. a healthy man requires at least three-quarters of an oke of bread a day, in addition to his ration of sheep's tail or meat sausage, of which the working classes lay in a provision in the autumn. the wages of a carpenter or skilled labourer are in good times 8 piasters a day. but hundreds of workmen were seeking employment at 1 1/2 piasters, and the best paid among the makers of cigarettes for the régie were receiving a daily wage of 2 piasters. rice at erzerum is quite a luxury, and potatoes are so little grown that they may be left out of account. how was a man to pay for his lodging, provide food for his family and himself, and obtain tezek, or cow-dung cakes, for his fire upon the current wages? i was shown the kind of bread upon which the majority were living; it looked like a thin pancake, and its staple consisted of a black grain or seed. but the principal ingredient was mud and chopped straw. the cruelty of the situation was accentuated by the fact that all kinds of comestibles were spread out upon the booths of the bazar. one regretted the absence of the glass windows of our shops. here the temptation might be touched as well as seen. there is no poor-law, and no poor-houses. people starve in the streets. a mussulman girl of great beauty came to our house, and begged piteously for food, showing her face. we endeavoured to obtain for her a place as servant in the residence of some turkish ladies. but it was well known that there was many a brute in erzerum who, like the spectre of hunger in the pregnant lines of alfred de musset, demanded kisses as the price of a piece of bread. the economical condition of the surrounding country is woeful in the extreme. the great plains from pasin to lake van were being raided by bands of kurds. i shall describe in a future chapter how this predatory people came to be established in the agricultural centres. erzerum was full of accounts of their open attacks upon the industrious peasantry; and even the mussulmans, as, for instance, at hasan kala in pasin, were petitioning government for protection. it is true they did not dare to call their assailants to book as kurds, but described them merely as brigands. it was well known that these bands were led by officers in hamidiyeh regiments--tenekelis, or tin-plate men, as they are called by the populace, from the brass badges they wear in their caps. the frightened officials, obliged to report such occurrences, take refuge behind the amusing euphemism of such a phrase as "brigands, disguised as soldiers." the scourge had almost exhausted the armenian population, and was now commencing to sit heavy upon the mussulmans. the armenians were emigrating as fast as they could. the russian consul informed me that he had been obliged to issue no less than 3500 passports to armenians during the current year. the russians did not want them; but what were they to do? i learnt from another source that in the caza of khinis alone 1000 armenians had left their homes, the majority in abject poverty, and had taken refuge across the frontier. with a famine in the provincial capital and the adjacent territory stripped by marauders, the inhabitants of any other country would have risen in revolt against the government. but the population of asiatic turkey, in spite of religious differences, are the most easily governed in the world. all the talk about mussulmans and christians flying at each other's throat is talk, and moreover very idle talk. during my subsequent visits to erzerum it was admitted to me by turkish officials that the massacres of 1898 were perpetrated in these districts by bands of imported ruffians. the still unavenged guilt of these abominable orgies does not lie upon the mussulman population. only on one occasion during my residence did the famished townspeople of the dominant religion come near to measures of insubordination. they sent their women--a method of petition which is neither usual nor lightly to be dismissed--in a body to government house. thence the petitioners proceeded to the residence of an official of the treasury at constantinople, who had been despatched to erzerum to make enquiries into the scarcity. the indignant matrons assailed his ears with the pertinent question: neye geldin, whereto didst thou come? dissatisfied with the answer they received, they smashed the windows of the functionary; but nothing came of the demonstration. all through that anxious time the civil government was in abeyance; and nothing was set up in its place. the vali was recently dead; his successor had not been chosen; the deputy governor was at once a puppet and an imbecile. an honest man with a few policemen at his back could restore not only order but prosperity. there is only one essential of any importance: to reorganise the territorial boundaries of the provinces, select good governors and invest them with extensive powers. if my reader be inclined to smile at the choice of my epithet when applied to a turkish official, i can only say that i much regret my inability to introduce him personally to the present holder of the office of vali of erzerum. i was privileged to make the acquaintance of raouf pasha on the occasion of my second visit. his career through a long life has been one of much distinction; he is honest, just, capable, humane. if such a man could only be freed from the leading-strings of the capital, he would go far towards a happy settlement of the armenian question, and of the still more important question, the continuance of the ottoman empire. the armenian inhabitants of the provincial capital are undergoing a state of transition from their ancestral customs to the less straitened manners of the west. but these customs die a hard death, and the emancipated armenian who has studied in europe must feel their fetters upon his return to his native land. let us suppose that he wishes to marry; he must have recourse to his mother, or, if she be dead, to a female relation. a bride is chosen for him, whom, as likely as not, he does not see until the marriage ceremony has been performed. if the parents of the bridegroom be still alive, the newly-married couple reside with them; and it is the custom that, while sons and daughters are permitted to speak to their parents, a similar license is not usually accorded to the sons' wives. thus a maiden quits a home where freedom of intercourse and speech is allowed her to enter one where she is not permitted to open her mouth. a son may not smoke in the presence of his father; and great are the agonies endured by the younger generation in this respect alone. the earnings of the sons are handed over to the father, who rules the family quite in the patriarchal style. a single family comprises a very large number of members, all living in the same house. in one house in which i visited there were not less than thirty. i photographed a group of five generations in this family, each person being in direct lineal descent. the infant is the son of the pretty young lady on the left of the picture, and it reposes on the lap of her great-grandmother (fig. 169). to erzerum belongs an antiquity which, if not remote, is at least respectable; and her history, or rather the glimpses which we obtain of that history, illustrate the time-honoured struggle between east and west. founded during the reign of the second theodosius (a.d. 408-450), at the instance of one of the greatest of the early armenian patriarchs, and upon the site of a village which dated from ancient times, [196] the new city received the name of theodosiopolis, and was designed to constitute an outer bulwark to the roman empire of the east. in the description of this event which we receive from moses of khorene the traveller recognises the familiar surroundings of the present town. the emissary of the emperor had journeyed over an extensive tract of country in search of a suitable site. his choice at length fell upon a position in the province of karin, at the foot of a mountain in which several rivulets had their origin. at no great distance were situated the sources of the euphrates, which, collecting into a sluggish stream, formed a large marsh, supporting abundance of wildfowl, on the eggs of which the inhabitants lived. the province lay in the centre of the country. upon this site were laid the foundations of a fortified city, defended by moat and walls and towers. baths of solid masonry were erected in the vicinity over the hot springs which welled from the ground. [197] seized in the year 502 by the sasanian king of persia at the inception of his war with rome, this remote stronghold was shortly afterwards recovered by the emperor anastasius and restored to its former fame. [198] the fortifications were enlarged and increased by justinian; [199] but at the close of the sixth century it again fell into persian hands. [200] i do not know that we are able to follow its fortunes during the campaigns of heraclius, who is said to have assembled there a council of armenian bishops (a.d. 629?). [201] in the year 647 theodosiopolis became the prize of the arabs; and more than a century elapsed before it was regained by the cæsars under constantine the fifth (755). [202] that monarch razed the walls, reduced the inhabitants to slavery, and transported a great number of armenians of the paulician sect to constantinople and to thrace. [203] shortly after this event it appears to have been rebuilt by the mussulmans; and it played an important part during the wars of leo (886-911) and his son constantine porphyrogenitus (911-959) with the arabs in the neighbouring province of pasin. [204] but the waves of mussulman conquest were closing in upon the eastern empire. about the commencement of the thirteenth century we find the place in the possession of a prince who bears the turkish name of toghrul ben kilijarslan. from his hands it passed into the dominions of the sultan of iconium. [205] the seljuk sultan was known as the lord of erzerum, just as his ottoman successors bore the title of lords of kars. [206] the rule of the seljuks was followed by that of their tartar conquerors. in the first half of the fifteenth century erzerum was in the keeping of the turkomans, from whom it was wrested by the ottomans under mohammed ii. [207] the name erzerum dates from mussulman times, but its exact derivation is obscure. it may either signify the land (ard in arabic, arz in turkish) of rum, or of the roman empire; or it may be compounded of this last name and of the name of an unfortified town in the vicinity which was known as artze or artsn. it is quite probable that this town was at an early date called artze of rum to distinguish it from another artze in the south of armenia which lay within the persian sphere. [208] local tradition places the site of the first of these artzes close to the present city and on or near the banks of the kara su. we know that the place was sacked by the turks in the middle of the eleventh century; [209] and according to saint martin the survivors took refuge within the walls of theodosiopolis, to which they transferred the name of their own populous town. [210] however this may be, the ancient armenian name of karin is still applied to the present city. [211] the monuments of the eastern empire have been seen in erzerum by modern travellers; and the chain of history has not been broken in a manner to disparage the identity of the roman fortress with this key to the asiatic dominions of the ottoman turks. chapter x return to the border ranges--thalatta, thalatta! from erzerum to the black sea, at the nearest point, near rizeh, is a distance as the crow flies of 88 miles, or, measured to trebizond, of 114 miles. yet the distance by the main road to the ancient capital of the grand-comneni is little less than 200 miles. [212] this large discrepancy is due to the great height of the block of mountain on the north of the plain of erzerum, and, more especially, to the essential character of the sea of troughs and ridges, interposed between the town of baiburt and the coast. the turkish government have built a magnificent chaussée across this country, constructed in the seventies by french engineers. but whatever its value in time of war, it has failed to revolutionise the methods of transport in vogue from immemorial time. vehicular traffic is conducted between the termini in summer, and in winter the journey is feasible on a sledge. but the camel, the mule, and the packhorse are still the principal means of carriage, and the caravan has not yet fallen into disuse. with horses which were short of work after their long rest in erzerum we reached trebizond during the height of winter in six days. at this season of the year the traveller is warned to beware of the blizzards which render formidable the crossing of the kop pass. the name of that pass is pronounced with a certain degree of terror in the bazars and coffee-houses of erzerum. each winter brings its catalogue of disasters to man and beast, buried in the driving snow on those bleak heights. nor is it easy to perform the passage in a single day from erzerum, waiting in the city for a favourable occasion. the kop is situated about forty miles west of the provincial capital; and the barrier upon which it is placed--the wall on the north of erzerum--can scarcely be surmounted at a more adjacent point while it is covered by the snows. for it is only the continual plying of caravans across a pass which, in this latitude and at so great an elevation above the sea, renders it practicable all the year round. caravans have chosen the kop, and there is nothing left to the traveller but to acquiesce in their choice. it was therefore decided to make our first day's stage at the village of ashkala, on the banks of the euphrates, a stage of over thirty miles, and thence, on the following day, should the weather be favourable, to take the ascent of the range. we set out at eleven o'clock on the morning of the 6th of february--a dim winter's day, when the sun was struggling with the grey mists spread over the face of land and sky. the thermometer registered no less than 20° of frost (fahrenheit); plain and mountain were completely covered with deep snow. even the road scarcely revealed a patch of brown soil, and was distinguishable only by the parallel dints of the ditches in the foreground of the white expanse. but the city was conspicuous on the lowest slope of the southern barrier, where the vaulted summits and bold convexities of that lofty wall of mountain sweep into the lake-like plain. there it lay, a sombre mass, from which projected into the murky atmosphere the outline of a tower, the needle forms of minarets. on its either flank, in a wide half-circle, the chain of heights advanced into the open, more elevated and less contracted towards the north-east, declining but more adjacent on the west. in both directions, the opposite horns of this bay of snow-clad eminences appeared to touch the answering parapet in the north--west and east in a long, straight line, fretted by the shapes of cones and humps, stretched the barrier of that still distant range. the point of apparent intersection between the two outlines are, in fact, the open doors of the plain. in the north-east it is the inlet which leads towards olti, known as the gurgi boghaz: in the west the valley which receives the kara su. our course was directed towards ilija, a village of above-ground houses at the foot of the western promontory, near some hot springs. the summer road to erzinjan diverges towards the west shortly after you have left erzerum. it is taken across the horn of heights, up a partial opening, which, however, was barely visible. the view across the plain and along the summits of the northern barrier extends from the deveh boyun and the distant heights of kargabazar to the kop mountain in the west. several individual heights may be distinguished from their fellows: sheikhjik, a beautiful cone, north-west of erzerum; then akhbaba, a cockscombed outline, and next jejen, a symmetrical peak. the flat-topped, broad-shouldered mass, which closes the series, is the kop, beneath whose shadow lies the pass. in the village of gez--a cluster of houses, partly mohammedan and partly armenian--we made a stay of twenty minutes, and said farewell to some of our friends, who had driven out to meet us in a sledge. sleighing is much in favour during the winter, both among rich and poor. little black specks come gliding over the snow-field in the neighbourhood of the town. taking shape, they are seen to consist sometimes of a lean hack drawing a couple of longitudinal logs, placed upon skates; or a graceful car, drawn by a pair of high-stepping horses, brushes past you at a rapid trot. near ilija we crossed a stream of warm water, which proceeded to follow us on our right hand; and at three o'clock we had reached the spot near the extremity of the promontory where the kara su might be expected to enter the narrows. but the river was quite invisible, buried beneath the canopy which stretched to the opposite mountains without a break. after doubling the horn, which was low, and was succeeded by gentle eminences, we made our way down the valley, between these hills and the northern barrier, through a dreary landscape upon which the mist hung. a fine fox with a sweeping brush made off across the snow, and found it difficult to escape from sight. i viewed him away with a shout which surprised our followers, giving vent to a whole season's abstinence. at four o'clock we passed the lonely station of yeni khan; and, an hour later, a road branched off across the hills, leading to erzinjan. in another half-hour we crossed the mouth of a large side valley through which was hissing a considerable stream. it comes from the mountains on the north, and is called the serchemeh chai; the combined waters below the junction with the kara su are generally known as the frat or euphrates. [213] we were surprised to observe the manner in which the connection was effected between this ice-free torrent and the buried kara su. descending to the trough of the valley, the rapid current was introduced into the same bed in which the companion river slept; nor did it dip beneath the canopy, but hurried along by the side of its partner, fretting the edge of the ice. when we crossed, a little later, by a substantial bridge to the right bank, the united ice and flowing water had a width of fifty paces. the valley had narrowed and become almost alpine in appearance since the bifurcation of the roads. in such surroundings is situated the picturesque village of kagdarich, just above the bridge, on the right bank. again the hills opened after our passage of the river, and, nearing ashkala, composed a plain. we reached our destination at a quarter to seven, beneath the shadows of night. it is a mohammedan village of some size, with a few armenian houses; the houses are above ground. the valley must have in places a width of six or seven miles. its character became apparent as we rose above it on the following morning, after crossing an affluent to the frat, called the kara hasan su, which was almost concealed by a crust of ice. like the plain of erzerum, it has probably been covered with a sheet of water during no very remote geological period. the floor of the valley presents, in fact, an almost level surface; but a special feature in this second lake-like extension of the euphrates basin is a bold mass of rock which protrudes in the neighbourhood of the village, isolated from the heights upon the north. the close resemblance of this hill to some of the spurs from those heights suggested the conception of a remote age when this valley was in its infancy, and the mountains which now rise on its opposite margins were integral parts of a single block of elevated land. the further we advanced towards the west, the more the plain narrowed; we were pursuing a diagonal course along the lower slopes of the northern barrier, and we could see the river at some distance, partly ice-encrusted, and partly threading the snow in several tiny channels. [214] february 7.--we had left ashkala (5520 feet) at half-past eight, with the promise of a perfect day; for the vapours had become collected into shining masses, and the sun was mounting into a clear, blue sky. just before losing the landscape of the plain, i stopped to take a photograph of the summit-formation of a spur from the northern range (fig. 170). i was struck by the resemblance of the flat edge of this eminence to the outworks of the bingöl plateau. a little later we entered a side valley through which flowed a small and partially ice-bound stream. proceeding up it a short distance on a northerly course, we arrived at eleven o'clock in the pretty alpine village of pirnakapan. beyond this mussulman hamlet, which is graced by a grove of willow trees, the valley becomes a gorge. so steep are the crags which overhang it that in many places they were free from snow. we were now at a level of about 6000 feet, and, as it were, about to take the ascent. the rocks of this region are highly folded, and consist of serpentines and limestones weathered to various hues. two partridges were seated fearlessly on one of the ledges a few yards from where we rode. the actual climb begins a little further on, where the scene opens and you stand at the bottom of the towering wall. there is situated among the snows the southern kop khan, from which the start is made. you see the chaussée winding in a long series of spirals to a lofty gallery of the range. it covers a distance between pirnakapan and the pass of about 7 1/2 miles. to that gallery, which is nearly as elevated as the pass, we proceeded to follow a much shorter track. in half-an-hour we had gained the position after a valiant escalade, and the camera was at once brought to bear. but our enemy was, alas! the sun, an inexpugnable adversary, shedding his rays from just the quarter which we wished to embrace. regretting the absence of the resourceful wesson, i was obliged to turn the instrument towards the east-south-east. in that direction we commanded the upper valley of the euphrates (fig. 171); but we were robbed of a picture of the important landscape in the south. it was a little after noon; the mountains streamed with light, and only above the deeply-seated river valley a heavy mass of vapour hung. all the summits which are seen on this side of that vapour belong to the block of mountain on the north. the conical peak on the left of the illustration is the beautiful jejen dagh. beyond the mist, the distant heights are those of the southern border in the neighbourhood of erzerum. in another half-hour we had reached about the highest point upon the undulating snow-fields of the summit region. the kop itself, the mountain which gives its name to the pass, is a flat-topped mass, rising with steep slopes on the right of the road. the pass has an elevation of 8048 feet. so brilliant was the sun that we were enabled to linger, and to attempt to realise the panorama of the south. the traveller who should approach armenia by this well-beaten avenue might fail to discover the characteristics of a great tableland in the configuration of that extensive portion of her area which is outspread from this pass. it is true that the range he crosses resembles a large block of hard material rather than a chain of mountains in the more usual sense. but the outline of this mass is broken into peaks of every shape; and the opposite ranges display the same features, the whole combining to produce the impression of a troubled sea. how different was this landscape from that which i had overlooked from the pass of zikar on the north! yet the explanation of this diversity does not, i think, belie the conception which a wide experience had inculcated in my mind--the conception, namely, of a vast mass of elevated country of which a prevailing characteristic is the flatness of its surface. for in this landscape the levelling influence of the lavas are almost absent, while, on the other hand, the operation of the various processes of denudation have been conducted on a colossal scale and with conspicuous results. the ancient sedimentary deposits have been worn by their action into peaks of considerable relative height, while the plains with their lake-like beds have, as it were, usurped the character of the mountains by which they are overhung. reserving for further study the country between frat and murad on the west of erzerum and mush, i need only remark that its present aspect from the standpoint of this pass was somewhat foreign from the idea of prevailing flatness which similar prospects had invited me to form. two, and only two, distinct chains of heights were visible in the south. the first, which was apparently the lower, was that on the south of erzerum, the palandöken and the continuing eminences toward the west. behind this outline rose a second and also horizontal series, which were identified by my informant, a zaptieh who lives on the mountain, as the range on the north of the murad or eastern euphrates, known to him under the same name as that of the district of terjan. between these two chains lay a mass of vapour, suspended above the river which joins the western euphrates below the town of mamakhatun. a third and further range, that of the kurdish mountains, beyond the murad, was not, and, according to the same authority, could not be descried from this pass. [215] proceeding on our northward journey at ten minutes before two, we entered, a little later, a break in the mass. in the hollow flowed a torrent, partially encrusted with ice, the first of the streams which find their way to the black sea. as we advanced, this shallow opening became a deep gorge, leading, almost directly, towards the north. the road was taken by easy gradients down this convenient valley, and, after a course of over five miles from the culminating point of the pass, reached the shelter known as the northern kop khan. here we rested for an hour and a half, continuing our ride at half-past four o'clock. we kept the torrent on our left, still adhering to the gorge, which displayed a fine view backward to the top of the mountain mass. a wall of stupendous height crowned its uppermost end, and displayed the familiar flat edge. the strata, of a marmorised limestone, which overhung the glen were much contorted, like the grain of a knot in a tree. after crossing a stream, in part icebound, which we recognised as the chorokh, we arrived at a quarter-past six at the little settlement of maden khan (5455 feet) near halwa maden, distant some 6 1/2 miles from our last halting-place, or about 29 miles by the road from ashkala. i do not propose to follow in detail the further stages of our journey to the coast of the black sea. but i have not yet taken my reader to the extreme geographical limits of the country which in the present work i am endeavouring to describe. from maden khan it was still a ride of one and a half days to the pass where you bid farewell to the armenian plains. this northerly extension of the highlands of armenia is watered by the upper chorokh. february 8.--leaving the cluster of wayside hospices in which we had passed the night, our course was directed westwards down the stream. on either bank rose hills of marble with no great relative elevation, covered, like the valley, with deep snow. the current sometimes flowed in an open channel, and as often plunged beneath a continuous crust of ice. not a single tree, nor even a bush, was visible in the landscape. a little further down the hills opened, and gave place to a stretch of plain (fig. 172). at the western end of this expanse they again circled inwards, and the valley took an abrupt turn towards the east. at the mouth of this passage is situated the castle and town of baiburt, barring the approach to these uppermost reaches of the chorokh. but on the west of this picturesque and ruinous fortress the heights which deflect the river to its long course toward the east command the stronghold and detract from its value in modern war. indeed they constitute an undulating upland or plateau, framed by the convex shapes of distant hills. at about its highest point this plateau has an elevation of some 5620 feet. leaving the town, we made our way across this upland in a direction of west to west-north-west; and, in a little over an hour, overlooked one of the flat depressions which have already been so often described. upon its snow-clad surface was placed an armenian village with three fine buildings, now in ruins, a relic of the old times. what an eloquent memorial those shapely forms and that finished masonry still preserved to a cultured and beneficent race! varzahan was the name of the village; but we had again been placed under surveillance, and it was impossible to perpetuate the image of these decaying remains. [216] the ova or plain of varzahan, to which we descended, is, in some sense, a westerly extension of that portion of the valley of the chorokh which lies below the town of baiburt. yet it was separated by a range of hills from the trough in the surrounding outlines through which we knew that the river must flow. these hills circle southwards from the latitudinal chain of distant heights which confine this ova and the chorokh valley alike. a passage is no doubt found by the streams which collect in the plain and find their way to the chorokh. we were reminded by its appearance of the plain of erzerum, of which many of the features were reproduced on a smaller scale. it seemed to strike the last note of the distinctive theme to which we had been listening for so many long months. the plain has an elevation of about 5300 feet, and it is possible to scale the heights on its northern border and, in summer, to pursue the journey to trebizond. [217] but in winter you are taken up an opening at its westerly extremity which we may call, after a considerable village which lies within it, the valley of balakhor. this valley conducts you in a westerly direction, to the ridge or ridges which form the water-parting on the south of the lycus, and on the west and east of the kharshut and chorokh. it was towards those dividing heights that we set out on the 9th of february from the lonely station of khadrak in the valley of balakhor. the stream which waters this valley and finds its way to the plain of varzahan was buried beneath a continuous canopy of snow. the heights on either side were of insignificant elevation, relative to the general level of the ground. in half an hour a way diverged, well beaten by traffic, leading to kelkid and erzinjan. it branched off on the left hand; we were at the head of the valley, surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills. our course was directed to the wall upon our right; and in another ten minutes we had gained the eminence. we were standing not exactly on a ridge, but on the face of an upland, over which the winds sweep in stormy weather with considerable force. yet another half-hour brought us to an elevation of 6468 feet, the saddle of the vavuk pass. we had arrived upon the boundary line between two vilayets, of erzerum and of trebizond. i was informed that quite recently a tartar horseman had met his death while carrying the post across this pass. he was overtaken and overwhelmed by a tipe or blizzard before he could reach the shelter of the valleys on either side. indeed the loss of life to beasts of burden is considerable along this road. no more eloquent evidence could be furnished of the want of humanity in the natives than the callous indifference to the sufferings of dumb animals which day by day is displayed upon these passes. such a habit of cruelty at once argues a lapse into barbarism, and explains the perpetration of the nameless horrors which so often shock the conscience of the west. we kept passing strings of heavily-laden quadrupeds, which with their dull eyes, drooping heads, and fleshless bodies, covered with sores, had lost the distinctive qualities of the horse. none of them had any thighs to enable them to breast the ascents, and most were incurably lame. their hocks were bent with curbs or swollen by spavins; one poor beast was dragging his hind legs behind him, and another had one of his forelegs bent almost double. neither--it could not be doubted--were destined to reach trebizond. so they crawl over the ground, from year's end to year's end, until they close their miserable existence by sinking exhausted on a pass. even at the moment of liberation they are doomed to a prolonged agony; and, having been martyred all their life by the barbarity of the human animal, they become victims of his perverse humanity in their death. you will see them prone upon the road, where their drivers have abandoned them to kick out their life in the snow. religious scruples prevent these misguided monsters from giving them the despatch. we were sickened on one occasion by the spectacle of a wretched horse which, with glazed eyes, continued to paw in a convulsive manner a space of ground which in his agony he had cleared of ice. at the end of my revolver i compelled one of the drivers to sever his jugular vein. from such scenes the traveller turns to the contemplation of nature, not only with a sense of relief, but under an added consciousness of her sublimity, the high exponent of the harmony of things. the pass of vavuk divides two landscapes of exactly opposite nature, and leads over into a new climate and a new world. the opposite wall of rock is dotted with low fir trees, which, as you proceed, increase in height and shade. the opposite valley to which you descend is already warm by comparison with the bleak highlands from which you have come. by the time the river is approached, the winding reaches of the kharshut, free, even at this season, of ice, great rolling masses of cloud are sailing over the mountains, distilling into mingled snow and rain. even at this distance the senses recognise the sea. all the characteristics of the border ranges, aligned in a deep belt upon the coast, are displayed during the successive stages of a ride of two and a half days. if the forests are less luxuriant than on the side of the rion, the view in places recalls, even during this season, those tree-clad parapets. valleys of immense depth are overtowered by rocky precipices; it is essentially a land of crest and trough. and just as the scene contrasts with the armenian landscapes, so the people and the types are new. the familiar features of the greek take the place of the armenians, and the ear is greeted by the language of the greeks. [218] yet another pass must be traversed, the wintry pass of zigana (6640 feet), and from its further slopes expands a vista of the distant sea. the thermometer has risen to 62° by the time the seaboard is reached. and there, at trebizond, the roses blossom in the gardens while the armenian rivers are buried beneath the ice. chapter xi revisit armenia four years had elapsed since the close of my last journey. armenia had in the meanwhile been the scene of tragedies which had touched the conscience of the west. petty disturbances among the mountaineers in the wild fastnesses of sasun, south of mush, were magnified by the provincial authorities into the appearance of a revolution, and were suppressed with savage cruelty. the example of a single massacre was not sufficient to overawe the armenians; the palace had tasted blood, and their special agents throughout the provinces were eager for the work and its rewards. against the counsels of their best officials and the entreaties of turkey's truest friends, the palace organised a series of butcheries on a great scale. the events in sasun were followed by similar atrocities not only in the towns and villages inhabited by armenians but also in the capital itself. europe, deeply pledged to secure good government among the armenians, was unwilling to embark on a policy of decisive action, paralysed by the mutual jealousies of the principal powers. during those dark times the country had been closed to travellers; and it was only with the greatest difficulty that i was at length enabled to complete the studies which had been interrupted on the former occasion by the rigour of winter. june 7, 1898.--on a day of early summer, when the air was fresh and the sun warm, my friend oswald and myself set out from trebizond, to perform the journey which forms the subject of the last chapter in the reverse sense. i have already described the stages from erzerum to the vavuk pass; but it may be desirable to notice briefly the intermediate section between the sea and that natural threshold of the armenian tableland. for a distance of over a mile the chaussée follows the coast beneath the shadow of that table-topped mass of dark porphyritic lava which is known as boz tepe. the view ranges over the considerable delta of the pyxitis--a strip of sand and pebbles projecting far into the sea, which is discoloured for some distance by the suspended sediment. but the large prospects are at once lost as you enter the river valley and proceed at right angles to your former course. the stream is swirling along, divided into several channels, and overhung at a respectable interval by tall cliffs. in places the outlines open and disclose a country of rolling hills, as where the large and white-faced monastery of aiana is seen high-seated in a charming landscape on the right bank. it is indeed an admirable approach to the recesses of the pontic chain, this valley of deïrmen. it leads with much of the straightness and space of a church's nave through the lofty and intricate outworks of the range almost to its spine at the zigana pass. before we had completed ten miles the wooded heights on either hand were dotted with the dark forms of the first spruce firs. the valley narrows; the walls grow steeper, and tower to a greater altitude; but you never lose the expanse of sky. if the scene recalls tyrol you are not conscious of confinement; there is none of the chill and darkness of an alpine glen. the character of the landscape is influenced by the alternation of tuffs with lavas; the latter become much darker and more compact. to the tuffs are largely due the softer spaces of field and garden; while the lava, which has cooled into a roughly columnar structure, produces parapets of immense height and precipitous crags. a little below the town of jevizlik we stood in wonder at the foot of a cliff composed of a rock of this description. it fills the angle between the main stream and a tributary to the left bank, and it must be at least 1500 feet high. the columns of lava suggested the appearance of an organ of colossal proportions. and what a romantic feature, the bold perspective of the side valley, the cultivation carried upwards by almost impossible gradients, the vivid green of the young corn contrasting with patches of fallow land, coloured a light purplish-brown! along the summits of the wide amphitheatre of ridges the forest rises against the field of the sky. jevizlik, the first station, is reached at about the twentieth mile; it is situated just below the confluence of a considerable stream which comes in on the right bank. a rough road diverges from the chaussée at this point, and follows the course of the tributary. it leads to the famous monastery of sumelas, a ride or sharp walk of three and a half hours. we passed bands of pilgrims on their way to this resort--whole families, an entire village packed up and piled upon horses, the women astride with their babes beside them, the men on foot. the monastery is built on a ledge of an almost perpendicular wall of mountain, at a height of 4450 feet above sea-level, and of 800 feet above the torrent which hisses at the base of the rock. it is placed almost at the head of the beautiful valley of meiriman--a valley which, indeed, is narrower than that of the pyxitis, but which combines in its various stages all the features of this fair land. orchards and stretches of forest trees clothe the easier gradients at the mouth of the opening--a large circle of heights soaring up into the heaven above purple slopes, where the soil is exposed by the plough. clusters of wooden châlets overlook the winding river, and each bolder eminence is crowned by a white, stone chapel. as the valley becomes a glen--the term is ill adapted to express the scale upon which nature has worked--the vegetation increases in luxuriance and changes in character, until the scene assumes that strange and almost supernatural appearance which has found such just expression in the weirdness of the kolchian myths. the foliage, which almost obscures the light of the brightest day, is composed of alder, lime, walnut and elm, of beech and spanish chestnut, of ash and, on the higher slopes, of tall firs. trees of holly, of azalea and of rhododendron supply an undergrowth which at this season is ablaze with bloom. in the autumn the pink, poisonous crocus (colchicum) springs from the rocks, of double the length and size of the ordinary flower. fungus with crimson stools start from the silver lichen, which diffuses an unearthly light. long streamers of grey-green lichen float on the lower branches, from which a profusion of creepers are festooned. here and there the thicket opens to an expanse of lawn. the forest is fed by the clouds collected in this caldron of nature; and from the month of may to that of october the windows of the monastery are seldom greeted by the rays of the sun (fig. 175). the traveller to erzerum who is in search of romantic scenery could not do better than follow this valley of meiriman. it is the route which i selected upon our return from this second journey; but it is not practicable during the winter months. a steep ascent from the head of the glen leads to a country of grassy uplands, rising gradually to the pass of the kazikly dagh. this pass is the more easterly counterpart of the zigana, but exceeds it in height by more than 1000 feet (8290 as against 6640 feet). the barrier on the north of the plain of baiburt is crossed at the kitowa dagh by a pass of 8040 feet (as against the 6470 feet of the vavuk pass). beyond the kazikly dagh there is a fair track which is used by caravans in summer; but between that point and trebizond they pursue a shorter route. this approach to the plains of armenia is almost in a direct line, avoiding the long detour by gümüshkhaneh. the journey from the cloister of sumelas to baiburt may be performed in two days. [219] on the present occasion we were constrained by perverse orders from constantinople to follow the chaussée. the tributary, which we crossed at jevizlik by a bridge of several arches, appeared to bring almost an equal volume of water as the river which it feeds. the upper stages of the main valley are picturesque in character, with none of the gloom and savagery of the vale of meiriman. the slopes on either side terrace upwards into the haze of the sky; and for some miles above jevizlik they are alive with settlements. at mid-height you admire the frequent clusters of the villages; the churches are built on projecting pinnacles of rock, and consist of a group of gables surmounted by a dome and approached through a belfry with two storeys of open arches. a white-faced monastery is seen high up on the opposite or left bank of the river; it fills a niche or natural recess in a vertical wall of rock, and its roofs are overhung by the roof of the cave. the stream is spanned at frequent intervals by little stone bridges with single arches, the arches highly curved and the roadway rising to the centre of the bridge. in one place the way which led up the cliff-side to a village was flanked at its upper end by a strong tower from which the inmates could resist attack from below. above this inhabited zone, at the foot of the firs, near the crests of the ridges, sparse hamlets or isolated châlets are just discerned in the vague detail of the uppermost slopes. a report of guns, sounding distant, comes from one of those eyries where they are celebrating a marriage feast. in the fields, with their strange gradients, men and women are at work, the men lithe of limb, the women square-set, with skirts to below the knee and thick stockings on their legs. it is a dreamy southern scene, in one hand beauty, in the other squalor; and it repeats on a large scale the characteristics of those transverse cuttings which extend from the coast to the highlands of asia minor and are inhabited by a population of greek race. the chaussée follows the right bank, at some height above the stream, in full possession of the views on either hand. the valley maintains its width; but the nature of the landscape changes; cultivation ceases, and the forest descends to the road. thickets of rhododendron are seen for the first time--the tree-like bushes with which we are familiar in england and the large flowers. the brakes were a mass of bloom; a little higher we met the azaleas; the yellow azalea and the pale mauve petals of the rhododendron were in the splendour of their latest blossoming. in the lush forest we noticed the beech tree, the walnut, and the maple, the hazel, the oak and the elm; the elders were in full flower, and the cherry trees were conspicuous for their number and size. the more open spaces were covered with masses of forget-me-nots; calices of hellebore, withered yellow, rested on the rank grass; and yellow mullein, filling the air with its subtle perfume, rose from among the rocks. little waterfalls leapt through the deep shade of narrow clearings; we were nearing the head of the valley. a bed of sandstone, holding the moisture like a sponge, interrupts the lava beds. the ridges circle inwards; the valley becomes an amphitheatre, and its stately character is preserved to the last. upon a terrace of this amphitheatre the little settlement of lower hamsi keui commands the long perspective towards the north. it is distant some fourteen miles from jevizlik and thirty-four from trebizond. we made our stage at the upper hamsi keui, over a mile beyond the lower, by a continuous ascent. it is situated above one of the two larger side valleys which converge towards the hamlet first named. it is from here that you commence the first portion of the climb to the zigana dagh, through forest glades in which the spruce firs alternate with the beech woods, and which are carpeted with an undergrowth of rhododendron and azalea and tall palm-leaved bracken. as we rose on the following morning above our surroundings we looked in vain for the vista of sea, the horizon being veiled in mist. our ears were greeted by the song of nightingales, and by the clear call-notes of the cuckoo; while the plashing of innumerable streamlets and waterfalls mingled to a background of tremulous sound. flocks of sheep were passed on their way to their summer pastures, and we could hear their liquid bells from afar. they were accompanied by shepherds with dogs not much smaller than mastiffs, which had long white hair and tails like a fox's brush. the side valley is left behind, and then a second and still smaller valley; until the forest ceases and you enter the region of dreary heights. but the azalea still continues, mounting the ridge like our english gorse and not less riotous of flower. patches of snow remain unmelted even at this season. at the saddle of the pass we had covered about 10 miles and risen nearly 2600 feet (upper hamsi keui, 4060 feet; zigana pass, 6640 feet). the slopes are inclined at an angle of about 30° and the rock is much decomposed. time was wanting for a careful examination; but oswald favoured the conclusion that it is hard and holocrystalline, similar in character to that of the kitowa dagh further east. the descent is long and gradual from the pass to the valley of the kharshut, which eats its way through wild mountains to the black sea. the road is carried along the heights, on the east of a basin of ridges, by a succession of terraces. in winter, when the snow spreads a carpet at the foot of the fir trees, the view is at once inspiring and superb. but in summer the long stretches of barren yellow talus--a trachyte, decomposed and weathered a staring yellow, fatigue the eye and repel the sense. there is a certain contrast in the vegetation of the southern slopes. the luscious forest has disappeared, and so have the rhododendra; but the azalea and the spruce firs still clothe the walls facing the pontic winds. on the other hand, the scotch fir takes the place of its slenderer rival on the parapets which are less exposed to the moisture. at the foot of the main descent are placed at intervals three hamlets with numerous caravanserais. the first is maden; the other two are known respectively as the upper and the lower zigana (4330 feet). the distance from the pass to the lower zigana may be about 4 1/2 to 5 miles. thence it is another 7 1/2 miles to the bridge over the kharshut (3100 feet). the landscape, of immense extent and of the most savage character, is framed in the south by the serrated outline of the giaour dagh, veined with snow and capped by cloud. between the pass and the hamlets we noticed huge volcanic dikes seaming the hillsides with bold causeways of finely crystalline rock. the little town of ardasa on the banks of the kharshut affords shelter for the night. it is placed at a distance of about 2 miles above the bridge, and of about 24 1/2 miles from the upper hamsi keui. the straggling settlement is overtowered by a cliff some thousand feet in height, perhaps a limestone and coloured a rusty brown. on the summit are seen the fragments of a mediæval castle. between ardasa and the pass of vavuk we followed next day the winding river, tracking it up almost to its source. the valley is fairly open, with a number of side valleys; but the scene is desolate and bare. not a remnant of the azalea enlivens the landscape; the vegetation adheres to the margin of the water--fruit trees and willows, the large mauve flowers of the field-iris, hawthorn in bloom, the yellow blossoms of the barberry. there is a certain air of comfort in the pretty wooden houses with their gables and wooden roofs, shining white. but this note is often and quickly lost in the sounding discords of a chaotic nature--the shales and limestones compressed into almost impossible contortions and baked and uplifted by huge bosses of igneous rock. beyond such a devil's gorge, which is overhung by a robber's eyrie, is situated the considerable town of gümüshkhaneh, famous for its silver mines, now no longer worked. you leave it on your right and pass through a lower suburb, at a distance from ardasa of about 16 1/2 miles. another 10 miles brings you to the large village of tekke; and about 2 miles further a bridge crosses the kharshut. it takes a road which here diverges to follow a tributary to the left bank, and which leads across the giaour dagh to erzinjan. we slept at murad khan, a comfortable shelter, having made a stage of about 33 miles (alt. 4430 feet). on the morning of the 10th of june we again pursued the river, now become shallow, and were soon passing beneath the castled crag of kalajik, one of the wonders of the journey to erzerum (ch. x., fig. 174, taken in winter). the size of the ruin and the scale of the outworks, which defend each ledge of the limestone precipice, far surpass the similar fastnesses in this wild valley. at 7 miles we left the stream to ascend by easy gradients the gentle slopes of the vavuk pass (6468 feet). at the saddle we had covered a distance of rather over 10 miles. we stood on the threshold of the armenian tableland, beneath a new climate and in face of a new scene. the contrast impressed oswald, who saw it for the first time, and who at once seized the special features of this new world. we had crossed the zone of sparse fir trees; the summit is completely barren; the plain before us, as well as the rounded outlines of the opposite hills, devoid of vegetation of any kind. only by the margin of a slowly-flowing river beneath us beds of buttercups marked out in patches its idle course. limestones and shales are the material of this and the further eminences; it is a country of soft, swelling downs on a large scale. the clouds stand arrested on the higher summits of this barrier; the sky beyond is pellucid, the air bracing, the tints warm. as we made our way beneath the night to our distant goal beyond baiburt the evening star was shining with the brilliance of a beacon, and my friend mistook the milky way for a luminous cloud. when we arrived in erzerum (6168 feet) on the 14th of june the lilac filled the gardens with its heavy scent. it was commencing to blossom in our native country before we left its shores behind. chapter xii across the central tableland to khinis the site of erzerum is already familiar to my reader; he sees her towers and minarets on the southern margin of a lake-like plain, and raised on the daïs of a fan of detritus from the southern line of heights. he knows the large surroundings of that city of inspiring prospects: the long and regular line of the block of mountains in the north, with their sheikhjik, their akhbaba, jejen and kop; the vague and gloomy passage of the gurgi boghaz through those mountains; and in the east the transverse parapet which interrupts the issue eastwards, that freak of nature, the deveh boyun. the southern barrier, which rises in the peak of palandöken to a height of 4500 feet above the town, would appear to constitute an impassable obstacle to traffic; and in fact precludes it during the winter months. yet there are several natural openings in the steep slopes of that barrier, leading to the uplands of tekman on its further side. of these the principal passage is that of palandöken, crossing the so-called crater of the palandöken--eyerli dagh. june 20.--our course was directed up the fan of detritus to this palandöken pass. [220] our little horses, full of corn, curveted along the path through the dreary waste of water-worn stones. erzerum was soon behind us, lost already in the expanse. what a contrast between these cities of asia and those of europe with their suburbs and villas! these repose upon their plains like a ship upon the ocean, which you speak, and all is soon again blank. in half-an-hour from the enceinte we gained a metalled road, which follows the course of a torrent of some size. it leads to two modern forts, planted high on the southern slope, on either side of the pass. the pass itself is placed beneath the peak of palandöken, upon its western flank. the road goes winding up the gorge, and along the eastern side of the so-called crater, crossing and re-crossing the torrent by a number of bridges. a nameless and minor mountain of symmetrical proportions and vaulted form rises on the northern margin of the cirque. we passed between it and the slopes of palandöken, supported by the outworks of the larger mass. patches of snow lay on the grass at this increased altitude, their melting remnants fringed by bright fieldflowers. on the banks were pulsatillas, with their drooping bells and scent of wine; buttercups and marsh marigolds in the beds of the runnels; forget-me-nots in profusion on every side. still the scene was bleak in character; and the sailing cumulus clouds sent their shadows over a surface which has been worn by ice and snow and water, and seems alien even to the hardiest plants. such was the appearance of the irregular caldron on our right hand--a yawning hollow sapping the bases of the adjacent peaks. closed on the south, it sends its drainage through deep valleys to the plain. the white face of a limestone rock interrupts the more grassy spaces, and is varied by the darker serpentines. the soaring heights around the cirque are of eruptive volcanic origin, and display the lava flows. after a sharp ascent, the chaussée reaches the standing southern wall of this caldron, and is taken, in a fine gallery, for some distance along its northern slope. its cliff-like outline extends from the heights of palandöken to those of eyerli in the west. a turn of the road conducts us to the pass (9780 feet). it was three o'clock; but the snow lay in sheets over the hollows, and the temperature was only 46° fahrenheit. grey clouds veiled the sky in the northern landscape, and were collected in inky masses about the snowy peaks of the chorokh region. the view in that direction, and along the two parallel lines of heights which border the course of the frat, impressed us in a double sense. on the one hand it was the great height of the summits in the north, which now showed up behind the cone of sheikhjik; we concluded that they must belong to the group of mountains in which the chorokh has its source. the other fact which appeared plain was the rising and massing of both lines of heights in the far west. following the chain upon which we stood across the slopes of the eyerli dagh, or pursuing the outline of the opposite barrier across the plain, the long perspective westwards met in shining masses of mountain, covered with snow and with precipitous sides. in the case of the opposite barrier, kop and jejen and akhbaba were dwarfed and humbled by those georgian heights upon the one side, and, on the other, by those giants in the west. a soldier, muffled in an overcoat, descends upon us from the nearest fort, and bids us to desist from our investigations.--the tripod had been erected: and they could see us taking bearings, which in this country, devoid of maps, is regarded as spying. but the bearings had been taken, and we were not loth to leave. the road becomes a track as you descend the southern slopes; we might say farewell to roads for many weeks. tekman lies before us--a vast plateau, a continuous basin, stretching towards the foot of a gently vaulted opposite mountain with long horizontal outline and shield-shaped slopes. it is the outline of the bingöl dagh; such its appearance at this distance; it is thirty-two miles away as the crow flies. it constitutes the opposite rim of the basin, the counterpart of these heights in the north. snow is lying in large quantities even upon its lower contours, a fact explained by their northern aspect and rounded shape (fig. 176). [221] the southern declivities of the barrier upon which we are standing are only flecked with snow. bingöl is little more than the culmination upon the horizon of the long outline of the tableland--a snow-clad ridge of little relative height. in places hard, black rock shows through the shining canopy, just below the crest of the ridge. in the east the highest point is but an eminence of the cliff-like parapet; but in the west there is a low vaulting which resembles a peak. in front of this western summit rises a mass of dark rock. no intervening forms obstruct the view over the basin to that long, low, east-west ridge. nor further round, towards the east, is the landscape interrupted, except at an immense interval and by imposing shapes. at a distance of fifty-two miles, a second shield-shaped giant is less conspicuous because only streaked with snow. it is khamur, a volcanic mass beyond the plain of khinis--a plain concealed by these higher levels, but indicated in places by a sharp edge, where the plateau breaks abruptly to the floor of the plain. as the train of khamur declines, a very lofty and pronounced mountain towers up into the sky. none of our attendants know its name; but it is the akh dagh, seen in profile, the boundary of the khinis region on the north. it is forty miles distant; such are the limits in that direction; while in the west the eye is arrested by outlines from the adjacent heights. we cannot see sipan for haze. a better standpoint than that of the pass from which to realise this region is afforded by the brow of a hill a few miles west of the village of madrak, to which we mounted on the following day. what a bleak and lonely scene! a country of rolling downs extends on every side, framed by the distant landmarks just described. yet the prevailing hue is not that of grass, even at this season; but of naked limestone, weathered a pale ochre, or of serpentine, dull-green or bluish-grey. both rocks compose hills of a gently rounded character; the limestones are most often capped by slabby lavas, which resist the crumbling and contribute to the horizontal appearance of all higher forms. the few clouds which have scaled the barrier of the palandöken send liquid shadows over the undulating expanse. of cultivation there is little--in places a patch of light reddish-brown; the stones are thickly strewn upon the fallows. the sparse hamlets, built of mud and stone, are lost in the folds of the hills. we were disappointed with the flora. we saw whole beds of white anemones; vigorous fennel and slender ferns filled the crevices between the rocks. the long grass was coloured by the ubiquitous forget-me-nots; magenta primulas flourish in the frequent little marshes, and masses of buttercups along the margins of the streams. such flowers, although common and humble, filled the air with perfume; and few countries in the world are endowed with such strong, sweet air. the earlier hour and the clearer day enlarged the scope of our vision; and the snow-robed sipan, a second ararat, was a ghostly presence in the south-east. we strove to identify the outlines on the extreme horizon of the half circle; but several even of the larger masses were not marked on any map. in the west the general level of the country was higher, and with less distinctive forms. in that direction the opposite heights, of bingöl and of palandöken--the rims of the basin--appeared in perspective almost to meet. and over the edge of the bingöl series you could see the mountains on the north of the murad, emerging in the far south-west. looking backwards to the northern barrier, we saw the white face of the limestone emerging in patches from the rough grass on its slopes. it is little more than the elevated and broken rim of the plateau country over which we were making our way. the akh dagh showed up boldly on the limits of the shallow synclinal described by these wintry, waterworn uplands. deeply eroded in that direction, they present a flat and more uniform surface as they stretch, mile upon mile, with gently shelving contours, to the opposite slopes of bingöl. what track will you follow, or what course will you shape towards khinis and its fertile plain? the natives take a route by tashkesen and chaurma, and descend to the plain over the akhviran pass. they travel in armed caravans. we had passed such a cavalcade on the road from palandöken, at the head of which, surrounded by attendants, armed to the teeth, rode a woman, muffled and veiled. but a portion of this route i had already followed during my former journey; and i was anxious to penetrate into the little-known region in the direction of bingöl. the kurdish village of madrak is situated on the further side of an affluent of the araxes, at a distance of some eight miles from the palandöken pass. although it lies in a hollow, near a marsh, abounding in snipe, it is about 1000 feet higher than erzerum (7061 feet). our zaptieh professed to know a track which led in the desired direction, and which should take us by a direct route to khinis. starting at three o'clock, after a morning of storm and rain, we followed a path which conducted us in a southerly direction across the downs. a single hamlet was passed by, and after a ride of over an hour we overlooked a spacious valley and a considerable stream. on its left bank is placed the considerable kurdish village of duzyurt; the gay dresses of the inhabitants brightened the scene. we forded the stream, which must join the one on the north of madrak; the water was pellucid, but barely reached to our horses' knees. regaining the uplands on its further side we enjoyed a larger prospect; the whole of bingöl was exposed to view as well as some of the outlines in the east. forget-me-nots shed a shimmer of blue through the grass which, as usual in this region, was thickly strewn with stones. at half-past five we were high up and in face of a second river valley; some rude buildings were collected on the down. we followed the course of this valley some little distance towards the east, and pitched our tents near the hamlet of khedonun (6713 feet). a band of armed kurds, richly attired, were watering their horses, or strolling idly along the banks of a little stream. the hamlet is situated on its left bank. the inhabitants of this region are at the present day exclusively kurds; but i was informed that, as regards the district of tekman in general, they are of comparatively recent importation. the armenian inhabitants left en masse with the armies of paskevich, and the kurds occupied their vacant villages. the kurds of khedonun were said to belong to the jibranli tribe--a tribe which is strong in the caza of varto. but among the kurdish population some have been brought from the distant vilayet of diarbekr, at the head of the mesopotamian plains. these belong to the zireki. our people fraternised with the horsemen; they composed the escort of a bridegroom who had come to the village from a neighbouring hamlet in quest of a bride. the wedding was to take place on the following day. although settled on the land, these kurds are distinctly tribal, and glory in the fact of being kurds. indeed throughout the country which i crossed during my second journey, if i asked people whether their village were "osmanli," i received the emphatic answer, "kurd." khedonun may serve as a sample of the settlements of this district. it seemed fairly well-to-do. the wealth of the villagers consists of their flocks and herds, upon the produce of which they subsist. during winter they stable them in the group of buildings which we had passed, and last winter a pack of wolves destroyed their flock. they said that bears abounded in the neighbourhood. they sow a little wheat, and plant some onions and cabbage; they profess to have tried potatoes, but it was a failure, owing to the late frosts. indeed the night was very cold, not much above freezing; and even at ten o'clock on the following morning the shade temperature was only 62°, although from sunrise the day had been warmed by a brilliant sun. the wedding was extremely picturesque. the procession, all on horseback, made a circuit of the countryside in the lap of which the hamlet lies. the bride was robed in a red shawl, and sat astride of a milk-white horse. a veil of yellow silk, which floated in the breeze, completely concealed her face. on either side rode two women, veiled and dressed in white. the horsemen, in gala attire, followed or flanked the ladies; all proceeded at a walk. but from time to time this irksome restraint was broken through by an explosion of wildness; and a shouting warrior, mad with excitement, would dash forward at full gallop, brandishing his rifle like a stick. the araxes, or egri chai, as it is called in the district, flows at a little distance south of the hamlet and receives the runnel which skirts khedonun. that it was the araxes appeared plain from the volume of water which it brought, from the direction from which it was flowing, and from our subsequent research. mounting to an eminence south of the village, we observed some lofty mountains on the sky-line in the west. the boldest peak among them lay almost above the course of the river, as it meandered towards the east. one of the kurds knew that peak by the name of sheikhjik. the relation of these mountains to the plateau country we were enabled to ascertain at a later date. looking up the valley we could see that it was carved out of calcareous deposits, overlaid by flows of lava or tuff. these deposits, which are without doubt lacustrine in character, extend for some miles towards bingöl. june 23.--after fording the aras we made our way for some considerable distance up the fairly broad valley of another little river, which was already close to its confluence. the valley favoured our course, having an almost meridional direction; the river was coming straight down from bingöl. the peculiar charm of this region is the number of delicious streams which furrow the breezy downs. with their grassy valleys and blue surface they refresh and please the eye, and in part atone for the absence of trees. the sides of the valley were seen to consist of a very white lacustrine limestone; these rocks were varied a few miles further, and at length almost superseded, by sheets of dark brown tuff. among such surroundings is situated the considerable kurdish village of kalaji, backed by a low cliff of rectangular blocks of tuff, and overlooking the stream from its left bank. at this point we crossed the river and regained the uplands; our landmarks were again in view. the snowy peak which we called sheikhjik lay on our right, above high outlines of these undulating downs. behind us stretched the outline of the palandöken heights; while before us rose the western and more pronounced eminence of the long ridge of bingöl. our guide was making for a village at the foot of bingöl which bears the name of kherbesor. hitherto we had been pursuing an almost southerly course; it was time that we should be turning towards the east. this wide curve is dictated by a block of limestone hills, which interposes a sea of peaks, with little relative height, between khedonun and the plain of khinis. we had now reached the base of the platform which supports bingöl; it breaks off just on the south of the village of kherbesor in a line of cliffs, which concealed the eastern summit. we were in the district of shushar; our further progress was directed up a wide valley between those cliffs and the block of hills with the rounded peaks. the cliffs appeared to consist of a dark lava, overlying calcareous lake deposits, which again overlay the tuffs of the plain of kherbesor. at a distance of some five miles, we crossed a col (7340 feet) over a ridge of limestone, joining the block of hills to the uppermost extremity of the cliffs. thence we descended to a spacious and roughly-circular valley, a kind of caldron among the bleak heights. it sends its drainage to the araxes in a stream which skirts the eastern outworks of the block of limestone hills. the hamlet of ali mur, which nestles in the lap of this hollow, has an elevation of 7180 feet. it belongs to the district of khinis. it takes its name from a grey-beard who became our guide on the following day, and who was the founder of the settlement. ali mur and his people are kizilbash kurds. he told me that they had found on this site the relics of a village known as kharaba, and a cemetery which he believed was mussulman. next morning we made our way in a south-easterly direction up the amphitheatral heights. in less than an hour we arrived at the col (7490 feet), a ridge of limestone hardened to marble, just outside the limits of the lavas of bingöl. this pass lies some miles south-west of that of akhviran, and, like that pass, leads down from the plateau country to the lower levels of the plain of khinis. our immediate surroundings were lofty downs from which rose the ridge of bingöl, both summits being fully exposed. beyond a vast trough, in which the plain of khinis lay, the mass of khamur loomed large (fig. 177). in the south-east soared the snowy shape of sipan, infinitely high. as we descended we overlooked two deeply-eroded cañons, that on our right hand being much the more pronounced. the stream which flows within it is known as the bingöl su; a smaller affluent was coming down the minor cañon. all these waters find their way round the khamur elevation by a long course to the murad. the face of the cañon of the bingöl su displayed lavas and tuffs to a depth of about 100 feet; these were seen to overlie the limestone, and it was evident that they had come from bingöl. similar terraces capped the cliffs of the minor stream. the ride over the tongue of high land which separates the cañons was not only remarkable for the wide prospects which opened before us, but also for the refreshing change to a little vegetation and to a kinder climate. little oak trees clothe the slopes, and an abundance of wild roses; these and purple peonies were in full bloom. when we reached the bed of the smaller river and, after fording it, followed the bingöl su, the pleasantness of our first impression was increased. the valley had become wide, but with high cliffs on either side; that on the right showed a face of lava, capped by tuff. these tuffs in the bingöl region resemble blocks of masonry, and have the horizontal outline of a wall. the heights on the left bank were of marble. the river winds like a snake through a fairly wide meadow, in which the grass was vividly green. tall willows spread their shade over the crystal-clear water; and our english fieldflowers, the poppy being most conspicuous, coloured the luscious undergrowth. grave storks were busy in the marshy places; the song of nightingales was heard in the groves. the limbs relaxed beneath this summer; we were loth to leave the sweet valley after a ride within it of three-quarters of an hour. the river enters a gorge before issuing into the plain; our path took us up the heights above its right bank. for some time we enjoyed fine views over the level country in the east, and then descended to the bed of a tributary. here i greeted and oswald admired the lonely "church in the valley." [222] a little later we arrived on the edge of the cañon in which reposes the town of khinis (5550 feet). chapter xiii from khinis to tutakh we pitched our tents upon the plain, above the cañon, on soil consisting of a deposit of lacustrine sands and gravels, overlying the lavas and tuffs from bingöl. far and wide, in an immense half circle, stretched the even, treeless surface--a surface scarcely less blank or less receptive of the hues of the sky than the waters which once rippled there. in the opposite direction rose the shield-shaped mass of bingöl; we stood at the foot of the several terraces of lava which mount like steps from the plain to the upper platform, whence volcanic emissions on a large scale have poured towards the lower levels. following the outline northwards, on the confines of the plain, its general character is that of a long bank, with scarcely perceptible declivity; until, about in the region of the pass over which we had journeyed, it again rises and becomes almost horizontal, curving over into the precipitous marbles of the akh dagh, which oppose a barrier of commanding proportions in the north. the flat edge of the tekman highlands is due to a capping of lava, from which the akh dagh limestones are free. in the recess of the curve, and in front of the horizontal outline stands a hill of marble with a gently rounded summit. the eye returns to the series of gloomy terraces leading upwards to the eastern summit of bingöl. deep cañons sear the lower slopes. khinis was little changed since i had last stood in its gloomy valley; but i noticed a larger sprinkling of kurds with the vulture features, and a greater display of the hamidiyeh ensign in their lambskin caps. they appeared to have nothing to do; but the armenian craftsmen were, as usual, busy at work in their booths. the old, outspoken kaimakam was dead. i could scarcely conceal my feelings when i was introduced to his successor, who, on his part, was at some pains to dissemble his want of ease. it was my old acquaintance, the kaimakam of karakilisa; but i refrained from alluding to the adventure about the gun. i was lost in astonishment at the change in his appearance. four years ago he was a supple young man, full of spirits, proud of his wit, and spending his leisure in hunting kurds. he had become middle-aged, almost old. his eyes had lost their lustre and his figure its shape. he rolled on the divan as he spoke. i enquired after ali bey, the rascally karapapakh; the reply came that he too was dead. he had pined away--such was his phrase--under government surveillance. the resourceful character of my old host was the one quality which appeared to remain to him. my cook had mutinied that morning, and could not be found anywhere; but he soon succeeded in tracking him out. he seemed to regret the society of the stupid miralais, the delighted gallery to which he used to play. a single companion of this description was vouchsafed to him at khinis--an officer of the regular army stationed in the town to drill the kurdish yeomanry. i enquired of this individual whether i could be shown a regiment exercising. he replied that they were called out only during april. had they trained last april? the answer was in the negative, but it was hoped they would do so next year. they were very brave men. my present object was to follow the course of the murad from tutakh to melazkert. [223] by shaping a direct course to the former of these places, we might become involved in an intricate, mountainous country; but, on the other hand, we should avoid the beds of the rivers, and become better acquainted with the configuration of the land. leaving khinis soon after noon on the 26th of june, we gained the valley of the bingöl su; and, as far as the large armenian village of chevermeh, followed its tortuous channel. low cliffs, composed of lacustrine deposits, border the meadows through which it flows on either hand. chevermeh, where we forded the stream, has some 150 ant-hill houses; it is surrounded by a pleasant oasis of willow trees, which cluster at the confluence of the teghtap su. a few small fields of potato and of vegetable marrow indicated a rather higher standard of life. a hedge of pink wild roses was a pleasure to see. several very young girls, almost naked, were playing in the shade by the water, and we were surprised to observe the fairness of their hair. some of the villagers are protestants, devoted disciples of mr. chambers, the head of the american mission at erzerum. they are indebted to him for relief during the past years of bad harvests; but they professed themselves confident of an excellent harvest during the present year. the missionaries have established a school and orphanage in their midst. the village reflects the greatest credit upon the americans, the people being well spoken and polite. they have their share, too, of material prosperity; and we had seldom seen such herds of cattle and droves of horses. having gained the heights on the left bank of the river, we struck obliquely across the plain, in the direction of the akh dagh, which shone in the softening glow. it is well named the white mountain, being composed of hard calcareous rock, which scarcely supports a trace of vegetation. seen from in front, it forms a chain many miles in length, inclined, roughly speaking, towards south-east. it has been carved out into valleys of great depth, from which rise a succession of bold peaks. this portion of the plain of khinis is little cultivated, and in a most haphazard manner. there is, however, an abundance of water, and, if stony, the soil is fairly fertile. from time to time we were compelled to turn aside from a patch of corn which already was in ear. the large armenian village of kozli was seen reposing on the basal slope of the akh dagh. another armenian settlement, that of yeni keui, lay directly upon our course. the day was drawing to a close as we approached dedeveren, a kurdish village where we decided to camp. we had been travelling through a country which was typically armenian--a spacious plain, quite treeless, but clothed with warm and delicate hues, and framed in the distance by mountains of great individuality. in one direction it was bingöl; in another khamur; while sipan stood so high that he could be seen from the river valley, always a ghostly presence in the sky. we pitched our tents a little distance west of the village, and looked across its stacks of tezek and wreathing smoke to the dim white form of sipan. it is characteristic of kurds that they never approach one another if they have anything to communicate. they remain at a distance and shout. such clamour is at its height towards evening, when the flocks and herds are brought in from the pastures. groups of gaily-dressed people had gathered round us; a little boy, stepping forward, makes an offering of a snow-white rabbit. the setting sun sheds a glow of orange and amber above the horizontal outline of bingöl. a single group of clouds, torn into tatters, as by a storm, repose motionless against the lights of the western sky. as those lights wane a crescent moon has risen above the white mountain, and a little dew falls. soon the watchman sends his long-sustained cry into the night, arousing the bark and howling of the dogs. next morning we proceeded towards the extremity of the akh dagh, where it sinks into the plain. after passing a copious spring, welling up in a little basin (the source of the akher göl su), we reached the armenian hamlet of gunduz. our path had led us over ground which was fairly high, and was composed of travertine. a new mountain had come to view behind the khamur heights. although of imposing size, it is not placed upon maps; and none of our people knew its name. it was the bold and isolated bilejan. from gunduz we made an excursion to the banks of the bingöl su, at the large armenian village of karachoban. the stream was winding at the base of the khamur heights, through a river-valley about a mile in width. the fact that these heights are not the train of a volcano, as their appearance might suggest, had already been divined as we made our way at a distance; it was now established beyond doubt. they were seen to consist of lacustrine deposits; higher up, patches of white limestone emerged from the scanty bush. the lavas of khamur rose at once above and behind them, towering up in terraces. the block of mountain had become low; the river pierces its extremities about two miles below the village. there it assumes its natural course, so long interrupted, and meanders idly to the murad. the khamur heights are crossed by a track which we could see from the plain of khinis in the neighbourhood of dedeveren. a portion or the whole of that section of the block is known as zirnek dagh. while we were returning to gunduz a party of four horsemen were seen galloping towards us from karachoban. they proved to be an officer of zaptiehs and three men. we had received a summons, when in the village, to visit the officer; but had excused ourselves from want of time. it was a forbidding picture, these zaptiehs living at free quarters in an armenian village. the fierce and almost black face of the officer fawned obsequiously upon us when he had learnt who we were. from gunduz we made our way over some grassy heights which continue the outline of the akh dagh. they are composed of intrusive rock, mainly basic in character. the marble of the akh dagh, dipping to the south-east, is interrupted by them; and the range, as such, is brought to an end. the pass across them is low (6265 feet), but it commands fine prospects over the country beyond the plain of khinis. a portion of the akh dagh comes to view, seen on its reverse side. two bold ridges were observed, plunging in an east-north-east direction, down from the summit region to a little river. it became clear that the axis of the range, as seen from the plain of khinis, does not correspond with its axis of elevation. in fact the akh dagh appears to consist of a number of ridges, ranged in echelon towards east-north-east. a sprinkling of snow rested on the north-eastern slopes, from which those on the south-west were entirely free. sipan was exposed from foot to summit, answered further west by another almost insular mass, the sombre rock and jagged outline of bilejan. vast tracts of plain were outspread at our feet--without a tree, with only a few rare patches of cultivation, the soil, where exposed by the plough, being coloured a rich brown. the air which we were breathing was strong and invigorating, while the sun, even near five o'clock, was warm. motionless grey clouds were suspended over the akh dagh; towards evening they increased in gloom; it lightened, and a few drops of rain fell. such is the counterpart upon the tableland of the storms of the pontic region. a village lay below us at the beginnings of the tracts of plain; it was the armenian village of gopal, in which we were to pass the night (5643 feet). one often wonders, while encamping in such a village as gopal how the burden of life can be sustained by its inhabitants. their property, their lives, and the chastity of their women are at stake from day to day. they exist under a perpetual reign of terror; and fear, the most degrading, the most exhausting of human passions, is their companion from hour to hour. conspicuous in this village were a band of hasananli kurds, parasites, no doubt, on the industrious armenians. a kurdish agha, in a gay dress which displayed some beautiful embroidered silk, visited us in our tent. we admired the sheath of his dagger, which was finely chased. between these kurds and the petty officials and the hungry zaptiehs, the armenian cultivator hovers on the margin between life and death. from time to time a revolution is invented by an ambitious functionary, and the village becomes the scene of bloodcurdling deeds. gopal is situated at the confluence of two little streams which collect the drainage of the mountainous country on the east of the akh dagh, and issue upon the plain near the village. the spot is indicated on kiepert's map by the site of a place named karakeupru; but we were assured that no such village exists in the neighbourhood, and that gopal had never borne this name. further doubts as to the topography of the map decided us on an excursion to the point where the streams, which unite at gopal, discharge into the bingöl su. our guide conducted us across the plain, which has here the character of downs, through which the river flows in a deeply-eroded bed. gopal itself rests on a wide flat of alluvial land; and the level of the plain on the south and east is appreciably higher than that of the plain of khinis. it has, indeed, been flooded with sheets of lava, which have probably issued from several points of emission at the base of the hills which confine it on the north. these lavas appear to have flowed towards the south-east; in places they are overlaid by calcareous marls. spaces of grass occur which are almost free from stone, and over which it is a pleasure to canter. on the horizon rise sipan and bilejan. in the middle distance we remarked a bold escarpment of limestone which we had noticed at karachoban. it forms one side of the gorge through which the bingöl su issues from the plain of khinis. the beds were seen to be dipping almost directly towards sipan; and they are probably continued across the river into the khamur heights. after a ride of over an hour, we arrived at the tongue of high land filling the fork between the two rivers. deep below us, at the foot of the cliffs, which are here composed of limestone, meandered the meeting streams. in one direction we looked up the gorge of the bingöl su; in another towards the face of the cliff on the left bank of the gopal su, which must be several hundred feet high. the village of murian, on its right bank, a little above the confluence, was a mere speck in the bed of the river at our feet. but we could see its inhabitants running in all directions, the size of ants, and like ants which have been disturbed. horsemen came spurring up the steep side of the precipice, of which we occupied the neck. our position was so strong that we had full leisure for our occupations, myself with the mapping, oswald with the rocks. krimizi tuzla is neither at nor near this confluence, as the map of kiepert shows. the joint waters flow off towards bayaz tuzla, which, however, was invisible. the eye follows their winding reaches for some distance as they cut their way through a succession of low, white hills. murian belongs to the vilayet of bitlis, and gopal to that of erzerum. in the meantime the horsemen had formed in line on the level ground north of our position. they proved to be a band of kurds in the employ of a kaimakam who resides in this remote village. that official stepped forward and saluted us with deference; at his side rode a sergeant of the regular army, commissioned to drill the kurds. these are members of the great hasananli tribe. the kaimakam escorted us for a part of the way to gopal, over the spacious downs. i employed my brief experience with yeomanry in england in the endeavour to put his retinue through some simple exercises. the sergeant translated the words of command. but it was impossible to keep them in line for any time. they would burst forward, each trooper vying with his neighbour, and careering over the plain, the rifle brandished like a spear. the more i saw of kurds the deeper grew my impression that they would be completely worthless in time of war. on the outskirts of gopal were encamped some gypsies, who subsist by making sieves. [224] it was late in the afternoon of the 28th of june before we left the village, and mounted the cliff on the left bank of the stream. for several miles we rode in a north-easterly direction across the upland plain. these levels extend from the ridges of the akh dagh, in the west, to a barrier of marble heights which rose on our point of course, and appeared to be continued southwards in a roughly south-east line. the prospect over the region in the direction of lake van disclosed an immense area of comparatively even country, limited only by the insular masses of sipan and bilejan. these masses were in some sense linked by the long outline of a range of hills, which, in fact, compose the southern edge of the murad basin, and beyond which repose the waters of the great lake. khamur was boldly defined in the south-west. i feel that i shall exhaust the patience of my reader if i follow in detail the remainder of our journey to tutakh. i have brought him along the outskirts of the important plain of khinis to the region about lake van. in case he may be a traveller, desirous of guidance over the wild country which separates gopal from tutakh, i would offer the suggestion that he should shape a direct course by his compass; i doubt that he would be obliged to deviate often or for very far. such advice would have saved ourselves from getting lost in the intricate districts to the north of such a direct line. nobody knew the way; there are few villages; and, although the inhabitants appeared to belong exclusively to the hasananli, each village was at feud with its immediate neighbours, and it was impossible to obtain guides. moreover the division of the day into tedious units of hours is a process which in that region is unfamiliar and scarcely known. during the summer the few inhabitants are scattered in the yailas; the remnant in the village is largely composed of old men and women, besides the children, male and female, whose naked stomachs are distended by the quantities of gritty bread they are obliged to consume. such scenes of abject poverty are rarely tempered by a brighter vision--the vision of youth, mature and unimpaired. the few young women and girls, who have not followed the flocks and herds, will be busy at their weaving of material for the black tents, stretching the long strands of goat-hair twine, and adding the woof to the web. their loose cotton trousers display the slimness of their limbs; and it is a pleasure to watch the rhythm of their bodies, seated by the side of their task with knees apart. but neither oswald nor myself regretted our wanderings. by adhering to the higher levels we obtained a picture of structural features, which not only confirmed the studies we had pursued together, but also contributed several interesting facts. it is in this region that the great lines of elevation and mountain-making describe that beautiful curve which attains its greatest orographical significance in the mountains which border the highlands of armenia and persia on the north and on the south. in the south it is the line of the armenian taurus arching over into that of the zagros chain; while in the north the wider span of the alps of pontus and the chorokh region is deflected into the border range of russian armenia and into the mountains of khorasan. [225] within the area of the armenian tableland this curve may be clearly traced; for instance, it is conspicuous in the trend of the mountains from palandöken to kilich gedik, and in that of the aghri dagh further north. even in the country over which we were travelling, some distance south of the former of these barriers, and of comparatively even nature, the strike of the stratified rocks displayed the change in direction; while the sheets of lava, which overlay them, were evidently due to zones of weakness, where the stress of bending over had been attended with fracture, and the apex of the arc had given way. speaking generally, the rocks consisted of older limestone, hardened into marble, and varied by igneous material, crystalline in character and of intrusive origin. upon this foundation rested layers of later limestone; while over all were outspread the lavas, sometimes covering the entire series, at others swathing the base of marble eminences. these lavas had welled up from fissures, for the most part on the north of our track; they had flowed towards the south, in the direction of the still distant murad, often following the trough of the river valleys, and sometimes altering the course of the drainage. the change of strike in the stratified rocks was observed in the neighbourhood of the village of alkhes. there the axis of the limestone folds was almost latitudinal; and, as we neared tutakh, it assumed a direction of east-south-east. this was also the direction of the several valleys between alkhes and the murad. in many respects the region resembles tekman; the higher levels over which we passed have an elevation of from 6000 to 7500 feet. but the lavas have played a greater part in its configuration; and the streams, which were mere runnels, have eaten to an immense depth and flow in meridional valleys. thus we were always either picking our way over a sheet of lava, crumbled into boulders and yellow with fennel, or descending hundreds of feet into a deep valley through which trickled a rivulet. we crossed only one considerable stream--the kersuk or kersik. it was winding through a gorge composed of limestone overlying serpentine, and was changing its course from south-east towards the south. at the bend, on the left bank, at some height above the river, is situated the picturesque village of alkhes. the channel had a breadth of only a few paces; but the water reached to our horses' girths. the district about alkhes, and for some distance west and east, is known by the name of elmali dere, or the vale of apple trees. these pleasant trees, with their grey-green foliage, are found in abundance in the valley and side valleys of the kersik. but the dreary fennel is almost the only plant on the higher levels; nor can the eye, far and wide, thence discern the shape of a tree. in the north the mournful landscape is framed by the mountains which bend south-eastwards into the kilich gedik. at alkhes they were known under the name of khalias dagh; at tutakh, where our informants were better educated, under that of mergemir. towards the south, upon the limits of a wide semicircle, rose the snow-clad and still distant summits of the ala dagh, rose sipan and bilejan. an unknown mountain, of relatively humble proportions, concealed the western slopes of the giant of lake van; it proved to be kartevin, a volcanic and insular mass, on the left bank of the murad. chapter xiv down the murad to melazkert [226] the perfume of a hayfield, in which the mowers were busy, greeted our approach to the town of tutakh. it came as a refreshing change after the dreary lava-sheets overgrown with fennel, and the stony paths, down and up, across the valleys. great rivers impress their dignity upon their surroundings; and, although we failed to discover the murad until we were close upon it, the larger folds of the down-like country, and the growing sense of space, appeared to indicate that we were already near our goal. twenty minutes before our arrival on the outskirts of the settlement, the white waters were seen winding far below us, at the foot of the hills. in the bare brown mountains from which they had issued, curving towards them from the outlines in the north, we recognised the distant horn of the crescent to which they had pointed at alkhes as the heights overlooking tutakh. those brown slopes indeed belonged to the barrier which the murad pierces upon its egress from the plain of alashkert. no trace of stratified rock could be detected upon them; nor was oswald, on the following day, when he examined a section of the bank of the river, successful in finding among the pebbles, embedded in the side of the cliff, any examples which were not derived from an eruptive origin. the face of the plain itself, through which the river wanders towards the basin of melazkert, has been flooded with sheets of lava, which have probably flowed in a southerly direction, and which extend at least as far as the right bank. along the opposite margin rise grassy heights, volcanic in character, and placed like an outer buttress in front of the ridges of the ala dagh. these are succeeded by the lavas of the kartevin. just below tutakh the murad enters a low gorge; but the remainder of its course is spent in a wide, alluvial bed, at the foot of rounded eminences on either shore. almost exactly at the point where the troubled ridges of the kartevin dagh commence to sink into the plain of melazkert, the heights on the right bank roll away. and, a little lower down, the river reaches the trough of the basin, which is about 450 feet lower than the level of lake van. [227] there it changes direction with almost startling abruptness, and flows off westwards through an expanse of even ground. the country upon the right bank of the murad, over an area which is roughly limited by the town of tutakh on the north, and by the villages of dignuk and murian (on the gopal su) upon the south and west, would appear to present features which do not widely differ from those of the higher region we had just crossed. as we overlooked a portion of that area from some of the loftier eminences which border the left bank, we were confronted by the familiar shapes of grassy, treeless downs; of terraces of lava or tuff sloping towards the river, of valleys deeply cut in the barren soil. the single river which effects a confluence through that region is the kersik; it enters the murad at the foot of lofty cliffs. but the flowering yellow fennel was either absent or less conspicuous; and its place was taken by a purple vetch, of restful hue and delicate petals, climbing the hillsides, like a heather, yet more intense. it is interesting to compare this impression of the country, formed during our journey along the river, with the conception of its character already present in our minds before we had reached tutakh. it was while descending from the upland plain above the left bank of the kersik, as far north as the village of alkhes, that we had for the first time obtained a prospect from a comparatively low level over the expanse in the direction of sipan. we stood nearly at the bottom of a wide valley through which trickled a little stream. yet the view towards that landmark was almost uninterrupted; we appeared, indeed, to be crossing a gulf-like extension of the great plain from which the mountain soars. as often as we became involved in the intricate down country, while pursuing our easterly course to tutakh, so, not less often, we emerged upon similar openings, where the downs seemed to tongue into the plain. the kartevin dagh was the only eminence which in part screened the volcano; but it did not extend beyond a portion of its westerly slopes. a fierce sun had already browned the scanty herbage of the hillsides, and at noon the thermometer registered 85° in the shade. we were constrained to abandon our tent, and to seek the shelter of a stone building, one of the few above-ground edifices in tutakh. a spacious room was placed at our disposal by the authorities, with thick walls and a lofty ceiling, constructed of logs. a carpet of thick felt and the gay trappings of the divan added an appearance of comfort to a sense of coolness. but the carpet was overlying a layer of filthy hay, and the divan was nothing better than a stage of mud and straw. the place was indeed a hotbed for noxious insects; legions of fleas continued and intensified the torments which had been interrupted at the approach of night by swarms of flies. our visitors in the apartment--one might almost say our companions--were an officer of police, a most intelligent individual, and the colonel of the karapapakh hamidiyeh. the former informed us among other matters that the post to erzerum is always carried by way of karakilisa. caravans proceed in summer across the kilich gedik to zeidikan, and so by pasin to erzerum. between tutakh and melazkert one has the choice of two ways; one may follow either the left or the right bank. but the fords lower down are said to be less reliable, and we were recommended to proceed by the left bank. the colonel of karapapakhs was attired in a circassian dress and spoke russian fluently. he told me that his people had emigrated from zarishat (in the kars-kagyzman district) after the last russo-turkish war. their earlier seats had been in daghestan. by remote origin he asserted that they were pure turks. they contribute altogether three regiments to the hamidiyeh, of which two are furnished by tutakh and by karakilisa, and the third by the tribesmen of sivas. july 2. --the murad opposite tutakh had a width of a hundred yards; but it was not deeper than two and a half feet. after crossing the ford we proceeded along the left bank, sometimes winding over the westerly slopes of the grassy eminences which screen the ala dagh, at others following the alluvial flat in the bed of the river. lavas, tuffs, and dark volcanic sands were conspicuous on the heights and in the valleys. oswald observed the frequent introduction of a conglomerate, consisting of well-rounded pebbles or blocks of lava, interbedded with volcanic sands. it may denote that the lake, which filled the basin of melazkert, extended at one time to this region. a new landmark rose in the north--the magnificent dome of the kuseh dagh; while, among our old companions, khamur could still be seen, and we were in full view of sipan and bilejan. but neither the dreary downs on the right bank of the river--our only prospect of any extent--nor the bed of the river itself, with its pebble-strewn flats of alluvium, afforded any refreshment to the eye. no restful groves cast shadows across the sheen of the water, where, here and there, a flock was browsing on the scanty herbage, or a herd of buffaloes wallowed in the oozy mud. i was reminded of the bed of the tigris below the town of diarbekr; and, indeed, the murad flows through these plains of armenia with much the same appearance as that of its companion at the head of the mesopotamian plains. it is a slowly-flowing river; [228] and it might, i suppose, be made navigable from tutakh as far as karaogli. locks would be required; but the lower region is so fertile that, with better government, such works might prove remunerative. we passed through several villages; but they are, for the most part, mere hamlets. one of the largest was gargalik. with the exception of baïndir, a karapapakh settlement, they are inhabited by sipkanli and hasananli kurds. we did not meet a caravan; there were few wayfarers; but from time to time an ill-miened kurd, armed with a muzzle-loader, rode by, taking stock of us as he passed. at gargalik, where there is a ford between two villages of this name, we were ushered into the largest of the ant-hill tenements. a burly figure, richly dressed, could just be discerned in the dim light, suffused over the cavernous chamber from an aperture in the roof. the figure was seated on the little daïs which, in such dwellings, divides the chamber from the stable, and from which rise the wooden pillars that support the roof. a strong odour from the horses and cattle, almost beside him, vitiated the air. we waited for some little time while the devotee bowed and muttered, or, with head upraised and lifted voice, uttered the climax of his profession of faith. then, after a brief silence, he approached us, and received our hands, and welcomed us to his abode. it was ali bey, son of the defunct yusuf pasha, and chief of all sipkanli kurds. [229] it was evident that he had been apprised of our approach, for he displayed three imperial decorations on his breast. and he showed us a cigarette-case, of gold encrusted with jewels, the gift of the sultan, accompanied by an autograph letter. as far as the kartevin the inhabitants are sipkanli; lower down the villages are peopled by hasananli kurds. a heavy shower--which was a rare occurrence--and the approach of night decided us, when we were opposite the village of hasuna, to take shelter there and encamp. it is inhabited by hasananli, who described themselves as raya, or cultivators, and it is surrounded by patches of cereals. each head of a family owns his patch and his animals. the men stand about and loiter in the grove of willows; the women work incessantly from morn till night. on the following day we mounted to one of the peaks of the kartevin dagh, which rises immediately above the village. the purple vetch, and a shower of tiny blossoms from the white gypsophila, varied the monotony of the arid slopes with their boulders of lava. flowering flax, the vivid green of wheat, already in ear, softened the base of the ridge up which we climbed. nearing the summit, we came upon the yellow immortelles; a little apple tree, bush-high, rose from the crevices in the crags of the peak. this crest had an elevation of 7580 feet above the sea, or of 2400 feet above the village. but the ridges on the north attain a greater height, perhaps of several hundred feet. the kartevin dagh appeared to us to be a radial mass, with a number of bold ridges and deep valleys. it is entirely of eruptive volcanic origin. the basin of melazkert, with the plain at the foot of sipan in the direction of patnotz, was unfolded, mile after mile, at our feet. from the parapet upon which we stood a sharp ridge, with precipitous sides, plunged at right angles into the level expanse. at its extremity lies the village of karakaya, on the right bank of a little river, which loops along the plain, coming from patnotz. we see it joining the murad; and we see the bend of the murad, which, after receiving this, the second of its considerable affluents below tutakh, turns westwards, and is soon lost to view. a dark speck, almost in the foreground, at a little distance from the larger river, is recognised as melazkert. the plain of patnotz is continuous with the plains of the murad, and both were covered by a single lake in no remote geological period--a lake extending into the plain of khinis. the appearance of the expanse is not untrue to its origin; and it would seem as if the waters had but recently receded from these gently-shelving and boulder-strewn tracts. around them rise the great volcanoes: sipan, seen from base to summit, and still robed in a mantle of snow; bilejan, the black mountain, with here and there a fleck of snow, with the outline of the nimrud crater emerging behind; khamur, above the region towards which the river is flowing; behind khamur the snow-field of bingöl. we observe the low, white hills which join the outlines of the two first-named masses, and which screen the lake of van. the marble peaks of the akh dagh rise with startling boldness; and, further round, we follow the outline of the mergemir. in that direction the fields of lava with their yellow fennel are conspicuous features in the scene. the circle is completed by the ridges of the ala dagh, capped with shining snow. and, turning again towards the south, we admire a small blue lake, reposing at the feet of bilejan. the snows of taurus just emerge beyond nimrud. after regaining our encampment, we resumed our journey in the late afternoon. almost opposite the village, the heights on the right bank recede, and describe a line of cliffs at right angles to their former course. the country opens to the plain; but the site of melazkert was hidden by an escarpment on the left bank of the patnotz river, where a bed of lake-deposits falls away to the alluvial flats. the track is seen winding over the crest of the bank, made conspicuous by the white soil. the evening was far advanced as we approached this high ground from the floor of fine sand, overgrown by bush and clusters of iris, which fills the area between the two rivers. the affluent, which we forded, was perhaps not wider than fifteen yards; but the water was almost uniform in depth, and reached to our horses' knees. mounting the little ridge, we made our way over powdery soil, and soon overlooked the dark mass of melazkert. the light was failing as we passed through the broken lines of ancient walls, near some barracks alive with bugle-cries. we were ushered into the principal room of a single-storeyed stone building, through a dark passage, in which we groped our way. the light of candles fell upon the cushions of a broad divan, and upon the hale complexion of an old man with snow-white hair. he came towards us with outstretched hands, while the chief of our escort introduced us to the kaimakam of melazkert. his zaptiehs, to the number of six, had already accompanied us for some distance; we had met them ranged in line and presenting arms. our host informed us that he was seventy-five years of age, and that a new front tooth was coming in place of one he had lost. he was a native of bitlis. his sorrow was sincere that he could not lodge us; the town did not possess a suitable house. he therefore begged us to erect our tents in the ancient citadel, where there was a fine site for a camp. we were soon proceeding thither, over ground which sloped upwards to a ruinous cross-wall. the jet of a fountain shone in the twilight from a recess beside the entrance, whence we mounted to a spacious platform, backed by a tower and encircled by walls. tower and walls alike were massively built. the moon rose above the tower, which screened the ghost-like sipan, from a richly mottled bed of cloud. it was a full moon, casting the parapets into darkness, and whitening the roofs of the houses at our feet. a little later, as we were preparing for sleep, the pale gold surface of the orb displayed but a tiny crescent of light. it was the shadow of our globe which was passing across the moon; but the vision was rapidly lost in the bed of cloud. it had scarcely become day when the deep voice of the venerable kaimakam was heard beside our tent. he had come to enquire after our needs; and he promised to endeavour to obtain a turkey from one of the circassian villages in the plain. but when i asked whether he were acquainted with some educated person, capable of indicating to us the various objects of interest, and perhaps of connecting them with the history of the town, his face became a blank, and he was emphatic in declaring that, by allah! no such individual existed in melazkert. but was there no school, no armenian teacher? i pressed him, but he spoke the truth when he answered in the negative. he added: "all the people here are very little people, occupied by the pressing needs of daily life. they have already forgotten what happened forty years ago, and they will remember your visit for forty years. beyond these limits they have no knowledge whatever." the kaimakam was right; melazkert is a heap of ruins, from which some pygmies have collected the stones and built tenements. a squadron of cavalry, quartered in the town, may lend a semblance of life; but it is a deceptive semblance, for the place is dead. we descended from the citadel at the eastern extremity of the town, resolved to conduct a careful search. let me enumerate in order, proceeding from east to west, the ancient edifices that still remain. all are built of the same black, basaltic lava which forms the material of the towers and walls; but, as this lava is highly scoriaceous in character, the stone cannot be properly dressed. the architect has therefore had recourse to a more suitable agent for the enrichments of his design; a calcareous rock has been brought from a distance and inserted in the dark walls. in such calcareous stone is carved the honeycomb ornament which fills the apex of the arch in two niches on the southern front of a spacious but deserted khan. it is a building in the fine old style, with a lofty and vaulted roof; a square aperture in the centre of the roof admits light and air. adjoining the khan upon the west are placed the remains of the most interesting monument, the church of erek khoran astvatsatsin. its name, the three altars, is evidently derived from the three apses which are a feature in the design. yet most old armenian churches are built upon this pattern, if the name apse may be extended to the lateral chapels. in the present case these chapels are almost as large as the apse proper. the nave is separated from the broad aisles by two rows of three pillars apiece; from the pillars spring pointed arches, which appear to have supported a vaulted roof. but the roof has fallen in; we could find no trace of a dome or tower; and the pillars on the north side were strewn in pieces on the floor. the basal stones of two of the columns are octagonal, and were probably taken from some edifice of earlier date. the interior has been faced with calcareous stone, admitting of fine chiselling. a frieze of honeycomb pattern, and two niches with the same ornament have been introduced into the apse. the floor of the apse is, as usual, raised above the floor of the nave, and the face of the daïs, so formed, is enriched with a relief of little arches, composed of mouldings with geometrical designs. in the centre of each arched space is the figure of a cross. carved mouldings also adorn the font, adjoining the more northerly of the two chapels. the exterior, which displays the usual black lava, is without any interesting feature. it was evident that the walls had once been covered with frescos; traces of this form of decoration were found on the capitals, and a few of the larger subjects might still be recognised. in the apse is portrayed the figure of christ receiving baptism from st. john. the faces of the walls dividing the apse from the lateral chapels are devoted to secular subjects. on the one we discovered the head, and part of the figure of a king, wearing a gold crown. his left hand rested on the richly-chased scabbard of his sword; his right supported a sceptre with a globe. the fresco on the other face was almost obliterated; but a crown and a portion of a head, probably that of a queen, were conspicuous among the faded colours. both heads rested on golden halos. one can scarcely doubt that these portraits are those of the founders of this church, which was evidently the royal chapel. i copied with difficulty the following almost illegible inscription, placed by the side of the king:--[old armenian inscription]. such is all that remains of this pleasing piece of architecture; the interior has an extreme length of sixty-five feet and a breadth of a little over forty feet. an almost similar edifice is that which is named surb sargis; it may have been the general town church (length of interior, sixty-six feet; breadth, thirty-nine feet). it is situated in the portion of the fortress furthest removed from the citadel, and not far from the south wall. it is still employed as a place of worship, but is maintained in a filthy state. the two rows of three pillars are still standing; and one of the pillars is composed of a slab-shaped monolith, engraved with an elaborate armenian cross. it is evident that it was imported from some other place. the present roof is a rude structure of logs, quite flat, and concealing the features of the former design. the altar-piece in the apse appeared to us to be the old one; but its effect was spoilt by daubs of staring colour. an altar of primitive pattern, composed of a slab of stone, resting horizontally upon a stone column, was standing in the southern side chapel. a little sacristy adjoins the similar chapel on the north, projecting from the outer wall of the church. abutting on the western front of this sacristy, and extending along the remainder of this outer wall, is placed a small and independent chapel, which repeats the same design. it is known under the name of arab kilisa, or church of the arabs; by which term i presume that the nestorian christians are denoted. it is now a mere ruin. a building of later date than these churches, but no doubt the outcome of a period of comparative prosperity, is the mosque which is placed just beneath the citadel, and which reminds one of similar structures in bitlis. a nave and two aisles, with two pillars apiece; a low central dome, pointed arches and vaulted ceilings--such are the features of a design which is evidently, to a large extent, a copy by mohammedans of the christian architecture. the interior, as well as the pointed arch over the entrance, is built of blocks of pink and black volcanic stone; the outer walls are of faced lava. the recess of the altar is inlaid with white marble. adjoining the mosque is a medresseh or college. the mosque is well kept up. we spent nearly two whole days in melazkert, visiting the remains of the former splendour of the place and occupied by drawing out the plan which accompanies this chapter. we estimated the length of the city at 750 yards, and its breadth at 500 yards. the former measurement was taken from the tower in the citadel to a tower in the walls at the opposite extremity. both the site, and the character and disposition of the fortifications remind one strongly of trebizond; and it would be a matter of great interest to determine the nature of the connection to which the similarity of design may have been due. melazkert is built upon a flow of lava, a feature of little importance in the general configuration of the plain; but this lava sheet descends to the alluvial flats about the murad in much the same manner as the site of trebizond shelves to the sea. like the city by the euxine, the armenian fortress is flanked on two sides by ravines; these ravines are indeed flatter than those of its counterpart; but the platform which supports the citadel and palace is 100 feet higher than the trough of the ravine on the north. there are similar little streams trickling along in either hollow; and a similar double line of walls, with towers at intervals, encircles the area of the fortified town. suburbs there may have been; but they have long since disappeared; the cemeteries are placed outside the walls. the solid octagonal tower at the extreme south-east end of the citadel may quite probably have served as the model for the tower of john the fourth, at trebizond. indeed, could we see this site under the luxuriance of the kolchian foliage, the resemblance would at once appeal to the eye. the only trees at melazkert are a few willows; but springs of cold, clear water well up from the ground. so far as we could judge from a hasty examination, the murad may at one time have flowed quite near the walls; but the bridge of the mediæval city is at least two miles west of the town. the road is taken over low and marshy ground, and crosses a side torrent of considerable volume, when quite near the bridge. this torrent is said to be derived from springs in the plain; it eats its way through a lava stream. the gorge is spanned by the single pointed arch of an ancient bridge--a structure so massive that it has resisted destruction, and still rears intact its elegant facing of pink and black volcanic stone. worse fortune has attended the noble structure which once joined the banks of the murad. of its thirteen or more piers only four are standing; some have rolled over and compose masses that defy the stream. on those that remain you admire the exquisite masonry, and the skilful variation of black with pink stone. the arches are much pointed, and are close together; the bridge describes a curve down stream. on the opposite margin we remarked the foundations of an ancient road, underlying the grass on the hillside. at the present day a road does not exist in the country, and the river is crossed by fords. indeed the city presents a strangely pathetic spectacle of fallen greatness, of a culture which has disappeared--more touching by the contrast with the blank of the present, by the sufficiency and eloquence of the monuments that remain. we are by them enabled to reconstruct the splendour of the citadel, which was perhaps the palace; the stateliness of the double walls with their picturesque towers; the frescos of the churches, the magnificent bridge, the broad, paved road. an armenian genius produced these works, and a turk destroyed them. now only some forty armenian families grovel among the ruins of a past which they ignore. a few small shops, some kept by armenians, a few by kurds, dispense manchester cottons and some of the necessaries of life. there is not a house that is not built out of the remains of the old town. the little windows are screened with paper or bits of calico. the kaimakam cannot tell you the number of the inhabitants. his clerk is ill, and he himself has no idea of the number; yet they are not so very many to count. it is possible that he is dissembling; yet he is very ignorant; he laughs at our notion of climbing sipan. he says that, years ago, during the course of an exceptional season, when the summit had become almost free of snow, one man was said to have reached the top. one can see that it is the snow which appeals to their doubts and raises their fears. what life you see around you is feeble and squalid--wicked, even, in a small way. and it seems as if the storks, which lend sanctity to the decaying towers, were the incarnation of the grave, sad thoughts that rise in the mind. the history of melazkert, such as we see the city in these ruins, appears to be little better than unknown. we turn in vain to the pages of saint martin or of ritter even for a few cardinal facts. if the story of the empire of the grand comneni, as unravelled by the labours of fallmerayer, still remains in the vivid language of its illustrious exponent a phantom picture, lacking the reality of life, then the mediæval kingdom of the armenian kings who reigned in melazkert may be described as but the shadow of a shade. their capital occupied the site of one of the oldest of armenian cities, and derived its name from manavaz, the son of the mythical hayk. [230] it was possessed by princes of this name during the arsakid period, tracing their descent to the progenitor of the armenian race. [231] melazkert was known to the byzantines as an independent city; but, like ani, it fell during the eleventh century to the arms of alp arslan. the same century witnessed the defeat of the byzantine cæsar by the seljuk conqueror in the neighbourhood of its walls. the fate of ani appears to have been repeated on the banks of the murad, for the city can never have recovered under its mohammedan rulers. at the present day the armenians, to whom it owed prosperity, have been almost driven away from the neighbourhood. at hasuna we observed one of their deserted graveyards; and again another between that village and the town. these and the crumbling towers and churches of the ancient fortress are the melancholy landmarks of the progressive ruin of the armenian inhabitants. [232] chapter xv from melazkert to akhlat in one of the ancient towers of the wall on the west was residing a kurdish chief, surrounded by a posse of his followers. perhaps he was in some sense a hostage to the government, or perhaps he was acting in a representative capacity towards the five regiments of hamidiyeh, each with 500 men, which, he assured me, were furnished by his tribe. his name is riza bey, and he is the brother of fethulla bey, chief of all hasananli. his brother resides in the village of dignuk, on the right bank of the murad near melazkert. riza bey came to visit us in the citadel and i returned his visit in the tower. his window commanded a fine prospect over the alluvial plain in the direction of the murad--all the detail, of crumbling cemetery, of willow-grown hollow, of channelled flats, framed by the deep embrasure. my host was seated on a divan, covered with a beautiful kurdish kilim; he was readily distinguished by his ferocious black moustache. he gave evasive answers to my questions about the annual trainings; one hears so very much, and one sees so very little of this formidable hamidiyeh! melazkert is a kind of headquarters for the force; and i feel sure that, if even one regiment were in actual existence, it would have been paraded for our benefit. late in the afternoon of the 5th of july we forded the stream in the southern ravine, and, after crossing an extensive and very ruinous cemetery, made our way over the plain of lava which stretches without interruption to the base of the still distant sipan. our course was directed to a village on its southern confines, at the foot of those heights which have already been mentioned as extending between sipan and bilejan. you may canter the whole way, for the ground is fairly even, although broken here and there by mounds of black boulders, which may represent either minor outbreaks of volcanic matter, or the sites of steam vents through the sheet of cooling lava. in places there is a thin covering of marly deposits; and, where these occur, the soil becomes fertile. but it is little cultivated--only in patches, and in a very primitive fashion. the village proved to be circassian; its name was kara ali; a second circassian settlement, called yaralmish, was its close neighbour upon the east. our track commenced to ascend, immediately beyond kara ali, up the face of the opposite heights. the nature of these hills was at once apparent from the character of their forms and from the change in vegetation. we rode over the slopes of downs, resting the eye on fresh pastures, and with the song of the lark in our ears. the purple vetch was resplendent on the cliff-sides. here and there a white patch disclosed the calcareous nature of the underlying rock. the village of demian (raya hasananli, alt. 6690 feet) is situated below the crest of the ridge, in full view of the plain. there we decided to encamp for the night. [233] july 6.--what a landscape to wake up to! the side of our tent towards the plain had been left open during the night. we overlooked such an immense expanse of earth--nude, or veiled in transparent mists, and quite unconscious of the presence of man! even we, who were already accustomed to such visions, had never yet seen the like. reach upon reach, in large surroundings, we traced the course of the murad, flowing towards us from tutakh; loop upon loop, we followed its waters into the dimness of the west, flowing away through the plain. the contrasts in the lighting were less impressive this morning; but last evening the river was thrown into pronouncement, and lay like a parti-coloured riband in the expanse. from vivid whites and tender greys it became a sheen of gold under the red blaze of the setting sun. the pass, or crest of the ridge (6870 feet), is close behind demian. among our landmarks, besides sipan, the akh dagh was most conspicuous, and, although probably less lofty, because quite free from snow, dwarfed the intermediate mass of khamur. the dome of the kuseh dagh was the bold feature of the scene in the north; while kartevin rose like an island in the plain at our feet. this pass is but the edge of a deep block of hill country, interposed between the plain and the lake of van. the highest level which we attained, during our passage across it, belonged to the ridge on the north of the village of khanik, and was a level of 7690 feet. that ridge was composed of eocene limestone, perhaps a travertine, while the ridge behind demian displayed the familiar fossils of the widely-distributed lacustrine rocks. coralline limestones of eocene epoch, much altered and hardened, perhaps by the action of hot springs, constitute the backbone of the mass; while on its southern side the lacustrine series is represented by the purplish-brown sandstones of the hills behind akhlat. sipan has burst through the zone of limestone hills, probably about in the central region; the volcano has been built up upon their debris, and overtowers their almost uniform levels. yet the stratified rocks are little diversified by volcanic outpourings: and only once, namely just upon our departure from the valley of khanik, did we ride over such material, a dark volcanic tuff. it is indeed surprising, the limited extension of the flows of lava even from such a giant as sipan. when we looked across to the mountain from the lofty down behind demian, the block of hills appeared to compose an outer sheath to the volcano, recessing inwards around its contours. and the plain or pedestal of lava at the foot of sipan was seen tonguing into the recess at our feet. through that valley was winding a little stream, which would probably become lost in the plain. we descended into the valley, which supports several kurdish villages, and rose up the opposite side. from this ridge to the guardhouse on the southern side of the block is the wildest portion of this bleak zone. we passed only one village, the circassian settlement of khanik, during our progress from the ridge to akhlat. the axis or strike of the limestones is in an east-north-east direction; they are carved out into deep and irregular valleys. extraordinary precautions had been taken for our safety during the passage of this region. our escort from melazkert consisted of eight zaptiehs, and of the head man of the village of akhviran, a notable of high rank in the hamidiyeh, who had been commissioned by riza bey to accompany us. at khanik we were met by no less than fifteen zaptiehs; and this little force skirmished up the heights adjoining our track, to protect us from an ambuscade. arrived at the guardhouse (7560 feet) we were saluted by a detachment of regular cavalry, mounted on snow-white horses. as we rode down this line of troops, an individual in civil dress stepped forward and took our hands. it was the kaimakam of akhlat. his servants had prepared tea in the solitary little building which rises like a beacon from the wilds. our further progress was a procession. we were sorry to lose the cavalry, who were under orders to return to the guardhouse. they manoeuvred in admirable fashion; and the motley zaptiehs, careering in all directions, were a poor substitute to the eye. the kaimakam rode by our side. but this little touch of humanity was quickly lost and soon forgotten in the emotions which were inspired by the unfolding scene. the landscape of lake van, overtake it where you may, can scarcely fail, with a traveller susceptible of such impressions, to bring tears to the eyes. and there it lies, deep down below us, streaming with sunlight, intensely blue and intensely pale. how startling is the change from these rounded forms about us--from the dome of sipan, wreathed in cloud, from the unbroken circle of the nimrud crater, islands of mountain in an expanse of plain and hill--to the jagged and snow-capped parapet of the kurdish mountains, reflected into the mirror of waters on the opposite shore! but this evening we miss the gloom which is wont to envelop those mountains; the clouds are suspended high above the outline of peaks; and the face of the wall is tinted a delicate yellow, relieved by shadows of a pale violet hue. the shadows mark the relief of the almost vertical escarpments, and have the appearance of a long succession of pointed spears. among the landmarks along those shores we recognise mount ardos, broad-shouldered above a headland in the east; a blue shadow in the lake, slightly raised above its surface, may denote the isle of akhtamar. the long promontory of zigag juts out from the nimrud crater towards the beautiful bay of surb, on the opposite shore. almost at our feet we see the top of a leafy tree, then another, and then a long grove. and immediately we enter the deep shade of the gardens which fringe the southern margin of the sea (5637 feet). chapter xvi akhlat july 15.--we have spent eight days at akhlat. they have been days which we shall always remember with delight. our surroundings, our occupations, the little comforts of our daily life, have been all that we could desire. we are encamped in an orchard by the side of the lake. the water plashes against rocks, at the foot of a well-defined bank, some twenty yards from our tent. we look across a floor of green, dappled with shade and sunshine, through the varied intervals of the grove of fruit trees, beneath the perfect foliage, to a field of light, with changing colour and ever-changing appearance, whence a freshness is wafted towards us across the flowering grass. such oases are not, indeed, infrequent in asia, where they derive enhancement not only from the contrast which they offer to the general treelessness of the land, but also from their special climate--the soil cooled by irrigation, and the leaves developed to a perfection with which we are unfamiliar in the west. luscious clover, white and red, purple vetch with a delicate perfume, the long, trailing stalks and pale mauve flowers of chicory, luxuriate on the damp soil. the cherries were small and yellow when we arrived; now they hang in bright red clusters before our tent. an old walnut tree protrudes its gnarled branches and thick foliage over the water on the margin of the grove; and two rollers, which have built their nest in an inaccessible crevice of the trunk, flit to and fro, in search of food for their young. the hues of the lake are repeated on their breasts; while on their backs and in their wings this azure blue is subdued and softened by rich browns, resembling the branches where they repose. [234] our little horses are picketed in the deep trench which divides the orchard from the sterile ground on the north and east. they forget the road beneath the shade of flowering olives, of which the strong scent reaches to our tent. the cook, who has so often mutinied and repented, is now all alacrity and zeal. our luxuries have been a turkey, some french beans of exquisite flavour, and little cakes of bread, in which our cook excels. the cherries are of the wild species--for the people are too lazy to graft; but, when stewed, they afford a delicious dish. no steamer disturbs our repose; no discordant note is uttered from morn to eventide. we are self-sufficient, mobile, always at home. the world is our house, and we move easily from room to room. it never rains; the moisture is controlled by man, who directs it whither it pleases him and for as long. the air is so dry that, with very little care, all danger of malaria can be kept at bay. but the old imam, who owns and appears to live in this garden, turned the water one early morning into the channels. he must have known that it would deluge our tent. he might have warned us to surround it with a shallow trench. i took revenge by cutting a trench to the lake. the wizened old thing did not display the smallest resentment. they say he is mad. he sits in the garden all day long, smoking cigarettes of his own manufacture, muttering to himself, his eyes fixed upon the lake. when night arrives he goes to sleep in the grass. he has never worked; but nobody works. the idea of work is not repugnant; it is simply an idea which they do not possess. man is here a shadow--a mournful presence. and the women appear conscious of some immense and inexpiable sin. the children are seldom gay; you never hear laughter. their poor little naked bodies are burnt brown by the sun, and their stomachs are distended by indifferent food. each morning we bathe in the lake. the water is delicious to the skin, bracing and at the same time soft. a certain soapiness in its composition produces a cleansing effect; yet to the eye it is transparent as crystal. swimming out into deep water, the thermometer registered 68°, or exactly the temperature of the shade at 6.30 a.m. the rocky shore shelves down with a measure of abruptness, so that in breezy weather the waves do not break until they reach the ledge. the bather is soon across this fringe of surf. and the colouring of the water! riding early to the ruins, or returning towards sunset to our camp, it is always a new effect, or a fresh and startling combination, differing from anything either of us have seen elsewhere. when the surface of the expanse is ruffled, the restless, sparkling water is at once intensely green and intensely blue; an aquamarine so vivid that it must be overpowering, an ultramarine so deep that it may not yield. twilight lasts but a little time; yet the brief space is many times multiplied by the number and variety of dissolving tints. the landscape of sea and mountain is overtaken by complete stillness. the lake becomes the colour of an iridescent opal, green, blue, and pearly white. the mountains are lightly tinged with delicate yellows and warm greys, faintly shaded in the recesses of the chain of peaks. the latest aspect of the scene is at once the richest and the most mysterious. all blue has passed from the sky and from the face of the sea, except here and there, under a lingering breath of wind. a dull golden tint is spread over the waters, cloaking the underlying green. in the distance, towards van, great shadows of indigo lie on the lake, and envelop varag to half height. from these emerges the crested ridge, a pink madder. varag rests against a background of vague clouds, purplish-blue, the only touch of redness in the landscape.... such effects are no doubt enhanced by the sublimity of the surroundings--the wide sea, the kurdish mountains, sipan, nimrud; but they may derive a special quality from the character of the water and from the great elevation of the lake (5600 feet). its pallor, combined with its blueness, is perhaps the particular characteristic which becomes imprinted upon the mind. our only regular visitor is the kaimakam--mohammed fuad bey--a circassian of middle stature and in middle age. a frock coat, of black cloth and european pattern, displays the litheness of his figure. his face is remarkable for the brilliancy of the small eyes. he is the hero of a recent adventure with the kurds. the other day some hasananli carried off from an armenian village a considerable body of cattle. the kaimakam despatched after them a contingent of regular soldiers, with instructions to pursue a prescribed route. he himself followed, accompanied by a single zaptieh. the soldiers appear to have lost their way; and the kaimakam was alone when he fell in with the marauding band. he rode straight up to them, pointed to the cattle, and ordered them in the name of the government to give them up. he added that his own honour was at stake. the kurds of course refused, seeing one unarmed man and a zaptieh opposed to their own numbers and arms. whereupon the kaimakam proceeded to drive off the cattle, calling to his attendant, who, however, was too much terrified to be of use. the kurds at once opened fire. one bullet entered the open overcoat of the official, and came out through the opposite flap. another pierced the frock coat which he habitually wears. his horse was shot in two places, but was not disabled. this occurred before the kaimakam could draw his pocket revolver, which he at once aimed at the nearest kurd. the man fell; his companions gathered round him, and almost immediately made off, carrying the body with them. they appear to have regarded the kaimakam's as a charmed life, and to have explained to themselves his courage in this way. the cattle were quickly driven home and restored to the armenians. this exploit is the principal topic of conversation at akhlat. the kaimakam has received neither thanks nor reward. the loss of his horse, which died shortly after from its injuries, has not yet been repaired. the palace no doubt deplores the loss to the empire of a hamidiyeh brave. i was anxious to visit akhlat during the course of my first journey; but the lateness of the season compelled me to push on. the project so long deferred is at length realised. the conception of the place which was present in my mind, before we commenced to investigate the ruins, may be expressed in a few words. a number of beautiful mausolea, illustrating the best traditions of mohammedan art in a manner by far surpassing the similar buildings we had seen elsewhere--a ruined city with mosques and minarets standing on the margin of the lake, and backed by the remains of a still older city, which perhaps dated from the period of the caliphs--such was the idea, so full of promise, which i had gathered from the oral accounts of travellers or formed from conversation in the country. not much more is to be gleaned from books. [235] writing now that we have completed our plan of the place, examined the monuments, and copied the inscriptions, i propose, in the first place, to submit a few general remarks, and then to resume the experiences of our several excursions, blending them into one. akhlat is the name of a district, comprising a number of oases, on the northern shore of the extensive bay which is bounded on its southern side by the long promontory of zigag. this district is divided for administrative purposes into five distinct quarters. the first is erkizan, the seat of government for district and caza, where the kaimakam resides and where we are encamped. the second is iki kube, or the two mausolea--so called from a pair of tombs which stand close together in the desert, some distance west of erkizan. this district comprises the walled city on the shore, as well as the village of kulaxis, situated in a ravine, a good walk in a northerly direction from the two tombs. the third quarter embraces the area of the older city, and is called indifferently kharaba and takht-i-suleyman. the remaining two are outlying, tunus, on the east of erkizan, at an interval of about half-a-mile; and kirklar, in the opposite direction, west of the quarter of kharaba and the ravine in which the older city lies. the population of the entire district cannot much exceed 6000 souls, of whom the majority inhabit the quarter of kharaba or the gardens of erkizan. of this number only 200 would appear to be armenians, residing about the ravine of the older city. the block of limestone hills which we crossed from melazkert extend from adeljivas along the shore. in the neighbourhood of akhlat they recess away towards lake nazik, leaving an extensive margin of fairly level land. but the coast itself, between erkizan and the delta of the streams below the older city, has the character of rounded cliffs, shelving to the lake. the soil is composed of purplish sandstones and conglomerates, which, as you approach the older city, are overlaid with lava and pumice. both the sandstones and the pumice tend to arid, dusty ground; while the yellow pumice reflects an overpowering glare. yet this ground, when thoroughly watered, becomes extremely fertile; and it is characteristic of akhlat that the oases are the most luxuriant, and the intermediate spaces the most sterile of all these shores. thus erkizan is a deep belt of shady orchards, while the walled city is surrounded by powdery waste. groves of aged walnut trees clothe the ground on either side of the ravine of takht-i-suleyman; but, if you ride from the walled city towards kulaxis, the light streams, and the dust rises in clouds. in such a waste the number of rivulets is surprising; and they flow with a vigour which is not less strange. it is probable that the more ancient city was surrounded by suburbs. the mausolea are spread over a considerable area; and, even in erkizan, the houses are built up with the faced stones which are characteristic of the ancient masonry. in this quarter we remark, beside the base of a tomb, a capital, enriched with an arab ornament, and a large stone, elaborately chiselled. both these objects are observed at random, lying unheeded on the ground. the government house is a solid stone building; the graceful pointed arch which we notice over a doorway would seem to indicate that the influence of the monuments is still alive. adjoining it is placed the prison. there are two or three shops, with deep verandahs over the shop, the whole surmounted by the roof. the dwellings are widely scattered; and, if window glass were universal, they would present an appearance both of solidity and of comfort. little lanes intersect the gardens; the murmur of water and the scent of the flowering olives fill the air with sweetness and pleasant sounds. such are some of the notes one makes when on a day of midsummer we wend our way on horseback through the straggling settlement of erkizan with the purpose of exploring the ancient sites. as we pass the prison, an old armenian protrudes his head from one of the windows, and begs us to intercede on his behalf. on the outskirts of the oasis we are met by the kaimakam, mounted on a white mare, with black and yellow trappings, and with a two-months-old foal at foot. in his company, and in that of a green-turbaned khoja, whom he employs as writer, we pass an old mulberry tree on the fringe of the fertile zone, and enter the waste on a westerly course. a ride of twenty minutes, walking our horses, brings us to the iki kube, or two tombs (fig. 181 and see the plan, nos. 1 and 2). they are separated by an interval of about ten yards. let me describe, once for all, the design of such edifices, known in the country by the name of kumbet. a circular, or drum-shaped structure rests on a deep pedestal, which slopes outwards to a square base. but the four angles of the pedestal are cut away in the shape of a wedge, the point of the wedge resting on the base. the whole is surmounted by a conical roof. on the level of the ground, an arched aperture gives access to a chamber, built in the hollow of the base. in this chamber, or beneath its floor, was presumably placed a coffin; but the catafalques, if such existed, have disappeared. the ground, too, has buried the base in most cases, so that you can only just crawl through the top of the arched aperture. on the other hand, the floor of the circular structure, resting on the pedestal, is high above the ground; and, in the absence of any stairs, you are obliged to clamber up the face of the pedestal, making use of little crevices in the stones. four open doorways, placed at regular intervals in the circumference, at once serve as entrances to the upper chamber, and as windows, through which the landscape expands on every side. it is supposed that the prospective occupant of the tomb, or the pious visitors to this place of burial, would sit and rest within this cool, circular chamber, beneath the lofty roof, enjoying the views of the country around. they would, however, have needed a ladder to reach the entrances. the interiors are quite plain; in one instance (no. 1) we observed traces of plaster; but, as a rule, there is neither ornament nor covering of the surface of the masonry, in which one admires the even joints of the blocks of faced stone. the material of these tombs is stone throughout--a pink volcanic stone. all the resources of the decorative sculptor are lavished upon the exterior, especially about the doorways, the four niches in the intervening spaces, and the cornice beneath the roof. in some cases raised stone mouldings enrich the surface of the roof. sometimes a frieze is carried beneath the cornice, the most effective being hewn out of white marble. [236] they are inscribed with sentences from the koran. the beautiful arabic letters vary the effect of the elaborate geometrical patterns in the decorated spaces of the walls beneath. the personal inscriptions are usually found over the doorways; and, in some instances, are engraved upon white marble slabs. the two tombs which we are now visiting both possess such inscriptions; the khoja copied them; they are in arabic prose. those on the first tomb (no. 1) record that it is the burial-place of a great emir, by name nughatay agha, and of the lady, wife to nughatay. the date of his death is given as a.h. 678, or a.d. 1279. the second tomb is described as that of hasan timur agha, son of this nughatay, who died in a.h. 680 or a.d. 1281. [237] quite close to the iki kube, in a north-westerly direction, is situated a third tomb, which is still erect (no. 3). it is less richly decorated than the preceding, and is without any commemorative inscription. making westwards, we at once enter one of the shadiest of the oases, passing a fourth mausoleum within its fringe (no. 4). a much less tasteful structure than the others, it is also of different design. within the chamber are ordinary graves, with marble headstones; the inscriptions on the headstones, and on a marble slab in the wall outside, indicate that it was the burial-place of some kurdish princes of modkan in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. almost opposite this tomb, which is without architectural merit, a most curious edifice, quite ruinous, is observed upon some waste land (no. 4b). built into a pile of massive masonry are some slabs or blocks of stone, of cyclopean character. the largest has the appearance of a lintel; it is twelve and a half feet long and three in thickness. the recess behind the slabs, upon which it rests transversely, is blocked up by a wall. a portion of a grinding stone is seen lying on the ground, perhaps belonging to a linseed press. the oasis belongs to the quarter of iki kube, and the gardens contain a number of modern dwellings. it is remarkable for the size and leafiness of the walnut trees. the remains of several ancient edifices rise from among the foliage, or are strewn upon the grass. the most notable is a square building of some size, with an octagonal and conical roof (no. 5). the walls are featured by square windows; but the architecture is plain and without ornament, and the appearance is stumpy and without grace. perhaps it was a tomb like the rest. a smaller mausoleum of similar design is seen by the wayside (no. 6). it is almost buried beneath the ground. before we leave the oasis, to visit the walled city on the shore, we are shown a subterraneous and vaulted chamber, now used as a store for hay. we now change direction and cross a zone of desert between the oasis and the walled city. when close to the north-western tower, we pause to admire the site, which commands the whole expanse of the lake. the view is only bounded by the distant ridge of varag, which rises behind van. the walls describe the figure of a parallelogram, of which the two long sides have a length of about a quarter of a mile, and descend in a south-easterly direction to the margin of the lake. the breadth of the figure, along the shore, is about half its length. the slope, although gradual, is not inconsiderable; the north-western tower is 130 feet higher than the level of the lake. the wall on the south overlooks a shallow ravine, through which trickles a little stream. the character of the walls may be described as a single rampart, with hollow towers at intervals, some round, and others pentagonal. the rampart has a thickness of about six feet, and consists of a pile of stone, faced with hewn and jointed blocks after the manner of the old armenian masonry. but the greater part of this facing has fallen away or been stripped off, displaying the raggedness of the pile within. we could find no evidence of breaches having been made in the enclosure; nor were there any visible traces of its having undergone a siege. the wall along the shore has long since disappeared; [238] and the lake has encroached upon its rocky bank. about halfway down the more southerly wall is situated the inner walled enclosure of the palace or citadel. this inner fortress comprises an area which is roughly rectangular, and which is of no great extent. it is flanked along the three inner sides by a rampart and towers, but the city wall is at the same time the wall of the citadel along the fourth or outer side. the site is signalised by a slight projection of the fortification, and by the greater propinquity of the towers to each other. from the tower at the north-eastern angle of the citadel a cross wall is carried down to the sea. the upper portion of the principal enclosure, as well as the space within the citadel, is now completely bare. nothing but the foundations of houses and buildings can be discovered within that area. the few modern houses are collected in the south-east corner, and have been built from the material of the old fortress. their inhabitants resemble phantoms rather than human beings; but the orchards, which are confined to this lower part of the enclosure, enhance the picturesqueness of the old kala, sloping down the hillside to the blue water. three gateways, from which the gates have disappeared, give entrance to the enceinte, two in the rampart on the north, and one in that upon the south. the upper gate in the north rampart is in a ruinous condition, the plinths having been broken away. the lower entrance is situated about opposite to that in the south wall; a road extends between the two through the cross wall. both these gateways are surmounted by inscribed slabs. the legend over the first is written in persian verse, and recounts that the fortress was built by order of sultan selim. the date is given in a chronogram as a.h. 976 or a.d. 1568. the inscription upon the second is in turkish verse, but the chronogram is obscure. it sets forth that the kala was built or restored by sultan suleyman the second (a.d. 1687-1691). the citadel is entered by a handsome gateway, facing towards the sea. this entrance consists of a pretentious piece of architecture, flanked on either side by a tower. the doorway leads into a vaulted chamber, where the passage into the citadel is placed at right angles to the outer door. the inscription above this entrance is in arabic prose, the characters being relieved by a ground of enamel in various colours. it is to the effect that the fortress was built by sultan suleyman, son of sultan selim. suleyman is styled, in the pompous language of the east, the alexander of his time. it would therefore appear that the citadel is due to suleyman the first, surnamed the great, who came to the throne in a.d. 1520; and that other portions of the fortifications were undertaken under subsequent sultans, notably selim ii. and suleyman ii. the only buildings of any importance within the enceinte are two mosques, which are rapidly falling into ruin. the largest (no. 18) is placed just opposite the gateway of the citadel, and is of charming proportions and design. the entrance is approached through a spacious portico, which extends the whole length of the wall. the piers or columns, which must have supported the roof of this structure, in the form of a façade, are no longer in their place. but one still admires the vaulted and groined ceilings, the vaulting being done in brick. and through the openings in the side walls, with their ogee arches, pleasant prospects are obtained. the face of the main wall, against which the portico rests, is decorated in a simple and efficacious manner by means of an alternation of bands of white marble with bands made up with blocks of black and of pink lava. the main doorway, which gives access through this wall into the mosque, is surmounted by a pointed arch. a slab of white marble over the door is inscribed with a legend in persian verse. it relates that the mosque was erected by sikandar or iskandar pasha; a chronogram gives the date of a.h. 976 or a.d. 1568. on either side of the doorway, as well as above it, openings with ogee arches admit light into the interior. in front of, but contiguous with, the portico on its south-west side, a massive circular minaret rises into the sky. it is seen, like a landmark, from afar. it does not taper perceptibly; but the honeycomb cornice which supports the balcony is surmounted by a second tower of smaller diameter. the cupola has fallen from this uppermost shaft. a band of white limestone, and two bands of black lava encircle the even masonry of pink lava. a heart-shaped stone, high up, is engraved with arabic characters, setting forth the name of the founder, sikandar pasha, and giving the date as a.h. 978 or a.d. 1570. the interior of the mosque is of extremely pleasing design--a circle described by eight pointed arches, springing from a square ground plan. four of these form recesses at the angles of the square; the remainder rest against the walls. the members of the arches are built of stone; but the walls are lined and the vaultings constructed with narrow bricks. the dome rests on the points of the arches, encompassing the interior with its beautiful curves. from the outside it is octagonal in shape. in the south wall are three apertures which serve as windows; two are of fair size. the dimensions are a square of 42 feet 6 inches. the altar is built of white marble, and the masonry throughout the building is carefully faced and joined. the second mosque, situated just outside the cross wall, is smaller, but of similar design. the portico is still perfect, the cups of the three ceilings being supported by pointed arches, resting on two columns with uncarved capitals. but this mosque is built throughout of stone, marbles of various hues being introduced. a legend in persian verse above the doorway is to the effect that it was constructed by the kazi, mahmud, in a.h. 996 or a.d. 1587. such is the kala or ottoman fortress, and what it contains. the architecture, although careful, and, in the case of the mosques, pleasing, displays a distinct decline in the arts. the admirable traceries in stone of the so-called seljuk buildings are nowhere to be found. persian influences make themselves felt. we proceed from the kala in a south-westerly direction, on a course about parallel to the outline of the shore. the high ground, shelving to the water, is barren and stony. at a distance of nearly a mile we arrive at an isolated tomb, of which the site is a little headland of the coast, commanding the inner curves of the bay of akhlat. it is the most beautiful of all the mausolea, in fact the only object of excelling beauty at akhlat (no. 7, fig. 182). it stands as a surpassing monument of arab architecture, engrafted upon the armenian style. its masonry is fresh as upon the day when it was completed, six centuries ago. but the ruins of a companion building, which stood not far behind it, and which collapsed, according to my informant, about two years back, are ominous of a dissolution which is perhaps nearer than we might expect. i have therefore reproduced its features in a careful photograph, and have endeavoured to invest them with the hues of reality. i do not know that i need add much to the general description already given of similar edifices. but in this tomb all the merits of the style are seen to culminate;--in none do the proportions attain such exactitude, or the ornament such a combination of extraordinary elaboration with the simplicity and stateliness of the highest art. tradition relates that these companion tombs are the burial-places of two brothers, and the work of a single architect. for the elder brother was designed the structure which has now fallen, and which is said to have been greatly inferior to that which stands. this individual lived to see the more finished monument erected, and to brood over the invidious contrast between his own and his brother's tomb. his anger was visited upon the daring architect, who was condemned to lose his right hand. the story sounds plausible, for there exists no personal inscription upon the beautiful tomb. we ignore the name of the personage for whom it was built. on the other hand the fallen structure possessed such an inscription, which our khoja had fortunately copied before it succumbed. it commemorates the great and noble emir, shadi agha, son of the great emir, saughur agha, son of khaghan agha. the date is a.h. 672 or a.d. 1273. the language is arabic prose. although the appearance of the kumbet does not suggest size, the dimensions are about the largest of all these tombs. the upper and circular chamber has a diameter of 22 feet; and each side of the square base which supports the structure is close upon 30 feet long. although the floor of the lower chamber is partially silted up, it has a height of 16 feet. beneath the deep cornice runs a frieze of white marble, with an inscription from the koran. the body of the building is composed of the usual pink volcanic lava. the interior displays no trace of plaster, nor is it ornamented in any way. between the isolated tomb and the ravine of the ancient city, the ground is covered by the headstones of an extensive cemetery, a kind of kensal green or père lachaise. but our european pattern of marble slabs, with thin incisions, are pale and paltry when compared with these. the fact that a majority of these headstones are still erect attests their extraordinary solidity. in all, or almost all, cases they have the form of a pilaster, surmounted by a honeycomb frieze. the silhouettes of these friezes are extremely picturesque against the lights of the sky. the stone has weathered brown and carries a little lichen. the head of the dead man is placed towards mecca, turned upon his right shoulder. the headstone faces the feet and the rising sun. the face bears the inscription in arabic character; on the reverse the ornament, which forms the subject of the accompanying illustration (fig. 183), is an almost universal feature. some of these graves are of the same date as the kumbets, or even earlier, while some are rather later. they represent a comparatively high standard of civilisation, in which the arts were cherished and extensively practised. continuing our course along the shore, but still high above the lake, we come to the point where the headland breaks away to the alluvial flats of an extensive delta. this delta constitutes the inner recess of the bay, screening a lagoon of some size. it is formed by the deposits of two streams, which meet close to us, and of which the more easterly flows from the ravine of the ancient city. yet a third stream enters the shallows some distance further west. the strip of alluvium in front of the lagoon extends from this headland to the opposite curve of the bay. it is probable that the gradual rise in level of the lake has caused these little streams to deposit a quantity of sediment out of proportion to their volume. so narrow is the strip of soil, that a peasant is digging a trench across it with nothing but his hands. he is wanting to let out the surplus water from the lagoon. several tall willows are growing within the delta, to which we immediately descend. from a bush at our side a young cormorant takes wing, and falls clumsily into the lake below. reversing our direction, we ride up the principal valley, at first over the soft sand. again commence the orchards, and again the air is scented by the flowering olive trees. the valley becomes a glen, and the bed of powdery silt gives place to slabs of rock. the stream cascades beside us, from one ledge to another, beneath the shade of walnuts, willows, and poplars. some little children are bathing in the deeply-shadowed water; a tiny calf stands on the shore. and a little further, behind the sparkle and effervescence of a waterfall, the site of the city comes to view. beyond the single pointed arch and little battlements of a stone bridge, you see the sharp end of a wedge-shaped platform, rising above the detail of the luxuriant valley like the prow of a gigantic ship. it cleaves the valley into two (fig. 184). the situation of old akhlat resembles that of bitlis; but it is bitlis shorn of its castle, and without the lofty mountains towering above it on every side. it is nothing more than a valley, cut by water deep into the lava, with a long spit of columnar lava rising up from the valley floor. the direction of this valley is roughly north and south. of its two branches, that on the east of the citadel is wider but less deep; while that on the west is narrower but more profoundly carved. these side ravines unite at both ends of the citadel; although on the north the junction is less obvious. there is no stream in the eastern ravine. the platform, which supported the citadel, is both highest and most broad towards its northerly end. its greatest width is about 100 yards, and its length, from end to end, less than 500 yards. its height above the stream is some 200 feet. the top of the platform is flat; all buildings have been razed; the tread sinks in the powdery soil. it is crossed by two depressions, which must have always been a source of weakness. the almost demolished remains of immensely thick walls still rise in some places from the upper sides. the ascent to the platform is from the valley on the east; on our way we pass a line of miserable shops and a cluster of houses, built of stone. caves in the side of the basaltic lava have probably been utilised in the construction of these tenements. the inhabitants have an emaciated and sickly appearance, being in fact extremely poor. a track leads up the cliff to the head of the platform, whence a fine view over the adjacent ravines is obtained. that on the east is almost treeless, but the higher levels of the western ravine are thickly clothed with trees. the verdure descends the clefts in that opposite parapet, which towers above the citadel. stone houses nestle among the foliage. it is surprising how little remains of the ancient city. on the slope of the eastern valley, which is, comparatively, a low gradient, a portion of the wall of some considerable edifice is still erect, and fairly well preserved. it is an extremely lofty wall, being flanked by buttresses; the masonry is of jointed and faced stone. below it are observed some remnants of a vaulted edifice, possibly a bath. beyond the fragment of a wall, and on the surface of the high ground, rises a ruinous round tower. in that direction we notice traces of a rampart. in the opposite quarter, beyond the western ravine, the standing portion of a ruinous kumbet emerges from the trees on the summit of the cliff, and forms a landmark from afar (no. 9). it is the tomb of the "lord of emirs"--so runs the inscription--hasan agha, son of mahmud. the date of his death is given as a.h. 672 or a.d. 1273. on the same summit the bases of two large and similar buildings may be discovered among the orchards. descending from the platform, we endeavour to trace the line of the walls, which enclosed a considerable area on the east of the citadel, and were brought down into the ravine. the result of our labours is shown on the plan. the round tower, already mentioned, which has an inside diameter of fifteen paces, evidently stood at one of the angles of the line of walls. just outside, and on the east of this line of fortifications is situated a little mosque, in pink volcanic stone, and by its side a tomb (no. 8). this kumbet differs in style from all its fellows, the circular structure, which is supported by the usual form of pedestal, being open upon the side that faces away from the wall of the mosque. on that side the conical roof rests on ten short columns, with honeycomb capitals. these columns rise from the lower portion of the drum, which is richly decorated. above them, and below the roof, runs a frieze with an inscription. in the side opposite the wall of the mosque is an aperture or entrance, set within a recess with honeycomb ornament. the interior of the tomb has a diameter of fifteen and a half feet. [239] the inscription, which is the longest of all these personal records, and, indeed, usurps the position which in the remaining mausolea is reserved for verses from the koran, may be briefly summarised as follows. it is in arabic prose. "this tomb preserves the remains of the great and laudable king, honoured among the sultans of the world for his valour in war, and for his zeal in the propagation of the faith--mubariz-ud-din, bayindar bey, son of the late rustem bey. under the auspices of his royal banner were vindicated the rights of sovereignty and the ordering of government. during his life he triumphed over his enemies with the aid of his victorious armies. he died in a.h. 886 (a.d. 1481). here also was buried zen mohammed, his son, who died in a.h. 894." the inscription upon the mosque refers to the same personage, as having erected it. but bayindar is styled "the ransomed emperor" and "the master of the sword and of the pen, the author of the book majmu-ul-makarim." having visited these meagre relics on either cliff of the volcanic valley, we descend to the western ravine. the stream is flowing beneath the deep shade of trees, and prattling over ledges of rock. this portion of the ravine is termed takht-i-suleyman, or solomon's throne, from the appearance of the lofty platform which it skirts. just north of the citadel the valley narrows, and becomes a deep gorge. we make our way along the side of the cleft. it was once spanned by the single arch of a stone bridge. a little distance further, the stream from kulaxis joins our stream, coming in on the left bank through a ravine and by a cascade. pursuing our course up the glen, for the space of half-an-hour from the confluence, we reach the armenian village of madavantz. madavantz is a semi-troglodyte village, which reminds one of vardzia (vol. i. fig. 18, p. 80). the dwellings are only partially built out from caves in the face of the lava. the place seems as old as the hills. the valley has become extremely narrow, and the cliffs rise with considerable steepness on either bank of the little stream. the village of caves overhangs the right bank. on the left bank is a little church, of which the interior chapel and altar are sunk into the rock. the main body is built out, and is supported on stone columns. the priest informs us that the chapel was built by the apostle thaddeus, who also preached at madavantz. however this may be, it evidently dates from a hoary antiquity, and it is by far the most ancient building in the whole district. [240] it is dedicated to the mother of god--astvatsatsin. let me review, for the sake of the reader who may not have leisure to pursue the excursions which are embodied in the above description, the results and impressions of our visit to these ruins. there are two distinct sites of cities which once were prosperous, but which now harbour a mere handful of miserable human beings. there is the walled fortress on the shore, a work of the sixteenth century, built by order of ottoman sultans. it is usually termed the kala, or fortress; while the more ancient site in the ravine north-west of this kala is generally alluded to as the kharab-shehr, or ruined city. in the case of the ottoman stronghold the walls and two mosques, one with a fine minaret, are still erect. but it is rather the happy choice of situation that impresses the traveller, than any special merit in the architecture. if akhlat should ever recover her former position, let us hope that the new city will grow around this site. at the present day, even the seat of administration for the district has been removed from the kala to the suburb of erkizan. of the older city in the ravine scarcely a remnant remains, although it is still possible to trace the foundations of the walls. on the other hand, several of the mausolea are still erect, and are distributed over a considerable space of ground. these, and extensive graveyards, are the monuments of that ancient city which have been spared by the ravages of war and the lapse of time. among the tombs, there is one of particular excellence, reproduced in my illustration (fig. 182). it would do honour to any school of architecture. it is one of the fine things in the world. a glance at the illustrations of the circular chapels of ani (vol. i. ch. xviii. figs. 85, 86, 88), and at some of the elaborate stone traceries of the armenian style (ibid. figs. 73 and 77) will throw light upon the source of the inspiration which produced it, or contributed thereto in the greatest degree. this and the several similar tombs at akhlat are all works of the latter portion of the thirteenth century. a later and less pleasing development is the tomb of prince bayindar, erected at an interval of two centuries. but who was bayindar, and who the persons with the cacophonous names to whose memory these mausolea were built? the east, which ever opposes the type to the individual, leaves so little for busy history to explore. at a time when dante was composing the divine comedy, and when the italian cities were commencing to throb with a new life of which every impulse is reflected both in literature and in art, architects, whose names soon perished, were erecting these monuments to princes of whom the names alone remain. what little may be gleaned from the sources at my disposal of the history of akhlat, may be summarised in the following short account. the place is first known under the name of khlath, and as an important armenian town. literature thus confirms the surmise which is readily suggested by the little chapel in the gorge at madavantz. indeed, one feels that this village of caves is perhaps the oldest of these ancient sites, like the crypt upon which in europe has risen the edifice of some gothic cathedral, but which once served as a druids' shrine. the shrine still remains; but the churches and monasteries have disappeared which, even as late as the end of the thirteenth century, were flourishing at akhlat. [241] but the city does not appear to have again come into armenian possession after its conquest by the arabs during the era of the caliphs. its close vicinity to the kurdish mountains and to the passage of bitlis explains the long sequence of mussulman rule. the byzantine empire, however, was successful in wresting it from the mohammedans, but only for a short time. it paid tribute to leo vi., a successor of the cæsars (a.d. 886-911); [242] and it was annexed to the empire under basil the second (in 993). but it fell to the seljuk turks in the eleventh century, from whose hands it passed into those of the merwanids, a line of kurdish princes which had arisen from the debris of the caliphate, and whom the seljuks had dispossessed of their seats about diarbekr. [243] the rule of these kurds appears to have been so harsh that they were driven out by the inhabitants; a warrior of turkish descent, who had been the slave of the seljuk governor of marand in azerbaijan, was called in as their prince. this individual, by name sokman, founded a so-called seljuk dynasty, which, under the pompous title of shahs of armenia, reigned at akhlat for upwards of a hundred years (1100-1207). [244] they were succeeded by the ayubids, descendants of the renowned saladin, and of kurdish extraction. the great siege of akhlat by the sultan of kharizme (khwarazm) falls within this period. the event still forms the centre of the slight historical knowledge which is possessed by the least uneducated of the present inhabitants. they attribute to it the present condition of the walls. after two attempts which were unsuccessful, the sultan made desperate efforts to reduce this strong place. twenty siege machines were brought against it from the side of the sea; and, so complete was the investiture, that the besieged were compelled to kill their dogs for food. it was at last taken by storm (in a.d. 1229). but the triumph of jelal-ud-din was not of long duration; his successes aroused the alarm of the seljuk sultan of iconium; and the bloody battle of akhlat at once decided the fate of his prize and sounded the death-knell of the kharizmian empire. the overthrow of that empire by the mongols afforded a passage to these savage hordes towards the south. they became masters of the city in 1245. we are informed that they made it over to a georgian princess, who had married a son of one of the shahs of armenia. [245] to this period are due the mausolea which we still admire, and some of which appear to have been erected to princes of mongol origin. my authorities throw no light upon the point. i am not aware that nughatay, or hasan agha, or the son of saughur are known to history. they preserve equal silence upon the period which produced the tomb of bayindar, master of the sword and of the pen. but we can scarcely doubt that he was a chieftain of the turkoman horde of the white sheep into whose possession the greater part of the country had passed during the progress of the fifteenth century. [246] akhlat was incorporated in the ottoman dominions under sultan suleyman the first in a.d. 1533-1534. [247] that the place continued to prosper after the catastrophe of the great siege by the sultan of kharizme is attested not only by the monuments which have been described, but also by the evidence of books. it was known to abulfeda at the end of the thirteenth century as a flourishing town, which he compares to damascus. a century later, it is described by bakoui as one of the principal cities of armenia. its decline appears to date from the commencement of the sixteenth century, though the district no doubt derived a certain glamour from the erection of the fortress on the shore. [248] chapter xvii our sojourn in the crater of nimrud july 16.--it was half-past two in the afternoon before our preparations could be completed, the pack-horses having already started with their loads. our orchard looked untidy, in spite of the care which had been taken to preserve its freshness from the usual litter of a camp. still the old imam was profuse of gratitude, his wizened face relaxing into a smile which vexed his muscles to produce. good-bye to our delicious home, and to our two blue-breasted friends! their loves have already ripened, and their young will soon be fledged. journeys many, and various homes, and different fates await us--fragments all of universal matter and soul. but when we sink at last upon the lap of nature, may her bosom reward the constancy of her own devoted lover with the perfume of the memory of this home! our course was directed past the iki kube and across the ravine towards nimrud. not a ripple awoke the vivid greens and azures of the lake upon the pallor of the surface of pale turquoise. the light was already mellowing as we approached the tomb upon the headland, throwing the proportions into relief with delicate shadows, and enhancing the natural tints of the pink volcanic stone against the background of restful blue. before us, upon the horizon, the grassy circle of the gigantic crater filled the landscape of the west (fig. 185, and plan). descending into the delta, we forded the two streams and rose up the opposite cliff side. the more westerly of the pair approaches the alluvial flat by a fine cascade over a ledge of lava. these lavas are seen to have followed the course of the valley, as it expands before you towards the north-west. a similar feature was observed in the ravine of madavantz. it proves that these valleys are older than the lava, which must have poured down them in a very liquid condition. from the high land, over which we were again making, and which is here covered with pumice sand, we obtained a view of bilejan. but our attention was soon diverted by the picturesque situation of a large village on our left hand. a rapid if only momentary change in our surroundings had taken us by surprise. it is due to a bed of dark, glassy lava, perhaps an ancient flow from nimrud, or from a fissure about its base. a deep stream, which is crossed by a bridge, eats its way through the hard rock, and descends by several waterfalls to a lagoon within the bay. the village is placed at some little distance from the shore of the lake, upon a platform of lava on the right bank of the stream. it possesses two small churches, which are evidently very old. on the outskirts, which we crossed, was a small field, planted with marrows, an unusual luxury in this neighbourhood. the inhabitants are all, i believe, armenians. but karmuch and its black valley, with the willows and the waterfalls, were but an incident--and the last incident--in the scene. an almost uniform plain, of very shallow gradient, stretched from all sides towards the crater in the west. covered at first by pumice, a brown lava comes to the surface, and extends to the actual wall of the circular mass. dry watercourses seam the entire region, which, however, is so even in its general character, that it would almost seem to have once been covered, up to the base of the crater, by the waters of the lake. at first the soil is barren, supporting only some burnt herbage; in such surroundings we sank to the trough of an extensive depression, in which is situated a deserted cemetery of some size. but when the lava is reached the vegetation commences, and continues to the foot of the higher seams. the spangled blossoms of atraphaxis, which i had not seen since my first journey, were conspicuous, but only here and there. the prevailing flower was a large forget-me-not, almost the size of a little bush; and, later on, a wild pea, pink and white. the higher we rose the more frequent became patches of standing corn, though by whom planted it was difficult to conceive. our people said they belonged to a distant armenian village at the foot of the crater, called seghurt or teghurt. the soil, where exposed by the plough, was a rich brown. small blocks of obsidian, coal-black in hue, were scattered over the grass. now and again a tortoise waddled over the sand. so we rode for a distance of many miles, until the wall of the crater rose like a rampart above our heads. we had reached an elevation of 6880 feet, or of over 1000 feet above the level of lake van. after a short halt, we led our horses up the slope, which has a gradient of 12°. it was covered with grass, and whole beds of wild pea. these sides of the crater are seamed with deep gullies, which display in section the lava-flows. the dark green obsidian of the uppermost beds was glittering in the sun. a direct ascent of twenty minutes brought us to the surface of a natural terrace, at a height of 7900 feet. we were surprised to find a well-used track, making use of this terrace to reach the summit of the circular wall. less astonishment was aroused by the presence there of a troop of cavalry; they had come to meet us from their camp within the crater. for more than a week, both cavalry and infantry had been patrolling this strange place, in anticipation of our visit. it is indeed probable that, without these extraordinary precautions, we should have found it impossible to carry on our work. that we were able to go where we pleased, whether in or around the crater, we owe to the kindness of the local authorities, and, in particular, to the late vali of bitlis. our excellent friend, the kaimakam of akhlat, personally accompanied us, and remained with us during our stay. the view from this terrace over the landscape of the east is one of the most inspiring that could be conceived. the western inlets of lake van, with their long promontories and varied outline--with the precipitous barrier of the kurdish mountains rising along the one shore, and from the other the fabric of sipan--are perhaps the most beautiful portion of the inland sea. they scarcely figure upon existing maps. certainly when you rise above them, and the expanse of the water is spread beneath you, and sipan emerges free of all lesser heights--while as yet their essential detail has not been lost by distance, but the vast prospects, which they lack, have been regained--these western inlets are the pride of the scenery of lake van. the setting sun sheds a mellow light upon the great volcano, robed in snow, upon the white summits of the kurdish range, upon the dim outline of varag. around the field of pale water are shed a thousand delicate hues, over peak and dome, and buried garden and arable. we can still see the lonely tomb upon the headland. on the opposite coast we see surb, fairest of little bays; the steep cliffs behind garzik; the arms of the sheikh ora crater, almost encircling the lake admitted to its inmost core. such is the landscape--so full of light and most ethereal colour--that has dazzled the eye during the ascent of the rampart. we ride on, along the terrace, with the uppermost slope on our right hand. it has a gradient of about 17°, and is largely covered up with white pumice sand. the track worms its way to a fork in the outline, which we reach in about ten minutes. it is just after six o'clock. the ground falls away, and a scene expands before us which mother earth, repentant of her orgies, has acted wisely in surrounding with a wall. the whole circumference of the gigantic circle towers around us, the vaulted slopes of the outer sides breaking down with precipitous cliffs, which, in some places, attain a height of over 2000 feet above the rubble at their base. the impression of height and steepness is accentuated by the lighting--the sun setting behind the crater. the same circumstance increases the weirdness of the vast spaces of the interior, with their multitude of chaotic forms. flatness is the prevailing characteristic of the bottom of the basin--but the surface has been blown out by subterranean explosions, or sunk into deep pits, or flooded with viscous lavas, oozing up, and cooling into comb-shaped crags. here it is a shapeless hill covered with white volcanic dust; there a lava stream, resembling rocks from which the tide has receded, that compels a large circuit from point to point. the coarse herbage has already been burnt by the sun, and its hues assimilated to the volcanic sand. these ragged yellows intermingle with the sombre lavas; and the only touch of beauty in this hell of nature is a little piece of blue at its furthest side. it is just a glimpse that we obtain of the principal lake. but what is the meaning of these many paths which seam the interior, arguing a considerable traffic to and fro. are there villages in the crater? we have never heard of any; we are assured that none exist. not a fire, no light is anywhere visible; but the tracks are broad, and have all the appearance of being regularly used. we feel surprise and express it to the kaimakam. he answers naïvely that kurds come here now and then. after a short halt, the whole party defiles down the narrow path--zaptiehs, cavalry, a detachment of infantry. looking backwards, it is a long, thin line from base to summit, the number of horses making an imposing array. arrived at the foot of the wall, we skirt the cliff for some distance in a north-westerly direction. it is our object to find some shade for our camp. but in this search we become involved in some deep ravines, covered with groves of aspen and birch. juniper conceals the hollows in the rocky surface, and adds to our difficulties in the failing light. none of the trees are of sufficient height for our purpose; and the kaimakam entreats us to avoid these wooded ravines, which are, he says, the favourite haunt of bears. they descend to the shore of the warm lake. at last we espy a clearing, a kind of platform, free of brushwood, yet close to the aspen groves. it overlooks, at a considerable elevation above it, the mirror of a fresh-water lake. the peaceful water fills the whole western segment of the crater. great, black masses in the heights about us intensify the darkness; they are composed of obsidian, pure, and black as jet. on a tiny promontory of the opposite shore a shepherd's fire starts from the shadows. failing shade, it is just the site for an encampment, and here we erect our tents (fig. 186). the morning breaks serene and clear; we have slept, as usual, with our tent open upon one side. it has been chilly during the night; but the temperature rises with great rapidity as the sun mounts above the rim of the crater. a charming landscape is framed within the opening of the green canvas, receiving the mellow light from behind. beyond the foreground of quivering aspens and white-stemmed, tremulous birches, the eye rests upon the transparent surface of the lake. the opposite segment of the circle of cliffs is mirrored in the water with all the wealth of detail which they possess. where these images cease, the surface is blue, like any other lake in the recesses of the mountains. we miss the changing effects and splendour of colour, characteristic of the lake of van. we descend through the groves to the margin of the water, to take our morning's bathe. the declivity is pretty steep, and there is a difference of level of 300 feet between our camp and the lake. the wood is still cool and fresh. tall stalks of flowering yellow mullein rise within it; and the prevailing greenness is relieved by patches of pink from the rosebay willow-herb, or of pale salmon from clusters of poppies. it seems quite a nursery for a variety of insects, this crater of nimrud. last evening, as we arrived, the bushes were dotted with sleeping butterflies, reminding us of the appearance of those shreds of coloured cotton which are affixed by devout pilgrims to the shrubs round their sacred place. this morning the air is all hum and bright wings; we notice the swallow-tail in abundance, the marbled white, some clouded yellows, a multitude of fritillaries, a few tortoiseshells. the water is pure as crystal; but it feels cold, having a temperature of 64° fahrenheit. to the taste it scarcely differs from ordinary water, although we thought it was at once more pleasant and more bracing to the skin. it is evidently increasing in level. many of the trees along its margin are submerged. we saw no fish, only some small leeches and fresh-water shrimps. if only one had a boat, and could take soundings, and could cross to the opposite shore! it is probably very deep. the walls of the crater are so precipitous, that one cannot walk along their base. nor is it possible to reach their summit, except on the eastern side of the great circle, in which we occupy a fairly central position. it is therefore necessary to make a very long detour when we wish to visit any point on the west of the crater. from our platform we see the worn tracks in all directions. yet not a single kurdish tent, no shepherd, no wayfarer can we descry in the wide landscape of the volcanic basin. we observe paved holes in the ground, where it is evident that bread has recently been baked. there are stone enclosures for penning cattle. more and more clearly we realise that the crater must be inhabited, and that this floating population have decamped at the approach of the soldiers. they will return the moment their backs are turned. indeed the place has the worst reputation as a harbour of lawlessness; and the turkish government might well have disclaimed responsibility for our safety in a spot so remote and wild. they deserve our gratitude for what they have done. have all quarry left the haunts of the great hunter, whose name is attached to one of the most remarkable among the mountains of the world? one of our party is prepared to swear that he saw two bears in the dusk of evening; they trotted away at his approach. and indeed, one night, i myself was awakened by something rummaging between the outer and the inner roofs of our tent. there are no dogs here; was it a bear? i rose, but could discover nothing--only the fact that our sentries were in a dead sleep. at nightfall our escort light extensive bonfires, and sing the wailing love-songs of the east. at intervals the bugle sounds; then there rises a loud cheer. the bugle, the cheers, the leaping flames, the tremulous chantings--even our watchmen are not proof against the contrast with such excitement of the heavy stillness of the midnight hours. and perhaps the bears have joined the brigands in taking to flight. for eight whole days we remained upon the mountain, busily employed in examining the crater and its surroundings, and in making a careful plan. we had been joined by captain elliot and mr. monahan, her majesty's consuls respectively at van and bitlis. captain elliot was desirous of making use of this favourable occasion in order to study nimrud. he gave us most valuable assistance in measuring the crater; and while he and oswald were engaged with our telemeter within the basin, i was reading with the prismatic compass from one point to another along the summit of the cliffs. by the time their labours were completed, i had prepared a drawing of the interior, as well as of some of the features of the crater walls. [249] in delicious air, under a warm sun, yet always tempered by a cool breeze, my portion of the task was a pure pleasure. on the other hand, my companions looked fatigued in the evening. when my turn came for work inside the crater, i readily understood the cause. from noon to three o'clock the conditions were most exhausting. the sun flamed above our heads, and the rock reverberated under our feet. refreshment came when the wind rose, but it was in the nature of a strong draught. on one occasion i let fall a lighted match by accident; it set fire to a whole side of the central hill. our people and the soldiers cut down branches and made arbours; but, even so, they suffered during the heat of the day. our cook implored me to move camp, and not deprive his wife and children of their sole support. if only the floating population of the place would allow the little trees to grow into wood! but they need firing more than shade. the shade temperature was never excessive--some 80° to 85°. and the nights were cool, necessitating a double blanket. when we arrived, there still remained a patch or two of last winter's snow within the wide area of the interior. the commanding position, the imposing dimensions, the remarkable preservation of the nimrud crater cannot fail to arouse the curiosity of the traveller, as he sees it from afar or passes it by. in summer it is a circle of grassy cliffs with a vaulted outline; during winter and autumn, when the higher levels are early robed in snow, it is a startling presence against the sky (see fig. 145, p. 142). from any point you command but a small portion of the vast circumference, which, measured upon our plan, amounts to 14 1/2 miles. of unequal height, the edge of the basin is most elevated upon the north, where at two points it attains an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet. it is lowest upon the east and west; in either quarter the outline dips to a level of 8100 feet. but the circle is nowhere broken; the rim of the caldron remains intact, although worn down and, in places, chipped. with two great depressions on either side, the lake of van (5600 feet) and the plain of mush (4200 feet), such a presence fills the landscape and engrosses the eye. nor is the imagination disappointed when the interior of the crater is seen for the first time. i have already described the impression which that view produced upon us, entering it from the east. the lake fills almost the whole of the western half of its area, at a level of 7656 feet. the remaining portion consists of older lava streams, covered with pumice, and of some more recent, which bristle with sharp crags. the eastern shore of the lake is deeply indented, and the volcanic matter has cooled in the form of high banks. the figure described by the walls of the crater is almost exactly circular, the diameter being greatest along an east-north-east line, or between the fork, where we first entered the basin, and the passage in on the west (c and m on plan). the distance between these points is nearly 5 miles (8500 yards). nimrud is therefore one of the largest perfect craters in the world. [250] the period during which it seethed with a lake of molten matter, which overflowed into the lower levels on every side, must date far beyond the limits of history. at the present day not a wreath of smoke ascends from the volcano; though at times a little landslip sends the fine sand into the air, with much the same appearance as a cloud. but the student of volcanic phenomena could not select a better example of the successive stages of eruptive activity. in an earlier stage we must suppose the walls of the crater somewhat higher, and the area considerably narrower which they enclosed. the earliest lavas, in the case of nimrud, were of an acid and viscous description (rhyolitic augite-andesites); and, as often as they rose above the lip of the caldron, they did not flow very far. but the later basaltic lavas had a larger extension; and to them is due, in no small measure, the plateau on the east of tadvan, which acts as a dam to the lake of van. the molten lava surged against the precipices which confined it, and gradually wore them back. the work of enlargement was advanced by violent explosions, which were principally directed against the western and eastern sides of the volcanic basin. the uppermost and steepest portions of the wall were, on these two sides, completely blown away. this epoch in the life of the volcano, the storm and stress of a tumultuous youth, was followed by the gradual subsidence of its energies. the streams of lava were confined to the interior of the crater, and the deeper portion came to be covered with a lake. it was perhaps at this period that were produced the little craters which figure on the outer slopes of the principal caldron, roughly along meridional lines. such minor points of emission were also formed within that caldron, and from them proceeded some of the older flows which cover its floor. explosions again occurred; but their effects were only local. they blew away portions of the little craters, and sent up showers of dust, which, falling to the ground, cloaked the surface of the lava streams. the latest and moribund stage is represented by those bosses of lava which form such a conspicuous feature. the viscous matter welled up along old lines of weakness, and from the chimneys of the little craters. one of these bosses divides a small warm lake from the main sheet of water; others form little peninsulas in the principal lake (c, d, e). they have all the appearance of being fairly recent, and they are not yet overgrown with wood. finally one may mention some extensive flows of cinder, about the base of the little crater on the outside of the mountain, on the north of the circle of cliffs. they might have issued a few months ago. to these various manifestations of the expiring forces of the volcano is due the present weird and troubled aspect of the interior, which formed the basis of our first impression. the little wood is confined to the neighbourhood of the lake; the remaining portion is barren and rugged. a high hill, covered with pumice, and about in the centre of this region, affords an admirable standpoint from which to survey the whole (l on plan). the little lakes which figure on the plan are due to the melting snows. i doubt whether you would find a spring of good, fresh water; we all drank the water of the lake. the warm lake is situated beneath the escarpment of the wall on the north, and is almost contiguous with the principal sheet of water (a). its level is about the same. but it differs from the other lagoons in respect of its colour, which, owing to the abundance of vegetation in its vicinity, is a yellow-green, resembling an english village pool. it is said to possess healing properties; but this i should be inclined to doubt. oswald, who waded about with unflagging curiosity, hunted out the several emissions of bubbles. their intermittent nature reminded us of similar phenomena in the shallows of lake van. perhaps the gas is merely due to decaying vegetable matter upon the bottom, and the temperature principally to the powerful effect of the sun's rays. the water in this lake, as in the big one, is rising in level, a fact which is probably due to the increased action of mineral springs. it is flat and mawkish to the taste. i should say that it might be possible to ride round the edge of the crater within a space of seven or eight hours. but the outline is so uneven, and the ground in places so difficult, that, at the best, it would prove a very hard day's work. we devoted considerable portions of several days to making the circuit, revisiting certain of the most important points. the ride is so remarkable, that i propose to follow it in some detail. the changing scenes which you overlook from a moderate height, from choice positions, among immediate surroundings of the grandest order, are nothing less than the geography of this part of asia, outspread before you beyond the skill of maps. the large feature, the leading motive of the immense landscape is the likeness, and yet the contrast, between the two great depressions on the west and east of the lofty stage upon which you stand. both are bounded on the south by the long barrier of the kurdish mountains; both oppose to that deep belt of serried ridges expanses of perfectly even surface. but, while the one dazzles the eye with its splendour of outline and brilliance of colouring, the other is always dim, grey, vague, and unseizable. neither view is ever lost for very long. even while you are in possession of the long perspective of the plain of mush, stretching to the horizon with a wealth of subdued detail, like the nave of some great cathedral in the west, between the crags in the opposite quarter, through some fork in the outline, the blue lake, the point of a promontory, a glimpse of sipan may still be seen. let us start from the point at which we entered the crater, from a level of 8150 feet (c on plan). it will be early in the morning, when the sky is flaked with cloud--beds of vapour, grey and white, scarcely concealing the field of blue, and unmoved by a breath of wind. proceeding northwards along the wall of the crater, we rapidly ascend. our horses' hoofs sink in the powdery pumice sand, which is held together in places by bushes of flowering spiræa, and by tufts of grass, among which a small species of campanula hangs its pretty little violet bells. the pumice tells the story of the violent explosions to which the present aspect of the crater is due. they have enlarged the circumference of the walls of the basin; and their effect is clearly visible from the interior as one looks to the side of the wall up the edge of which we now ride. whereas the beds of lava on the north and south walls, which are the most lofty, are seen in section as perfectly horizontal sheets, on this north-eastern wall, as well as upon the face of the corresponding cliff on the west, they have a downward slope. it is obvious that all the layers at the time of emission must have been horizontal around the original crater rim; and the pronounced obliquity of the beds on the western and eastern sides is due to their being exposed by explosive agency at a point where they had commenced to descend to the surrounding plains. the underlying lava is of the usual description, a rhyolitic andesite with a thin selvage, or upper surface, of obsidian, which shines like jet in the sun. the basaltic lavas, with their cloak of pumice, ease the gradient of the slope towards the plain in the direction of akhlat; but the explosion has produced a steepness up which the horses are obliged to zigzag, in making north, along the edge of the cliff. a turn outwards discloses the harmony of the landscape of lake van; a turn inwards the mystery of the scene within the crater. the higher we rise, the more abruptly the outer slope of the wall sinks to the plains about its base. the pumice disappears; the lava gets the upper hand. after a climb of some duration, we reach the summit of the wall on the north, at a point which is almost immediately above the hot lake (b). our elevation is now 9750 feet; and this lofty level is continued, with little intermission, for some distance towards the west. the greatest eminence of the cliff stands back from the lip of the crater, say at an interval of 80 yards from the point described. here, among huge blocks of reddish-brown rock, i take the boiling-point. the mean of this reading with another, registered on a subsequent day, gives a result of 9900 feet. we are therefore standing on the highest pinnacle of the whole circumference. pinnacle and slope are free of snow; but snow would lie at this season were it not for the steepness of the slope of lava. the lava does not appear to have extended much beyond the foot of the immensely lofty crater wall. beyond some broad-shouldered bastions, we look down into the plain south of lake nazik; we range the shores of that lonely lagoon. not a tree can be discerned in that wide landscape; no strip of verdure fringes the margin of the blue water; scarcely a patch of cultivation features the plain. the block of limestone hills between us and the dome of sipan, forming the coast of lake van, recess away behind akhlat towards lake nazik; and, from this height, one might suppose that the level of the plain below us were continued to the borders of the inland sea. the conspicuous mountain, besides sipan, is the rugged mass of bilejan, rising to a sharp-edged ridge. the outlines in the north, khamur and bingöl, remained misty during the whole of our stay. but the delicate bedding of cloud, which may collect towards morning, soon gives way, as the day advances, to a sky of the purest blue. west of this position, the rim of the crater flattens, although its immediate edge is much broken, apparently by earthquakes, the fissures in the surface of rock necessitating detours outward, towards the lower levels. we are approaching the little crater on the outside of nimrud, of which mention has already been made. the wall still maintains its considerable altitude, the height of an eminence of huge boulders, by which we pass, being again 9750 feet. the little crater is situated at some distance north of the main basin, but before the ground falls away to the plain. indeed we are now in the neighbourhood of the extensive flows of basaltic lava which are such a feature on the north-west side of the great crater. such is the insignificance of the object for which we are making, that it might well pass unobserved from the edge of the cliff. but the curiosity is aroused by a long, low ridge, like a volcanic dike, which, commencing almost at that edge, is produced at right angles, in the direction of the plain. realising the feature, one observes that the field of lava on the margin of the cliff is raised up into a saddle along a meridional line. a little further northwards, and at a lower level, pasty rhyolitic lavas have oozed up from long, narrow fissures along the eastern base of the ridge. at its extreme end there is a mass of the same lava; and at that point the ground breaks away towards the lower region. slanting off from the edge of the cliff in a north-north-westerly direction, we reach the eastern base of the low ridge. it is flanked on this side by deep fissures in the surface of the ground--gloomy chasms, partially filled with perpetual snow. towards their upper or southernmost end there is a small circular pit, from which protrudes a boss of rhyolitic lava. a little lower down the several fissures combine, and form a long trough. this trough has been partially filled with a mass of lava, which stands up with rugged crags. from the base of this lava an extensive flow of cinders blackens the ground for a considerable distance towards north-east. the trough or principal fissure again splits up into minor cracks, as it reaches the elevated platform of the terminal crater. in a manner exactly similar to the upwelling of lava within the fissure, the little crater has been filled up with the same pasty matter. this forms the mass at the extreme end of the meridional ridge. the walls of the basin are beautifully modelled, the shape being preserved by a pavement of basaltic lava. the pool of rhyolitic lava is, of course, a much later feature. like the same phenomena in the interior of the great crater, which are all due to the expiring forces of nimrud, the appearance of the mass is that of a boss. one cannot fail to be impressed with the contrast which is presented between the smooth and rounded sides of this almost circular basin, and the monstrous pile which has arisen in their midst. we cross to the further or western side of the terminal crater, observing that its walls are fractured by the lava on the north and south. we descend to another flow of cinders. hard by is a little kurdish yaila, at the foot of an extensive patch of snow. we enquire whether they can tell us when these cinders were emitted; for they might have issued a year ago. they answer that they have always known them there. leaving the hollows, we regain the neighbourhood of the cliff, which is bordered, in this quarter, by a broad field of basaltic lava. we make our way over this field, in a south-south-westerly direction, towards an eminence of the crater wall on its westerly side. a conical hump rises from the lava at no great distance from the edge of the caldron, and forms a conspicuous landmark, as well from the interior as from the summit of the cliffs (o). the field is extremely even, being composed of a pavement which suggests the appearance of a military road, fallen into disuse. this characteristic is, of course, due to the columnar lava. in places this even surface is overlaid with cindery blocks. patches of grass occur, from which the snow has just melted; these will be browsed by a dark flock with their kurdish shepherd. at first the direction of flow which was followed by the lava is towards the region we are leaving behind; but a little further on it inclines towards the plain of mush. in the neighbourhood of the conical eminence we come across some blocks of obsidian, which are probably due to the last violent explosion. from the summit of our landmark all these features become clear; we overlook these extensive fields of basalt. judging from the manner in which they have flowed, it would, at least, appear probable that at one time in the history of the volcano the wall was extremely high on the side of the plain of mush. indeed one is surprised at the limited amount of matter which has been outpoured in the direction of that great depression. the conclusion is suggested that the explosion which produced the lake blew away the upper portion of the wall on the west. this conical eminence marks an independent point of emission, which vomited lava after the wall had been thus reduced. the flows are seen to have branched out in all directions, even towards the present edge of the crater. this eminence is the second conspicuous pinnacle of the circle, as seen from immense distances in the northerly regions. we can see the two summits of the bingöl rampart, while bilejan is fully exposed. the long perspective of the plain of mush is outspread before us, flanked on the south side by the base of the kurdish mountains, and, on the other, by a line of heights which recall the appearance of the block of limestones between the plain of melazkert and the lake of van. to that broad belt of heights the lavas descend with precipitous escarpments, and also to the plain. the dim surface of the level ground is seamed with rivulets, which, towards evening, flash in the light. sheets of light in the distance represent the course of the murad, after it has entered the plain. the head of the depression is remarkable for a pronounced terrace along the foot of the heights, perhaps denoting the level of a former lake. [251] from this pinnacle, which has an altitude of 9676 feet, we arrive, by a rapid descent, at the fork in the outline which corresponds to the dip in the opposite wall on the east, whence we started on our ride. the elevation of this fork is almost exactly the same, 8140 feet. we are here on the longest axis of the circular ellipse (c-m). a path enters the crater from the direction of the plain of mush, and debouches on to a little promontory at the foot of the cliffs, the only projection from their abrupt sides. the promontory, which is covered with scrub, is probably due to a local flow of lava; a few little islands are placed at its extremity. it would not be possible to make use of this entrance to reach the high ground on the east of the lake, owing to the steepness of the walls on either side and the absence of any beach. the outline again rises on the south of this passage, although the outward slope is fairly well rounded. but after crossing some bold cliffs, over ground flooded with tuff, you sink for the second time to a considerable hollow (i-k, alt. 8700 feet). this depression on the south-western side of the crater wall is remarkable for a somewhat singular phenomenon. from the edge of the crater you overlook a grassy terrace, some one hundred feet down the cliff-side. the slope of this step-like prominence is inclined upwards from the face of the cliff, so that the edge of the terrace is not much lower than the edge of the crater. it is probable that it represents a piece of the crater wall which has slipped down into the lake. along the middle of the terrace runs a ridge of lava, about parallel to the cliff. we have already passed several of such dikes. rising gradually, we soon leave the terrace behind us, and our attention is directed to the interesting features on the outside. below us, from the eastern margin of the plain of mush, rises a volcanic mass of imposing proportions, almost flat and slightly hollow at the top. a number of little conical summits emerge from the platform, and the mountain is thickly covered with brush. the slopes on all sides, except towards nimrud, appear extremely abrupt. it is separated by a little upland plain from the sides of the crater; and it is clear that the mass has acted like a dam to the flows of molten matter. it has turned them in the direction of tadvan, as well as towards the plain of mush. my people confirmed the name under which i have already made it known (ch. vii. fig. 150). it is called the kerkür dagh. i have also alluded in a former place (ibid.) to the little parasite cone, high up on the outer wall of the crater on the south. passing it now from above, it looms much larger; and it is succeeded, lower down, by quite a series of volcanic vents. these are all in the same line with the more pronounced feature, and roughly in the same line with the dike and crater on the north of nimrud. rising always higher, we make our way with some caution along an edge which has become knife-like in character. indeed it is in places not more than 8 or 10 feet wide. on our left hand descend the vertical walls of the crater; on our right a slope of about 30° seems scarcely less precipitous to the eye. the lavas descend with bold bastions towards tadvan. the highest point on this side of the crater is on this edge; it has an elevation of 9430 feet. the view embraces the wild ridges of the kurdish mountains on the south, capped with snow on their topmost peaks. trees in a hollow and a winding road among the recesses of that barrier are recognised as marking the site of bitlis. below us lies the wooded platform of the kerkür dagh; the plateau of lava, between the plain of mush and the shores of the great lake, appears to shelve with gentle gradients towards those waters. we discern the verdure about the village of tadvan. in the north we may descry both summits of the bingöl ridge; while the dome of the kuseh dagh is a bold, vague presence in the sky. from this lofty portion of the crater wall the descent is rapid and continuous to the beds of pumice which cloak it up on the east. we again overlook the beautiful inlets of lake van. we avail ourselves of a track which leads from tadvan into the caldron (e), in order to reach our camp. the outline of the circle of cliffs again rises a little between this point and the track from akhlat. i have taken my reader a long ride, round the vast circumference of the crater--an excursion which, when presented in the form of a narrative, may be too tedious for his taste. let me therefore endeavour to present in a summary manner some of the conclusions which were engendered in our minds. faithful to the laws of eruptive volcanic agency, this huge crater has arisen on the margin of a great depression of the surface of the tableland. in spite of the considerable difference in their present elevation, the lake of van and the plain of mush may be regarded as parts of a single basin. indeed it is mainly due to the emissions of lava from nimrud that the lake is now separated from the plain. the region on the north of the crater is considerably higher, though in closer connection with the lake than with the plain. nature has produced this manifestation of violence in the stress of her effort to complete a harmonious design. the curving over of the great lines of mountain-making has resulted in this explosion of forces, usually under control. but as we make our way in silence beneath the stillness of the night, threading the chaos of tumultuous forms on the floor of the crater, we may yet reflect upon the relative insignificance of such violent action, even in a country where it has operated on so great a scale. the stratified rocks are seldom wholly absent in the landscapes, as they are wanting to the savage landscape of the nimrud caldron; and, when you think you are admiring the long train of a volcano, a closer inspection reveals slowly-built, sedimentary mountains, upon which the volcano has been reared. nature has preferred regularity of achievement, a quality reflected by the moral sense of man. [252] chapter xviii round nimrud by lake nazik july 25.--a sharp ride of an hour and a half brought us down from the crater to the village of tadvan. the descent is more continuous than on the side of akhlat; the outer slopes of the mountain are seared with deep gullies. crossing the orchards of the straggling settlement, we pitched our tents on the west of the village, upon the margin of a field of late-sown wheat. a line of well-grown willows, fringing the bank of a tiny stream, promised shade during the later hours of the day, when the sun should be at our backs. that welcome shade was indeed commencing to subdue the brilliance of the young corn while the canvas was being stretched. we looked out over the green field across the waters to the smiling landscape of the opposite shore. the curve of the little harbour of tadvan was turned towards us, backed by a lofty boss of rock. quite a number of picturesque craft were lying within it; but only one, so far as i know, was laden. she was carrying wood and charcoal from the bitlis district. the rest were doing nothing, many of the men having families here. all this time i had seen but a single sail upon the lake, besides that of captain elliot's boat. but sea-gulls there are, to give life to the waters, with their beautiful white wings. tadvan was in a state of commotion, or what passes as such, in a country where all spirit has been gradually extinguished among the population of armenian race. although this village is armenian, they did not hesitate to betray to the authorities four of their countrymen, who had taken refuge in their midst. these individuals appear to have been under the ban of the law, and, indeed, were alluded to as brigands. one never hears talk of kurdish brigands; though i have never met a kurd who was not more or less a brigand, nor an armenian who either justified or deserved the name. the notorious ali bey, police officer at bitlis, hurried to the scene. he surrounded the hut which harboured the men; fire was opened upon them, which they returned, and a zaptieh was shot. a villager, who tried to mediate, was killed. then ali bey collected straw, and set light to it, and literally burnt them out. i was told that all four succumbed. all this happened a day or two ago. i informed the kaimakam that i should like to kick the official if he would be so obliging as to come my way. when one is kindly treated by the authorities, one endeavours to avoid getting very angry, except before their face. we spent several days in the neighbourhood, making excursions, and mapping in these unmapped shores of lake van. the kaimakam was obliged to leave us and return to akhlat; we were sorry to part, having become mutually attached. the armenian villages of this district are evidently very old, and have probably existed from the dawn of history. one of the most flourishing is kizvag, which occupies a situation of ideal quality as a home of man. it is placed on the southern horn of a beautiful little bay, sheltered on the north by a bold promontory, from which rises a knife-like ridge. this ridge is composed of a lava which has welled up along a latitudinal fissure. one rides there over layers of lava and pumice, some of which show traces of having been deposited in water. the corn was already golden in the fields, very tall in the stalk and heavy in the ear. we had never seen finer crops. vines flourish along the base of the promontory; but a vineyard is a rare occurrence in these scenes. the air was always radiant and invigorating, in spite of the heat of the sun. kizvag is a considerable place; but the houses are the usual ant-hills. the dress of the people is gay. the women wear the embroidered aprons which are such a striking feature of their national dress; but the designs were finer than any we had seen. i endeavoured to purchase a few; but all the new ones were vastly inferior; it was only the old ones, now torn and faded, that showed any taste. it is the same in persia, and central asia--everywhere in the east. it is a fact for which one may discover explanations; but none appear altogether adequate. the lower slopes on the opposite shore of the lake are well wooded, and this pleasing landscape circles round towards tadvan. the wood is due to the character of the rock, a mica-schist, yielding a fertile soil. but higher up on the face of the range the hard marbles come to view, and, while their surface is well adapted to take the hues of the sky, it is inimical to all vegetation. about a hundred feet above the water, you perceive a well-marked terrace, denoting a former level of the lake. i have already remarked that the level is again rising; and the same occurrence, which was presented in so striking a manner at arjish (ch. iii. p. 30), is already threatening the village of kizvag. the hill of tadvan, at the promontory, is not volcanic, being composed of marble and mica-schist. it is less lofty and extensive than that of kizvag; the summit is crowned by the substructures of a ruined fort. this fort was erect and proud at the commencement of the sixteenth century. [253] nothing remains at the present day but a deep pit, which was perhaps a reservoir for water. the inhabitants of tadvan are in a deplorable condition, the women in rags, the children mostly naked. it was pitiable to see the women stretching out their arms towards us, imploring us to give them food. we distributed a little money. from tadvan we directed our course towards the head of mush plain across the volcanic plateau west of lake van. [254] our track conducted us past a projecting outwork of the opposite range, well wooded and consisting of mica-schist. the extremity towards nimrud is faced with lava. you mount gradually above the fertile surroundings of the lake to arid and, therefore, sterile ground. a few patches of burnt grass, some beautiful hollyhocks, with very large white flowers, are about the only vegetation which it supports. on the right hand rises the kerkür dagh, covered with flourishing brushwood, and, behind kerkür, the immense mass of the nimrud crater. in the opposite direction the barrier of the kurdish mountains is less bold and imposing than at other points. this is partly, no doubt, due to the flooding against them of volcanic matter. the plateau attains its highest level at about a third of the whole distance from the point where we gained its surface to the head of mush plain. the altitude by boiling-point was 6320 feet, or 680 feet above lake van. we were impressed by the fact that in the immediate neighbourhood of the kerkür the ground slopes towards that upstanding mass. and the broad valley, which we knew must contain the beginnings of the bitlis chai, was screened by a somewhat higher level of the field of lava. it may be that this is due to the lavas having swept round kerkür, leaving a slight depression at its southern foot. oswald rode off to investigate the material of the kerkür, and found it to consist of a mass of trachyte. the slopes are covered almost to the summit with talus, and it is evidently a very old volcanic boss. the plateau descends to the plain by two lower terraces, the descent being fairly gradual in each case. the kerkür is also screened by a bastion-shaped terrace of talus which sinks into the plain. i have already described this stage of our journey (ch. vii. p. 162); and i shall only pause to give some account of our visit to the pool of norshen, which i had omitted to examine during my first journey. about fifty yards west of the tomb of karanlai agha lies an almost circular pool. it is slightly embanked for the purposes of irrigation, and, in places, on its margin there are distinct vestiges of masonry. it is thirty-five yards in diameter; and, in the centre, did not appear to be much more than five feet deep. but our guide from the village believed it to be deeper, adding that it had recently drowned a bullock, which had ventured too far in. there is no trace of this pool having arisen in a crater, although the material, through which the spring wells up, is a tuff. the water is crystal-clear, and is furnished in abundance, giving rise to a little river. it is extremely pleasant to the taste, like water which has come from the chalk. it is cold too; for at 7 p.m., while the temperature of the air was 80° fahrenheit, that of the water was only 51°. the villagers believe that it is derived from the lake on nimrud. it is much more likely to be in connection with the springs of the chain on the south. the tomb exactly recalled those of the same period at akhlat; indeed it is of the same date. the upper portion has fallen into ruin. in the adjacent cemetery there are the same headstones with the honeycomb friezes which we admired about the site in the ravine at akhlat. a stork was standing on the topmost pinnacle of the crumbling edifice, of which the outline was clearly defined on the western sky. the great plain was veiled in haze, due to the intense heat. beyond the headlands and little promontories, the sun--a red orb--sank behind delicate beds of perfectly settled cloud. the situation of the pool of norshen is well adapted to serve as a standard of the elevation of the head of mush plain. tested by boiling-point, the level is 4630 feet, which represents a decline of 1000 feet from that of lake van. this difference in level is mainly responsible for a distinct change of climate; the plain of mush is quite a furnace in july. norshen itself, although high-seated above the floor of the depression, must be one of the hottest places in the plain. it is screened by the volcanic plateau and by the outworks of the great range, under the wall of which it lies. the level ground at its foot has been flooded with lava; and the pavement, thus formed, glows in the sun. there are a few shady trees on the outskirts of the village, but we were obliged to erect our tents in the open, for want of a suitable place among those groves. in the morning the heat became unbearable under canvas. the inhabitants are a surly, unmannerly set of people, all of kurdish extraction. the news of the death of the vali of bitlis had already reached them; and they were evidently quite out of hand. our zaptiehs--an abominable lot, sent from bitlis by the deceased governor--came near to exciting a serious affray. it did not promise well for the success of an excursion into the wildest districts, that those blackguard kurds at bitlis had poisoned the vali, and that our escort seemed as much pleased by the removal of the least vestige of discipline as the unruly people through whose country we were about to pass. july 30.--starting at eleven o'clock, we made our way across the plain towards the lofty block of heights by which it is confined upon the north. we could already see our track, showing white among the brushwood towards the summit of that long barrier. even at its upper end, the plain of mush is of considerable breadth, the distance, measured direct, between norshen and the foot of that parapet being about eight miles. two gently vaulted hills, standing close together, are conspicuous features in the plain. we reached the base of the largest and most easterly of the two in about three-quarters of an hour. oswald rode off at the canter to examine its composition, while we continued our course. he found it to consist of a cindery lava, the flows radiating outwards, especially towards north-east. it has therefore been an independent centre of emission. the ground which we had been crossing is not cultivated, from want of streams, and the slabby lava was aflame with sun. pushing our horses, we distanced the hill and were approaching the opposite confines of the plain, when i called a halt in the hamlet of göl bashi, the first that we had seen. it takes its name from a delightful spring that wells up in the village, with a temperature of only 55°. inasmuch as the stream was dry which passes morkh and norshen, this pool is perhaps entitled to be regarded as the source of the kara su, owing to the permanence of the water which it supplies. another such source is the pool beside the tomb. a little river collects below göl bashi, fed by this and by other springs. the plain is perfectly flat in that direction, and was green with cultivation. the adjacent farms belong to a bey in bitlis, who has built a good stone house for his steward in the hamlet. proceeding on our course, and when near the foot of the wall before us, we rose gradually over the surface of a flow of lava. the flow skirts the base of the opposite parapet for some distance towards the west. at the same time it radiates into the plain. it is strewn with blocks and small fragments of jet-black obsidian, which have come from the cliffs above. high up on the terrace, thus formed, is a grove of lofty oak-trees, by the side of water running down from the face of the cliff. a small kurdish hamlet nestles beneath them, and an ancient cemetery, buried in foliage. cattle and a flock of sheep were resting in the shade, the sheep panting, and the bullocks lolling their tongues. black goats, alert and elastic with life, browsed the lower shoots of the oaks. the ascent of the wall begins at this hamlet of karnirash, and took us over half-an-hour to complete. the face of the parapet was seen to be the side of a stream or streams of rhyolitic lava with the usual obsidian. they are overlaid, towards the summit, with a pavement of basaltic lava. these lavas have probably proceeded from nimrud; but at a time when the crater was in its infancy, and when its walls had not yet reached their ultimate height. for those walls towered high and abruptly above us, nor did we think that these lavas could have welled over from that lofty rim. how far west the emissions may extend it was impossible to determine exactly; but the appearance of the block in that direction, when we reached the summit, seemed to disclose, at no great interval, the stratified rocks. the upper slopes of the barrier are abundantly wooded, though only with dwarf oak. we were astonished at the great size and beauty of the hollyhock petals, large as clematis on our english garden walls. the hollyhock is the flower of the surroundings of nimrud, as the yellow mullein is the flower of bingöl. it flourishes on the plateau of tuff to which this pass leads over, blossoming white and, much more rarely, a purple pink. the pass has an elevation of 6950 feet or of 2300 feet above the plain. we soon lost the little wood as we proceeded over the plain of tuff in a north-north-easterly direction. nothing but the bare pavement, and here and there a patch of burnt herbage; and only those large white flowers to refresh the eye. on our right hand the vast crater, steeply contoured down towards us; before us bilejan, again exposed. but the stifling atmosphere of the trough behind us had given place to pleasant breezes, and we rode along gaily over the even ground. all of a sudden i hear shouts in the direction in which we are going; and, coming up, observe a group of men in fierce altercation by the side of a small drove of cattle. they prove to be one of our escort and another zaptieh, unknown to me; the rest are peasants, on foot. our man is threatening a peasant, bending over on his horse; his comrade has blood on his face. the fellow pays not the slightest heed to my peremptory orders; so i send for the zabet or officer of the company, in whom, however, owing to his fussiness and manifest cowardice, i have not the slightest confidence. the zabet, with his extravagant verbiage, does nothing better than inflame the matter; and the wretched wayfarer is on the point of being murdered when i seize his assailant and pull him off. the would-be murderer then faces round, and, as we are both on horseback, extricates himself and turns on me. in an instant he levels his rifle at my chest, and brings it to the cock. happily for me, my companions all ride up at the same moment, and force his arm up from behind. none of us can learn the cause of the dispute. i take the man on with the greatest reluctance, fearing he may do worse harm if allowed to rove. for some short time we had been skirting the immediate outworks of the nimrud mass; a new feature was introduced when these turned off to the east-north-east, and gave us space in the direction we were pursuing. before us lay a wide depression of the surface, the levels about us tonguing into that lower ground. the heights on the further side were of no great relative elevation, but they screened a considerable portion of the pile of bilejan, and they completely concealed lake nazik. we could see, at this distance, our track winding across them; they were evidently of volcanic origin. sipan now came in view; and those heights stretched across the horizon towards the heights on the west of sipan. the depression did not appear to have much westerly extension; but it was continued, mile after mile, towards the east. i can scarcely doubt that the drainage which collects within it finds its way into lake van. we forded a nice stream of crystal-clear water, flowing into the plain, along the base of nimrud. at this point we passed an extensive cemetery. perhaps there was a village in the immediate neighbourhood; but we saw no habitations as we rode across the plain. the trough of the shallow basin is followed by the course of a rivulet, which, at this season, had run dry. according to a single reading of the aneroid, it has an elevation of 6460 feet. the ground consists of a decomposed lava; nor did we observe lacustrine deposits, though one cannot doubt that this plain was once the bottom of a shallow lake. it was six o'clock before we reached the opposite heights, and commenced to mount the side of a ridge covered with a pavement of lava. but from the summit of this low vaulting we overlooked a second ridge, with a grassy valley of some breadth at our feet. not a glimpse as yet of the lake. after fording the stream in this hollow, which was flowing towards the plain, we rode through the armenian village of mezik, situated at the base of the second and principal ridge. a short ascent brought us to the slope on the further side, whence, at last, the long-hidden waters came to view. we had struck the lake close to its south-western extremity, towards which we lost no time in directing our course. at this upper end there is a marsh and a considerable stretch of alluvial soil, which, however, does not extend to the east of the beginnings of the lake. it was a tedious ride over stony slopes to the floor of these meadows; but still no village was in sight. mistrusting our escort, but without a guide, i hesitated for a moment whether to follow them up the valley towards the west. but one of them was so positive he knew well where the village lay, that i resolved to try him for a certain time. he proved to be in the right; but the light was already failing when we entered the kurdish settlement of nazik. it is situated out of view of the lake, on the right bank of a pleasant stream, which feeds the marsh along which we had passed. the ridge, against which it lies, is the same that we had crossed, and the same that we had seen from afar. it had first attracted our attention as we descended into the great depression, having a bold conical peak, a little west of the village. the people received us with marked coolness; and no sooner had we commenced to erect our tents by the side of the stream than they offered objections, and bade us remove to some other place. they said that our tent would face that of a great bey on the opposite margin of the water. i answered that i should place ours in such a way as to respect decency; but that, if it were a question of either party moving, it would better become the bey than us, who were his guests. this speech had a good effect; but supplies were not forthcoming, and, as usual, i summoned the mukhtar (head of the village). after much delay they bring me a lean greybeard, with sunken cheeks, beak nose, long yellow teeth and a cavernous voice. he laughs grimly when i address him as mukhtar. it is evident that these people hate the turks. july 31.--in the early morning our entire escort appear before the tent, headed by the zabet, whom i admit. he complains that the villagers refuse, for love or money, to supply food for themselves and horses. at the same time the five or six privates approach, and make use of threatening language towards me. realising how the matter stands, i endeavour to persuade the officer to get out of the place as quickly as possible with his men. he urges that we shall then be at the mercy of these kurds; i retort that i prefer it so than to be at his. he answers with some reason that to desert us might cost him his post; but i reply that he may regard himself as already cashiered should he dare to disobey my deliberate orders. a compromise is at length arrived at, under which he undertakes to dismiss his men, provided i will allow him to remain. he also begs that he may send the man who attempted my life back to the headquarters at bitlis. but this last proposal i refuse to entertain. after much palaver, they are all induced to take themselves off, with instructions to await us on the shore of the lake. the villagers, seeing them gone, and ashamed to abuse our confidence, at once adopt a much more friendly tone. the bey of nazik, a young man, brings his little brother with him, and converses with us in our tent. on the opposite bank, beyond the willows, lies the encampment of the older bey, who does not appear to belong to the village. his two large tents, of black goat-hair, are open on this side. the coarse canvas, with several supports and considerable span, descends within a few feet of the ground. at the bottom, a screen of reeds at once provides shade and a pleasant draught of air. similar screens divide the interior into compartments; in the centre sits the bey, an oldish man, who never smiles, by the side of a cradled baby which rarely remits its cries. a young woman, who may be his wife, or one among them, is engaged in swinging to and fro a large vessel of earthenware, which they use for making cheese. it was eleven o'clock before we again reached the corner of the lake. there we took the boiling-point. we found that the elevation was 6406 feet, or about the same as that of the depression which we had crossed on the previous day. the water tasted like very flat lake water. proceeding along the southern shore for some distance, we kept the ridge, over which we had ridden last evening, close up on our right hand. it had grown considerably lower and was dying away. it consists of a stream of lava from the little peak which has already been mentioned. further eastwards, the line of low heights is continued by what appears to be an independent, latitudinal volcanic ridge. the lake widens rapidly from the little bay at its westerly extremity, and describes, so far as we could judge from a hasty survey, a triangular figure of which the base is on the south, and the apex in an inlet of the northern coast. its greatest length is from west to east. the opposite shore appeared to consist of a block of heights in connection with those west of sipan, and of streams of lava, descending from bilejan. the wide stretch of sand along the shore may perhaps be regarded as an indication of a somewhat higher normal level during recent times. from a boss of dark lava, forming a promontory, we obtained a far-reaching view. we could see but a single village on the lake; and that settlement clustered on the extreme point of a little cape, just east of the one upon which we stood. it was jezirok, partly kurd and partly armenian, the only village, as we afterwards learnt, which is placed immediately upon these shores. about half-a-mile away, we overlooked an islet, white with the droppings of waterfowl. indeed it is a nursery for many varieties of this description, and was alive with wings and sharp cries. pelicans abound on lake nazik, swimming, singly, like swans, over the mirror of waters, or sweeping above our heads with rapid, shooting flight, in movements perfectly combined. there must be fish in plenty beneath that blue surface, which lends a touch of beauty to the dreary, yellow landscape, and derives enhancement from the distant snows of sipan. we now left the lake, and gained the further slope of the low ridge on the south, whence the view extends over the broad depression at the foot of nimrud. here we remained for some considerable time. while i was engaged in mapping, oswald made one of his beautiful drawings of the wondrous landscape before our eyes. the northern buttresses of the great crater towered up from the opposite margin of the level ground at our feet. we could plainly see the volcanic dike leaving the rim of the caldron, and bursting the northern wall of the little terminal crater. turning towards the east, the heights on that side of the lake displayed a number of conical forms. but the outline appeared unbroken, as it extended towards sipan. between it and the nimrud outliers we obtained a distant glimpse of the waters of lake van. our course was directed towards that vista, over the bare surface of the plain, which widens considerably; it is completely covered over with brown lava. it might be made a granary; yet it is now but little cultivated; and rarely were we deflected by a patch of standing corn from a course almost as straight as a bee-line. lake nazik was never in sight, although its waters find an outlet into the great lake. [255] we saw only a single village, at some distance on our left hand. low hills confine the plain upon the east, but a dip in the outline disclosed a deep ravine. the cleft, which was now dry, would give issue to the water collecting in the depression, which we now left behind. soon after crossing these heights, we entered the barren highlands on the north of akhlat. the lava, which is thickly covered with pumice sand, shelves away towards lake van. a little river which we forded, coming from the direction of lake nazik, must be the same that cascades into the delta below the site of the old city, and is perhaps derived from the lake. its water had exactly the same flat taste. on our right, in the direction of nimrud, we observed a broken-down crater, which has sent its principal flows to lake van. a little further on we descended into the ravine of akhlat, and crossed the stream within the hollow; and not long after we were again in our shady orchard, and in the society of the kaimakam. the old imam was there, squatting among some beanstalks, taking foretastes of paradise. his mad son was not long in coming, nor his scold of a daughter-in-law; while in the morning the pretty little girls made their appearance, slipping gracefully on their errands through the bush. but our home was no longer there; we felt as emigrants feel when their voyage is already prepared. i handed over my rascal zaptieh to the kaimakam, who consigned him to the prison. the rest of the crew, with their zabet, i dismissed. after resting a single day, we set out for adeljivas, along the shore of lake van. the ride was shorter than we expected, for the position of akhlat is wrongly placed upon the best existing maps. [256] chapter xix ascent of sipan august 2.--walking our horses all the way, we reached adeljivas in four hours, excluding stoppages. the track follows the shore of the lake the whole distance, and you never lose the expanse of waters. in fact, it is the base of the block of limestones on the west of sipan that you are skirting throughout the ride; although at first, and for some distance, the stratified rocks are superseded by intrusive material of igneous origin. these sombre heights are flanked by low foothills of purple conglomerate, which have been thrown into a succession of shallow folds, with an axis parallel to the shore. but as you approach adeljivas the igneous rocks give way, and the conglomerate thins out and disappears. the limestone meets the waters, which it tinges with its own white hue. hardened almost to the state of marble, it is in places full of corals. the scene becomes remarkable in the neighbourhood of the town, where cliffs of this description and of great elevation descend abruptly into the depths above which you ride. [257] where these recede and leave the shore, giving place to a wide alluvial strip at the foot of sipan, long concealed, is situated adeljivas. the castle clings to the cliff; the gardens clothe the alluvial soil. in other respects our journey was not, perhaps, noteworthy. besides tunus, we passed only a couple of hamlets the whole way. such oases of verdure--for the walnuts are especially fine--were much more rare than one would expect. but the district is unsafe; and it was patrolled by soldiers before we passed. this precaution was perhaps due to the presence by our side of the kaimakam of akhlat. his colleague of adeljivas came out to meet us, near the border of his administrative district. the promontories along this shore do not protrude far; but they are bold, and with several prongs or bluffs. they offer no difficulties to the road. lagoons have been forming on a large scale within the bays, due probably to the rise in level of the lake. passing through the enclosure of the ruinous walled city, which recalled the kala or ottoman fortress at akhlat, we encamped among the gardens of the more modern quarter. [258] the trees are well grown, and provided us with deep shade. at least one considerable stream descends from the interior; the oasis is of some extent. early next day we made our way in the lightest of clothing from our tents in the heart of the orchards to the margin of the shore. it was some little distance, but the walk was all that we could wish. the morning is the time to enjoy the picturesqueness of any eastern town. there will be shadows to give relief to the scene, and light sufficient to bring out the colours. the deep white dust upon the lanes has not yet been disturbed. draughts of freshness from the groves and gardens keep the air sweet and cool. such a straggling lane or two, between low walls of mud and stone, took us past an old mulberry tree studded with red fruit, and a fountain gushing forth by the side of the way. so we came to a little valley, opening out towards the lake, and harbouring a swift and shallow rivulet, black with the shadows of an avenue of willows. a mass of foliage, on either side of the adjacent meadows, screened the pleasant place from fortress and suburb, except for a glimpse of the citadel in the west. we stripped on a narrow margin of pebble-strewn shore, regretting our purple rocks at akhlat. the water is shallow for some distance out; but, in spite of the embouchures of the irrigation channels, it was most intensely blue. we swam forth, enjoying the buoyancy of the waves, with the distant barrier of the kurdish mountains before our eyes. their bare escarpments towered up to their crown of snow. in the reverse direction the landscape was already flooded with light, and the foliage merged into the general brilliancy of tone. a conspicuous object was the ruinous citadel, proudly placed against the cliffs--the single witness in the scene to a period of human masterfulness in direct contrast to the actual insignificance of the human element in this fair and richly-gifted land. when we returned there were two wooden couches with leather seats, and a couple of chairs, of similar pattern and equal shabbiness, arrayed upon the sward. these unusual objects had been unearthed for our benefit. they were not long in finding occupants among the personages of importance who were desirous of paying us the honour of a visit. the commandant of the garrison came, accompanied by his aide-de-camp; they were followed by the burly mufti, and by several notables; last of all came the two kaimakams. it was a medley of striped military trousers and gold lace, of flowing cloaks and white turbans, of black frock-coats and the tasselled fez. each had a word to say upon the details of the expedition; each could help if one would only give them time. my great regret was that time failed me to receive their suggestions; there were indeed so many things which must be done. first i had to feed and water my horses, for the forage had not arrived in the early morning. when it came, the several owners were at variance, one with another; and i was obliged to seize it by force. then there were my people, who would surely go without their breakfast rather than take the trouble to procure victuals. these i had provided with great difficulty overnight; but the cook had experienced trouble with his fire. such everyday concerns were augmented on this occasion by several affairs of much greater consequence. it was necessary to engage at least ten porters; when these had been got together with infinite difficulty, there was no possibility of arriving at terms and a price. by the time the kaimakam appeared, the orchard was alive with people, all intent on delaying the conclusion of their several bargains for the mere love of talk. that official was of great assistance, because he fixed the price himself, and ordered each man to conclude his business on those terms. but there was one matter which called for very delicate treatment, and of which the ultimate issue was not so clear. it was most important that our escort, during the journey through the wild districts interposed between sipan and bingöl, should be composed of men who might be trusted at least so far as not to involve us in unnecessary brawls. they must obey my orders to the letter; but my authority could only exist by delegation from a higher authority; and it was essential that they should both respect and fear this source. now the kaimakam of akhlat alone inspired me with confidence that his men would think twice before daring to play the fool. but adeljivas belonged to the vilayet of van; and his colleague would certainly insist in sending his own zaptiehs at least as far as the borders of that of bitlis. and at what point in that bleak region could one hope to pick up the others? fortune came to my aid in arriving at a settlement. it so happened that the vali of van had not been informed of our intention to enter his province. indeed the ascent of sipan had not formed part of our original programme. now the vali was alarmed at the prospect of a possible visit on our part to his capital. adeljivas was so very near; we should be across in no time. and van was in a state of unrest. his subordinate had telegraphed overnight that we had arrived, and might return after our excursion to sipan. this it was in the interest of the vali to prevent. a message came that very morning, conveying greetings from his excellency, but enquiring whether we were furnished with a permission to travel, or even with a tezkere, or travelling pass. of course he well knew that no such documents were in our possession, since the whole question of the right of the palace to prevent englishmen from travelling had been raised in connection with our persons. the incident brought the very wind into our sails which we had been courting on every side. we had not the least intention of going to van. but the kaimakam of adeljivas would now be anxious to be rid of us for good and all. when therefore i placed before him the two alternatives, of returning and perhaps proceeding to reason with his excellency in the capital; or of pushing on direct from sipan and leaving his territory as fast as possible--the latter course was at once and joyfully approved. and when i made it a condition that the men of the kaimakam of akhlat should be allowed to meet us at the base of the mountain upon our descent, this proposal was also accepted without demur. it was noon by the time these various matters had been decided--not a bad piece of work under the circumstances. there only remained the last and saddest of our duties--to say good-bye to the energetic and admirable official who had accompanied us thus far on our road. what a contrast between this circassian, lithe of figure and nimble of mind, and his heavy, thick-skulled colleague of adeljivas! in the latter i had recognised the former kaimakam of vostan--him whom i had met at akhavank. what memories arose of khachatur and his famous dinner! i learnt that he had already descended to his tomb.... nothing could be more pathetic than the spectacle of an honest man, endeavouring to cope, not only with the inherent difficulties of his post, but also with the tricks of such rascals in high places as you see on every side. such is the lot of the kaimakam of akhlat. it touched us to the quick. it is quite as sad as the sufferings of the armenians. in the turkish service there still remain a number of excellent officials--men well capable of dealing with the armenian question in a manner conformable at once to humanity and to their country's good. but they are flouted, and set aside. some retire, others are constrained to effect a shabby compromise; while the younger or less steadfast become rapidly demoralised, and end as badly as they commenced well. two villages had been mentioned as both presenting a good base from which to climb sipan. one was norshunjik, and the other uran gazi. the first is situated on the south-western side of the mountain, and the second rather more round towards the west. uran gazi--a circassian settlement--was, after some debate, selected, owing chiefly to the reputation and resources of its head men. it may be reached in about two hours from adeljivas. riding in a northerly direction, we pursued a winding track which became involved in the recesses of the hills. we must have been close to the break-off of the plateau of limestone on the west of sipan; but the view towards the east was never open. the limestone was all about us, white and barren as usual, in striking contrast to the verdant scene we had left behind. so high did the escarpments tower, that although we continued to rise at a considerable gradient for a space of about an hour, it was only towards the latter portion of the ascent that we obtained a view of the summit region of the great volcano. but the vista towards the lake was of striking beauty, with the ruinous castle standing up against the blue. deep below us on our left hand we admired the site of a walled monastery, high-seated in a broad valley. there was more traffic along this track than one might have expected; we kept meeting laden donkeys and a number of wayfarers. the adjacent slopes were, in places, strewn with blocks of lava. when we reached the pass, we were standing on the edge of an undulating plateau, and were still within the zone of the limestones. a slight descent from this point brought us almost immediately to a shallow but very extensive depression. it had, in fact, the appearance of a vast plain, somewhat of an oval, with an axis roughly from east to west. in the latter direction we could see the plain tonguing into the limestones, or, in other words, the almost latitudinal limestone ridges sinking into the plain. but these were dwarfed in the east by the flows of lava from sipan, of which the huge frame was now fully exposed. in particular a bold stream plunged down from the summit region, ending in dark, precipitous sides. about in the centre of the depression lay a little lake, fringed by marshes, and bordered by a deep belt of what appeared to be a white efflorescence adhering to its shores. it was the jil göl (lake of rushes), once of considerably greater extent. a village, just a speck at the western extremity of the bold ridge of lava, was identified as uran gazi. behind us the limestones stood up like a wall, screening the lake of van. except for the marshes, there was not a trace of verdure in a landscape devoid of trees or even of bush. far and wide, the surface of the plain was broken only by mounds or gullies--the mounds heaped up with blocks of black lava, the gullies doubly darkened by the same material. indeed the whole depression has been covered with lava, probably to some considerable depth. its elevation above sea-level is not much less than 7700 feet. [259] these lavas, which must have been of a liquid nature, may have been, in part, emitted from the volcano during its infancy, but have largely issued from fissures in the plain. flooding into the limestones, they compose such a lofty pedestal that the volcano somewhat loses height. the climber is not ungrateful for their help. in another three-quarters of an hour we reached uran gazi, and were received by two circassian notables, resident in the village, murad effendi and shakir effendi. i think i have already observed upon the superiority of the circassian villages to those of their neighbours, armenians or kurds. the bread they make is eatable; fair cheese can be obtained; the tenements are much more solidly built. great stacks of hay had already been collected against the winter. the circassian skirted coat and the circassian cap are still worn; and, indeed, this people cling to all the customs of their native country, from which the russians have compelled them to wander out. of our two hosts, murad was in the prime of life; while shakir, although advanced in years and with snow-white hair, still retained his vigour and vivacity. it is the vivacity of the circassians which is so impressive in the moral sphere, just as in the physical sphere it is the brilliance of their eyes. murad effendi buckled to, with the result that in an hour and a half all was prepared for the start. tezek fuel for the fire, and hay for the horses, and for ourselves a lamb and several chickens--such were the burdens which were ready for the shoulders of the porters, four of whom had already arrived. the position of the village, at the extremity of the bold ridge of lava (fig. 187), may be taken as representing the furthest westerly extension of the flows of lava from the volcano, as we see it now. the ridge itself has an axis of about west-south-west. at four o'clock we made our way along its southern margin, up the broad valley by which it is separated from similar outliers on the south. the caterjis, with the packs, followed this valley to its head; but our guides, whether from knowledge of the ground or from mere impatience, were not long before they led us right up the wall of the ridge. dismounting, we dragged our horses over the rocky surface, at considerable peril to their legs. the summit was, however, almost perfectly flat; and, although the upward slope and the craggy nature of the ground rendered progress rather arduous and slow, the breadth of the ridge enabled us to pick a way. in this manner we struggled on for about an hour, when, at six o'clock, i called a halt. the caterjis were not in sight, and, when last we had espied them, they were still in the trough of the valley. there they would have remained, with our tents and baggage, knowing well that we must come to them. i sent an officer with instructions to bring them up by force; and, after waiting until night, we were at length rejoiced by their arrival, and encamped on a stretch of sward below a large patch of snow. our elevation was 10,300 feet. august 4.--the ascent of sipan offers no difficulties whatever at this season, and is, indeed, a delightful excursion. there is the joy of awaking to a landscape so inspiring--such a wide segment of a circle, almost without limits on the horizon, framed by the heights descending upon either side. from the rocky island of the kartevin to the western slopes of the nimrud crater, an immense region is outspread at our feet. flatness of outline is the almost universal characteristic; and the marble peaks of the akh dagh, conspicuous even at this distance, are at once an exception and a solecism. further west, the view extends to the even ridge of the bingöl dagh, flecked about the centre with snow. nearer masses of imposing aspect are bilejan and khamur; an unknown mountain, which, later in our journey, we came to know as kolibaba, rising with lesser proportions between the two. but the plains outdo the mountains, resembling a wide sea--although surely no sea can be surrounded by such commanding objects. the treeless, yellow surface commences deep below us, and stretches without a break to the kartevin. low ridges come edging towards it from the block of limestones, which, in the west, appears to encircle the lake of nazik, and to divide it from that of gop. the outline of the block grows in height towards lake van. it was two o'clock in the afternoon before we were ready to start upwards, turning our backs upon this scene, and on foot. the ten porters carry our flying tent and our wraps, besides a little tezek fuel for our camp fire, and four long poles for taking measurements. they perform their work in an admirable manner, never grumbling and never stopping to talk. their features betray their armenian origin, although they are mussulmans. the westerly eminence of the summit region towers high above us; but there is no beach of boulders to impede our progress, like upon ararat, and no causeways to circumvent. the tops of the streams of lava are always fairly level, although they are rocky at the sides. they consist of a basic augite-andesite, with conchoidal fractures, which grows more glassy as you approach the higher region. stretches of grass are not infrequent, watered by the melted snow. little runnels descend the slope with a pleasant, gurgling sound, but cease to flow when the sun goes down. in three-quarters of an hour we open out lake van, the ridges collecting towards the summit circle. the gradient of the slope is now 33 1/2°, the highest registered on this side of sipan. we are above and among large patches of snow. but the going is very easy, the ground being covered with turf and flowers. it is quite a little garden of forget-me-nots and pink daisies and buttercups and campanulas. these raise their heads above an undergrowth of pearl-wort. there is no juniper or yellow immortelle to be seen. soon after four o'clock this flowery slope gives way, and we enter the summit region, with the westerly eminence on our left hand. before us lies a deep and irregular basin filled up with masses of snow. such perhaps is the most concise description of the strange scene about us and at our feet (fig. 188). my illustration was taken on the following day from the top of the westerly eminence, or western summit of sipan. our position now is on the slope of that lofty eminence, on the upper margin of a field of snow, which is not visible in the picture, but which descends to the little lake in the foreground. the lake is known as kirklar göl, or lake of the forty mussulman saints, and is probably due to the dissolving of the snowy sheets which hem it in on either shore. the slope on the opposite, or southern side of the basin is very steep where it sinks to the pool; and it sometimes happens that the snow falls headlong and in a mass into the blue water. west of the lake, and especially beneath the western summit, the edge of the basin is low; indeed we have entered into the summit region by a natural passage or partial cleft. adhering to the skirts of this western summit, or taking refuge upon the snow from the deep rubble on its uppermost slope, we proceed in a north-north-easterly direction towards the northern side of the basin. a new flower clings to the powdery surface above the snow--sweet-scented arabis. the bold bluff of the peak above us joins on to a pronounced ridge, corresponding to the ridge on the right of the illustration, of which, indeed, it forms the counterpart on the north. we now open out a most remarkable object--a round and very lofty mass, built up, it would appear, of rubble, and of such dimensions that not only does it fill the basin on its eastern side, but even destroys and supersedes the peripheral figure. it looks as if it were flat upon the summit, from which rise a number of little conical peaks, like cairns. its sides are so steep that they are nearly free of snow. we exclaim, "there is kerkür, piled upon sipan!" the only feature which we miss is the oak scrub. the mass is well shown in the photograph, but not the second little lake which nestles in a lap of snow at its foot. this pool is separated from the first by a low saddle in the hollow of the basin, of which it collects the waters on the east. the ridge upon which we stand narrows and becomes knife-like, as it bends towards the northern extremity of the upstanding mass. it provides the scantiest strip of bare but level rock between sheets of snow on either side. on the north it is a cornice of snow above the plains, thousands of feet down. in that direction there would appear to be a tremendous abyss. nor is the slope towards the basin of tolerable gradient; it is so steep that it would be difficult to descend to the second of the lakes without making a considerable circuit. still this ridge appears to offer a convenient site for our encampment, owing to its central position. there are a few piles of rocks, nearly as high as a man, which will prevent us being swept into the depths on either side, in case a storm should arise. the only danger would be a sudden drift of snow. i give orders to erect the tent against one of these little screens; and, accompanied by a circassian, oswald and i continue our march towards the lofty platform on the east. our slender parapet ends in its steep and talus-strewn side, which we commence to scale. we step from block to block, the boulders consisting of a light brown lava, which has broken up with sharp angles. there can be no doubt that this mass is the latest result of eruptive action upon the summit of sipan. the whole or nearly the whole of the eastern portion of the crater was blown away, and this cone raised upon its ruins. it is almost circular in shape. the level parts of the platform, upon which we emerge from the rocky slopes, are covered with snow and ice; but the cairns, of which there are too many to count, protrude from the white canopy with little beaches of brown rock. it is hard to tell at a first glance which is the highest of these piles. our circassian conducts us to one among them on the north of the mass, which, indeed, is the most elevated of all. when we have clambered to the summit, we are amazed to find a screen, rudely erected from the boulders by a human hand. it provides us with just the shelter which we shall require for our observations upon the following day. we have reached an altitude of 13,700 feet. [260] the sun is setting; so the tripod is rapidly erected, and the bearings of the principal mountains registered with the utmost care. happily the sky is almost free of cloud. ararat soars into space, a magnificent object, both peaks of the greater mountain, although almost merged by the perspective, being distinguishable by the naked eye. the bold snow bastion on the west is seen to the fullest advantage. but the little ararat is almost hidden by nearer outlines; and only the summit of that graceful cone is exposed. if the mountain of the ark be without equal, or even rival, in a landscape which in all directions is sublime, it possesses at least a neighbour with many attributes in common--the kuseh dagh, beyond the plain of alashkert. that giant overtops the land forms, almost from the very base--a truly inspiring sight. it is so essentially a great mountain, towering up to a symmetrical, but deeply vaulted dome. night is falling as we descend to our little tent upon the ridge at an elevation of 13,000 feet. but our poor porters and the several zaptiehs who have, quite unnecessarily, scrambled up--how shall we protect them against the rigour of the night? they prefer to remain with us; so we wrap them up in the stout red cloth which we have by us for our measuring poles. they cower over the smouldering fire against the screen. but the temperature scarcely sinks as low as freezing-point in the sheltered places, and at dawn the lake below us is free of ice. august 5.--neither my companion nor myself are able to sleep, although we are quite fresh for our work next day. the same experience befell our party upon ararat; at these high altitudes one does not seem to require sleep. we are up before the sun; but the light is already sufficient to disclose the great world, silent at our feet. not a vestige of cloud is clinging to our mountain; and, as the sun rises, all the outlines in the distance are well defined. to oswald is apportioned the task of taking measurements, and he starts off over the snow-fields with his telemeter and his poles. i mount to the summit of the platform on the east, which is reached at half-past six. there i erect my instruments in the same cairn which we visited yesterday, and which may be called the eastern summit. the pools on the way are thinly crusted with ice. with what joy i look out from the well upon the cairn, and am greeted with the sight of ararat in all his majesty, without a particle of cloud! every minute the outline grows in distinctness, and each familiar feature becomes clear. how radiant the fabric looks--such a bright presence in the sky, above the summits of the ala dagh! those mountains pass insensibly into the outlines on the east--the horizontal heights of the persian tableland. westwards it is a series of plains. the plain of patnotz, deep below us, joins the plain of melazkert; that expanse is continued into the region of bulanik, threaded by the silver channel of the murad. kartevin and bilejan rise like islands from this sea-like surface, in which are lapped the blue waters of lakes nazik and gop. in the north the undulations of the plateau country are continued up to the barrier of the mergemir--kilich-gedik; but that outline is so low that you almost see the plain beyond it, supporting the base of the kuseh dagh. further west the plains are bounded by much bolder masses--khamur with bingöl showing up behind. the peak of palandöken is just perceived. but the nimrud crater is a conspicuous object--not the least remarkable feature in the scene. how vast it all looks!--stray clouds throwing liquid shadows, and earth reflecting the glow of morning in vague, mysterious lights and hues. in the opposite direction the contrast exceeds expectation--for one is standing in the border region on the outskirts of the plateau, and near the serried ranges which confine it on the south. never have i seen those ranges look so steep and savage, the seams rising like spear-points from the water's edge. nowhere is their outline more broken into peaks, more exactly the opposite of the outlines on the north. and the contrast is enhanced by the sea to which they descend--the dream-like presence of the sweet sea of van. pleasant verdure softens the landscape of the nearer shores, with their sinuous inlets, already deepening to an intense blue. i remain about three hours upon this summit, and then proceed to the highest eminence on the eastern margin of the circular figure, in order to overlook the eastern arm of lake van. on my way there a strange incident occurs. my circassian has told me that there exists a ziaret, or place of pilgrimage, in the vicinity of this cairn. curious, and half doubtful, i ask him to show me the spot, which he says is close by. what is my amazement when, opening out a slight hollow of the snowy surface, we see before us a group of mohammedan women, standing upon the ice with bare feet and ankles, and prostrating themselves before a pair of stag's horns! indeed the antlers are so thickly covered with little bits of rag that it is impossible to say for certain to what species of animal they belonged. stranger still is the fact that a band of women--i count twelve--should have risked their lives in this way. tantum religio!... and yet the kaimakam of melazkert is quite unshaken in his belief that only one man, and he in exceptional circumstances, has ever trodden the sacred summit of sipan! [261] after spending nearly another three hours upon the eastern eminence, during which i draw in the portion of the lake which lies before me, because i recognise several errors in the existing map, i return to our camp upon the ridge. oswald has just completed his arduous work upon the snow; and the combination of our labours produces the following results, which must be taken as approximate. the long axis of the figure described by the summit region is but little inclined from an east-west line. the centre of the circular mass, to which the eastern summit belongs, is a little north of a line drawn from the western summit in an easterly direction. the ultimate points of this axis are, on the west, the western summit, and on the east, the eminence upon which i last stood. the distance between the two is one and a quarter miles. the breadth of the basin is just under a mile. the circassians and the porters dance with delight when the order is given to take down the tent. they appear to have made up their minds that we shall keep them shivering for another night. all give utterance to devout and repeated alhamdilallahs, thanks be to god! our last duty is to scale the western summit, and to become familiar with the scene which it commands. we overlook the small circular lake of the aiger göl, on the southern slopes of sipan. it perhaps fills the basin of a parasitic crater. the elevation of this peak is about the same as that of the eastern summit, namely 13,700 feet. on our way down we recognise the traces of a bear; and we reach our standing camp without further incident at about five o'clock. it has been a very full and delightful day. [262] chapter xx back to the central tableland we were received with the greatest kindness by shakir effendi upon our return to uran gazi. the vigorous old man came to sit with us in our tent, and gave us some account both of himself and of his people. it appears that he has held the office of kaimakam of adeljivas, and that he occupied that dignity for four years. he is the reis or supreme chief of all the circassians in these districts; and he gave me a list, which should prove of some interest, of their villages. [263] he added that the population was increasing. the founders of the settlement, of whom shakir was one, came to these seats after the last russo-turkish war. they were emigrants from the district of kars, a home which they had adopted after the russians came into possession of their native mountains. when the russians captured kars they received notice to quit, or, as shakir put it, they were told to get out (aideh!). they took ship, and landed upon the shores of the black sea within turkish territory. but no arrangements had been made to settle them anew. they were starving and being decimated by sickness, when the queen of england came to their aid. her majesty told the turks that they must either find the land without delay or she herself would provide land within her dominions. this speech spurred the turks on. in this way they became established in uran gazi. this kind action on the part of our queen would always live in their memory. they are on good terms with the turks, but they are preparing to move on again. that inexorable russian advance! as for the kurds, they regard them as scarcely human beings and do not fear them at all. but they are held in great awe by the kurds. unlike the wretched armenians, they are allowed to carry arms, which they know how to use with effect. and you hear the laughter of children in their villages. while i was engaged in writing, the indefatigable oswald scoured the plain in all directions. he found the limestones on its margin highly marmorised, full of corals; they must belong to the eocene period. the efflorescence on the border of the jil göl is not in fact an incrustation, but is due to a bleached felting of confervæ. rushes abound, but they had already been cut. the waters find an egress through two funnel-shaped basins, near a large crack in a boss of lava. they disappear beneath the ground in little whirlpools, and are believed to come to the surface at adeljivas. shakir assured us that, if anything, the lake is now on the increase; it has been increasing since the earthquake which was so destructive at adeljivas about five years ago. this earthquake did little damage at uran gazi. although the village is now about a mile distant from the lake, good water may be found at any point in the vicinity by digging a short distance down. august 8.--nimrud and sipan having now yielded up their secrets, it was our next object to explore bingöl. but, on the way, we were anxious to follow the course of the murad, the reaches of that river between gop and charbahur being practically unknown. we were also desirous of climbing khamur. our first day's stage was to be the village of gop. [264] we therefore crossed the plain in a north-westerly direction, the way being indicated by a circassian guide. after riding about three miles we reached the foot of some low hills, confining the plain on that side. against their first slopes lay a kurdish hamlet--karaghun. issuing into a valley, we rose above it to the crest of the hills, which, as we expected, were down-like in character. for some little distance our way led over these downs. but i need not tire my reader by taking him over old ground; he will readily recognise that our surroundings were much the same in character as during our journey across this region from melazkert. for the second time we were crossing the block of stratified rocks on the west of sipan; but on this occasion we were already within their northerly and less elevated zone, and we might, no doubt, have descended to the plain, and followed along their base. we struck our former route above the village of demian, after passing through the same valley to which we had then come down at akhviran, and which we now entered above the large kurdish village of shebu. it is an inlet of the great plain at the foot of sipan. but our guide preferred to take us along the slope of the mass, all the way from demian to the village of leter. for that is the direction which these heights pursue. i have little doubt that these stratified rocks come up again on the east of sipan, and the view from the eastern summit disclosed in that direction very similar block-like heights. they probably sink beneath the volcanic system of the ala dagh. in this northern zone the downs consist of lacustrine deposits, sandstone, and a limestone full of the little shells known as mytilus. [265] the sandstone underlies this mytilus limestone, indicating, as oswald observed, that the great lake, which once covered this region, grew deeper before the latest earth-movements set in. throughout the ride from demian to leter, a distance of 5 3/4 miles, we overlooked the flat region which is due to the action of those former waters, and through which the murad flows. but a gale of wind was in our face; the plain was shrouded in haze--a treeless and little-inhabited district, which might, no doubt, be made fertile and prosperous. leter, a large village, partly kurd and in part armenian, is situated on the confines of the plain. it is built upon lava, black and slabby in character, which has broken through the lacustrine deposits. similar bosses, resembling those near uran gazi, but larger, rise up from the level expanse beyond. the direction in which the inhabitants pointed towards the village of gop was plainly not that of the lake of the same name. we had already obtained a glimpse of its waters, lying almost west of where we now stood. anxious to visit the lake, we shaped a course which we thought would find it beyond a screen of low hills. the plain in that direction was very rudely cultivated, white hollyhocks and a large mauve thistle crowding out the ragged corn. at about 6 1/2 miles from leter we passed through the first village we had since seen, the large armenian settlement of kekeli. and in another ten minutes we stood on the summit of the eminence which had concealed the lake for so long. it was nothing more than a low hill, an isolated mass of lava rising up from the plain. it was crowned by a little chapel, put together with stone and mud, and provided with a wicker door. looking through, we discovered a large stone, engraved with a cross, which was, no doubt, the object or symbol of worship. before it, three little lamps reposed on a horizontal slab. from this standpoint we overlooked the extent of the waters, of which the nearest shore was still some two miles off. the lake is bordered by level ground upon the east and south, and by considerable heights on the west and north. on the west it is bilejan, sending outwards radial buttresses with deep valleys from a central, meridional ridge; lesser heights in connection with the mountain, and of volcanic origin, descend to the waters along the northern shore. a slight depression separates this series from bilejan, and they, in turn, sink somewhat steeply into the plain. at that point, and at their foot, lies the large village of sheikh yakub, beside which flows the stream giving issue to the lake. in the opposite direction, beyond the plain on its southern confines, it is overlooked by an extension of the heights on the west of sipan, which are continued up to the mass of bilejan. it would appear that volcanic action has been busy throughout this region; and we thought we saw a grassy crater among those heights. beyond the outline of the barrier emerges a little conical peak, which we recognised as the cone on the west of nazik. bilejan itself does not look as if it ever could have possessed a crater, and it is probably due to upwellings of lava along a meridional fissure. the highest points along the central ridge may have an elevation of some 9000 feet. a brisk breeze was blowing as we made our way to the brink of the water, churning up its muddy depths. indeed this lake is thickly charged with dark sedimentary matter--a characteristic which has given rise to a name under which some know it, lake bulama, or the muddy lake. [266] another and not more savoury feature is its odour, which is fetid and nauseating. an abundance of fresh-water mussels were strewn on the shore, and several pelicans were floating on the waves. in shape the lake appeared to be almost circular. its elevation, as one would expect, is much less than that of nazik, being only 5550 feet. in point of verdure its surroundings are quite as mournful as those of its neighbour, while the lake itself does little to relieve their monotony. from the north-eastern extremity of this unattractive sheet of water we followed the course of the foul stream by which it is drained. it took us to the foot of the heights already mentioned, and through the village of sheikh yakub. it is a very large armenian village, which has probably been prosperous, but which is now in a state of extreme destitution. all the inhabitants were in rags. boys up to the age of puberty were quite naked, and girls to their fifth or sixth year. the village was full of soldiers, who were standing on the roofs. i summoned their officer, and enquired what their business might be. he answered that ibrahim pasha, adjutant of kurd hamidiyeh, was about to visit the place. in gop i ascertained that the object of his visit was to restore some property which had been carried off by kurds. such at least was the explanation which i received. it was certainly not a bad idea to quarter all these troops upon starving people; they would think twice before claiming redress a second time. but i suspect that it was a rather clumsy lie. gop is situated in the plain, some miles distant from the lake, at the foot of the extreme slopes of the heights which border the northerly shore (alt. 5150 feet). although the place is the capital of the caza of bulanik, it is a large village rather than a town. the kaimakam informed me that there were 400 houses, all but 50 inhabited by armenians. the district of bulanik comprises some of the most fertile land in all armenia, and is of considerable area. towards the east it includes a large portion of the plain of the murad below the town of melazkert; while, on the west, it reaches across the mass of bilejan and its outliers to a second extensive stretch of fairly level ground. that region slopes away from the northern border heights of mush plain to the murad and the opposite heights of khamur; it sends a tributary to the left bank of the great river, and one of its principal and central villages is that of liz. the fecundity of the soil is probably due to a happy combination of calcareous marls with the detritus of eruptive rocks. the grain which it produces is of excellent quality, in spite of the fact that the fields will be full of thistles. the peasants are miserably poor. the kaimakam explained that their rags, and squalor were matter of custom (tabiat); and, in fact, they had plenty of money, hoarded away. it is possible that such an hypothesis may indeed govern some of his actions; but i doubt whether he put it forward in good faith. the main cause of their destitution is plainly the want of security, coupled with the impossibility of exporting their crops. but usury is also a factor of considerable importance, the husbandman having generally borrowed to buy his seed at rates which rob him of most of the earnings of his toil. from gop we made a second excursion to the lake, riding to one of the most conspicuous of the volcanic eminences which rise from its northern margin. it is a distance of about four miles. the ascent commences on the outskirts of the village; but it is at first very gradual, the slope consisting of marly clays. these beds were full of mytilus in perfect preservation, and were seen to have been overlaid with tuffs. about halfway, we came to the walled monastery of surb daniel, containing the relics of a saint of that name. the ancient chapel has been restored. over the altar was conspicuous a picture of the virgin and child. the one or two resident priests were sunk in abject ignorance, but they were in possession of some good farm buildings within their enclosure. we remained for some time upon the peak which we had selected, and from which we obtained a fine view of the lake and its surroundings. while i was mapping, oswald sketched. we could see two villages on the level ground south of the lake--khashlu and piran. in the plain towards the murad several settlements were visible upon a line between leter and gop. august 10.--it was ten o'clock in the morning of a fine summer's day when we resumed our journey, and set out in a north-westerly direction across this spacious plain. travelling at this season is most agreeable in armenia; it scarcely ever rains, yet one is never overpowered by the heat of the brilliant sun. pleasant breezes float across the expanse. the harvest was being gathered in. our landmarks were in full view--sipan, khamur, bilejan. a little river meanders through the deep soil, on a course towards the murad. it receives the waters which irrigate the village of gop, and, among them, those of the stream from the lake. it has its origin some distance east of gop. it is called the kör su. at first our track took us about parallel with its banks; then we crossed it at the large armenian village of yungali. anxious to visit the point of confluence of the bingöl su with the murad, we now diverged towards the north. the nature of the ground compelled us to cross the latter river a little above the junction. it was flowing in a very broad, alluvial bed. in width it may have been about a hundred yards; nor in any place did the water reach much above our horses' knees. except for the great islands of mountain about us, we might have been standing upon the mesopotamian plains. our approach disturbed a group of large eagles, so heavy that they were obliged to run before taking wing. the bingöl su came in through a deep channel, which washed the girths of our horses. it did not seem to be more than forty yards wide. but, although sluggish, it must bring a very considerable volume of water; for its contribution extended to about half the width of the joint river, being clearly distinguished by the quantity of sediment which it sustained. from this confluence we followed the course of the murad, riding over the plain on the right bank, with the stream. a flock of wild geese were resting in the pebbly bed, nor did the shapely birds move as we passed them by. one of our escort was successful in securing a fine specimen with a bullet, which provided us with an excellent meal next day. but the features of the landscape soon underwent a change; for the river was approaching the foot of the khamur heights. at first it was low hills, consisting of lake deposits, which we skirted on our right hand. but near the armenian village of karaogli a bold ridge comes into prominence, and it extends all the way to shakhberat. it is of eruptive volcanic origin. it is an important member of the series of heights of which khamur forms the dominant mass. east of khamur that series rises to a considerable elevation before declining to the valley of the bingöl su. the highest ridge, as seen from this district, lies some distance towards the north, and is called the zirnek dagh. on the other hand, this volcanic parapet comes right up to the river, which follows along its base. at the same time hills started up from the plain upon the left bank. it was evident that they were volcanic and in connection with bilejan, of which we were opening out the more westerly and less deeply carved side. these features transformed the scene with startling rapidity; the idle river was no longer able to flow where it pleased. some two miles below karaogli it enters a deep gorge, and throughout its course to the plain of mush it is, with little intermission, confined in a narrow bed. except during the passage of the block of heights on the north of that plain, the murad performs no considerable feat. it follows the general trend of the lines of elevation, and one would expect its course to be fairly tranquil through this region. but the lavas tease the river; they have welled up along fissures, and have converted the wide valley into as inhospitable a district as any through which it passes on its long journey to the persian gulf. our mid-day halt was spent beneath the shade of a grove of willows, on the margin of some fields of hemp and cabbage, which softened the site of karaogli. but, the village left behind, we soon entered the narrows, the track being taken along the cliff-side, at some considerable height above the hissing, silvery water. the murad pierces a mass of lava belonging to the ridge on its right bank. it seemed a wayward thing to do; for the ground is lower just south of the gorge, and appeared to invite the river. while still within the cleft, it was spanned by a wooden bridge resting on several piers of solid masonry. this is probably the first bridge over the murad below tutakh. issuing from the cliffs, the tortuous reaches opened out into an easier country, and a wider prospect was unfolded on either side. for the first time we obtained a view over the plain on the west of bilejan, bordered on the south by the still distant heights, on this side of the depression of mush. but the volcanic hills on the left bank were not long without a successor; the outline was taken up by a second block of similar origin; and the scene again became restricted to the immediate surroundings of the river, which were stony and bare and bleak. we passed only a single kurdish hamlet during our ride to the cirque or caldron of shakhberat. there the river makes an s-shaped bend through a fairly wide valley, enclosed on all sides by volcanic heights. the ridge and peak of kolibaba is seen to full advantage, confining the valley on the west. two little kurdish villages, arenjik and shakhberat, lie on the slopes and in the lap of this spacious cirque. august 11.--the level of the murad at shakhberat was tested by two readings of the boiling-point apparatus on successive days. it was found to be 4900 feet. the village commands a view of the summit of khamur, the highest point of the amphitheatre in which the hamlet is placed. but that lofty ridge is in part screened by the slopes of kolibaba, and by the parapet which has skirted the right bank of the river all the way from karaogli. that parapet joins the mass about opposite the summit; and it is only at the head of the valley between khamur and kolibaba that the outline and slopes of the principal ridge are fully exposed. the shortest way to the summit, but certainly the steepest, would lead up that valley by a fairly direct course. but our guide preferred to take us by a more easterly approach, up the face of the parapet. he was a very pleasant fellow, a khoja or village priest; and he looked well with his clean white cottons, astride upon his mare. but the notion that we really intended to mount to the actual peak was repugnant to his good sense. climbing khamur meant to him proceeding to an adjacent eminence and thence contemplating the airy heights above your head. such a spot was provided under circumstances of luxury by the site of a hamlet high up on the ridge. a rustling stream flows through it, which has been dammed and made into a lake; and round the pool trees have been planted to shade the flocks. it was indeed a charming foreground to the immense landscape which already extended to nimrud. but the khoja's dallying was soon cut short; the track ceased at this village, which bore the unworthy name of ganibuk. he was forced to lead us across a beach of large boulders, and through some thickets of oak scrub. the ascent became pronounced, and, when at length the flat top was reached, the main mass was still distant, and looked very high. the composition of the ridge, which we had now surmounted, is at once interesting and typical of the whole region. it consists of a series of deep beds of lake deposits, separated one from the other by bands of lava. at first the lava was seen to be basaltic in character and compact; but towards the summit it became scoriaceous. the fact would seem to indicate that, while the earlier issues were submarine, the latest flows were outpoured when the land had risen above the water, and the present configuration was being attained. the platform upon which we stood was composed of a sheet of lava, and so was the summit of the opposite ridge of khamur. but as we rode into the shallow trough which separates the two eminences, the greyish-white marls again came to view. we could see them on the escarpments of both ridges, which, further east, became gradually separated by a deep latitudinal valley. we could observe the soft material where it was baked into a yellow porcelain by contact with the cap of lava on the khamur ridge. far and wide, towards east and south, the landscape wore the same hues and appearance; the same character appeared to belong to the heights on the north of mush plain. descending into the depression and rising again on its further side, we reached the actual peak or highest part of the khamur ridge after a zigzag climb up a slope overgrown with fennel. we had attained an altitude of 9850 feet. although the outline of khamur assumes a somewhat pointed shape when seen from the south, as from the cirque of shakhberat, yet the summit is nothing more than a fairly flat and narrow platform, which slopes away with some abruptness on the north and south. the lava upon this platform is slabby in character and may be described as an augite-andesite. there is no crater on the summit and one cannot speak of khamur as a volcano in the proper sense. in fact it is a considerable block of elevated land, in the western portion of which volcanic action has played a great part. the foundation of the block is probably composed of eocene limestone, which has been overlaid by later lake deposits. this limestone comes to view in a remarkable manner as you survey the eastern half of the mass. the ridge upon which you stand extends for a mile or two in that direction, and presently sinks to a somewhat narrow upland valley. this depression can be clearly seen from the adjacent region, whence it has the appearance of a notch in the outline of the mountain. its eastern slope leads over into a very broad block of mountain, of which the central region is hollow and basin-like in shape, and the outer sides steep and high. they are perhaps steepest and most lofty on the south. it is in fact one grand synclinal, described by beds of hard limestone, which, from a distance, groups with khamur in a single mass. the axis of the mass in that direction is about east-north-east. the prospect towards the west is not of lesser interest, and is certainly even more strange. time was wanting to examine this extraordinary region, which, indeed, it would require several days to explore. the ridge of khamur is joined on to the northern portion of another great block of elevated land. the eastern wall of this plateau projects some distance towards the south, almost up to the right bank of the murad. but the deep valley, which is formed by this projection and by the ridge of khamur, is filled up by the lofty pile of kolibaba--a peninsular mountain, only connected beyond a considerable depression with the slopes of the main ridge. it is plainly of eruptive volcanic origin, and it is somewhat circular in form. its sides are strewn with talus and clothed with oak scrub. our guide and the people of the district knew it under the name which i have given, and which they averred to have been that of a holy man who had been buried there. though who this prophet might have been, or what he wrought, or when he lived, not a soul among them knew. throughout this district, as far as bingöl, the tops of mountains will be often crowned by the rude enclosure of some sage's grave. such a monument was a conspicuous object on the very peak of khamur; and with its headstone, a huge slab grimly resembling a human bone, might have been disposed to receive a giant's remains (fig. 189). but to return to the scene before us--this adjacent plateau on the west extends all the way to bingöl. indeed it is connected with the southern margin of the bingöl pedestal by a bold saddle, due to a flow of lava. this feature was, of course, scarcely visible from khamur; but the continuation of the khamur ridge might be traced throughout the region, being distinguished by a succession of bold bosses, rising along its northern margin. these peaks are especially pronounced at their inception, and appeared to rise almost immediately from the northern shore of a large lake which was irregular in form. near its south-east corner lay a second, much smaller and circular lake. neither figure on any map which i have seen. they are evidently rather deep, for their colour is an intense blue. such are some of the characteristics of this curious region, which may be included among the khamur heights. it rises above the murad with cliff-like sides, which scarcely decline at all to the elevated level of these lonely azure lakes. the view from the summit of khamur may be divined by my reader; nor need i attempt to describe it in any detail. it embraces palandöken and bingöl on the north; nimrud, bilejan and sipan on the south. on one side lies the plain of khinis, bordered by the peaks and ridges of the akh dagh, which are seen to their fullest advantage. on another it is the basin of the murad, with sipan rising in all his majesty from an expanse of level and cultivated ground. in yet another you overlook the plain and village of liz and the course of a winding river. from no standpoint does the character of the country, as a succession of sea-like plains, become imprinted with greater clearness on the mind. nor is any district in the nearer asia better adapted to become the granary of a prosperous and highly civilised land. we descended in failing light by the valley on the side of kolibaba, and reached our camp with some difficulty in three hours. august 12.--on the following morning we set out to follow the murad, as far as its egress from this region through the heights which border the depression of mush. much the same features were continued throughout the stage. the cirque of shakhberat is enclosed upon the west by a stream of lava from kolibaba. this emission has flowed in an almost meridional direction, and has forced the river to bend away to the south. after passing through the armenian village of akrag, which is placed on a higher level of the basin-like area, we breasted the bold ridge which has been formed by this lava, and crossed it just south of a little parasitic cone, emerging from the side of the mountain. some low oaks flourish among the boulders; the rock is a glassy augite-andesite. the ridge leads over into a little plain, bordered upon the north by the wall of the khamur plateau, and with a high rim upon the side of the river, which cannot be seen. the plain has evidently been covered by a lake in fairly recent times. a crack in the rim of the basin displays the channel through which it was drained. on the side of kolibaba an old beach line was visible, some fifty feet above the level of this plain. the soil consists of a black clay which is not cultivated, but which must be very rich. it took us nearly an hour to cross to the opposite side, where it is confined by an outwork of the khamur heights. our further journey, which occupied the better part of a whole long day, need not be followed step by step. we had arrived at a spot where the dominant lineaments of the landscape had already become pronounced. these prevailed with little variety all the way. on the right bank, at an interval of two to three miles or more, rose the wall of the khamur plateau. the further west we proceeded the more irregular it became, the less distinguishable from the massive spurs which it put out. these outworks descend into the river valley, which is flooded and choked by the lavas. both in the valley and on these slopes the lavas have the upper hand; but the grey lacustrine marls are seldom absent or for long. they provide favoured stretches, covered with luscious herbage, where a little stream may trickle down from the barren heights. still the scene remains wild, bleak rather than of impressive ruggedness; there is space along the margin of the river, which flows in a deep cañon through the sombre eruptive rock. some stunted oak springs from the crevices among the boulders, but it rather enhances than relieves the mournful aspect of the surroundings. on the left bank a new feature came into prominence: a long and fairly lofty ridge, with perfectly horizontal outline, many miles away on the south. but the slope of this broad mass was continuous to the brink of the river, where it was broken by the stream into cliffs. its gentle gradient and almost level surface somewhat softened the rigour of the landscape. it was seen to consist of a sheet of lava, which had covered up the marls, and which must have issued in a very liquid condition. the heights upon which it is built are the northern border heights of mush plain; and this block of heights approaches closer and closer to the murad, as it eats its way through the district on a westerly course. such was the character of the country beyond the winding, hissing river throughout the whole stage. villages there were none, and hamlets few. a single oasis of any importance was observed high-seated upon the slope in the south, near the break in the outline where the murad pierces through the block. we should have been pleased to spend the night in that extensive and leafy grove, which belongs to a village called ali gedik. but we were assured that the river was not passable, and we were obliged to push on to charbahur. after following a romantic gorge where the murad has again been wayward, and has preferred to saw a passage through a towering parapet of lava rather than to follow easier ground upon the south, we rode for some distance along a wide stretch of alluvial soil in which the river at length reposes from its arduous labours. the circassian village of charbahur is placed at some distance from the waters, on the northern margin of the broad strip of willow-grown land. [267] charbahur is backed by a barren slope of the khamur heights, and is screened from all freshness on the side of the north. on the other hand, it is exposed to the sultry southern breezes, which find their way through the passage of the murad, acting like a funnel to the furnace of mush plain. there were said to be some sixty houses in the village; but i should say that there were more. some of the tenements are well built, resembling neat cottages; but unfortunately they swarm with fleas. the standard of living is far higher than among the armenians; but one feels that there is little or nothing in the race. our impression of the circassians did not improve upon longer acquaintance; although they are by no means the worthless and predatory people which they are sometimes represented to be. their conspicuous characteristic is an inordinate love of swagger; and their handsome figures encourage the tendency of their disposition. one afternoon, as we were busy at work, a bugle sounded; and immediately a band of horsemen galloped into the village. one by one they passed our tent at the utmost speed of their horses, jumping to the ground and vaulting back into the saddle, while still at full pace. those cossack manoeuvres heralded the approach of their chief, suleyman pasha, who, it appeared, was riding over from the neighbouring capital of the caza in order to honour us with a visit. when he arrived the place became full of irregular troops, with whom were combined a small detachment of regular cavalry. dismounting from a well-bred horse, he came towards us with hands outstretched, tall and supple, with a rhythm of movement which at once revealed his circassian blood. his large and animated eyes, the thin, aquiline nose, the high forehead and the black hair, waving on brow and chin, were set off by the contrast of a very correct uniform--a deep-blue tunic with a pale crimson collar. the voice suited the man; it was resonant and was meant to be so, and his words were accompanied by a profusion of gestures. he was followed by two valuable english pointers, which, however, he did not treat with proper respect. to him the world was a gallery; yet he lacked the mind of the actor; and, while his principal occupation was the giving of orders, his directions were not less empty than his words. but these defects were in the nature of inherited failings; personally he was extremely kind, and, i believe, a staunch friend. he spoke with gratitude, which was sincere, of the service which had been rendered to his countrymen by england and england's queen. it has sunk deeply into the hearts of circassians. at home we are too much imbued with excellent business principles; and few of us realise the value in politics of sentimental considerations, especially when we are dealing with the untrained peoples whose destiny happens to link with ours. the most interesting occupants of such a village are, no doubt, the girls and young women. they retain their fair complexion even in this climate, as well as their roundness of face and form. several among them would come to the margin of an adjacent stream, in order to wash their grain. their bare feet were as shapely as their hands. from charbahur we made an excursion to the passage of the murad, riding first to the confluence of the important stream which collects the drainage of the southern slopes of the bingöl plateau. a ridge from the khamur heights extends across the wide valley, choking it up and checking the drainage of its considerable extension towards the west. the stream cuts through this obstacle a little west of charbahur, issuing into the alluvial plain at the circassian village of charbahur tepe. it joins the murad at the egress of the river from the valley. it comes in beneath the shade of willows and silver poplars. it brings a large addition to the waters of the murad, and is by far its most important tributary since it received the bingöl su. unhappily this affluent bears the same name as that river; but i need not fear that my reader will confuse the two. this bingöl su had a width of about 30 yards; its depth was fairly uniform, and it reached above our horses' knees. [268] the murad now becomes a stately river, recalling, both by its volume and the manner in which it flows, the course of the danube in upper austria. we forded it at a point some 3 miles down the passage, where it was over 100 yards wide and reached above our horses' girths. it had descended to a level of 4570 feet. the cutting through the broad block of mountain which is interposed between the plain of mush and the long valley through which the river has been flowing for so many miles--a valley which is continued as far west as the little plain of dodan--is perhaps too broad to be described as a gorge. yet the heights on either side descend to the margin of the murad, which has turned at right angles to its former course. it pursues this southerly direction until it has gained the floor of the mush depression. from the ford we mounted the slopes on the eastern side of the valley, and, after a sharp climb, reached the summit of the block. our position was a little south of that pleasant grove which has been mentioned, belonging to the village of ali gedik. we stood on a sheet of lava; but the limestone was all about us, on the face of the cliff, in the bed of the river, where it formed long ridges, fretting the current into rapids. it was seen to contain fossils of the cretaceous period, and its strike or axis of elevation was towards east-north-east. the heights on the opposite bank appeared to be of similar nature. the view extended over the plain of mush. mush itself was seen nestling in a recess of the border range. we could see the village of sikava, well in the plain, and the almost imperceptible break in the wall of mountain where the murad issues from the plain. in the north, the line of cliffs belonging to the bingöl plateau dominated the scene. bingöl itself was either hidden behind their lofty edge, or could not be distinguished from the mass. we returned to charbahur not along the valley, but down the gentle southern slope of these heights. its even nature is due to a flow of basaltic lava. we found the murad above the junction with the bingöl su to be flowing in two separate channels, which we forded and so returned to our camp. august 15.--to reach gumgum and the westerly extension of the long valley, it is necessary to cross the ridge from the khamur heights which i have mentioned; such was our purpose and our next task. we found it to consist of grey lacustrine clays and marls with interbedded lavas. a thick layer of tuff occurs high up on the ridge; and the summit of the whole formation displays a cap of basaltic lava, sloping northwards in the direction of gumgum. the parapet lessens in height as it stretches obliquely into the valley towards the block on its southern verge; yet even at the lofty col, over which our track lay, it was less elevated than the corresponding ridge which joins the khamur heights to the bingöl plateau, and which is surmounted by the road from gumgum to khinis. as we descended, a pleasant stretch of fairly even ground lay beneath us, in the lap of which we could see the capital of the caza. it was watered by several streams, which issue from the slopes of the wide amphitheatre described by the khamur heights and the bold outline of the bingöl cliffs. one river alone was seen to proceed from the very heart of the bingöl system, coming into the plain through a tremendous chasm in the cliffs. above that abyss we obtained a glimpse of the western summit of bingöl. further west the great valley was choked up with minor heights, rising up from its floor. on the south it is bounded by the commanding block of mountain which continues, across the passage of the murad, the long wall of the northern border of mush plain. limestones, buff and white, could be seen high up on that flat-topped mass, with the same axis of elevation as those further east. the scene was bleak, without a tree and scarcely a bush. gumgum had evidently blossomed since my last visit, for it possessed at least two stone houses above ground, besides several little shops. we found it in a state of extraordinary commotion, owing to the presence of suleyman pasha. a troop of regular cavalry, mounted on white horses, had met us on the road. they had been sent as a guard of honour to escort us into the place. the scene before the government building was extremely picturesque; and what was our astonishment when we beheld, among the medley of circassian cavalry, a ragged band of horsemen whom we at once identified as kurds, and in whom we recognised the much-talked-of hamidiyeh! here indeed was food for the note-book and the camera! on the steps of the building stood the kaimakam, not my friend of the first journey; and beside him the hakim in a black robe. behind these were gathered the notables, and among them a giant who enhanced the imposing nature of the show. when we had received and returned the greetings of this distinguished company, we were ushered into the presence of the pasha, seated in an inner room. he overwhelmed us with every token of kindness; and, when the kaimakam read me a telegram relating to a supply of money, he waved him aside with a gesture of magnificent contempt, and drew from his pocket a reel of gold which he begged me accept. a little speech, modelled on his own, seemed to allay the sting of my refusal; but he insisted upon our taking with us to our camp on bingöl a detachment of cavalry. this offer was gratefully accepted. orders were at once given to prepare a repast. the servants left the presence with a deep obeisance; but, alas! it transpired, after a considerable interval, that there were no viands in the house and none to be found. all this time the audience chamber was filled full of as strange a company as it had ever been our privilege to see. suleyman pasha appeared to hold a roving commission in connection with the hamidiyeh. but the men of his own race, settlers in the country, had come in from all directions to do honour to a countryman in his high position, and to a nobleman in whose veins their bluest blood flowed. the circassians furnish recruits to the regular army, differing in this respect from the tribal kurds. but, jealous of their ancestral customs, they maintain the irregular cavalry, of which a strong contingent was gathered together in gumgum. the principal men, one by one, were introduced into the apartment; each bowed low and kissed the pasha's hand. to each was assigned a seat on the divan. most had passed the middle age; their wizened and wrinkled faces harmonised with the drab hues of the cossack dress. the pasha was resplendent in his blue and crimson uniform; several swords, in richly engraved and valuable scabbards, rested by his side. near him sat a grave and gloomy personage in european uniform. his cruel face displayed the true tartar lineaments and expression; yet he was a kurd, and the colonel of one of the four hamidiyeh regiments recruited among the jibranli tribe. the pasha treated him with great courtesy, if with a little condescension; but, although he received the many orders which were addressed to him with military obedience, his manner scarcely concealed the irritation which they produced. there was mischief in the man's face. he is seen on the left of my illustration (fig. 190); his bugler, a young kurd, richly attired, is placed on his left hand. behind him are some of his horsemen, of which in all there were mustered a hundred, after extraordinary exertions on the part of the pasha. yet the nominal strength of the regiment is six hundred. the whole force--regulars and irregulars, kurds and circassians--were drawn up in a half-circle for our benefit. the regulars were, as usual, a fine body of men; of the rest the very refuse were the kurds. we did not regret to leave a scene which was pathetic as well as humorous, and to set forth on an expedition to one of the most remarkable of those works of nature with which asia--past mistress of violent contrasts--appears to mock the contemporary littleness of her sons. we had experienced the greatest difficulties in obtaining supplies; for the wretched shopmen, alarmed at the inundation of undisciplined soldiery, had absconded after barring up their humble booths. the promise of some cavalry had proved empty; none came or intended coming. we had said good-bye to our excellent escort from akhlat, of whom the officer, a handsome man with charming manners, had suffered in health owing to the hardships of the journey. but we had been met by our tried and trusted zabet from erzerum; and to him was attached a fellow-officer from gumgum with several men. we might have proceeded on a fairly direct course to our mountain, which indeed is situated almost north of the little town. but i was anxious to retrace my former journey as far as dodan, in order to complete my rough survey of this interesting region, interrupted on that occasion by failing light. our course was therefore directed up the long valley, with the outline of the stupendous bingöl cliffs on the one side, and, on the other, that of the border heights of mush plain. at the hamlet of alagöz we forded the stream which comes down through the great chasm, and which, perhaps, for want of a better name, we may call the gumgum su. it unites at this point with the combined streams which water the plain, and the joint river flows off through a gorge in some minor heights to effect a confluence with the bingöl su. i have already mentioned that the valley is choked up with insignificant hills; on its southern margin flows the river last named. eruptive volcanic action has played a great part in its configuration; and the axis of the masses of lava which rise up from its floor is about the same as that of the plain of mush. these eruptive hills are varied by heights composed of limestone, or of marls and clays, interbedded with lava and tuff. after a long ride through this wild scene we at length emerged upon the plain of dodan, level as the lake which it must have supported in fairly recent times. dodan lay beneath us; but we pushed on to a further village, the picturesque and pleasant settlement of gundemir. chapter xxi our sojourn on bingöl gundemir is an armenian village of considerable size, better built than is usually the case (fig. 191). it possesses an ancient church, and the houses cluster round it, rising up the slope of a little eminence from the plain. the place is evidently as old as the hills. several groves of lofty poplars spring from the surface of the level ground, which extends in all directions except on the north. one will enclose a field of cabbage, another fringes a tobacco plantation, with the large and luscious leaves. most of the male inhabitants were absent in their yaila; the women were busy threshing this season's corn. the head man was present, one avedis effendi; and he supplied all our wants with the utmost zeal. we were glad to be back in an armenian village, after our experience of the circassians at charbahur. from our encampment on the margin of such a grove of shady trees we could study at leisure the features of the plain. i have already noticed its appearance and extraordinary surroundings (ch. viii. p. 182); and this second visit enabled me to answer some of the questions which were suggested, but could not be resolved, on the former occasion. while the ova is immediately bounded on the south by the block of heights which we know as the northern border heights of mush plain, the northern boundary of the whole wide valley--the towering bingöl cliffs--are distant several miles from the confines of this lake-like depression, in which that valley comes to an end upon the west. the intermediate zone is filled up by hill ridges, of which the axis is the same as that recorded in the last chapter, when we were journeying along the valley from gumgum. it is an axis similar to that of the plain of mush. it is evidently a line of volcanic elevation, being almost at right angles to that of the stratified rocks. of these ridges--with their beaches of lava and sprinkling of oak scrub--two descend and die out into the plain. the more easterly leaves our village close upon the right hand, skirts dodan, and ends in a series of little cones, which push the river to the very foot of the barrier on the south. its neighbour on the west composes the heights on the north of the plain. it comes down from the uppermost slopes of the bingöl plateau, and determines the drainage of the bingöl su. it appears to be connected on the south-west with the sheets of lava which have built up the westerly and plateau-like boundary of the plain--a barrier which has been eaten into by a deep cañon through which a stream descends into the plain. the name of that affluent to the bingöl su we learnt to be the sherefeddin su; it enters the ova at the village of baskan. the bingöl su approaches the plain on a meridional course, bounded on either side by the two ridges above mentioned, and watering the orchards of gundemir. it has almost crossed the ova when it is joined by its affluent; it then turns eastwards and settles down to a course towards the murad. august 16.--it was afternoon before we were ready to start on our journey towards the still distant outline of the bingöl cliffs. after fording the river, we made our way up its right bank, along the pebbly alluvial bed, which had a width of about a quarter-mile. in half-an-hour we crossed an outlier from the ridge on the west, leaving the river on our right to flow through a gorge between this ridge and that upon the east. emerging on the further side, we stood in an extensive depression with nothing between us and the base of the cliffs (fig. 192). on our left hand, the ridge on the west was seen extending in a north-westerly direction to the very face of the opposite parapet; a conical eminence, consisting of lava built up on lacustrine deposits, was a conspicuous feature upon the mass. its companion on the east had the appearance of being more isolated; and the prospect in that direction was far-reaching over the undulating basin of the bingöl su. at the kurdish hamlet of chaghelik we again crossed the river, and struck a fairly direct course for the cliffs. the belt of detritus and broken ground which extends along their base is of considerable depth. all the way we were riding over lava, tending to decompose into brown sand. our track was indicated on the face of the barrier by a very white appearance, due, as we found, to the dust of a pink lava. layers of lava and tuff were seen in section along that face. the actual ascent occupied nearly an hour; and it was growing dark as we opened out the surface of the plateau. we had attained an elevation of some 8500 feet, or of 3500 feet above gundemir. let my reader picture to himself the cliffs of dover raised to seven times their present height. the air was heavy with perfume; yellow mullein, ablaze with flower, rose in profusion from the even sheet of lava. far and wide it spread before us, sometimes rising to a barren knoll, as often sinking to a grassy hollow. in such a faint depression, by the side of a tiny runnel, we fixed our encampment for the night. the shadows hung about us; but the western sky was shot with fire above a sea of ridges, billowing towards us, and buried in the depths of the landscape before ever they could attain our airy platform. the phenomenon was new; nor were we able to grasp its whole significance until we had become familiar with the relations of this uniform tableland to that country of ridge and trough in the west. the solitude of the place, and its remoteness from any human settlement disposed us to receive to the full the spirit of our surroundings; nor was the mood disturbed throughout our stay on bingöl. so plastic is the nature of man that one must regret his confinement in cities, and his exclusion--which is sometimes life-long--from communion with the natural world. such communion is at once a spiritual and a mental exercise; and the greater grows our knowledge of the phenomena around us, the more complete becomes the fusion of soul with soul. the hebrews copied from asia her vastness and her essential harmony, and translated them into their religion and laws; the inspiration has grown feeble during its passage through the ages; but the source is still open from which it sprang. one feels that its ultimate origin must be placed in this country; and that the fables, which are woven around the infancy of our race, resemble the mists which hang to the surface of some stately river, but have been distilled from the solid waters which they veil. the natural setting of those legends are a bingöl and an ararat--the one the parent mountain of the fertilising streams, the other the greatest and most imposing manifestation of natural agencies working to a sublime end. and europe, with her turmoil of intellect and clash of religious opinions, has need of the parent forces from which she drew her civilisation, and of which the spirit speaks to the spirit of the humblest of her sons in the same accents and with the same high purpose as of yore. we debated on the following morning in which direction we should proceed. where should we find a yaila from which to draw our supplies during our sojourn upon the mountain? we were as yet a long way west of the so-called crater, and we were led to hope that we might find such a kurdish encampment just below and on the south of its main wall. we therefore set out in a north-easterly direction over the undulating surface of the plateau. the smoothness of the ground, over which we rode for many miles, is characteristic of this extensive and remarkable tableland, and is due to the slabby nature of the sheets of lava, which must have issued in a very liquid state. [269] in this region they are seen to have flowed towards south and west. they support an abundance of yellow mullein which grows to a great height. the flowers of this beautiful plant are as delicate as their perfume; and we did not regret that on bingöl they take the place of the monotonous fennel. the mullein is the flower of the surroundings of bingöl, just as atraphaxis spangles the base of the ararat fabric, and spiræa and giant forget-me-not haunt nimrud. but violets we had not yet seen; and here they grew in plenty, on the margin of each patch of melting snow. their perfume was like that of our garden description; and, while the upper petals were mauve, those below paled off into white. the little hollows of the ground were moist and grassy, having collected a little clay. over such a scene without limits a few white clouds were floating, borne by delicious breezes across the field of intense blue. after riding for over an hour without any landmark we reached the summit of a meridional vaulting of the table surface, due perhaps to the emission of lavas from a fissure. from this point we could see the western summit of the so-called crater bearing about east-north-east. it looked a mere hill, like any other of the irregular eminences. the trough below us, on the east, was seen by oswald to slope southwards, and to become trenched by the course of a southward-flowing stream. this rivulet would therefore be the head branch of the bingöl su. beyond this valley we mounted a second meridional ridge, coming towards us from the western summit. the view now extended along the entire wall of the crater, seen on its southern and rounded side. its basin and steep cliffs have a frontage towards the north, and were, therefore, hidden from sight. a bleak scene lay before us in the hollow, framed on one side by the ridge upon which we were standing, and on the other by the long perspective of the wall on the north, stretching, like a huge rampart, towards the east. into that hollow we made our way in an east-south-easterly direction, in search of the vaunted yaila. after riding over stony and difficult ground for over an hour, i called a halt, deciding to abandon the quest. we could see that we had reached a point about south of the eastern summit, for the outline of the rampart was already preparing to decline. to proceed further would be to occupy an unsuitable position for the purpose of exploring the mountain. our tents were erected a little north of the head of the chasm through which flows the gumgum river. two zaptiehs were at once despatched with orders to carry on the search, and to bring back with them whatever food they could find. they discovered the yaila at some distance in an easterly direction, but still within reach of our camp. the kurds supplied us with milk and mutton; but for flour and corn we were obliged to send to gumgum, and for charcoal all the way to khinis. we remained in this camp for six days, finding it to be an excellent situation. from early morning until evening we pursued our work upon the mountain, visiting the basins on the further side of the rampart, taking measurements and ascertaining altitudes (see the two plans accompanying this chapter). it may be best to resume our results in a single picture, embracing first the mountain, next the immediate surroundings, and last the features of the landscape which it overlooks. [270] the bingöl dagh consists in the main of a narrow and almost latitudinal ridge, with an axis which is inclined towards west-north-west and east-south-east. the little relative elevation of this rampart above the plateau, which supports it as a pedestal or base, is the cause of the insignificant appearance of the mountain, which, in winter, is almost concealed or merged into its surroundings by the continuous sheet of snow (fig. 161, p. 191, and fig. 176, p. 247). the fact that it is highest at its eastern and western extremities, and that from those peaks horn-shaped eminences project towards the north, with a curvature convex to the inner area, and with a rapidly decreasing elevation--this fact, together with the abruptness of the face of the ridge on the side of the north, give it the semblance of the standing southern wall of a huge broken-down crater when seen from a distance on that side. a nearer view from the same side destroys the unity of this conception; the crateral area is broken into two. it is seen to consist of a somewhat smaller basin upon the east, and of one rather larger on the west. the two basins, which are both perfectly open towards the north, are divided by a meridional ridge, which is joined to the main rampart at a third eminence, intermediate between the western and eastern summits, and resembling them in character, although not so high. this medial ridge, like the two horns, dies rapidly away into the plateau. from the extremity of the western horn, which opens out in a north-westerly direction, to the recess of the bay formed by its companion on the east is a distance of about 4 1/2 miles. while the western and eastern summits--the highest points on the entire ridge--attain an altitude of 10,750 feet, the level ground just north of the main slope of the detrital fan has an elevation of 9000 feet. on the other hand, the line of cliffs on the south of the rampart by which the plateau breaks away to the valley of gumgum are over 9000 feet high along their edge. these measurements may serve to define in figures some of the characteristics which i have endeavoured to describe. before pursuing a more intimate and detailed study, it may be well to fix in our mind some of the leading positions, and to assign to them convenient names. our predecessors have given three such names to the principal eminences. the western summit is called by them bingöl kala (the bingöl castle), that on the east demir or timur kala (the iron castle or the castle of timur), and the intermediate hump, which is joined to the meridional ridge, kara kala (the black castle). i took some pains to ascertain whether these names were known to the kurds, for none of my escort had ever heard of them. the yaila from which we drew supplies was the most considerable in the district, and belonged to one mahmud bey. this kurdish chieftain was absent from his encampment, scared by the presence of suleyman pasha, with his demands for hamidiyeh, in the close neighbourhood of his lair. but his son came to our camp, and one of his near relations, a middle-aged and unusually intelligent man. he said that they knew the mountain under the name of bingöl koch, or, translated, the bingöl caldron. they had no particular designation of the highest parts. when i mentioned the three castles he reflected a little, and then answered that the western eminence was known in old times as bingöl kala; but with the other names he was quite unfamiliar. i see no reason on that account to reject these designations. kara kala is well adapted to express the prevailing sombreness of that peak with its dark and broken ridge. demir kala may serve to remind us of what is probably a historical fact, that the great timur, or cold steel, marshalled his armies among these congenial surroundings, and here celebrated his victories with women and wine and song. the statement, however, of one traveller that the eastern summit consists of several storeys of walls, put together by a human hand, must be regarded as fabulous. he vouches for the fact, and adds that, according to what he learnt, an iron door had been removed from the castle and taken to khinis some forty years previous to his visit. [271] he supposes the fortress to have been erected by timur. the manner in which the lavas have cooled upon the rampart suggests the appearance of such a human structure at certain points. but the feature is most noticeable just west of kara kala, where the outline assumes the shape of two round towers. to these names i should like to add one other, for which i have no authority. just below the western summit a bold, talus-strewn ridge extends from the face of the cliff in a northerly direction, rising as it proceeds into a tumbling mass of lava, and ending in a conical eminence of the same material. indeed it constitutes an inner wall of the western basin. it may not be inappropriate to call this rampart aghri kala, the rough or rugged castle. the only eminence along the main ridge of a pointed and peak-like character is the western summit, or bingöl kala (10,757 feet). its effect is heightened by the rapid decline and termination of the parapet just west of this position, as well as by the increasing flatness of the ridge as it extends towards the east after a gentle descent. at the time of our visit this summit was completely free of snow. on the north it breaks away with great abruptness to the basin; but on the south it slopes off into that vaulted meridional ridge which has been already mentioned during our passage across it to our camp. the western summit can be reached with great ease from the south or south-east, or along the edge of the main rampart. the average gradient will not be more than 15°. it is strewn with talus, like all these slopes; the actual summit is fairly level, and is partially covered with blocks of lava. following the top of the rampart eastwards from bingöl kala, its general character is the first feature which seizes the eye. on the south it presents an evenly-vaulted slope, which is continued in an east-south-easterly direction, almost in a straight line. on the north it is hollowed out in the form of a cirque, which, bounded on the west by aghri kala, and by kara kala on the east, has the appearance of a crater with three standing sides. the particular feature of the rampart in the direction of kara kala and beyond that eminence is the breadth of the platform which it presents. at no other part is it so easy to ride along it, as well as to scale it from the south. the northerly slope of the shallow vaulting is always covered by a sheet of snow, which descends into the cirque. the passage from the south into the western basin lies west of kara kala, and is not difficult for unloaded animals. indeed it is the only pass across the bingöl rampart, which, further east, increases in the steepness of its northern face. kara kala projects from the parapet some little distance towards the north, at the head of its meridional ridge. but this feature is not observable from the southern side of the mountain, where the rampart is seen to pursue its long, straight course. the gradient of the southern slope increases as you approach demir kala, but does not exceed 23°. the platform along the summit gradually narrows, until in demir kala it becomes an upstanding mass of blocks of lava which must be climbed, stepping from block to block. the lava, which east of kara kala has shown traces of obsidian, is somewhat scoriaceous and in places weathers a brick red. [272] the summit is flat and fairly free of boulders, which, however, are piled in a beach further east. the level at demir kala (10,770 feet) is fairly well maintained for some distance, and produces the bold effect of the horn on the east. but the cliff, after turning northwards, soon comes to an end, being separated from the bank-like continuation of the horn by a narrow but passable cleft. this long, meridional bank composes the eastern wall of the eastern cirque, which is bounded on the west by the medial ridge from kara kala. the character of the rampart in this eastern basin is much the same as in the western cirque, although more uniform in point of height. from the south it has the appearance of a straight and gently vaulted bank; from the north, that of a curved outline with steep cliffs. just as bingöl kala is joined on the south to a meridional ridge, so is demir kala in connection with another such outside parapet, which continues the main rampart in a south-easterly direction, far beyond the limits of the cirque. this parapet is beautifully vaulted on the south-west, where it determines the drainage of the gumgum su. but on the north-east it breaks away to the grassy ground outside the basin with piles of boulders which are somewhat difficult to cross. indeed it was always a most laborious matter to reach the eastern cirque from our camp. if we took the pass between the western summit and kara kala, there was the medial ridge, with its beach-like terraces, to surmount. if, on the other hand, we made our way up the south-western face of the outer parapet, we encountered the difficult descent on the north-eastern side, and, when this feat had been accomplished, we were obliged to ride a long way north before it became possible to cross the bank which confines the basin on the east. for a man on foot it is feasible to descend the cliffs of the main rampart at several points, and a horse may scramble through the cleft formed by the break-off on the north of the wall of the eastern cirque. but such an attempt is not less dangerous than the endeavour to lead an animal up the snow-slope in that cirque. it seems an easy matter; for the snow extends from the floor of the basin to the edge of the cliff, which at the time of our visit was free from snow. but it nearly cost us the lives of a zaptieh and several horses. when the gradient was at its steepest the snow gave way, and the manner in which one horse by a series of plunges reached the summit was a remarkable example of the power of nervous energy. it is plain from this description that the conception of the mountain, as seen from the north, is likely to be considerably enlarged and modified by a visit to its southern side. instead of a single ridge we have a series of ramparts, which describe a figure somewhat resembling an h. the transverse bar of the letter represents the main parapet with the three summits, bingöl kala, kara kala and demir kala. the two uprights will correspond with the horns of the basin on the north, and with the connecting ramparts on the south. a medial projection should be added to the transverse bar, in order to include the meridional ridge from kara kala. finally the upright corresponding with the northern horn on the west should be split into two short arms. of these the inner arm will represent aghri kala. at the risk of becoming tedious, i have thought it well to insist on these features, in order that our statement may enable the practised reader to judge for himself whether bingöl ought to be regarded as a volcanic crater in the strict sense of the word. before adducing additional facts, which may point to a negative conclusion, i should like to mention the explanation which appeared to us on the whole more probable of the phenomena with which we are dealing. it is evident that the latest emissions of lava were much more acid and viscous than those which produced the plateau surface of the surroundings of bingöl. if we assume that all these lavas issued from fissures rather than from a crater, then the formation of such ramparts in the final stages may be readily explained. the molten matter, welling up from its original vents, became too viscous to flow far. it massed in the form of vaulted ridges along the axis of the parent fissures, or in their neighbourhood. i have already noticed the rounded nature of these various ramparts when seen from the south, as from the standpoint of our second camp. the transverse parapet with the principal summits has the appearance of a long, straight bank, flanked at its extremities by two similar banks, which project towards the south like wings. look where you will, the slopes are gentle, and strewn with fragments of lava, which in some places have the appearance of loose tiles. within the figure, thus formed, rise the head waters of the gumgum su, collecting, with a network of streams, both from the west and from the east. they combine at the head of the great chasm, to flow through its shadowed depths towards the plain. it is true that this vaulted and bank-like appearance of the ramparts is not characteristic of any of the slopes towards the north. indeed the exact contrary is the case. but at this stage of the enquiry we are introduced to a feature which is perhaps the most remarkable of all these phenomena, and which it is surprising that none of our predecessors should have observed. when i descended for the first time into the western cirque, oswald, who had been engaged there in taking measurements with the telemeter, pointed out to me evident traces of the action of ice. quite close to the cliff on the south the bosses of lava within the basin have been worn by a glacier moving towards the north. smooth on top, and with an almost flat surface upon the south, they are rough and precipitous on their northern sides. the rock is very distinctly striated, the striæ pointing in a northerly direction. the feature continues and gains in definition as you follow down the cirque. between the bosses the ground is covered with turf and oozes with water, which collects in pools or little tarns. blue gentians are found in abundance within these peaty hollows, while the violets scent the air in the neighbourhood of the snow. some distance further, when you are already outside the limits of the cirque, and have reached a level of about 9000 feet, the moraines commence to form. we visited this district from the west, and made our way in an easterly direction across the moraines. they were seen to consist of a medial and two lateral moraines, of which that in the centre proceeds from the extremity of the meridional ridge from kara kala, and must have separated two glaciers, issuing one from either cirque (fig. 193). the lateral moraine upon the west seemed about in a line with aghri kala; but a branch of the glacier must have flowed towards north-west, for the extremity of that ridge has been cut down by the stream of ice. this moraine is so pronounced that it is difficult to realise that there are now no longer glaciers on bingöl. on both sides it is bounded by a lofty embankment of blocks of rock, embedded in soil. the summit, which is broad, bristles with upstanding boulders, and in the hollows there are a number of lakes and pools. a stretch of level and grassy ground is interposed between this rampart and the medial moraine, which shows a similar embankment on its western side. a little river, collecting the drainage of the western cirque, flows in the trough of this grassy depression. the lateral moraine upon the east is in fact that great fan-shaped bank, which extends northwards from the horn of the eastern cirque. again in this basin a branch of the glacier has diverged, and broken its way through the cleft in its eastern wall. the floor of the cirque is much more grassy than that of its neighbour on the west, but the masses of rock are striated in a similar manner. the principal reservoir for the ice and snow has been the broad platform between kara kala and the western summit. thence have issued towards the north extensive fields of moving ice, while the melted snow has poured into the hollow on the south of the platform and has carved down the great chasm. we could not trace the action of ice upon the rocks in that direction. i do not know whether we should be justified in dating the disappearance of these glaciers as far back as the glacial epoch. striking evidence of the existence of a glacial period in these countries has been collected by a modern traveller in the highlands with their marginal region on the side of the black sea. [273] we are therefore justified in assuming that the abruptness of the ramparts on the north, as well as the carving out of the main ridge into cirques, is largely due to the erosive action of ice. leaving this subject, i would ask my reader to follow us in an excursion to the interesting region on the south of the mountain. for perhaps the most remarkable characteristic about bingöl is the great plateau which it has contributed to form; and the features of that plateau which engrave themselves most deeply into the memory are the towering cliffs with the chasm on the south. as we surveyed the scene from our encampment--in which there was not a trace of snow--the eye was taken naturally to two particular points. one was a graceful cone, just at the head of the great chasm; the other consisted of a pile of lava on the eastern side of this gorge, and some little distance from its margin. it appeared to emerge from the plateau at about its highest level. it is indicated by the letter x on the plan. to reach it we were obliged in the first instance to cross the intricate ridges and troughs through which the streams find their way into the chasm. but beyond this troublesome zone stretched the undulating table surface, strewn with stones or covered with coarse grass. when we arrived at our landmark we found the pile to be loftier than we expected; indeed its summit is the best standpoint from which to overlook the country on the south and east of bingöl. the blocks of which it is composed are derived from a lava which may be described as a basalt. they are full of magnetite, affecting the compass. this basalt is part of a stream of the same lava, which is traceable to the upstanding crags of the pile x, as a probable point of emission. towards the west the flow does not appear to have extended for a great distance; but in the direction of south-east it has travelled further, and has produced important results. it connects the bingöl and khamur plateaus, being traceable as far as the foot of a conical eminence on the latter mass. the lava from the south-east rampart of bingöl has also flowed in that direction, while towards the peak x it has described a curve of exquisite symmetry. the view embraces that strange plateau on the west of the khamur ridge and the blue lakes which it supports. the slope of its crinkled surface is towards the plain of khinis, at its south-western or upper end. so far as we could judge, the mass consists in the main of limestone, capped by lava in the south. descending from this eyrie i rode to the edge of the cliff, in order to ascertain its height. i stood at a level of 9240 feet, while that of gumgum, a speck in the plain which stretched from the base of the cliff, is about 4800 feet. on either side, towards the chasm or towards the floor of the plain, the ground was falling away with stupendous precipices. in the trough of the abyss lay the gumgum river, resembling several fine threads of silver. our return journey led us past the yaila of mahmud beneath the wall of the south-east rampart. it occupied an ideal position, in a spacious meadow, and on the banks of the principal branch of the gumgum river. the chief's tent faced towards us on the opposite margin, as we rode along the left bank of the stream. the goat-hair canvas, spread with many supports over a wide area, divided up into compartments by screens of osier, had the appearance of a roof with many gables. in the shadowed recesses one observed a medley of luxurious cushions and of household utensils of every kind. women, gaily dressed, and unveiled, although very bashful, mingled with the group of men, collected to see us pass. the chief's son, a mere youth who had just returned from six years' residence in a school at galata (constantinople), was pacing to and fro in a remote part of the meadow, a picture of the out-of-place. round the tent of the chief, in a wide and respectful circle, were ranged the much ruder tenements of the tribesmen--mere pens of boulders with a strip of canvas overhead. the older women had the weird and witch-like expression which one sees in the faces of the highland women in the background of a novel by walter scott. underlying the lava, and at the head of the great chasm, is placed a bed of tuff. it forms the bulk of the beautiful cone already mentioned, which has been preserved and invested with its peculiar symmetry by a capping of hard lava. in the hollows about its base yellow mullein grows in profusion, and campanula with its bell-shaped flowers. making our way over the col which joins the cone to the plateau of our encampment, we proceeded to lead our horses up the slope. but nothing would induce our zaptieh to take his animal with him; he declared that such an act would be impious on the part of a believer, for we were treading sacred ground. indeed, when we reached the summit, we found an enclosure of stones, protecting a human grave. it was evidently a place of pilgrimage for the district. our attendant prostrated himself on the ground outside the boundary and took from within it a handful of dust, which he preserved. i asked him to whom he might be paying so much honour. he replied that it was the grave of goshkar baba, or father shoemaker. the holy man had in fact been shoemaker to the prophet, and had therefore been buried here centuries ago. when i enquired whether he had ever done anything great during his lifetime besides making shoes, he answered, "bashkar yok"--"no, he did nothing else." from this eminence we could see the basalt on the face of the cliff below x, overlying streams of lava which were relatively shallow, and were inclined some 6° to south-south-west. the layers on the western side of the chasm are also thin, and slope in the same direction, with a gradient which slightly increases as they approach the edge of the cliff. it remains to notice some of the features of the panorama which expands from the summits of bingöl. the view comprises palandöken, the akh dagh, the plain of khinis; khamur, with kolibaba; sipan, bilejan, nimrud. the patience even of an assiduous reader would be exhausted by the attempt to draw its full meaning from this varied scene. we may confine ourselves with more advantage to a particular segment of the circle, taking our standpoint on the western summit, bingöl kala (fig. 194). i may mention that one day, while we were making our way in that direction from our camp on the south of the rampart, oswald discovered, just behind the actual peak, a large stone with a cuneiform inscription. it was lying on the ground, only distinguishable by an eye like his from the adjacent blocks of lava. over the almost obliterated characters had been incised the figure of a cross, with a circle at its upper end. this stone may have served to define a boundary, both in the times of the vannic and of the armenian kings. [274] the scene which forms the subject of my outline sketch extends from east-north-east round to west. the foreground includes the westerly horn of the main rampart, with aghri kala, seen in perspective, projecting into the cirque, and, just beyond that ridge, a bank of detritus, probably due to the action of the glacier. the little lakes on the right of the picture belong to the western cirque, and are seen to send streams which tend to meet in the distance, and which flow at the bottom of cañons into the plain of khinis. both this series and the pools in the eastern cirque drain into the eastern bingöl su. they are in fact the highest sources of the murad or eastern euphrates, and their waters find their way to the persian gulf. looking further into the landscape, we see the back of that long line of cliffs on the further side of which lies the village of kherbesor (see p. 252). it is an important barrier in a geographical sense, for it constitutes the parting between the head-waters of the murad and the streams which find their way to the araxes. the outline rising on the north of these cliffs belongs to a group of limestone hills, which extend to the north-western extremity of the plain of khinis, and to the pass of akhviran (a, a). in the background the bold profile which looms upon the horizon represents the extension of the palandöken heights. the peak of palandöken is a well-defined feature; and equally prominent is the break-off in a cliff-like form of the high ground west of the village of madrak. the outline of that high ground is continued for a long distance westwards (b, b), until it declines behind the ridges in the west. between bingöl and that outline, which we may call the madrak line of heights, the land forms are insignificant and vague. it is that country of rolling downs at a great elevation over which we journeyed from madrak to kherbesor. i would ask my reader to observe how the ridges in the west die out into that extensive block of water-worn plateau. let him follow the outline (c) from a somewhat pyramidal summit on the east of sheikhjik; or let him notice, both in this drawing and in the one which i shall presently offer, the direction of the sheikhjik ridge (a), and its tendency to extend into the watershed of the araxes. west of sheikhjik he sees quite a sea of ridges; but in the middle distance all the forms are flat and the surface even--the surface of the bingöl plateau. bingöl! the thousand tarns--one grasps the significance of that poetical name at this season of the year. the feature is largely due to the peaty soil which has been deposited by the action of glaciers in ancient times. the lakes and pools which collect the meltings of the deep canopy of snow would be almost impossible to count. in the foreground, between aghri kala and the horn of the western cirque, lies such a conspicuous flash of blue water. i am inclined to regard this particular pool as the source of the araxes; for although it be possible that one or other of the streams which rise outside the rampart may have a slightly longer course, this source is probably the most elevated of all. but the most interesting of all the features in the middle distance is the outline, as seen from behind, of the plateau itself (e, e). its equality of surface is due to the liquid nature of the lava--a grey, basaltic augite-andesite--and not to flows of tuff. in the west it must fall away to a river valley, separating it from the sea of ridges in that quarter which we noticed from our first encampment on bingöl. the outline in that direction is in some places the edge of a cliff; but at others it assumes a vaulted form. i shall presently show that this latter shape is due to rounded hills of serpentine, which have acted as a dam to the lavas. a hill of the same form is seen much further east, quite close to the western cirque. although we did not examine this particular eminence, it is probable that it consists of the same old rock, representing the former configuration of the land. the bingöl plateau merges insensibly into the highlands of tekman, and the collective figure may be known for geographical purposes as the central tableland. but that long break-off upon the west to a river valley--with the wild ranges, a solecism in the landscape, towering up upon its further side--is such a strange and fascinating characteristic that, even apart from its great geographical significance, it merits careful study upon the spot. let me therefore take my reader a distance of many miles and place him upon the summit of a lofty hill at the head of that valley, just west of the village of gugoghlan. the position is clearly indicated in my sketch from bingöl kala, and forms the standpoint of my second sketch (fig. 195). the hill itself is built up of limestone--probably eocene--overlying serpentine, and capped by recent lava. on the left of the picture you see in perspective the bingöl rampart, with bingöl kala rising boldly at its western end. you observe the serpentine hills damming up the lavas in two separate zones. the break-off of the bingöl plateau is now exposed in face, and a conspicuous feature are the cliffs which it forms (e). the head waters of the araxes are fanning towards us in pronounced cañons, deflected at first by the one zone of serpentines, and a little further by the second zone. but it is the general level of the plateau surface which in fact determines their new direction, and prevents them flowing into the basin of the euphrates. and this level is due to the massing of the lavas against the bases of the serpentine hills. deep down in the valley below you meanders the merghuk su, on its way to the murad. it soon winds away from its almost southern course, to thread the ranges, which already commence to rise from its right bank, with a direction which will probably average south-west. what a contrast between these ridges and the plateau on the east! they have the appearance of stepping up to its very margin, for their axis is about west-south-west and east-north-east. tier upon tier they rise, one behind another, extending into the far horizon on the south-west. their eastern limit, as seen in the perspective of the drawing, is the bold mass, like a sentinel, of sheikhjik. but north of that mountain you observe the gentler outlines (b and c) which were so prominent in the last sketch. the abrupt ending of the outline b--the madrak line of heights--figures as boldly in this landscape as in that from the summit of bingöl. and the way in which both outlines die away into the block of the tableland is not less clearly and unmistakably defined. i might write many pages were i to pursue this subject further; i must content myself with a statement in a very summary form of the conclusions at which i arrived. in the first place it is misleading, and indeed it is incorrect, to speak of a meridional line of elevation with orographical significance as connecting palandöken with bingöl. it is strange that such a practised observer as the great abich should have fallen into such a grave error. [275] the lessons which may be derived from the landscape of this important region may, in this connection, be grouped under two heads. in the first place the fundamental line of elevation is that almost latitudinal line with which we are so familiar, and which may be specified as a west-south-west--east-north-east line. the lie of the country is determined in the principal degree by the strike of the stratified rocks. between bingöl and palandöken the ridges in the west tend to die out into a single block of elevated land. further east this central tableland becomes split up, and gives rise to mountains rising on the margin of lake-like plains. such mountains are represented in a striking manner by the akh dagh; and we have already observed the commencement of this transition in the outline a, as seen from bingöl kala. but the country on the east still maintains its essentially plateau-like character; while the region on the west and south-west of sheikhjik and the hill of gugoghlan is continued in all its wildness between the two branches of the euphrates, into the districts of kighi and terjan. the great height of the ridges points to the conclusion that, in addition to the activity of denuding agencies, they owe their characteristics to a more pronounced or less impeded operation of the forces which have determined the elevation of the country as a whole. in the next place it appears plain that, although volcanic action has no doubt been a factor of considerable importance in producing the level surface of the districts on the north, south, and east, the tendency to a strongly pronounced plateau country is independent of such action. a striking example of this tendency on a very large scale may be derived from the manner in which the outlines north of gugoghlan mass together and die out into the region of tekman. throughout this country, as elsewhere in armenia, the lava streams have played an important part, and have done more than any actual lines of volcanic mountain-making to determine the drainage of the land. a little incident of our stay on bingöl may deserve to be recorded, if only because it furnished us with an opportunity of admiring the vast extent and strange brilliance of the heaven above us during a whole summer's night. on the last day of our visit we gave orders to our people to move our encampment across the rampart into the western cirque. oswald and i, accompanied by two or three zaptiehs, proceeded to the eastern extremity of the principal ridge, and remained there, mapping and drawing, until near sunset. before it commenced to grow dark we descended into the eastern cirque; but the light had already faded before we could surmount the ridge from kara kala, and we became involved among its crags and stones. for nearly an hour we groped our way, leading our horses, and coming near to breaking their legs. when we obtained a view over the snow-sheet and the tumbled bosses in the western cirque, we searched in vain for any sign of our camp-fire. by the light of a crescent moon we proceeded to the margin of the snow at the foot of the cliff on the north of the basin. even from this eminence we could not discover any sign. we then rode down the cirque, towards the open country; still not a trace of our people. the zaptiehs endeavoured to discharge their rifles; and one man accomplished the feat after several misfires. we ourselves filled the air with the reports of our revolvers; but no answering signal came. we were surprised at the absence of any kurdish encampment in the neighbourhood of the mountain. there was not a glimmer of the lights of a yaila near or far. was the tale of the frequency of such summer-quarters on bingöl a fable, or had the kurds been scared away by the dread of suleyman pasha, who might require them to make some show for his paper regiments? or had we courted an attack by dividing our forces, and were our servants and our papers and our baggage at the mercy of thieves? it was clearly not to much purpose debating such questions; we had no alternative but to pass the night where we stood. both were clothed in the thinnest of garments; but our zaptiehs lent us their overcoats, of such material as they were. we established ourselves within a circle of loose boulders, which had probably been reared by shepherds as a pen. the wind came sighing down from the snowfield in the cirque, and blew through the apertures of the low wall. our poor horses shivered and starved. oswald and i attempted sleep under the partial cover of a small camp table which we had with us for our mapping. it was to no purpose, for our limbs became numb. meanwhile the moon had vanished; but the heaven was still alight; one could scarcely see the stars to greater advantage than from the open flats of such a lofty platform. these last nights we had been observing the advances of jupiter to venus--a stately and not too intimate intercourse, as becomes gods and stars. venus, the most engrossing of all the dwellers in the firmament, a true mother of the inhabitants of heaven, had been receiving the somewhat distant approaches of jupiter, and the wooer had almost mingled with his bride. to-night they had travelled apart--we reflected upon the mournful omen, with something of the impertinence of the astrologers of old who presumed to connect the operations of the celestial bodies with the puny fate of a kingdom or a king. pacing to and fro, we realised the paradox of perfect discomfort and keen pleasure. one of our zaptiehs appeared to encompass the same result by surrendering his senses to quite an orgy of ecstatic prayer. when at last the suffused splendour of the milky way became pale, and the first flush of dawn was thrown over the dim land forms, we emerged from our flimsy harbour and rode towards the west. a little later horsemen were seen, coming towards us at a dangerous speed over the sheet of snow and the rocky ground in the south. they proved to be our escort, wild with excitement, and quite speechless when they arrived. it is strange that none of the natives have the smallest conception of locality; they had encamped miles away from the appointed place. they had been riding all night in quest of their charge, and had by fortune, as a last chance, extended their search to the scarcely ambiguous position of our prescribed tryst. chapter xxii home across the border ranges august 24.--we found our camp a long distance south of the western summit, and, after a short sleep, resumed our journey. we simply followed a compass course to the head of that river valley along which the bingöl plateau breaks off on the side of the west. the general flow of the lava over which we rode was towards north-west. we crossed the first zone of serpentine hills through a deep valley with heights on either side. beyond the passage we issued upon a lower plain of lava, where the stream of molten matter had been diverted by the serpentines, and had circled round them, flooding down into the plain. in the section displayed by a river cliff within the limits of this region we observed a bed of columnar lava some twenty feet in thickness, overlying lavas to a depth of some eighty feet. near this point we reached the first village, the kurdish settlement of bastok. it is placed upon one of the head streams of the aras, which we forded, and, not long after, arrived on the banks of the main channel at the kurdish hamlet of shekan. the aras had already become a little river, and was known to the villagers under that name. we crossed it, leaving it to flow off into an alluvial plain, along the marginal heights of which we rode. this is the first plain in the proper sense of the word through which the araxes winds. it is situated at an altitude of about 7000 feet, and may be called, from a village on its northern confines, the plain of altun. we discovered a kurdish village at the eastern foot of the hill which had been our landmark and point of course. it bears the name of gugoghlan. it fronts the plain of the aras, which, on the north of the hill, is only separated by a low lip of ground from the basin of the murad. such is the habit of these water-partings. i remained for two days in this village, drawing and mapping on the hill. oswald preceded me to erzerum. our journey thither led us across the central tableland, a little west of the route pursued during our outward march. i have already dealt with the general characteristics of the region, and shall only add a short account of any fresh features. gugoghlan already belongs to the district of shushar, while the villages on the further side of the sheikhjik mountain are included in that of kighi. the western and north-western sides of the altun plain have been flooded by a lava which appears to have issued from the neighbourhood of sheikhjik and also from the heights upon its northern margin. our way to erzerum took us over this sheet of lava. in a depression between two such flows we passed an extensive yaila, belonging to zireki kurds--a tribe of which the main body live about diarbekr, and of whom these people are a colony. north of the yaila we commenced the ascent of that latitudinal wall of mountain which at once forms the limit of the plain of altun, and sends the araxes off towards the east. it consists of lava overlying lacustrine deposits, and the summit is perfectly flat. you may ride in any direction until you are stopped by a river valley, which will be deeply cut and bordered by commanding heights. i had for guide an old and almost toothless kurd, whom i had instructed, with some misgivings as to his knowledge, to lead a course as straight as possible to erzerum. the usual route from gugoghlan would be by way of madrak, keeping to lower levels but rather longer. but at this season of the year when elevation is of no consequence, the snow having long since disappeared, it is just as well to follow the most direct line, and keep as high as possible and near the water-parting. from one side of the flat vaulting the streams will flow westwards, and from the other towards the east. we crossed no less than six tributaries of the araxes. of these the first three converged rather closely together, and they probably compose the stream upon which is situated the village of khedonun. their valley or valleys have lofty parapets which required to be turned. i observed that the lavas upon the hillsides had in some places cooled in a columnar fashion. the direction of the first and most imposing of these valleys was towards south-south-east. north of the series the country again became flat, and the views far-reaching; we were in fact approaching the spine of the whole block of heights. two new branches were crossed, both flowing into a wide depression which we overlooked in all its extent. they were separated by a considerable stretch of very elevated land. their situation points to the conclusion that they take their waters to the stream which skirts the village of duzyurt. making our way from one to the other, we rode at the foot of outcrops of lava upon our left hand. some were circular in form. blue gentians are found in the grassy places, and the more northerly of the two streams is placed at a level of no less than 9400 feet. the highest point along our route lay some little distance further north, and may have been some 200 feet more elevated. it may be called the pass over this plateau region. the block of heights is separated from those of palandöken by a depression, which is crossed by a saddle-shaped neck of land. on one side of this vaulting water flows to the euphrates, and on the other to the araxes. the affluent to the araxes is one of the branches of the madrak river. we forded it near the head of the trough. we did not pass a single village, not even a yaila, during our ride from the encampment of zireki kurds to the palandöken ridge. the surface of the plateau consists of a slabby lava, which probably overlies the limestone with no great depth. the lavas appear to have issued from approximately east-west fissures at a time when the country had been already carved out into the main features of its present contour. especially remarkable, as we neared the palandöken line of heights, was the whiteness of their face where the rock was exposed. the limestone, which perhaps constitutes the bulk of that block, is probably of eocene age. we struck a course up the slope of those heights a little west of the more westerly of the two forts; and we issued into the so-called crater of palandöken-eyerli dagh, where we encamped by the margin of the first northward-flowing stream. on the following morning i made the ascent of the peak of palandöken. the result of my test of boiling-point on this single occasion gives it a height of 10,690 feet. it is therefore about at the same level as the highest points on the bingöl ramparts on the opposite side of the whole wide basin. like its close neighbour on the west, the equally bold eyerli dagh, it is of eruptive volcanic origin. but the cirque between the two has probably never been a crater; it seems more likely that its peculiar form is mainly due to the erosive action of snow and ice. we had not time to make any careful examination of the wide area which the cirque covers. but this view was suggested by all the phenomena which came under our notice. [276] the basin has been cleared out by two gorges, and the matter is deposited on the wide detrital fan which extends some distance into the plain of erzerum. a patch or two of snow were still visible in the hollows; but the peak and steep, boulder-strewn sides of palandöken were completely free of snow. from erzerum to the coast we took a fairly direct route, travelling by the pass of the jejen dagh (8600 feet) to baiburt, and thence by the passes of the kitowa (8040 feet) and kazikly (8290 feet) daghs to the monastery of sumelas. [277] but the great height of the passes and the general ruggedness of the country are against the prospects of this route as a possible avenue of constant communication between trebizond and the armenian fortress. a future railway will probably follow the devious course of the existing chaussée by way of gümüshkhaneh, or will strike a direct course for the seaboard, issuing at the port of rizeh. [278] but to the traveller who is in search of romantic scenery one may confidently recommend the summer road which we adopted. the passage of the first barrier will afford him a near view of the beautiful peak of the jejen; while the later journey lies among the summits of the pontic alps and among some of their wildest glens. the last stage will introduce him to one of the most remarkable valleys in this or any other land. he should endeavour to arrange his visit during his return homewards, when the features of the tableland, with their majesty of form but bareness of surface, are freshly graven upon the mind. the contrast to that landscape which he will find in the vale of meiriman is at once sudden and complete. vegetation of bewildering beauty takes the place of grandeur of outline; and only the impressive scale upon which nature has moulded her work in asia remains constant to the end. chapter xxiii geographical my purpose in the present chapter is to collect the threads of that part of the narrative which was occupied with the natural features, and to endeavour to weave them together into a composite but single fabric, capable of being appreciated as a whole. in the pursuit of this object i shall postulate familiarity on the part of my reader with the contents of the companion chapter dealing with the same subject which belongs to my first volume; and it is not without misgiving that i compare the scantiness of my present material with the multitude of facts with which the researches of hermann abich have enriched our knowledge of the russian provinces. i am dependent almost entirely upon the gleanings of my own journeys and of those accomplished by my friends within quite recent years; and it has been impossible to commence the writing of this chapter before the completion of the map embodying these results. what it may, perhaps, be hoped without excessive presumption is that the framework, at least, of our subject, the geography of south-western or turkish armenia, can now be established with some degree of certainty; and that succeeding travellers may be enabled to recognise at a glance the more imperfect parts instead of losing themselves in the almost unknown or falsely known. [279] no better standpoint could be selected from which to commence a survey of the geography than the spine of that range whence we descended into turkish territory during our journey southwards from kagyzman (vol. i. ch. xx. p. 409, and ch. xxi. p. 436). it carries the present frontier between the russian and turkish empires, and in fact divides the area of armenia into two parts. in a political sense it forms a boundary of considerable significance, shutting off russia from the waters which issue in the persian gulf. more than once have her victorious armies flooded across this barrier, and not less often have they been compelled by the provisions of the ensuing peace to withdraw to its further side. the length of the range, its ruggedness and the relative height of the passes, compared with the plains on either flank, are features which must have operated throughout history to invest it with an importance unrivalled by the other systems which furrow the surface of the armenian tableland. from the kuseh dagh (11,262 feet) in the west to little ararat (12,840 feet) in the east is a distance of nearly 100 miles; and throughout that space the chain is made up of such lofty peaks as the ashakh dagh (10,723 feet), perli dagh (10,647 feet), sulakha dagh (9644 feet) and khama dagh (11,018 feet). the passes reach from 7000 to 8500 feet; while the level of the plain of the araxes does not exceed 3000 feet, nor that of the plain of alashkert 5500 feet. in appearance the barrier as a whole resembles the mountains of the peripheral regions; there are the same deep valleys, jagged outline, precipitous slopes. it seems some daring invasion of those mountains into the plateau country; and the semblance is accentuated by the beds of marl along its northerly base into which the long transverse parapets plunge (vol. i. fig. 106, p. 419). highly crystalline rocks, such as diabase, and even syenite, of which the spine of the more westerly portion is probably composed, have played the principal part in its configuration, where recent eruptive action has not built up a sequence of volcanic fabrics, such as kuseh dagh, perli dagh, the peaks about lake balük, the great and the little ararat. this range, to which collectively we may apply the name of aghri dagh or ararat system, constitutes the principal intermediate line of elevation between the northern and the southern zones of peripheral mountains. it has been subjected to intense folding pressure, and during the process of bending over from an east-north-easterly to a south-easterly direction a partial fracture of the arc it describes has taken place. from the western shore of lake balük, an upland sheet of water lying at a level of 7389 feet, we are, perhaps, justified in tracing the extension of one branch of the system along the water-parting between the murad and the araxes south-east to the tendurek dagh, and through that volcano into the line of hills which divides the basin of lake van from the streams which find their way into the araxes. thence the elevation may be followed into the southern peripheral region, forming, as it were, a splinter from the chain of zagros which has struggled upwards through the plateau country to its very heart. the prevalence of crystalline rocks, which have been classed by loftus as granite, has been attested along the inner edge of zagros all the way from near khorremabad in persia past hamadan to the sources of the great zab; and they extend from the western borders of lake urmi at least as far as the district of bayazid. [280] it seems probable that they are in connection with the granite rocks of the aghri dagh, where they are found to the west of the perli dagh along the axis of this northern intermediate system. [281] the more northerly and principal branch in an orographical sense would appear to consist almost exclusively of recent volcanic mountains, stretching from perli dagh in an east-south-easterly direction to the pambukh dagh, west of great ararat. in this neighbourhood the line is taken up by the fabric of ararat, raising the barrier by slow stages to nearly 17,000 feet, and having an axis from north-west to south-east. [282] the sequence comes to an end in the little ararat, whose slopes descend on three sides to fairly level plains. an interesting feature about the range in its more westerly portion are the outbreaks of andesitic lava along its base upon the north. these eruptions appear to have culminated in the peak of takjaltu (8409 feet) near kulpi, which forms a landmark to the districts on that side. thence the fissure which gave issue to the andesite may be traced westwards, keeping parallel to the chain. the eruptions have disturbed the sedimentary rocks, and their incidence can be certainly attributed to the miocene period. [283] further east the upwellings of lava along the slopes of the mountains have all the appearance of having been discharged into a sheet of water spread over the surface of the ararat region. [284] west of the kuseh dagh, the bell-shaped mountain, this intermediate line of elevation may be plainly followed upon the map along the southern confines of the plain of pasin through the limestones which the araxes threads in a landscape of savage grandeur before its entry upon the level expanse. from the left bank of the river the heights are continued for many a mile, until they are distinguished by the palandöken-eyerli dagh volcanic system (10,694 feet) just south of erzerum. a slight inclination southwards through the karakaya dagh into the volcanic keupek dagh, and further south into the khach dagh, the southern boundary of the province of terjan, takes the line with clear definition through the girdim dagh and the baghir dagh into the lofty and extensive barrier of the merjan-muzur dagh (about 12,000 feet), facing the plains about erzinjan. the progress of the elevation across the euphrates through asia minor to the mediterranean appears to be indicated on the map of kiepert by the sarichichek dagh, west of egin, whence it is probably protracted between the taurus and the anti-taurus chains. the anti-taurus would appear to be represented in armenia by the system which enters the country in the chardaklu dagh (long. 39, lat. 39.55), and extends in the form of an elevated block of tableland through the sipikor dagh, dadian dagh (11,000 feet), kop dagh into the dümlü dagh, north of erzerum, and the chorokh region. the importance of the orographical system which we have now traced from ararat to muzur dagh, and from lake balük to the zagros range, may be appreciated in a geographical sense by one or two reflections. in the first place it provides the natural frontier between the country about lake van and the persian province of azerbaijan. this frontier may probably be regarded as the natural eastern boundary of armenia during its course from behind bayazid to the avrin dagh, overlooking the valley of the river of kotur. at the present day it forms the turko-persian border; while the more northerly branch, which effects a junction in the neighbourhood of lake balük, divides the russian and turkish empires. as the most pronounced constituent of the asiatic structural design within the limits of the tableland, the system carries over the tauric lines of elevation into those which have determined the configuration of the iranian highlands. it encompasses this result in a most impressive manner, standing up from the plateau region with precipitous slopes on either side and suggesting to the mind the conception of a backbone to the country as a whole. it is at this point that in the shatin or aghri dagh it effects the bend over into persia, but not without partial fracture and consequent dislocation. at the same time we should be mistaken in attributing to the system functions analogous to those of the mountains of the peripheral regions. even the aghri dagh is deprived of many of the qualities essential to a barrier by its narrowness and by the extension of the open plains on either flank. the border between the lake van basin and azerbaijan consists of a line of hills rather than of mountains in the proper sense. the extension of the elevation along the southern confines of the plains of pasin and of erzerum takes the form of the lofty rim of the central region of the tableland, and not of a mountain range. that term might, perhaps, be applied to the cretaceous heights of the merjan-muzur dagh; but these again are probably due to the resistance of the dersim block, the plateau-like country which they limit upon the north. i have already traced the course of the mountains of the northern peripheral region, the effective barrier between armenia and the coast of the black sea, throughout their prolongation upon the confines of the tableland, and have drawn the natural frontier inwards in the neighbourhood of ispir across the valley of the chorokh to the northern border heights of the plain of erzerum (vol. i. ch. xxi. p. 431). the analogous zone upon the south is composed by the main chain of taurus, separating the highlands from the low-lying plains of mesopotamia and buttressing them up on that side. this chain appears to have succeeded in accomplishing the curve into the iranian direction without undergoing fracture to any material extent. the symmetry of the arc described as seen from the plains about diarbekr has already enlisted our admiration (ibid. p. 424). the spine of the range may be followed along the southern shore of lake göljik to the palu dagh, east of the town of palu. thence it is taken along the plain of chabakchur and the left bank of the murad to the confines of the plain of mush. conspicuous with sharp peaks which are seldom free from snow, it stretches past the depression of mush into the landscape of lake van, where it recalls the sombreness of the norwegian coast. through the karkar dagh (long. 42.47), and, further east, through the bashit dagh, west of bashkala, it makes steps southwards to the threshold of the basin of the great zab; and the elevation may be traced on the further side of the river in the peaks of the jelu dagh, said to attain a height of between 13,000 and 14,000 feet. [285] an impressive feature of this taurus range, and one which ought not to escape the attention whether of geographers or of political students, is the manner in which it appears to have sunk down along its southern edge between the 39th and 42nd degrees of longitude. in places the girdle of mountains becomes so narrow that its effectiveness as a barrier is much impaired. from the town of arghana, which must lie almost at the southern foot of the chain, it is a direct distance of not more than 28 miles to the confines of the plains about kharput. these may be attained from diarbekr on the lowlands without encountering a greater altitude than less than 5000 feet. the position of the town of haini (2800 feet) appears to correspond to that of arghana; and thence the murad may be reached in 22 miles direct by a pass of only 4200 feet. in such a climate heights like these are quite insignificant, and they would not offer at any season an obstacle of much importance to an army operating from the lowlands in the direction of the armenian plains. this sinking-down of taurus has been accompanied, as indeed one might expect, by volcanic action on a considerable scale. the karaja dagh, which lies to the south-west of diarbekr, is not a mountain of much relative height. you may ride at a trot across its long-drawn undulations, admiring the sea-like expanse of the plains around. yet it represents an extensive outpouring of lavas in recent geological times. it would appear to be in connection with some of the greatest of armenian volcanoes, and with a string of depressions extending across the plateau. the line may be easily recognised through nimrud and sipan to tendurek and ararat. with the exception of the dersim block, lying to the south of the merjan-muzur dagh, which has not yet been satisfactorily explored, the remaining lines of elevation within the limits of the tableland are probably for the most part derived from the taurus system. in this connection it is most interesting to take due note of the phenomenon that, side by side with the results of the later earth movements which have most largely determined the existing configuration of the land, an older movement may be discerned with a wide extension in turkish armenia, rearing mountains along a south-west--north-east line. we ourselves remarked this phenomenon on an impressive scale in the akh dagh, an elevation of highly marmorised limestone, which may well be older even than the cretaceous period. it rises up on the north of the plain of khinis (ch. viii. p. 186, fig. 159), which it confines in an east-south-easterly direction. though we were unable to test the strike of the stratification, the appearance of the ridges of which it is composed almost demanded the conclusion that they were originally members of a series of heights with a north-easterly course. even as far east as the region to the south-west of lake van, where the taurus is pursuing a general trend towards east-south-east, the strike of the older rocks was ascertained to be north-east. a glance at the map will show that the heights which confine the course of the gunek su pursue a north-easterly direction. those on the right bank, extending to the basin of the kighi or peri su, may be clearly traced into the taurus on the west of palu, to be represented further south by the chembek dagh and mastikan dagh, constituents of taurus to the south-west of kharput. in the opposite direction the line may not unreasonably be regarded as extending beneath the volcanic accumulations of the bingöl dagh through the akh dagh into the hills confining the plain of alashkert upon the south, known as the mergemir or khalias dagh. the younger movements may find expression in the present trend of the two last-named systems, and, further south, in the köshmür dagh, shaitan dagh and javresh dagh, mountains through which the kighi su breaks in a narrow defile after leaving the khindris ova or plain. these last extend with impressive orographical distinction to the south-western edge of the bingöl plateau. the köshmür dagh effects a junction with the mountains of the dersim; and it would almost seem as if that region had refused to submit to the folding pressure, causing the earth waves to work round it and, like the plateau of azerbaijan, on the east of armenia, favouring fracture rather than subordination in any complete sense to the general structural laws. [286] yet i cannot doubt that the dersim should be included within the limits of the country which forms the subject of the present enquiry. the name appears to be applied more strictly to the mountainous region lying to the east of the upper reaches of the muzur su, between that river and the town of kighi kasaba. but it may be used to embrace also the country to the south of the merjan-muzur dagh, as far west as the great bend of the western euphrates and up to the right bank of the murad on the south. separated from the important turkish military station at erzinjan by a range of mountains covered with snow during six months in the year, it slopes gradually towards the river on its southern confines, well wooded in many parts, abounding in minerals, but broken and rugged especially in the northern and eastern districts. the original home of an armenian population, who probably entered their historical seats from the west, it is dotted over with the ruins of armenian churches, monasteries and villages, and is mainly but sparsely inhabited by kizilbash kurds. [287] the natural boundary between armenia and asia minor is the course of the western euphrates between the town of kemakh, the burial-place of the armenian arsakid kings, and its passage through taurus below keban-maden. north of the euphrates the line may be drawn in a more or less arbitrary manner from above egin to the mountains of the northern peripheral region. the boundary of taurus is clearly defined from one end of armenia to the other, describing a symmetrical curve along the threshold of the armenian highlands, and affording a number of standpoints whence the contrast may be appreciated between the plateau country and the peripheral mountains. a string of great plains extend on its inner or northern side, but plains quite different in character from the lowlands about diarbekr, and framed in a landscape never wanting in the long-drawn outlines of the loftier levels. the plain of kharput, with an altitude of something over 3000 feet, commences the series on the west. it is reached from the west and the south by a number of easy approaches, the tauric barrier being readily surmountable in this neighbourhood. the town is built upon a hill, not far south of the murad, on the northern confines of the plain; and the old castle overlooks the expanse at a difference in level of about 1000 feet. various estimates assign a population of from 13,000 to 25,000 souls to this ancient armenian borough; and, although the armenians are in great minority in the city, they have a large preponderance among the inhabitants of the surrounding region. it has been estimated that not less than from 130 to 150 villages are situated in the vicinity. the vine flourishes and is cultivated at this moderate elevation; and the dwellings are for the most part constructed of mud and brick with two storeys, in striking contrast to the unhealthy underground burrows in which the peasantry cheat the rigour of an armenian winter over the greater portion of the area of the tableland. pear and plum trees grace the outskirts of the settlements, and the mulberry grows in such profusion that the silk crop is often of considerable value. kharput has become a centre of american missionary effort--on the whole a salutary and civilising influence in these lands. their educational activities are represented by a well-equipped institution founded in 1876 and bearing the name of armenia college. thither flock the armenian youth from all parts of the country, to grow up beneath the example of the most progressive of western peoples. within recent years the value of that example has somewhat diminished in their eyes, owing to the impunity with which the organisers of palace policy in constantinople have applied the torch to the property of american citizens and the ban of the censor to the loftiest creations of western literature. these are little misunderstandings which will disappear. a fairly level country extends from the territory of kharput eastwards to the confines of palu. the murad wanders in many channels over the expanse, approached at an interval which is always diminishing by the tauric barrier. the river is forded to the right bank before the castled rock is reached, past which it flows in a single stream. it washes on three sides the steep declivities of the platform upon which the town is built. palu is described to me as a thriving borough with about 2000 houses, which gives a population of from 10,000 to 12,000 souls. six hundred are said to belong to armenian families and the remainder to kurdish people. a bridge with eight arches and a length of 190 yards connects the place, just to the east of the loop described by the river, with the opposite or left bank. on the north extends a plain in connection with that of kharput and productive of abundant crops. rock chambers and a cuneiform inscription of the vannic king, menuas, recording his conquests and emblazoned with the name of khaldis, his supreme god, remind the traveller that he is already approaching the centres of that old civilisation which existed before the armenians, and was perhaps the highest that these lands have known. [288] from palu a fair track leads through temran into the khindris plain, and thence to erzerum. the passage of the shaitan dagh into the plain may be effected at different points, but the pass to lichig has an elevation of over 8000 feet. the government are proposing to carry their new carriage-road between kharput and erzerum through the gorge of the kighi su. two routes are offered between palu and the next great plain at the foot of taurus, comprised within the territory of chabakchur. the upper route proceeds through khoshmat to chevelik in the valley of the gunek su, crossing a mountainous region and attaining elevations of 6000 to 7000 feet above the sea. [289] the lower follows the gorge of the murad and is more in use during winter, but it is described in no very favourable terms. the narrows commence just east of palu and extend to chabakchur. a waterfall brings to an end the navigation of the river, which is conducted with no small difficulties by means of rafts. when at length the plain is reached communications become better; and the valley of the gunek su affords an easy approach to erzerum, though one which would not be agreeable during winter. between chabakchur and the plain of mush the murad is again confined in a gorge, and its course is still requiring to be explored. a mule track is forthcoming, which keeps close to the river, passing through the district of genj. i am informed that it would be impossible to convert into a good road. the more usual route is by menaskut, entering the plain below surb karapet after traversing a mountainous but well-wooded country. one may say in general terms of the extensive region we are now leaving that the pleasant plains along its southern margin are by no means the dominant feature. the territory lying between the two great rivers, the western and the eastern euphrates, which is bounded on the north by the merjan-muzur dagh with its continuation eastwards in the baghir dagh, girdim dagh and khach dagh; and on the east by the westerly edge of the bingöl plateau and the water-parting from bingöl to palandöken, the mountain landmark just south of erzerum--all this area, measuring some 140 miles from west to east and on the average 50 miles from north to south, is intersected by a sea of mountains, threaded, indeed, by considerable streams, but always difficult and in winter almost impossible to cross. the constant acclivity towards the north, the height of the barrier on its northern confines, and the indifference of the approaches from the east combine to shut it off from the stream of human movement, which is diverted into other channels. we can scarcely understand the history of these countries without appreciating this fact. be the movement from east to west or from north to south, the main current is sure to eddy along the outskirts of this territory, either pursuing the broad avenue of the valley of the western euphrates, or turning aside from the plateau region and flooding across the peripheral mountains into the lowlands of mesopotamia. as might be expected under such conditions, the country is for the most part under little control. strange people who are classed as kurds, but speak a dialect called zaza, and for the most part profess a liberal religion which holds the scales between christianity and islam, compose the bulk of the inhabitants in the mountainous parts. the government works from the upland plains, of which there are many and of ample extent, and from such centres as kighi kasaba and pülümer. if my reader will turn to my sketch from the hill of gugoghlan (fig. 195, p. 373), he may realise at a glance the rugged nature of this region and the contrast which it offers to the normal surface features. it comprises the ridges in the west and south-west of the panorama; and the merghuk su, which meanders towards them, is the name of the head waters of the kighi su, issuing in the plains about kharput. travellers praise the woodlands which clothe great parts of the country, though they were not visible from the standpoint of my drawing. the next great plain at the foot of taurus derives its name from the town of mush, built against the wall of the range. it extends from north-west to south-east for a distance of over 40 miles, crossed at its lower end by the wandering stream of the murad, to which it sends a dull and almost stagnant tributary. how clean the line of taurus stands out on the southern margin of this flat and almost limitless expanse! under happier human conditions the plain would soon become a garden and granary, favouring the vine and the luscious growth of the tobacco plant as well as all kinds of cereals. at the present day marshes extend over a great part of the area, and the armenian peasantry--one of the brawniest and most sturdy in the world--have been reduced by the excesses of the kurds to abject indigence. mush is in communication at all seasons of the year with the great grain-growing districts of bulanik and khinis, and with the plains of pasin and erzerum. it is little more than a step--indeed a step in the literal sense--up to the fertile territories on the north of lake van. ready access is always forthcoming through the bitlis passage to the mesopotamian lowlands. the mush plain represents a considerable subsidence of the plateau region, the average elevation being only 4200 feet. thence you pass across the dam formed by lavas from nimrud to the much higher level of lake van (5637 feet). that inland sea, with the gulf-like extension of the even area up the valley of the khoshab, the district of hayotz-dzor, forms the appropriate termination of the string of level spaces outspread at the base of the chain which comes from the mediterranean during its passage along armenian soil. in the companion chapter of the first volume i have endeavoured to suggest the characteristics of the mountains of the northern peripheral region. the corresponding zone upon the south which is occupied by taurus is distinguished by many similar features. there are the same sharp peaks, precipitous slopes, narrow valleys and swift streams and rivers, composing a landscape which, except for the greater scale of the phenomena, is essentially and constantly alpine in character. unlike our alps but like the barrier on the side of the black sea, one valley is ever higher than the trough which lies behind it, each crest more lofty than the last, as you journey towards the edge of the tableland whether from the coast of the northern waters or from the alluvial flats which extend to the persian gulf. of moisture there is less among these southern mountains, and we miss the exuberance of the pontic vegetation. but forests of dwarf oak relieve the sternness of the scenery, and the knots or whorls on the trunks of the numerous walnut trees sustain an industry which attracts the most adventurous of native traders, causes them to sojourn in these wild districts, and enables them to supply the markets of europe with excellent material for veneering purposes. the summits attain their greatest elevation in the jelu dagh, a group of peaks just east of the valley of the great zab which are at least as high as 13,000 feet. but by the time the summer is well advanced the landscape is almost free from snow. west of the zab a labyrinth of valleys feed the long course of the bohtan su across the mountainous belt. the barrier has more than trebled in lateral extension since confining the territories of kharput and palu. even the tigris, which has been idly spreading over the vast alluvial flats about diarbekr, is compelled to become a mountain stream. above the primeval village of hasan keif it enters the narrow gorge which pierces the foot of taurus as he reaches out into the plains in the hill range of midyat. it is in that gorge that the bohtan effects the confluence; and well i remember the roar of the tributary and the genuflexions of my companions as the swirling water eddied around our raft. the tigris is henceforward a noble river at all seasons, and when jezireh is soon passed its brief activity is over and it luxuriates in open spaces till reaching the gulf. all this alpine country between the edge of the tableland and the plains of mesopotamia, which is watered by the numerous constituents of the tigris, is the original and natural home of the kurdish people, the true kurdistan or kurd-land. these shepherds love the mountains as the arabs affect the plains; but they need the warm plains during the winter season when their fastnesses are covered with snow. they descend to the foot of the chain with their numerous flocks and herds, and camp on the lower course of some southward-flowing tributary or even upon the banks of the great river. the winter climate of the lowlands is temperate and delicious; the long kurd with his loose limbs, hollow cheeks and beak nose meets the neat and nimble arab. the coarse but perky little highland horse is watered from the same flood to which the arab leads the graceful creature prized beyond all other possessions, of skin like satin, limbs like ivory, and head which is the supreme embodiment of high courage, docility and intelligence. the noiseless raft surprises a group of kurdish women bathing quite nude upon the margin of the sandy bed. a man is watching over them, and they seem without concern. two specks are descried upon the bosom of the waters; the current brings them nearer; they are swimmers from the opposite bank with the chest supported on an inflated skin. within a few yards of your calek they emerge upon the bank, arab maidens who would delight a sculptor with their slim forms resembling deer, and who have never learnt the sin of human nakedness. slowly they free the air from the buoyant skins, unbind the bundle on their heads containing their loose cotton garment, and make their way to an invisible village or encampment. when summer comes the annual migration to the recesses of the mountains has taken place, and whatever kurds are not detained in the lowland villages, which are fairly numerous in spite of the aversion of the tribal kurd to a life within walls, have already ended their brief sojourn in the country of the arabs and are stretching their goat-hair tents upon the upland pastures. streams of cattle, sheep, horses and goats obstruct the passes; the shepherds have doffed their felt cloaks and clamber over the boulders, their women beside them, mounted or on foot. the glades and gorges become bright with red and blue cottons, and kurdish girls with comely faces and white ankles are seen on the mountain paths. long-drawn shouts are carried far across the hiss of the torrents, and wurra, wurra! or ho, ho! announce the locality of the speaker or awake the attention of callous ears. the kurd is a picturesque and welcome presence among these solitudes, and it is only when he has been severed from his natural surroundings that he becomes odious and an enemy of the human race. of the principal communications across taurus with the tableland of armenia i have already glanced at those connecting diarbekr with kharput and erzerum through arghana, and with erzerum through haini. the latter is a direct and, in spite of the great elevation of the country which it traverses between the plain of altun and the northern capital, nevertheless a promising route. mush plain may be reached from diarbekr by way of kulp and the gozme gedik pass (6645 feet). but between this approach and the bitlis passage the country is ill-controlled, nor am i aware of any favourable and beaten tracks. the bitlis passage represents the main avenue between the lowlands and the country about lake van (ch. vi. p. 148); from diarbekr it is entered by way of zokh and from mosul through sert. i shall not stay to discuss the various more or less direct routes across the mountains between sert and the city of van; nor can i speak from personal knowledge or even conjecture of those which conduct to van from jezireh-ibn-omar, or from mosul by the valley of the great zab. [290] the entire region to the south and south-east of the great lake--khizan, mukus, shatakh, nurduz--has been scoured in recent years by various travellers whose experiences have not to my knowledge as yet appeared in print. [291] i should now propose to dismiss this part of my subject, dealing with the zones of peripheral mountains and the intermediate lines of elevation upon the surface of the tableland which they enclose; and to bring under review some of the remaining features characteristic of the armenian highlands in their westerly extension from the spine of the ararat system to the confines of asia minor. hitherto our study of the orography of this tauric armenia has been mainly occupied--it is interesting to recall the fact--with lines of folding of the earth's crust. indeed the country as a whole has not been subjected to recent volcanic action in the same degree as the plateau regions lying to the north of the spinal mountains--the territories of akhaltsykh, ardahan, akhalkalaki, alexandropol and kars. at the same time it has not escaped the operation of these agencies; nor have they worked upon a less impressive scale. be it lavas flooding over the sedimentary deposits and levelling the inequalities of the ground--what more startling manifestation could be offered of the process than the bingöl plateau with its piled-up layers of lava and tuff? or if volcanoes in the strict sense be matched against volcanoes, there are nimrud and sipan to enter the lists with alagöz and ararat. several mountains which are due to eruptive action have been added to the map in the course of my own journeys. such are bilejan and kartevin. the roll will be increased as our knowledge is carried further of the districts on the west of bingöl and palandöken. a striking analogy in some respects to the russian territories which i have just specified is provided by the surface features of the bingöl plateau, with its continuation northwards in the shape of a deeply eroded block of land to the confines of the plains of erzerum and pasin. this extensive region lies about south-west of the corresponding area of rectangular shape within the russian frontier. it performs the same function of a roof to the adjacent countries; and just as the one stage gives birth to the kur and the arpa chai, so the other feeds with countless channels the earliest course of the araxes and contributes the largest proportion of the waters of the murad. the streams which decline from its north-westerly extremities swell the volume of the western euphrates. built up on the south with lavas and tuffs to the extent of thousands of feet, it has throughout been flooded with volcanic matter. taken in relation with the general structure of tauric or turkish armenia, we may apply to this elevated stage of the plateau country the designation of the central tableland. my reader is already familiar with the characteristics of the region--the basin-like appearance, the long parapets on the northern and southern edges, in the one case culminating in the volcanic peaks of palandöken (10,694 feet) and eyerli, in the other distinguished by the eminences of bingöl (nearly 10,800 feet). the limits of the bingöl plateau are clearly defined on three sides, and may readily be recognised on our map. on the north it merges insensibly into the shushar and tekman districts, though at some points, as, for example, the cliffs just south of kherbesor, lines of demarcation may be laid down. how the waters of this plateau converge together in the shape of two fans, as they are precipitated from the highest levels towards the north and towards the east, burying themselves ever deeper into the volcanic soil! the one group is collected in the plain of khinis, and the other by the course of the araxes between the plain of altun and the narrows on the north of kulli. there in the hollow of the basin the levels are still lofty--the altun plain with about 7000 feet and kulli with about 6000. ascend to the table surface from the beds of the rivers, and you register heights which range between 7000 and at least 9000 feet above the sea. a country with down-like outlines, composed of limestones with intrusive serpentines and pliocene lake deposits capped by sheets of the ubiquitous lava--an expanse sterile and vast at all seasons, and in winter covered with snow--a softly billowing surface dappled by the shadows of cumulus clouds and shot with colour from a network of blue streams--such, i think, are the most permanent impressions of our journeys across the central tableland. volcanic action is largely responsible for the configuration of this tract of country, filling up hollows, preserving the sedimentary deposits with overlying sheets of lava. the extent of the operation may best be gauged on the south-western extremities of the bingöl plateau. there the ridges in the west are seen stepping up, one after another, almost to the margin of the elevated platform where your tents are spread. the setting sun invests them with an added glamour of gold and purple; yet how futile this fretful array against the solid land about you, dimly spread in horizontal spaces beyond sight! the yellow mullein which scents the air springs from the ruin of all those ridges, growing upon the tomb of their deeply-buried remains. but further north, where the sway of the lavas has already become feeble, the same phenomenon, a little modified, may be observed. survey the scene as it is unfolded northwards from the western summit of bingöl or from the hill of gugoghlan (ch. xxii. p. 373, figs. 194 and 195). what a contrast between the landscape of the west and that of the east! all those ridges in the west are dying by themselves into the down-like spaces of the central tableland. here the lavas have been a contributing but not the principal cause. the truth is that we should here be standing quite near the point of greatest constriction between the inner and outer arcs. in other words, it is just west of this region that the greatest compression of the armenian highlands by earth movements may be supposed to have taken place. a natural consequence of the process would be the ridging up within a narrow space of the normal surface elevations. east of an imaginary line between bingöl and palandöken the area becomes enlarged. room is given for the ridges to spread; they flatten out and almost disappear. at the same time the change from the tauric into the iranian direction soon commences to make itself felt. mountain and gentle hill, the rocks on the heights and those in the hollows are all imprinted with the stamp of a new-born force. in the most central districts we recorded this change in what geologists call the strike between the villages of kanjean and alkhes in the region called elmali dere or vale of apples. there the stratified rocks have been flooded with sheets of lava, which have presumably welled up from fissures. a glance at the map will show that all the outlines are bending over, those on the north-east and those to the south-west of this point. and a little looking brings home the fact that most of the great armenian volcanoes are situated at or near the bend. the tendency to a strong-pronounced plateau country is in armenia, and especially in the south-western territories, independent of volcanic action. hermann abich aptly describes the effect of this tendency upon the mountain masses when he speaks of their constant, nearly horizontal summit line. [292] yet the heights which elicited this appreciation belong to the system west of bingöl, and are mainly composed of stratified rocks. horizontality is the prevailing characteristic of the outlines on the north of the series of plains from pasin in the east to erzinjan in the west. those outlines belong to a block of elevated land from over 9000 to about 8000 feet above the sea. lavas have accentuated the feature in the case of the border heights of pasin (ch. viii. p. 193, fig. 163); but when, further west, the barrier consists of limestones and old igneous rocks, the same appearance of a flat-topped mass, representing a higher stage of the plateau region, is only varied by some beautiful shapes emerging upon the sky-line, such as the cretaceous peaks of akhbaba and jejen. if you draw a section between the western extremity of the plain of mush against taurus and the maze of valleys which feed the chorokh on the north of erzerum, the true character of the land will be exhibited in a striking manner. you will commence with a level plain of immense extent from west to east and with an average elevation of 4200 feet. proceeding northwards, you scale a wall of 8000 feet, only to find yourself upon a platform almost as flat as a billiard-table, over which the track leads without much change in level for a distance of many miles. this stage breaks off upon the north to a little plain even as water, lying in the lap of an extensive depression of not more than 5000 feet. you cross the depression with a parapet of 8400 to over 9000 feet closing the landscape with gigantic cliffs before your eyes. it is the edge of the central tableland. the journey is long from this, its southern margin, to the corresponding rim upon the north--water-worn downs with an average altitude of over 7000 feet. after registering heights, always on the level, of about 9000 feet, a descent is made to the vast expanse of the erzerum plain (5700 feet). the mass which rises on the north of that plain contains the sources of the western euphrates and leads over to the deep valleys which sustain the chorokh. it is flat-topped, and attains a level of about 9000 feet. the most fertile and agricultural districts lie to the east of this section; they are generally separated one from another by mountains of recent volcanic origin, upon which, however, with the possible exception of the tendurek dagh, a wreath of smoke is never seen. the plain of khinis (5500 feet) is screened by khamur from the plains of bulanik and melazkert (5000 feet), where some of the finest grain in the world is grown. bulanik is divided into a western and an eastern territory by the radial volcanic mass of bilejan. the line of heights which are interposed between western bulanik and mush plain are probably partly due to lavas which have welled up from fissures, and are easily crossed almost at any point. the plain of mush (4200 feet) and the level country of almost endless extent between sipan and the murad are shut off from the cornfields and orchards of the basin of lake van (5637 feet) by the immense circumference of the nimrud crater and by the block of limestones and lake deposits upon which sipan is built up. the region between lake van and the hills of the persian border is parcelled out into a number of districts by such volcanic eminences as varag dagh, pir reshid dagh, [293] and tendurek dagh, which last-named mountain has sent its lavas a great distance south into the abagha plain. [294] all the way from tendurek to the plain of khinis eruptive agencies have fastened upon the land on a considerable scale. a large area is occupied by the radial volcanic system known as the ala dagh, but very scantily explored. it is succeeded further west by the kartevin dagh. the extensive territories between kartevin on the south, the plain of khinis on the west, and the sharian-mergemir dagh barrier on the north, are for the most part covered with sheets of lava. but the plains of alashkert (5500 feet) and pasin (over 5000 feet) are worthy to rank with the most favoured regions; and this sequence is continued westwards by the plains of the western euphrates, commencing with that of erzerum (from 5750 to about 3800 feet). north again of this series one may specially instance the plain of baiburt (5000 feet), which is a typical armenian plain. as you travel from plain to plain, from one basin to another, the horizon is most often filled by some shapely volcanic outline, slowly rising from the floor of the expanse. yet the stratified rocks are seldom absent, emerging from the volcanic layers or only capped by a thin sheet of lava. dominant among them are the limestones of various geological periods, from the cretaceous and probably earlier, to the pliocene deposits, when the greater part of the country must have been covered by a lake of fresh or brackish water. intrusive in the earlier limestones are found a variety of old igneous rocks, such as diabase, gabbro and serpentine. the serpentines combine with the limestones to form rounded hills or downs with soft outlines. sometimes a cap of lava has preserved a particular piece of limestone, and the result has been a summit with a point like that of a needle overtopping adjacent and undulating forms. where the old igneous rock occurs in a zone, a sombre landscape is forthcoming, as for instance above the northern shore of lake van between akhlat and adeljivas. or when the highly marmorised older limestones have the upper hand, there ensue sterility and glaring light. these latter rocks have a fairly wide extension and compose prominent lines of mountain. for example, they have bestowed upon the plain of khinis its northern boundary; and nowhere are they seen to greater advantage than in that shining and richly modelled barrier appropriately named the akh dagh or white mountain. during the journey from gopal to tutakh on the upper murad they were constantly emerging from the sheets of lava; and in the south we found them in the vicinity of the southern peripheral mountains. they alternate with mica-schist in the elmali dere and güzel dere, districts at the south-western extremity of lake van. and they stretch across the water to form the promontory of tadvan. a rather later series of limestones would appear to be represented by the slopes over which we climbed to the vavuk pass between gümüshkhaneh and baiburt. there they are placed on the very threshold of the armenian tableland; and they are distributed in a wide zone over the northern districts of armenia, extending all the way from the merjan-muzur dagh in the west to be represented by many a summit of the deeply eroded chorokh region. the block of heights on the north of the western euphrates is composed to a great extent of such limestones; and both in the neighbourhood of the kop pass, and during the descent northwards from the pass of khoshab punar, we have been able to identify them by the evidence of fossils as belonging to the cretaceous period. the several startling eminences from the surface of this elevated stage--a surface which is characterised by prevailing flatness and horizontality of the summit-line--are mostly due to upstanding masses of limestone, such as akhbaba and jejen. in the south we recognised the fossils of this same series of rocks upon the line of hills which border upon the north the great depression of the plain of mush, where these give passage to the murad. later still in date, and of almost constant prominence in the landscapes both of the plateau region and of the peripheral mountains, are the limestones of eocene age. they are, perhaps, more usually associated with softer features, especially when they are interbedded with shales. writing from memory, one may best recall the incidence of their impressive features at such widely distant points as the palandöken line of heights, on the south of erzerum and pasin, and where they whiten the waters of lake van in the neighbourhood of adeljivas. this pretty town with sweet-sounding name lies at the foot of a lofty cliff composed exclusively of white chalk. as you lunch in one of the caves along the road from akhlat, numerous corals are observed imbedded in the rock. even where volcanic action has fastened upon such heights with greatest persistency, the white face of this rock or of the softer pliocene deposit is seldom absent from the scene. eocene limestones and pliocene deposits are prominent over the area of the central tableland; and the limestone emerges on the further side of the plain of khinis to compose the zirnek dagh, continuing the outline of khamur. the almost limitless expanse through which the murad winds between tutakh and melazkert reveals most clearly its essential character as a country of rolling chalk downs beneath the covering of a cloak of lava. the southern limit of that expanse would seem to the eye to be volcanic, misled by the precedent of the immense extension of the train of ararat. but when the barrier is at length reached it is found to consist of eocene and pliocene limestones, forming a pedestal for the fabric of sipan. scarcely a less prominent surface feature are the pliocene lacustrine deposits, [295] crumbling in the hand with masses of freshwater shells. there can be no doubt that at an epoch contemporaneous with the outpouring of lavas a lake or lakes extended from erzinjan, erzerum and pasin across the region now occupied by the central tableland, and through khinis to the plains of the murad and sipan. the interior of asia minor and the tableland of persia were covered with lakes at the same date; but that these were salt in the case of persia is proved by the melancholy saline deserts which disfigure immense tracts of the soil of iran. in armenia they have been productive of the greatest fertility, their wholesome sediments having mingled with volcanic matter and become constituent of rich brown loams. it seems likely that the purple sandstones and conglomerates along the northern shore of lake van are the representatives of similar conditions within that basin. one is justified in supposing that the waters became gradually more shallow, until they remained only on the surface of the numerous greater and smaller depressions, which still bear their imprint to a degree which must be convincing even to an unpractised eye. a chain of separate lakes was formed, spread broadcast over the land, and washing the promontories of the heights. such lakes appear to have existed at alexandropol and in the plain of erivan; over pasin, the plain of erzerum, and that of erzinjan; in the districts of khinis, alashkert, bulanik and probably mush, to say nothing of the smaller sheets of water. they were drained away as a result of the increasing elevation of the land as a whole; and, probably, in some cases the process was accelerated by uptilt, causing erosion of the adjacent barriers to be accelerated. the lakes which exist at the present day are almost exclusively due to lavas filling up the mouths of valleys and forming dams on an immense scale. the relation of geology to geography must always be intimate; and in such a country as armenia it is scarcely possible to travel without becoming absorbed in the open book of that fascinating study, as day by day the eye is greeted by a new page. the architectural quality of the structural features is perhaps the main incentive, stimulating the curiosity to comprehend the underlying design. but the absence of wood and the sparseness even of vegetation permit and invite the interest to centre in the forms and hues and texture of the material which has been the vehicle of the large idea. nature is revealed in her sculpturesque rather than picturesque beauties; nor will her admirer regret the nakedness of his love. but the climate suffers from the prevailing treelessness of the landscapes, being deficient in moisture for the most favourable development of the human race. one feels the skin growing contracted as in most eastern countries, and the native sappiness of the flesh becoming impaired. there is no reason why this country should not be strewn with woodlands, and her plains verdant with a kinder rainfall and extended irrigation. patches of forest, but thin and miserable, still struggle towards the interior from the luscious zone in the north. they are seen on the sides of the passes at a distance from the villages. but with the exception of the very thinly populated districts of kighi and the dersim, and the slopes of the soghanlu mountains south-west of kars, the land has been denuded of any covering as a result of progressive economical decline. centuries of unchecked licence on the part of tribal shepherds--tartars, turkomans, kurds--have brought about the destruction of a source of salubriousness and wealth which under any circumstances would require careful husbanding. so the clouds are little tempted to descend upon the earth, and the sky lowers without bringing rain. the country streams with light, and the pavements of ubiquitous lava burn like an oven beneath the untempered rays of the sun. in winter the glare is blinding; for the ground is covered with snow, though not generally to any great depth. these are disadvantages which are not entirely without remedy; and there is nothing needed but less perversity on the part of the human animal to convert armenia into an almost ideal nursery of his race. the strong highland air, the rigorous but bracing winters, and the summers when the nights are always cool; a southern sun, great rivers, immense tracts of agricultural soil, an abundance of minerals--such blessings and subtle properties are calculated to develop the fibre in man, foster with material sufficiency the growth of his winged mind and cause it to expand like a flower in a generous light. one feels that for various reasons quite outside inherent qualities this land has never enjoyed at any period of history the fulness of opportunity. and one awaits her future with an expectant interest. both branches of the euphrates wind their way by immense stages at the foot of these mountains, in the lap of these plains. the eastern branch, called murad, contains the greater volume, rising in the neighbourhood of diadin near the base of the ararat system and traversing armenia almost from one extremity to the other. the principal affluents are the bingöl su, bringing the drainage of the plain of khinis; the gunek su, and the combined waters of the kighi and muzur rivers. the more westerly channel is composed in its infancy by two streams of almost equal size, one descending from the dümlü dagh and flowing sluggishly through the plain of erzerum; the other, and perhaps the greater, springing in the neighbourhood of the sources of the chorokh in the elevated district of ovajik. the kelkid and chorokh are both in their upper courses typical armenian rivers. the araxes takes its birth upon the central tableland, and its true source is probably represented by the little lake which appears in my drawing from the western summit of bingöl (ch. xxii. fig. 194, p. 373). what a contrast between this wealth of waters, many of which might be rendered navigable, and the hopeless sterility of great parts of the interior of persia, from which no river finds its way to the ocean! all these rivers wind slowly and silently over the surface of the tableland, threading landscapes which most often expand beyond the range of sight. they find a tardy issue through the zones of peripheral mountains, where they meet the hiss of torrents and the spray of waterfalls. when one reflects with closed eyes upon the experiences of travel it is not the dividing heights that fill the mind. what are these for the most part but the higher stages of the plateau country? it is the plains, great and small, with their lake-like or sea-like surfaces; and it is the ever-present feature of the volcanic outlines, spaced at large intervals. the streams part on their course to widely distant oceans from a scarcely perceptible rise in the ground. earth is spread about you, nude and quite unconscious of the restless presence of man. a variety of delicate and transparent tints are shed over the modelling, due to the atmosphere and the volcanic nature of the soil. the hues deepen in the blue ribands of the flowing waters, in the gem-like appearance of those that are still. and when the vision has nearly faded there remain the shapes of ararat and sipan, the campagna of erivan, the ineffable beauty of the lake of van.... the area of the country which has been delimited within the turkish frontier measures 35,599 square miles. if we add this figure to the russian territory (vol. i. p. 445) we may conceive a geographical unity nearly equal in extent to england and wales. chapter xxiv statistical and political when after the close of the last war between russia and turkey the leading statesmen of the european powers assembled in congress at berlin in the year 1878, they were approached by delegates from the armenian people, one of whom was no less a personage than the present katholikos, or high priest of the nation, his holiness mekertich khrimean. in answer to the enquiries of the plenipotentiaries upon what portions of the ottoman empire the armenians--of whom they had heard during their studies of the classics at school and college--still bestowed the glamour of an historical name, the delegates addressed themselves to the excellent map of the late professor kiepert and endeavoured to trace upon it the approximate limits of their country, embracing its area by a coloured line. kiepert's map, displaying on its face this interesting addition, is now slumbering in the archives of the berlin foreign office, and i have been permitted, by the courtesy of the german government, to hold it in my hands. so far as i remember, the area comprised within the coloured line corresponds approximately to that which is indicated in a document presented to congress by the delegates, under the title of a project for an organic regulation to be applied to the new armenian province which they desired to see established. the delegates asked that this province should be administered by armenian officials; and when they were requested to state what proportion its armenian inhabitants would bear to the mussulmans, they furnished figures for the vilayets of erzerum, van and bitlis (excluding sert) which placed the numbers of the mohammedans at 528,000 and the non-mohammedans at 1,172,000. [296] all the country between the russian and persian frontiers on the east, and a line drawn between tireboli on the coast of the black sea and the confluence of the kizil chibuk chai with the euphrates on the west, was to be included in the new government. the northern boundary was the coast line of the black sea; while that on the south extended from the euphrates to the river of bitlis, and so through the wild districts south of lake van back to the persian frontier. at a congress of oriental diplomatists both their demands and their statements would have been perfectly understood. one-half of the former might possibly be conceded, and the smallest fraction of the latter accepted. the collective wisdom of europe assembled in the prussian capital may perhaps have received a hint in this sense. the delimitation on the map of kiepert was a far greater puzzle; how many members of congress had even heard of the publication of the learned and laborious german professor? but it was evident that there must be districts somewhere containing an armenian population; so a clause was inserted in the treaty to the effect that the porte was pledged to carry out reforms in the provinces inhabited by armenians. [297] the plenipotentiaries returned to their respective countries immensely pleased with themselves and with their work. europe forgot all about the armenians, nor have the powers collectively displayed up to the present day the smallest interest in the armenian question. only england has taken the matter in the least seriously; and the reaction which marred the results of the far-seeing policy of lord beaconsfield--and which was perhaps induced by the theatrical character of that eminent man--prevented us from striking while the iron was still hot. the important position which we had attained in the councils of the ottoman empire by the provisions of the cyprus convention was early and perhaps irrevocably lost. when mr. gladstone's government came to deal with the complexities of the armenian question, they could scarcely expect to enjoy the goodwill of the turkish government, which, out of office, they had done their utmost to disparage and humiliate. an attempt was made by mr. goschen, ambassador at constantinople under the gladstone régime, to grapple with the inherent difficulties of the case. immediately after the berlin treaty a number of able consular officers had been despatched by england over the whole of asia minor with instructions to report upon the general condition of the country, and upon the measures of reform, extending over the whole field of turkish administration, which it would be necessary to recommend. their reports are an interesting contribution to the literature of blue-books; but in respect of the armenian question our ambassador cannot have been enabled to extract from them the information which was necessary to provide him with that sure ground upon which to build that he was seeking to acquire. the armenians themselves, for whom he was working, supplied him with misleading statistics, and seem never to have inspired him with any real confidence as to the soundness of their cause. [298] as a consequence, no definite plan was placed before the porte, and, what is more important, no definite policy seems ever to have been brought to the mind of our ambassador or of his colleagues representing the signatory powers. the teasing activity of england in asia minor, and the reports of misgovernment in every direction which she showered upon the porte, seem not only to have alarmed turkey but the european powers as well; and it only required a word from prince bismarck to dismiss the whole question of armenian reforms. [299] what was the problem? the berlin treaty spoke of the provinces inhabited by the armenians. but the armenians have become scattered in considerable numbers over the whole extent of asia minor. this dispersal is the consequence of comparatively remote historical events. to require the porte to introduce reforms in the provinces inhabited by the armenians, and to supervise the carrying out of the new measures, would amount to little less on the part of europe than to take the whole of turkey under tutelage. but there might be certain districts in which the armenians were in a majority, and where they might be able to provide the necessary machinery of government, enjoying a certain measure of local autonomy while remaining subjects of the sultan. neither the armenians themselves nor the british consuls appear to have furnished satisfactory evidence towards such a solution. what is needed by statesmen who have to deal with asiatic problems is an intimate knowledge of asiatic geography. during all the long series of our investigations into the armenian question this side of the subject was almost ignored. the armenian project of which i have spoken embraced within the area of the proposed province outlying regions which present such dissimilar economical and political problems, that it would have been an act of political madness to endeavour to weld them together under the rule of a mere governor-general. our own consuls, partly, no doubt, owing to the vague character of their instructions, fell into the same error. for instance, in estimating the population of the armenian provinces, vast outlying districts were included, such as the sanjak of hakkiari belonging to the vilayet of van, where the armenian inhabitants are few and far between, and where the character of the country and people is so wild and intractable that they could with difficulty be controlled from an armenian centre. the problems that are presented to a governor on the tableland of armenia are quite sufficient to absorb his attention and exercise his resources without the addition to his jurisdiction of the mountains of kurdistan, which, if russia were mistress of the country, would be constituted into a military government and subjected to military law. it must be my endeavour, in proceeding to the statistical aspect of my subject, to avoid, as far as possible with the existing governmental areas, this lamentable mistake. as in the case of the russian provinces, i shall adhere as closely as may be feasible to the natural boundaries of the tableland of armenia, such as they have been determined in the preceding chapter and delineated on the little map which accompanies the political chapter of my first volume. just as it was necessary in some instances, when dealing with the russian territory, to overstep the limits of the natural frontier, so i am now compelled by the statistical units at my disposal to diverge at certain points from that established line. reference to the map of which i have spoken (vol. i. p. 452) will enable my reader to compare the geographical with the statistical area. the latter is made up of the governments or divisions of governments indicated in the following table. since this statement was compiled the numbers of the armenians have been reduced by the massacres of 1895. in the vilayet of erzerum between 2500 and 3000 people were butchered; in the town of bitlis not less than 800, in that of kharput 500, and as many as 2800 in arabkir. reliable figures are wanting for the losses in human life throughout the country districts of the vilayets of van, bitlis and kharput. but they must have been considerable, and whole villages were wiped out. about 50,000 to 60,000 armenians fled into russia from the eastern vilayets. but many of these have already returned, and a few years of settled government would enable this prolific people to make good the deficiencies in their ranks. later estimates, affected by such special circumstances, would be more misleading than those which i now present. table iii.--population of the armenian tableland in turkey (about the year 1890) =============================+==========+==========+=======+============+=========== | | christians. | | | moslems. +----------+-------+ others. | total. | |armenians.|greeks.| | =============================+==========+==========+=======+============+=========== vilayet van[300] | | | | | town of van | 10,000 | 20,000 | | | 30,000 merkez-caza of van | 7,000 | 27,000 | | | 34,000 other cazas of van sanjak | 35,229 | 28,644 | | | 63,873 +----------+----------+ | +---------- total | 52,229 | 75,644 | | | 127,873 | | | | | vilayet bitlis[301] | | | | | town of bitlis and merkez | 27,673 | 16,094 | | 342 | 44,109 caza | | | | (syrian | | | | |christians).| other cazas bitlis sanjak | 18,593 | 14,306 | ... | ... | 32,899 total sanjak bitlis | 46,266 | 30,400 | ... | 342 | 77,008 sanjak mush- | | | | | town and caza of mush | 21,246 | 35,328 | | | 56,574 other cazas | 42,572 | 25,873 | | | 68,445 total sanjak mush | 63,818 | 61,201 | | | 125,019 sanjak genj- | | | | | town and cazas | 35,370 | 5,583 | | ... | 40,953 +----------+----------+ +------------+---------- total of the three | 145,454 | 97,184 | | 342 | 242,980 sanjaks | | | | | | | | | | vilayet kharput[302] | | | | | sanjak kharput | 120,000 | 85,000 | 1334 | 422 | 206,756 sanjak dersim | 62,000 | 8,000 | ... | ... | 70,000 +----------+----------+-------+------------+---------- total | 182,000 | 93,000 | 1334 | 422 | 276,756 | | | | | vilayet diarbekr[303] | | | | | caza palu | 45,580 | 15,150 | | | 60,730 | | | | | vilayet erzerum[304] | | | | | sanjak erzerum- | | | | | town of erzerum | 26,554 | 10,434 | 484 | 1422 | 38,894 other cazas | 207,261 | 57,358 | 330 | 1797 | 266,746 total sanjak | 233,815 | 67,792 | 814 | 3219 | 305,640 sanjak erzinjan | 155,879 | 31,091 | 2456 | 2182 | 191,608 sanjak bayazid | 38,801 | 7,885 | ... | 568 | 47,254 +----------+----------+-------+------------+---------- total | 428,495 | 106,768 | 3270 | 5969 | 544,502 +----------+----------+-------+------------+---------- grand total | 853,758 | 387,746 | 4604 | 6733 | 1,252,841 =============================+==========+==========+=======+============+=========== the moslem population may be divided into turks and kurds as follows:- turks (sunni mohammedan) 442,946 kurds (sunni mohammedan and kizilbash) 410,812 ------ total 853,758 it may be interesting to add these figures to those which i have given for the russian provinces. the population of the country as a whole for the statistical area delimited on the map will be represented by the following figures:- armenians 906,984 turks 489,931 kurds 479,676 tartars 306,310 greeks 52,367 russians 28,844 others 84,439 -------- total 2,348,551 in the case of the turkish provinces i have found it a task of the greatest difficulty to arrive at a statistical estimate of the population upon which it might be possible to rely. the results resumed in table iii. are the outcome of a long and laborious investigation pursued in the country itself, in which i was sometimes aided, but more often bewildered, by the lists which i had in my possession, and which have either already been published, or were furnished to me by private friends. in the absence of a census conducted on scientific principles, any figures can only be approximately correct. two possible sources of information exist which, in the first instance, it is natural to consult. the first are the official lists which are published in the almanacs of each government, and which profess to give the numbers both of mohammedans and of christians inhabiting each caza or administrative sub-division. the second are the books of the diocesan authorities who, under the 14th and 96th articles of the so-called armenian constitution (of which i shall speak later on), are enjoined to maintain complete records of all births and deaths among armenians in the diocese, and to provide copies to the central bureau of the patriarchate in constantinople. but the diocesan authorities are chary of recording information which conflicts with the number of armenians who are placed for purposes of taxation upon the government lists, and these lists themselves are founded upon a system of which it is the tendency to underrate the number of the population, mohammedan and christian alike. owing to the seclusion of women in the east, no serious attempt is made to count the female population; while in the case of males the figures in the official statistics are derived from the military census, which is at best a very imperfect record, and which each man strives his utmost to evade. all mohammedan males are liable to be enrolled in the army, while the christians are obliged to pay an annual tax which exempts them from military service, and which is incident at birth. in the case of the sedentary population it is probable that the christians evade this census to a greater extent than their mohammedan neighbours; for the budget of a christian family is immediately menaced by the birth of a male child. on the other hand, there are extensive districts on the southern portion of the tableland in which the kurdish tribes inhabiting them are in a state approaching independence, and have never been counted at all. the official lists must for these reasons be used with much discrimination and care. in one government they will be compiled with some measure of completeness; in another they will be defective as regards the armenians; in yet another as regards the kurds. in addition to this source of information there are the estimates which have been made in particular districts by private people engaged in business, and who know their own district well. the figures which emanate from the armenian patriarchate, and which have found their way into the blue-books, have evidently been designed to subserve a political purpose, and may be dismissed under a sense of disappointment and disgust. two further points are suggested to me as calling for special remark. in the first place, i am satisfied that the total population of the turkish provinces is in excess of the figure which i give. that figure only shows a percentage of population to the square mile of less than thirty [305]; in the russian provinces, which can scarcely be called populous by comparison, although they probably contain less waste land, the percentage is over forty-nine. secondly, while the greatest care has been taken to get the totals of the different peoples at least correct in the proportion which they bear to one another, it is probable in the cases of the armenians and of the kurds that even for this purpose the figures are a little too low. i have preferred to content myself with reproducing the statistical materials which, however imperfect, i consider the best, and only to mention in this connection the general impression which i have received. [306] among the inhabitants of the turkish provinces who are classed as mussulmans there exist considerable differences both of race and of religion; but for our present purpose it is most useful to distinguish them according as they are turkish or kurd. under the former name i have counted the mussulman population of the northern portion of the government of erzerum, or, to use more specific language, of the entire government of erzerum, with the exception of the sanjak of bayazid and the cazas of khinis, kighi and terjan. i have also included as turkish one-half of the mussulman inhabitants of the caza of pasin. in the governments of van and of bitlis the only portion of the population which i have thought it safe to number as turkish are the mussulmans in the towns of van, bitlis and mush; as citizens in governmental centres they are attached, if not by a common origin, at least by a common character and common sympathies to the interests of the ruling race. in the cases of the government of kharput and of the governmental division of palu, i have been unable to verify by personal acquaintance the estimates which i have adopted as the best; these estimates make the turkish about as strong as the kurdish element in the sanjak of kharput, and a little less numerous in the caza of palu. that part of the mussulman population of the sanjak of dersim who are counted as adherents of government may most usefully be classed as turkish and have been included in the roll of turks. in the several governments the remainder of the mussulman inhabitants compose the total which has been given for the kurds. to express these results in general language, we may say that the seat of the turkish population is the country on the north of erzerum, while the kurds inhabit the more southerly districts of the tableland, extending to the southern peripheral mountains. but what is the meaning of the name turkish which has been used to distinguish the one from the other element? we must certainly guard ourselves from the danger of attributing to a convenient political designation an ethnological sense. we are justified in declaring that the mussulman inhabitants of the northern districts of the government of erzerum are not of kurdish origin; on the other hand, the ground is less tenable if we suppose that they belong to the turkish race. how large an admixture of turkish blood may flow within their veins, is a question which it is impossible to determine; it was rather the fertile country on the west of the euphrates that presented the most attractive settling ground to the invading hordes of turks. i am given to believe that a considerable number derive from the widely spread georgian family; but that family has here mixed with other race elements, of which the turkish is one. in what pertains to national solidarity, in the possession of common interests and common sentiments, these mussulman inhabitants of the northern districts may justly be classed as turks. but even this statement is subject to exception and cannot be universally applied. just as in the northern zone of peripheral mountains there still exist whole districts of which the inhabitants have adopted the mohammedan religion, but retain their essential affinity to the greek race to which they belong, so within the statistical area of the tableland among the ranks of the mussulmans may be found considerable aggregates of people who, although of armenian origin, profess the dominant creed. in the northern province an important instance of this change in religion rather than in nationality is found in the district of tortum between erzerum and the town of olti; the mussulman inhabitants of that district are said to be the descendants of the ancient armenian families who are known to have lived there within historical times. while the turkish inhabitants are engaged in agriculture and in those pursuits of urban life which attach to the service of government or of individuals, or to the less ambitious among the requirements of industry and commerce, the kurdish population, on the other hand, present a variety of social development which includes both the sedentary and the nomadic state, the organisation of the commune and that of the tribe. a people who were known to a remote antiquity and whose character is already sufficiently familiar in europe, the kurds who inhabit the tableland are not only distinguished from one another according to the plane of social life to which they have attained, but are divided by essential differences of language and of creed. from the neighbourhood of the town of sivas in asia minor to beyond malatia on the south, and between the two branches of the euphrates to the vicinity of mush, the kurds, although classed in the official lists as mussulmans, neither practise the orthodox religion nor speak the same dialect as their neighbours of presumably kindred race. branded throughout the nearer east under the opprobrious name of kizilbash, they harbour a sullen hatred of the turkish government, whose attempts to convert them to orthodoxy they resent; while towards the christians they are drawn by the impulse of a common antagonism to the existing order, and by the respect in which they hold the christian religion, in the person of whose founder they recognise an incarnation of god. their religion, so far as we know it, bears the impress of the aryan mind, which seeks for a human embodiment of the deity; they invest with divine attributes moses and jesus, mohammed and ali. their language, although a branch of the kurdish, contains an admixture both of persian and armenian words, and is said to differ so greatly from the prevailing dialect of the kurdish tongue that those who are familiar with the one are unable to understand the other. while they practise the rite of circumcision and have adopted certain of the observances of islam, the contempt in which their religion is held by their mussulman neighbours of the sunni sect disposes them against the dominant creed, which they regard as a dangerous enemy of their own peculiar faith. in brief, they constitute a separate element in the kurdish population of the tableland, and the numerical value of this element may be placed at about a third of the total figure which i have given for the kurds in the turkish provinces. their geographical position between and about the two branches of the euphrates invests them with some contemporary importance from a military point of view; and they hold the wild and mountainous country on the south of the headquarters of the turkish army corps at the town of erzinjan. in this district, which is known under the name of the dersim, they have long resisted and continue to resist the imposition of the turkish yoke. they are here in the tribal and pastoral state; but they have been obliged by the rigour of the climate to dwell in houses, and they cultivate small strips of land. in the country on the west and east of the dersim the kizilbashes are peaceful and industrious peasants, of whom most travellers have spoken with respect. if we draw on the map an imaginary line from mush through erzerum towards the sea, the mussulman population of the turkish provinces are distributed in the following manner over the area of the tableland. on the north of erzerum and on either side of this line the turkish population extend from the russian border on the east along the banks of the western euphrates to its junction with the eastern branch. the country south of erzerum and on the west of the line is the seat of the kizilbash kurds; while on the east are situated the kurds who profess the orthodox religion and speak the prevailing dialect of kurdistan. the territorial extension of the kurdish people varies according as the forces of order are strengthened or decline, but their original home and natural habitation are the mountains which contain the sources of the tigris. from the euphrates on the west to the persian gulf upon the south the zone of buttress ranges which support the tablelands of armenia and persia, and which we know at first under the name of taurus and then under that of zagros, is inhabited by tribes of aryan origin--the kurds and further south the lurs--who are distinguished by considerable variations in dialect and in religion, but who present the common characteristic of an inveterate aversion to settled life and to the imposition of the yoke of law. their manner of living is directly determined by their geographical position and pastoral pursuits. as spring develops into summer and the yellow drought creeps higher and higher up the slopes of the mountain-sides, they ascend from one to another step, from a lower to a higher chain, and arrive, perhaps at the approach of autumn, on the fringe of the tableland. when at length the season is verging upon winter the migration southwards begins. a continuous throng of sheep and goats and horses and weather-worn people of either sex and every age flows slowly down the blighted country, filing by tortuous tracks between the boulders or pausing about the noonday hour by the bed of a shaded stream. at the foot of the range, on the verge of the vast alluvial plains through which the tigris winds, is placed their winter encampment; their tents are sufficient shelter against the climate of the low country, which even through the colder months is temperate and mild. these yearly migrations of the kurdish tribes are not conducted without great suffering on the part of the settled population; their granaries are plundered by the shepherd army, and the land which they might have cultivated is occupied by the nomads during winter as pasture for their flocks. but this is a problem which belongs to the southern peripheral region and to the lowlands, rather than to the tableland. the kurds of the tableland--with the possible exception of the kizilbashes--are an alien element of the population. the great distance of their pastures from the plains of the tigris makes it difficult for them, if not impossible, to pursue their instinctive migration; the rigorous winter obliges them to discard their tents and inhabit villages--in a word, to take the first step towards a more settled order, of which the further development is viewed by some of them with just alarm, as incompatible with their tribal organisation and independent life. we may place at the kernel of the armenian question in turkey the difficulties which arise from the presence of this kurdish population upon the armenian plateau. it is true that a considerable number among them have become industrious cultivators and subsist on the fruits of their own toil. according as the period which separates them from their former life is long or short, or the name of their more lawless kinsmen is despised or respected, these peasants will answer the traveller who inquires to what people they belong either by replying that they are osmanli or by owning to their being kurds. in the first case they rank themselves with the settled turkish population; in the second they acknowledge the bond which attaches them to the free life of the tribe. but the weight of this agricultural element lies in the scale of peace; it is otherwise with those kurds who retain to the full their tribal organisation and who pasture their flocks on the lofty highlands which extend to the plain of erzerum. it is possible that from a remote period the nomads of kurdistan proper may have advanced the limit of their summer journey beyond the plain of mush, to return at the approach of winter to the neighbourhood of diarbekr. how far their migration should be extended would be determined by the distance which separated them from their winter quarters on the lowlands, and by the degree of resistance which the settled peoples might be able to offer to their unwelcome approach. the fall of the feudal system in turkey and the decline of the power of the turkish beys may no doubt have contributed in a sensible manner to open breaches to the kurds; but it appears that a powerful colony of this people were brought to their present seats in armenia through a definite act of public policy on the part of the turkish power. after the defeat of the persians in the plain of chaldiran in 1514 it became necessary to arrive at a permanent settlement of the kurdish provinces; and it formed part of the plan pursued by edrisi, the distinguished minister of selim the first, and himself a kurd of bitlis, to remove a portion of this turbulent people from the country of their home and to settle them along the new frontier of turkey in the districts bordering upon persia and georgia which had been acquired from the shah. it is said that they were granted a perpetual immunity from taxation on the condition that they would act as a permanent militia upon the border which had been given them to guard. [307] neither the evidence of subsequent history nor the contemporary political situation upon the tableland can be taken to have established the wisdom of a policy which appears to have overrated the capacity of the kurds whether for benefit or for harm. on the one hand, by adding to the area inhabited by them, the turkish government seems rather to have increased the difficulties which have always beset their efforts to hold this people in check; and, on the other, their experience of the value of this militia can scarcely be so pleasant a memory as their persistent continuance in a worn-out ideal might lead us to expect. during the two campaigns against russia of 1829 and 1854 the kurdish chiefs played off one power against another, and are even said to have assisted the invading armies by affording a passage through their adopted country and by providing them with supplies. in the campaign of 1877 the kurds were the most dangerous element in the turkish army, and are described by an eye-witness of the several actions in asia as a grotesque corps of irregular cavalry breaking into groups when resisted and altogether unfitted for the serious operations of war. their atrocious cruelty towards the wounded and their mutilation of the dead was visited upon the heads of their afflicted protectors in a general execration of the turkish name. yet even the bitterness of this disappointment and the scarcely doubtful lesson of several minor wars, which within the course of the past century they have been obliged to conduct against the kurds, seem not to have convinced the turkish government of the folly of endeavouring to humour a people who will never be of any assistance to government until they shall have lost for ever the power of resistance and ranged themselves on the side of law. the reigning sultan in his dealings with the kurds has inclined to the old policy; he has sought at once to civilise them and to render them more efficient from a military point of view. in the wild and seldom-visited country between the plain of alashkert and the lake of van i was able to gain a practical acquaintance with the methods that are being pursued. in the village of patnotz, the principal seat of the notorious tribe of haideranli, a solid stone structure, which has been built by order of government to serve the several purposes of a mosque, a school, and a residence for the chief, stands out from the usual cluster of mud hovels--a palace among ant-hills. in every larger kurdish village i found a petty officer of the turkish army bewailing the sad fate which had brought him to this exile, and his own impotence to control the slippery people and constrain them to attend his drills. a new name, that of hamidiyeh, has been given to this irregular cavalry, and they have been liberally supplied with uniforms from the turkish magazines. the headquarters of the corps are at melazkert on the eastern euphrates or murad su, and over thirty regiments have already been registered over the area of the tableland. each regiment has a nominal strength of about 600 men. but they have never yet manoeuvred together, and when in 1892 a detachment from each regiment paraded at erzerum, i am informed that the whole number did not amount to 2000, and that the sorry spectacle was presented to the turkish general of a motley company of aged men and half-grown youths, mounted on horses which wanted muscle and had perhaps never tasted corn. it is pleasant to acknowledge the good intentions of the sultan in endeavouring to educate the kurds and to organise them in a more efficient manner for the purposes of serious war; the ideal which has no doubt been present to the mind of his military advisers is the example of the russian corps of cossacks. but the mild measures at present in favour will never attain this result; it is not under such a policy that the kurds will be subjected to the regular discipline of a camp. either the young men must be taken from their native or adopted provinces and trained in the armies of the empire at a distance from their homes, or the entire people must be made to bend to the yoke of an equal civil law, of which they at present evade the provisions and defy the ministers. while the turkish government have little reason to be satisfied with the results of their experiments with the kurds, the effects which derive from their presence on the tableland are disastrous in the extreme. yet it is not the mussulmans so much as the armenians who are afflicted by this scourge. let us pursue a little further our original analysis. transplanted from their natural camping-grounds, and obliged through the long months of an arctic winter to provide themselves and their animals with shelter and with food, this pastoral people were quartered on the armenian villages, but were required by government to pay an annual tax in return for the accommodation which during winter they received. [308] but an arrangement which was based on the just principle of ensuring to the armenian a fair remuneration for the lodging which he furnished and the fodder which he supplied, was put into practice by the local authorities in a characteristic manner: the proceeds of the tax were committed to their own coffers. in 1842, after the promulgation of the celebrated charter of reforms which is known under the name of the hatti-sherif of gulkhaneh, a beginning was made towards the abolition of the system; the kurds in the neighbourhood of mush were allotted certain villages which had been vacated by the armenian emigrants, and the armenians of the district were relieved of the heavy burden which they had previously been obliged to bear. at the present day the pastoral kurds of the plateau have all their own villages, and the old system, except in isolated instances, may be said to have disappeared. yet even now the kurds justify their raids upon the armenians on the ingenious plea of the ancient right of quarter which they consider they are entitled to enforce. policy also dictates a procedure which their tender conscience has approved. the armenians are at once the most immediate and the least redoubtable among their neighbours. the courageous kurd equips himself for the foray with a rifle of modern russian pattern and belts bristling with cartridges; his victims, by a cruel and cynical provision, have been deprived by government of all arms. should the kurd be caught red-handed and arraigned before the civil authority, he will scornfully defy the civil jurisdiction and claim to be tried by his military superiors as a trooper in the hamidiyeh corps. when the civil branch has been successfully thwarted, the military authorities are cajoled, while the injured party is rewarded by the visitation of a fresh injury, which he endures without complaint. i can understand that in kurdistan proper with the lowlands about the course of the tigris the shepherd problem presents some difficulty; it must always be a task of some magnitude to control a people whose migrations extend over so wide an area and whose country conceals within its countless recesses such inaccessible retreats. on the tableland the case is quite elementary: the pastoral kurd belongs to a village, and that village is situated in the neighbourhood of the pastures from which he is driven by the winter snows. it cannot be a matter of great difficulty to follow up the robbers to their homes. it is well within the capacity of the existing authorities to enforce against them the necessary measures of police. but the tribal chiefs are well aware of the consequences which would flow from such a change in turkish policy towards them, and they exert all the means at their disposal to avert it. upon the tableland they enjoy a parasitical prosperity. once prevented from levying their supplies of grain and fodder upon the armenians, and restricted to the legitimate operations of barter with the peasantry or reciprocal trade, their tribes would gradually melt away, and, while a large number would join the ranks of the agricultural population, a remnant only would remain to continue in armenia the shepherd calling and the tribal life. the armenians are distributed in the following manner over the statistical area of the turkish provinces. compared with the number of the mussulman inhabitants, they are in greater strength in the government of van than in any other government. taking that government as a whole, but of course excluding the hakkiari, they exceed by about one-third the total of the mussulman population. in the town of van the proportion of armenians to mussulmans is about as two to one. in the government of bitlis they are in a majority in the neighbourhood of mush, and in the fertile district of bulanik, north-west of the lake of van. on the other hand, they are outnumbered by the mussulmans in the populous sanjak of kharput, and in the caza or governmental sub-division of palu. in the government of erzerum there is scarcely a district in which they are not less numerous than their mussulman neighbours. yet, when estimating the relative strength of the armenian element, we deceive ourselves if we dwell with complacent insistence on the fact of its numerical inferiority. several factors essential to such an analysis deserve and require attention. in the first place, the most fertile portion of the country is held by the armenians. the beautiful region about lake van, the vast plains of bulanik, of mush, and of kharput are the principal seats of the armenian peasantry--a peasantry as sturdy as the mussulman settlers and far more industrious and progressive than they. another advantage possessed by the armenians is their favourable geographical situation in relation to the turks and the kurds. the armenian population compose a mass of varying compactness which extends across the tableland from east to west, and may be said in a general manner to divide as with a wedge the two branches of the mussulman inhabitants. or the armenian may be compared to the middle bedfellow of three. again, the solidarity of the armenian element, both from a political and a social point of view, is a fact which must not be ignored. nowhere in a more conspicuous manner than upon the tableland has the gregorian church resisted the advances of rome. according to the statistics supplied by the catholic patriarch to mr. goschen, the number of the catholics within the limits of our statistical area cannot amount to 20,000 souls. of these, the great majority inhabit the northern districts of the government of erzerum, while in the country of van and mush, which is essentially armenian, there are scarcely any adherents of rome. it is true that the protestant community is growing; if we include the mission of mardin lying outside our area, they are over 16,000 strong. but the paramount object which is present to the protestant missionaries is not to subvert the national church or to attach it to their own denomination, but rather to raise the standard of the national religion and to improve the social condition of the people among whom they have come to live. finally, we must not overlook the high place which the armenians already occupy in the economical order of the country, and the fact that the armenian population is capable of very rapid expansion under kinder circumstances. i have already had occasion to speak in praise of the armenian peasantry; yet, while agriculture suffers from the disappearance of the armenian from the soil, the place which he occupies in the less rudimentary grades of civilised life can never be supplied. the worn and crippled machine of industry functions through him alone. his advancement means the progress of the country; his removal is the cause of its decay. yet the stream of emigration continues, and is gathering fresh volume every year. the general exodus of the armenian population which ensued upon the retirement into russian territory of general paskevich in 1839 has been followed by a gradual process of depletion, which varies in intensity according as harvests are good or disastrous and the kurds are encouraged or restrained. during my stay in the country the armenian peasantry of considerable districts were exerting themselves to pay off their debts, and to obtain permission to leave. many were flying to the russian frontier to seek an asylum from the kurds. a change in policy is alone needed to transform a country which is rapidly becoming a desert into a prosperous and progressive province. behind the armenian population of the tableland stand their kinsmen who inhabit the less distracted districts of asia minor. at the first approach of a better era many of these would seek with eagerness the ancient home of their race. many of the emigrants into russia would return to their old seats. the tide now setting to america, whence the armenians, like the irish, transmit large sums of money to their less prosperous relations at home, would slacken if it did not cease. a country which even in its wildest regions still retains the traditions of armenian civilisation, and is adorned with the remains of armenian architecture, would resume the old order in a spirit essentially new. have i wearied my reader with this long and almost exhaustive analysis, at which i can scarcely myself suppress a yawn? at least we may console ourselves with the virtuous reflection that we have been disentangling a difficult subject of which we shall all hear more as the years go by. most of us--for we are all rulers, and our voices reach far--will some day be expected to pronounce our opinion upon it; i have therefore endeavoured to present the facts in an uncoloured narrative. but it may be asked: why has so little been heard of the armenians still residing in their native seats? are they not a handful among the numbers of their countrymen dispersed over the ottoman empire, and inhabiting the capital or the great towns of asia minor? sasun, where the massacres commenced in 1894, is surely a district which lies outside the proper limits of armenia; while sivas and trebizond, diarbekr, marash and aintab--cities of which the names are engraved in red upon our memories--are situated at great distances from the armenian centres. such reasoning is in a great measure true; it is the berlin difficulty. in the absence of reliable statistics i shall refrain from any attempt to trace the distribution of the armenians over the whole extent of the ottoman empire. the total number of armenians in turkey was given by the delegates to the berlin congress as amounting to 3,000,000 souls. this figure is certainly too high. an armenian clerical writer, who appears not to err on the side of exaggeration, has placed the entire gregorian population, that is the great bulk of his countrymen in turkey, at 1,263,900 souls. [309] it is reasonable to suppose that the armenian subjects of the sultan number upwards of one and a half millions, of whom some half million may be taken to inhabit the statistical area with which we have been dealing, after considerable additions have been made to supply the deficiencies in the lists. the remainder are spread over the empire, forming fairly compact communities in the more populous towns. previous to the massacres of 1895, the armenians of constantinople were estimated at 180,000 souls, of whom some 80,000 might be reckoned as immigrants for a certain period from such armenian centres as van and arabkir, and the remainder were permanently established. other considerable aggregates are forthcoming in northern syria and cilicia, where, besides the towns, the mountainous district of zeitun is inhabited by a vigorous and brave armenian peasantry. the towns on the highlands of asia minor from the euphrates to brusa and smyrna number large bodies of armenians among their citizens. the same may be said of those on the lowlands from the persian gulf to diarbekr. trebizond contains a populous and flourishing settlement, as do most of the rising towns along the coast of the black sea. indeed the armenian is ubiquitous in the nearer asia, from the northern province of persia to the mediterranean and the indian ocean. yet this people as a whole can scarcely amount to more than 3,000,000 souls, a round figure of which the principal components are as follows:- the armenian tableland (russian and turkish provinces) 906,984 caucasus and remainder of russian transcaucasia 450,000 astrakan and bessarabia 75,600 remainder of asiatic turkey 751,500 turkey in europe 186,000 azerbaijan province of persia [310] 28,890 colony of julfa (ispahan) and remainder of persia [311] 14,110 bulgaria and eastern rumelia 5,010 rumania 8,070 austria 1,230 -------- 2,427,394 two sets of causes are responsible for the recent outbreaks of armenian sentiment in regions where this people are an insignificant minority, separated from the natural and historical seats of their race. there is in the first place the political and social inequality between the christians and the mohammedans. just as beside some stagnant pool among the recesses of the rocks the returning tide awakens the folded life of plant and shell, so our western civilisation, recoiling upon asia, arouses the hopes which have slept for centuries in the breasts of the christians of the east. it is not that they are denied religious freedom, as some of their partisans are bold enough to assert. the tolerance of the reigning sultan is active throughout his empire. the traveller marvels at the liberty, almost amounting to license, which is allowed to the votaries of the several creeds. take the capital: there are the greeks with their noisy carnivals, so repugnant to mussulman austerity. or the moslem wayfarer is hustled from the street by some funeral procession with its bevy of priests, conducting an open coffin where the lineaments of the deceased are exposed to a curious and respectful crowd. what invisible force controls all this fermenting human material?... nor will the favourable impression be diminished by the wider experience of a provincial tour. in the country the sound of christian bells falls upon the landscape from some cloister nestling in the lap of the hills. in the towns the observance of sunday effects a change in urban life which is almost as marked as in a christian state. trades are suspended, shops are closed, chimes ring from the churches. what is denied to the christians is political equality. they are tolerated and they are taxed; but they remain the unbelievers, the victims of a prejudice stronger than any law. in the case of the armenians they are rigorously prohibited from possessing firearms, and they do not serve in the army. they are excluded from the highest administrative posts. their share in the provincial government is almost as nothing. the edicts which have pronounced in favour of equality have been inoperative and are in abeyance. at the same time the voice of the west is heard louder and nearer; and the rebellious spirits appeal to the example of eastern europe, freed for ever from a mussulman yoke. but why did the movement fasten upon these scattered communities--hostages, as it would seem, to the mussulman power? i think the reason is not very far to seek. because of the severity with which the outbreaks in armenia were quelled during 1890 and the preceding years. it was evident to the revolutionary party that the spirit of their countrymen had become cowed in the land where they are native. however real their wrongs--and i think i have testified to their reality--they had learnt by recent experience to endure them in silence without attempting to obtain redress. the movement, suppressed in its place of origin, broke out on new ground. sasun, a mountainous region belonging to the southern peripheral zone on the outer margin of the armenian tableland, was the scene of the first events in the latest recrudescence of the old malady, smothered but not cured. the district extends from the southern slopes of the mountains overlooking the plain and town of mush, situated upon their northern verge, to the neighbourhood of the town of hazo. it formed a canton of the old armenian province of aghdznik, which is sometimes joined by armenian writers with that of korduk, the modern kurdistan. the name of the canton, sasun, is said to be derived from sanasar, one of the two sons of the assyrian monarch sennacherib, who, after slaying their father, fled into armenia. [312] his descendants appear to have been known as the sanasuns or sasuns [313]; they were princes of aghdznik, and occupied the very highest rank at the court of the armenian arsakid king. [314] their territories were no doubt occupied by an armenian population; and the memories of that distant period still linger among the peasantry who are scattered over the wild but in places fertile land. [315] but the vicinity of the region to the towns of the lowlands must have rendered wellnigh impossible the maintenance by its inhabitants of their christian religion during the period of mussulman expansion. we know from history that its armenian ruler at the close of the ninth century had adopted a mussulman name and outwardly professed the mohammedan religion. [316] at the present day some handfuls of armenian christians preserve with obstinacy the habits of their race and the practice of their religion among remote fastnesses. the bulk of the population have adopted islam, are classed as kurds, and can with difficulty be distinguished from the kurdish people. strange indeed are the anomalies which are presented in these little-known districts of turkish kurdistan. on the southern fringe of sasun live a tribe called the baliki or beleke, speaking a mixed language of arabic, kurdish and armenian. their religion cannot be classed either as christian or mohammedan, nor even as that professed by the kizilbashes. when they make oath it is in the name of a church or monastery. but they possess neither churches nor mosques. marriage is a rite which they ignore. their women go about in perfect freedom and unveiled, wearing white trousers like the yezidis or so-called devil-worshippers. wives are bought or exchanged--a woman of forty for one of twenty, the owner of the latter being compensated by a few silver pieces. a girl may be purchased from them by a stranger, provided always that you take her away. these baliki are probably a particular remnant of the old inhabitants, with whom the armenians, dispersed among them as traders, would scarcely recognise any racial link. serfdom is an institution which is not unknown in the country, though its existence is softened over by the turkish authorities, who shrink from dispensing a purely nominal sovereignty. the serfs, who are armenians, are known as zer kurri, signifying bought with gold. in fact they are bought and sold in much the same manner as sheep and cattle by the kurdish beys and aghas. the only difference is that they cannot be disposed of individually; they are transferred with the lands which they cultivate. the chief appropriates as much as he wishes from their yearly earnings, capital or goods; and in return he provides them with protection against other kurdish tribes. many stories are told to illustrate the nature of the relation. a serf was shot by the servant of a kurdish agha who possessed lands in the neighbourhood. the owner of the serf did not trouble to avenge his death on the person of the murderer, still less upon that of the agha, his neighbour. he rode over to the agha's lands, and put bullets through two of his serfs, the first that he happened to meet.... the serf of a chieftain residing a few hours' distance from the town of hazo had settled in hazo, where he had become treasurer to the turkish government. one night his house was attacked by another kurdish chief, his money carried off and he and his cousin murdered. in this case the owner was not so easily propitiated. he gathered his people together, bearded his fellow-brigand in his lair, killed him, burnt down his house, and put to death every living thing. both these incidents occurred during the lifetime of people who are still living; the one is related by no less an authority than a british consul, and the other by an individual in a responsible position, whose sympathies are on the side of the turkish government. on the tableland of armenia such relations between the kurds and the armenians are altogether unknown. their existence in one form or another among the inaccessible retreats of kurdistan provided material for the revolutionary propaganda of the agitator, damadean, whose early doings in the sasun region i have chronicled in my chapter on bitlis, and who presents a striking and almost legendary figure even in the sober narrative of the blue-books. [317] this man and his successor boyajean knew full well that there in sasun they were breaking virgin ground. they were further encouraged by the fact that the armenian peasantry of that region were in possession of arms and knew how to use them. the result of their efforts and of the ill-advised action of the local authorities was the sasun massacre of 1894. it was followed by the massacres of 1895, which devastated the country districts and most of the great towns of the armenian tableland, but of which the principal and new feature was the occurrence of such tragedies among the armenian communities spread over the face of the ottoman empire. i have not been able to learn that the condition of these scattered communities presents any special cause for disaffection; and i do not believe that the revolutionary movement, in which they all participated in some degree, was either spontaneous in its nature or indigenous in its growth. few if any of them are engaged in a struggle for life and death with hordes of kurds, let loose on territory which is not kurdish and which is far from being suited to that race of lawless shepherds. most of them are fairly prosperous citizens in the towns; and whatever grievances they may possess are shared in a greater or a lesser degree by all the christian subjects of the sultan. the armenian cause, as a cause with a justifiable and reasonable aim, is not founded upon any such grievances. for all practical and constructive purposes it is simply a question of the proper government of the provinces of armenia which are inhabited by mussulmans as well as by armenians, but which are raided and drained of their resources by tribal kurds. one other aspect of this part of the subject remains to be considered. the massacres of 1895 were certainly not the outcome of a spontaneous rising of the mussulmans against the christians. all or nearly all were organised from without. i well remember how, while taking coffee with an official high in the turkish service in the neighbourhood of a great provincial centre, my host, pointing to the road which we overlooked from the open windows, said: "i can never look upon that road without remembering the occasion when i sat in this very room and saw strange people passing along it--immigrants, so they seemed, from the mountains in the north. our massacre followed at no long interval." the mussulmans of the armenian provinces are perfectly well aware that their own turn will closely follow upon the disappearance of the armenians. they will not, indeed, be butchered by imported bands of ruffians; but they will be swallowed by the kurds. some of their villages have already been raided by this people, who are less to blame for such natural exercise of their appetites than those who have transplanted or enticed them from their native seats.... i must now pass without any preamble to the larger bearings of the armenian question: does it offer any scope for a practical and special solution which need not embrace the reform and rejuvenescence of the ottoman empire as a whole? and what are the interests of the progressive states of europe, and of great britain in particular, in the settlement and disposal of the question? i. i must repeat with tedious persistency that what is most required is a knowledge and appreciation of the geographical conditions. these i have endeavoured in a lengthy analysis to elucidate. collective notes and schemes of reform are of very little value, if it be attempted to apply their provisions indifferently to regions presenting features so distinct and dissimilar as the tableland of armenia and the mountains of kurdistan. no solution of the armenian question in turkey would be calculated to contain the elements of permanence which should not be concerned in the first instance with delimitation, and with redistribution of the existing governmental areas. the principles upon which such redistribution should proceed are the common-sense principles of grouping together districts which naturally belong together, and of rendering the governments as far as possible homogeneous. i think it would be found that obedience to these principles would at the same time assist a practical solution of the kurdish question. they would point to the formation of three great governments. one would be constituted by the mountainous districts between the tableland of armenia and the black sea, and might be called the black sea government. it would coincide to some extent with the existing area of the vilayet of trebizond; but it might seem advisable to include within it regions at present belonging to the vilayet of erzerum, such as tortum and the districts on the side of olti. the second government would embrace the tableland itself, and its demarcation should be conducted as far as possible in consonance with the natural frontiers, such as they have been determined in the present work. the third government would be the government of kurdistan. it would comprehend a considerable area, from kirkuk and sulimanieh on the south-east to diarbekr and the confines of kharput on the north-west. mosul, jezireh and diarbekr would be the bases of the administration, these cities on the lowlands being situated in convenient positions to serve as centres from which to control the necessary winter migrations of the kurdish tribes from their mountains to the agricultural regions bordering on the left or eastern bank of the tigris. strong military posts might be established within the mountainous area in the principal towns of kurdistan. of these three governments that of the tableland should be administered from a suitable centre, which centre would be neither erzerum nor van. akhlat, melazkert or khinis would seem to be naturally designated to fulfil the requirements of the case. none of these towns are very far removed from the frontier line of the kurdish mountains, on which side alone would the new government be exposed to incursions of the lawless kurdish element. all of them are favourably placed for intercommunication with the principal armenian districts. passage of the tribes from kurdistan proper into the governmental area should be rigorously interdicted. it could be prevented by no more formidable measures than the enrolment of a corps of gendarmerie. such a corps would also suffice to police the districts on the tableland at present inhabited by tribal kurds. reforms or changes of this nature are well within the capacity of the government at constantinople. they would not, i think, prejudice their general military administration; it might even be found that they would be in harmony with purely military interests. but the turks should never forget that they are much more likely to succumb as an empire owing to defects in the civil rather than in the military arm. europe, with all her want of squeamishness, cannot permanently tolerate civil misgovernment on so great a scale. one after another the friends or allies of the ottoman empire in europe will be compelled to stand aside. sooner or later the young german empire will be forced by circumstances to adopt the same attitude as her elder sister of great britain. meanwhile there is growing up with alarming rapidity a situation in the provinces immediately adjoining russian territory which already invites and may soon require russian intervention. russian statesmen are only awaiting the favourable moment in the world movements of the time. russian troops are already placed within striking distance of the fortress of erzerum, immediately commanding the roads to the interior of asia minor and to the capital. it does not require a long memory to recall the pretexts--nay, the causes--upon which russia justified her previous aggressions upon turkish territory. who shall assert that the present situation on the tableland of armenia is less aggravated than that which prevailed in the european provinces when the russian armies crossed the pruth in 1877? administrative changes of the nature i have indicated are, of course, only feasible as a whole through spontaneous action on the part of the government at constantinople. their professed friends but real enemies may try to play upon their suspicions; and will, no doubt, urge that they are being offered in a thinly veiled form the substance of an independent armenia. but such a consummation, were it even possible in a remote future, need not alarm the well-known solicitude of oriental rulers for the interests of posterity. if the millions of mussulmans attached by religion and common interests to the rule of the sultans were ever insufficient to keep within bounds armenian ambitions, the presence of such a strong nation upon the high road of the russian advance would surely be a blessing in disguise. it can scarcely be doubted that in that case the weight of armenian sympathies would be on the side of the weak ottoman empire. but this talk about a revival of the armenian kingdom is windy and frivolous in the extreme. the armenians have neither leaders nor a class of leaders; and how long would it take to develop such a class? in the ninth century, when they broke loose from the expiring body of the caliphate, they had their princes and nobles of greater and lesser degree. these families have disappeared without leaving a trace. and is it certain or even probable that, if the old ideal could be again realised, the armenians in the twentieth century would be prepared to revive a polity which would narrow their activities from the whole wide area of an empire to the confined stage of a petty state? the example of bulgaria, sometimes quoted with a shiver of fear in this connection, is not an example in point. there the christians composed the bulk of the population; and they had no links, such as are present in the case of the armenians, with the rest of the ottoman empire. but, even if the apprehensions of the most nervous could be justified by solid arguments, what is the alternative which they are able to suggest? if they settle the kurdish question they are in so far assisting the armenians; while, if they allow it to settle itself, they are face to face with the ruin of these provinces, which russia, in the interests of the security of her own frontier, will be constrained and will be invited by europe to occupy. but the regulation of turkish armenia is not a matter which alone concerns the rulers on the bosphorus. europe has always recognised her intimate interest in the affairs of turkey, and she is specially pledged to secure good government for the armenians. but her intervention, should it be necessary, would, i hope, be based on the broadest grounds, not in favour of the armenians alone, but also of the mussulmans. the constitution of a single new province on the tableland would not be tantamount to controlling the administration of asiatic turkey; it is a measure which can be reasonably demanded and readily executed. moreover, if europe were again to take up the question, she would be well advised not to recognise any limitations in respect of the qualifications of the new governor-general. he would, of course, not be an armenian, and he might very well be a mussulman and a subject of the sultan. or a european might be appointed to the post. in a financial and administrative sense the province would be dissevered from the central government; and, in the present state of the country, a loan to the provincial treasury would be necessary to supply the funds for the organisation of the gendarmerie. the new governor would rule over a somewhat heterogeneous mussulman majority and a compact armenian minority, very much their inferior in numbers. but his efforts would be assisted by the homogeneous nature of the provincial area; and his jurisdiction would embrace, not a tract of difficult mountain country, but some of the finest agricultural districts in the world. the needs of the armenians living in the capital and in the towns of asiatic turkey could be met by the revival of the so-called constitution granted to their nation by sultan abd-al-aziz in 1863. i have thought it worth while to include a translation of this lengthy document, and it will be found in my first appendix. it has the nature of a regulating statute, like the polojenye in russia, rather than of what we should understand by a constitution. but, unlike the polojenye, it is mainly addressed to the development among the armenians of systematic management of the affairs of their communities. those communities have always enjoyed the privilege of administering their own institutions, such as monasteries, churches, hospitals and schools. the statute of 1863 provides a complete and democratic machinery for the better organisation and control of such institutions. it wisely avoids, except in the last resort, any interference by government in these purely internal affairs. i cannot conceive any better training for the armenian people than that which they would receive by the application of their great intelligence to such practical and concrete ideals. the pitfall which they should avoid, were the statute ever revived, is the attempt to convert it into a political weapon. ii. europe as a whole is concerned with the future of these asiatic provinces on the score of her great and growing trade. the particular powers are also interested on political grounds--to preserve the balance of power. the territory of turkish armenia is of first-rate importance whether from the one or the other point of view. as regards trade, it is not only the trade with armenia that is at stake, but that with the whole of northern persia. the great highway of commerce between the ports on the black sea and the interior of persia passes along the avenue of the armenian plains. the possession of erzerum by a protectionist power would effectually stifle this important trade-route, and would cut off persia from the black sea. not less far-reaching would be the results in a political sense of such an occupation. the strategical value of the country is difficult to overrate. turkish armenia is the sign-post of the nearer asia, commanding the roads west, south and east. these issue upon the one side at the mediterranean seaboards, and, on the other, at the persian gulf. the contemporary littleness of the land has served in no small measure to blind our eyes to these facts. europe may elect to keep herself blind to such considerations, whether of a commercial or political nature. the question then arises, what are the interests of great britain, and upon what lines should her policy be shaped? in the discussion of all such questions it is a principle of no small value to ascertain not the opinions of statesmen and diplomatists, but those of the proverbial man in the street. of the former, few, indeed, are at the present day possessed even of an elementary knowledge of such-like asiatic problems. layard and rawlinson have both been long removed from the stage of politics; and these eminent men and stately figures with their western culture and eastern sympathies have both already passed from our midst. we can none of us be specialists on each and every question; and it is with a feeling of deep respect that those among us who have, perhaps, acquired some small knowledge of a particular problem, should endeavour to select among their friends those possessed of the divine average, and use them as foolometers--the gauge of common sentiment. several different kinds of opinion will be registered. "it is very sad, those poor armenians; but we are not knight-errants, and there are hard blows going about."... "why can't we leave the turks alone--they are in possession. turkey belongs to the turks and china to the chinese."... "so we are to hark back to the miserable policy of bolstering up the turks! let them go bag and baggage to the quickest possible perdition; and, if russia will do the work and remove the nuisance, so much the better for us and the whole world."... "we can't expect to have a finger in everybody's pie. we have already more than we can manage on our hands." the one conclusion which you may draw from these conflicting utterances is that the balance of common sentiment is, perhaps, in favour of standing aside. in england the actions of governments are based on common sentiment. there is no government in the sense of an enlightened administration, with a reasoned foreign policy and what the french would call a politique de longue vue et de longue haleine. even our great indian empire is ruled on principles which, so far as they relate to external affairs, are little better than the proverbial methods of the ostrich. what indian foreign secretary is even conversant with the affairs of persia, his next-door neighbour, as one might say? the indian government are at the present day sensible of great constriction in their finances, and what are the methods which they pursue? in every direction they draw in their horns, saving a few pounds here and a few there, and pointing with pride to the forcible retirement of a pair or two of distinguished teachers in a great educational establishment. what vigilance and strict economy! but business, at least in the city, is not as a rule conducted by the clerks. there our suspicions are excited by such pettifogging manoeuvres, and we keep our eyes open in expectation of the inevitable failure, not less certain than in the case of inflation and extravagance. at home widespread prosperity, a long start in the industrial race and the complexity of our world-wide transactions have grown like weeds and flowers around the margin of a salubrious well, screening the view and almost the sound of the life-giving waters. we forget the commercial basis of all our wealth and power; and few among us are sensible of a thrill if some vast province of the chinese empire be walled round against our trade. yet foreign commerce is the most delicate of national activities, slow, shy, easily disturbed and swiftly killed. the essential peacefulness of its methods, and the fact that few of the homes it helps to support are even aware of the destination of the goods they contribute to produce--such characteristics are little calculated to compete with the clamour of other interests, such as gold-mines, colonies, pan-germandom or pan-saxondom, or any other of the popular cries of the day. the spirit of adventure lying at the foundation of the british character has been enlisted into african enterprise. one cannot help admiring the undoubted ability with which the organisers of the movement towards south africa have at once appealed to the imagination of the british people, and won over to their side by careful preparation both the elements in the body politic capable of exercising quiet pressure and the recognised mouthpieces of public opinion. the prettiest women, the most ancient titles have all their share in the movement; and a press, which cannot be bought, has been successfully persuaded of the excellence of the cause which in full chorus they uphold and applaud. on the continent similar methods have been pursued by our boer adversaries; and the result has been a war in print and a war in feeling with our neighbours in europe of far greater moment than the african battles we have won or lost. for such outbursts, produced by a clever imitation of south african methods, or, perhaps, by spontaneous appreciation on the part of the boers of the new-born forces of advertisement on a huge scale, the organisers in england can scarcely be held responsible. they have done their work well, however we may judge its effect on character; and we cannot blame them if, absorbed in their own particular problem, they have at the same time thrown cold water on all questions concerning asia. the prudence of our people, once committed to an important struggle, has also been a factor on their side. but africa, this syracuse of modern europe, will not always, let us hope, be at our doors. the moment our hands are free i trust they may be directed to the disentangling of some asiatic knots. now the interests of great britain, under which we may include those of british india, are, i think there can be no doubt, most intimately bound up with the asiatic provinces of the ottoman empire. starting from the base of the persian gulf we have built up by laborious methods, extending over a period of getting on for a century, a commercial system which reaches far into the interior of mesopotamia and embraces the whole of southern persia. at the same time we have erected that northern trade-route of which i have spoken, giving access to our goods from the coast of the black sea to the markets of northern persia. what a long and patient struggle in face of almost overwhelming difficulties has been successfully conducted and inch by inch pursued by these various enterprises! with them are associated the names of brant in the north and of chesney and lynch in the south. the correspondence of consul brant with his distinguished chief, stratford canning, will, i trust, be some day given to the world. [318] it displays on its face a union of ideas with the much rarer capacity of translating them into practice by unwearying attention to the minutest details, which, whether the quality may have been inspired by the ambassador or his able subordinate, reflects lustre upon both names. it serves to remind us that the russian policy of building walls round their possessions is not a policy of recent date. we may regard with legitimate pride the readiness of our ancestors to take advantage of the throwing open of the black sea and of the facilities offered by the introduction of steam power; the old land-routes through asia minor were rapidly superseded, and a new commercial avenue between trebizond and the interior of persia was gradually opened up by a series of patient efforts which would have done credit to the genoese. in the south the expeditions of chesney (1835-37) [319] and of lynch (1837 and following years) were directed to the survey of the rivers euphrates and tigris and of the countries through which they flow. the former took his vessels in pieces from the coast of syria to the euphrates, while those of the latter--the nitocris, assyria and nimrod--were conveyed by sea to the estuary of the shat-el-arab. the labours of these pioneers were thrown away by the british government, and the project of an overland route from the mediterranean to india somewhat suffered from the undertaking of the suez canal (1860 and following years). it is certain to be revived. on the purely commercial side something was saved by individuals; and, starting from the knowledge acquired by the two eminent explorers, a trade with an annual value at the present day of about a million sterling has little by little been built up. it is carried by river steamers, which also convey the british mails, from the persian gulf to baghdad. these steamers have to contend with a variety of disabilities imposed by the turkish government. their voyages are confined to the tigris; the euphrates is kept closed, and they are not suffered to proceed a mile above baghdad. but the magnificent country through which they pass is growing in wealth through the facilities they provide; and the force of circumstances will sooner or later open wide the doors. of even earlier date are our trade-routes from the gulf seaboard to the tableland of persia. indeed it may be said without exaggeration that from kirmanshah on the north to beluchistan upon the south the zone of mountains which support that tableland are threaded by a number of arteries, diffusing over the vast body of the iranian highlands the life-blood of reciprocal commerce. such facts have not escaped the notice and solicitude of competent observers; but it seems to me that their logical bearing upon the problems of the nearer asia has not been examined with sufficient thoroughness. there can be little doubt that the acquisition by russia of a port on the persian gulf would not be tolerated by any british government. [320] apart from all considerations of a commercial nature, it would imply the necessity of maintaining a powerful fleet in the gulf, with additional strain on the finances of india. but what if the northern power were to occupy turkish armenia? would it merely entail the loss of our northern trade-route? i should like to examine in a temperate spirit the possibilities of such a hypothesis, not fearing to look them in the face, but endeavouring to divest my remarks of any alarmist or sensational character. my reader who may have mastered the facts of the geography will call to mind the intimate connection of the system of tablelands with one another from the borders of india to the mediterranean. the capital of persia and her greatest cities are situated upon the tableland; and i cannot conceive that the empire of the shahs could long maintain its independence after russia had become possessed of turkish armenia. not less certain would be the fate of asia minor, west of the euphrates; and, indeed, in the contingency which we are discussing, the german empire might be well advised to bargain away the important railways which she has recently constructed in that country in return for substantial advantages elsewhere. as regards england, i cannot admit, after careful consideration, that the loss to her trade of turkish armenia and the presence of russia on the tableland of persia would necessarily endanger india. such a consummation--regrettable as it must be, and avoidable as i believe it is--would deal a hard blow at her trade in the south. but one has to face that common sentiment of which i have spoken, and the corresponding lukewarmness of our rulers in the domain of asiatic affairs. it would be a very different thing if we were to suffer any encroachment on the part of russia upon the zone of mountains supporting on the south the tablelands of armenia and persia, and drawn like a long succession of chevaux de frise around the lowlands of mesopotamia. her occupation of any part of that zone of mountains would necessarily entail sooner or later the occupation of the whole. the lowlands themselves, the field of our trade, and appointed by nature as a granary for india with her teeming millions and uncertain harvests, would be at her mercy without striking a blow. distance is a factor of little importance on the lowlands; they are flat as the sea, and traversed from one end to the other by two magnificent navigable rivers. a power stationed at diarbekr is already stationed on the persian gulf, with a country of immense potential wealth at her back. for these reasons it would be well that we should recognise as soon as possible that the bedrock of british policy in the nearer asia should be the preservation of the integrity of the lowlands with their frame of mountains from syria to the borders of india. the conclusion at which i arrive is that the possession by russia of turkish armenia would be attended by consequences which have scarcely been appreciated at all by the majority of my countrymen. i would fain hope that, if this event be indeed inevitable, it may not take us by surprise. our own path is clearly indicated by the finger of nature; and the russian empire, established in armenia, would be quite as accessible to attack from the lowlands as our indian empire to hostile approach on the side of asiatic russia. but in order to safeguard our interests and provide for future contingencies we must accustom ourselves to think a little ahead. it will not be sufficient to beat time, and endeavour to entice germany into our own particular domain. as a natural commercial ally in her own field of asia minor, that power may render assistance to the common cause. as a competitor in our sphere she would be very much more likely to make her own terms with the northern empire. finally--for after all it is as much a question of men as of measures--i should like to contribute my vote as a traveller--whatever it may be worth--in favour of a proposal recently made by a well-informed writer. and the only amendment which one might desire to the proposition he has well expressed is that it should be accompanied by a recognition of what our foreign office has already accomplished with the imperfect system which it at present dispenses:--"the machinery of the foreign office is not adjusted to perform the new and strange duties which belong to oriental diplomacy. the ministers and secretaries who are competent officials in vienna or rome are lost among the tortuous political pathways of bangkok, teheran and pekin. never shall we hold our own in asia until an asiatic department is formed, under the charge of an experienced minister of cabinet rank, with an independent diplomatic staff, trained in the methods, and speaking fluently the languages of the east." [321] appendix i national constitution of the armenians in the turkish empire preliminaries the sublime porte, ministry of foreign affairs, no. 191. to the prudent representative of the patriarch (locum tenens) prudent and dear sir--the imperial firman concerning reforms requires that each community shall take into consideration within a given time the privileges and prerogatives which it enjoys, and, after due counsel, shall decide upon the reforms which are in accordance with the circumstances, the civilisation and the learning of the present time. it shall present a list of such reforms to the sublime porte in order that the authority and rights granted to the spiritual heads of each community may be placed in harmony with the position and new conditions secured to each community. in accordance with these behests, the outlines of a constitution for the armenian nation have been prepared by a committee composed of certain honourable persons. but at the same time it has been considered appropriate that the ecclesiastical members of the general assembly and the delegates of the different quarters should select by a majority of votes a committee of seven, to whose consideration the above-mentioned project should be submitted. we therefore beg you to despatch within a few days the summons to hold the election of that committee, and to direct that the committee shall meet at the sublime porte the committee and functionary appointed specially for this purpose. we beg you also to send us the names of the seven persons thus elected. (signature) ali. 1862, feb. 14 (old style). document presented to the sublime porte by the national committee and the committee of the government to the sublime porte, ministry of foreign affairs. the imperial government has from ancient times granted to the different nations under its righteous protection privileges and prerogatives for their religious liberty and the special administration of their internal affairs. these prerogatives are in their principles uniform for all nations, but they are at the same time adapted to the particular religious regulations and customs of each nationality. and each nationality has used and enjoyed them according to its peculiar manners and customs. the armenian nation, like other nations, has had to this day a patriarch, who has been acknowledged by the government as the president of the patriarchal administration, the representative of the nation, and the medium of the execution of imperial orders, and who from ancient times has been elected from the ecclesiastical body by a general assembly, composed of individuals representing the different classes of the nation. the patriarch in his office, which is to preside over the nation and to watch over its interests, has never been exempt from the influence and supervision of the nation, exerted over him through the general assembly. the proof of this is that the patriarch has always invited and convoked the general assembly, and has applied to that assembly for a decision when a question has been raised by orders of the sublime porte. the armenian nation about two years ago begged of the imperial government to have two assemblies established in the patriarchate under the presidency of the patriarch, one religious, the other political, that they might be participators in and auxiliaries of the office of the patriarch, and that any deviation on the part of the nation from its ancient regulations and customs, both religious and political, might be prevented. when these assemblies were established it became necessary to organise other councils for the administration of the minor affairs of the nation. but as the authority and duties of each national officer were not definitely defined, it was evident that these efforts to improve the state of affairs in the nation would be the occasion of continual misunderstanding in the different branches of the national administration, as well as between that administration and the nation. this naturally would be the cause of many irregularities in the execution of justice for all concerned, and of confusion and disputes in the national administration. with the object of doing away with the causes of such confusion and dissension, and with the nuisance of the undue claims of different parties, the imperial government, with its paternal solicitude for all its subjects, deems it necessary to organise a national mixed committee in order to prepare a constitution in accordance with the peculiar religious and political customs and long-established manners. now that mixed committee considers it proper according to the outline of the constitution presented for confirmation to the sublime porte, i. that the office of the patriarch as the medium between the nation and the sublime porte should remain as it was in the old system, ii. that the organisation of the general assembly should be reformed. the national delegates, instead of being elected by the esnafs (artisans)--since the condition of the esnafs is no longer what it used to be--should be elected by the committees of churches, that is, by different quarters, in a way that perhaps will be more regular and lawful than the one adopted by the greeks. and as armenians living in the interior of the country rightly complain that they are altogether deprived of participation in the deliberations and decisions of the patriarchate, a number of the delegates should be elected by the provinces to be added to the number of the delegates of the quarters or sections of constantinople. the ecclesiastical members, twenty of them, should be elected by the clergy in constantinople, so that the total number of the members of the general assembly be 140; their term of office should last ten years, and once in every two years the tenth part should be changed, and new elections take place. the general assembly should nominate both the patriarch and the members of the two assemblies working under his presidency and should have the supervision of their acts, iii. the administration of religious affairs should belong to the religious assembly, the administration of political affairs to the political assembly, and that of mixed affairs to the mixed assembly, which shall consist of the other two assemblies together, iv. the religious and political assemblies should manage through the sectional and other councils all national affairs of the church communities (that is to say, the people of different sections or quarters) under their jurisdiction, and the affairs of the churches, schools, hospitals, monasteries, and other similar national institutions, v. the centre of the administration should be the national patriarchate. the patriarch, as the official head of the patriarchate, should preside both over the general assembly and over the two national assemblies, and he should under the inspection of the general assembly manage all the affairs concerning the nation directly or indirectly, vi. the administration of provincial communities should be connected with the central administration. the metropolitans should preside over local assemblies which should be organised in the same way as those in constantinople, and they should be the managers of those local assemblies, vii. the provincial assemblies should be responsible to the central administration. each one of the councils of this central administration should be responsible to the assembly to which it belongs. the national assemblies should be responsible to the general assemblies, the patriarch responsible on the one hand to the imperial government and on the other to the nation (through the general assembly), viii. and, inasmuch as the imperial government considers the patriarch as the natural medium of the execution of the orders given by it to the nation, and at the same time considers him as the head of the national administration, and it is to him that it addresses its question, if the government should command the patriarch to give his opinion on the question asked, the patriarch should act according to the decision of the assemblies under his presidency; but, if he be ordered to communicate to the government the opinion of the nation, then he should convoke the general assembly and communicate to the government the final decision of that assembly, ix. the national administration has three kinds of obligations. first towards the imperial government, that is to preserve the nation in perfectly loyal subjection and to secure to the nation in general and to individuals in particular the preservation of their rights and privileges on the part of the government. the second obligation is to the nation, to treat it in true compassion and in a paternal way. the third is to the see of edgmiatsin, to act in accordance with the religious regulations and laws of the armenian church. these are the features in the constitution which the mixed committee considers desirable. these features are approved by the other committee which was organised according to the orders of your excellency, in order to present to the sublime porte on behalf of the nation their observations on the constitution. constantinople, 1862. signatures of the members of the committee of the sublime porte--stephanos, archbishop of nicomedia, representative of the patriarch elect of constantinople, three armenian ecclesiastics, and eight notables. signatures of the members of the national committee, seven notables. ordinance of the sublime porte to the prudent representative of the patriarch elect of constantinople. the constitution drawn up by the committee formed at the sublime porte for the reforms of the condition and administration of the armenian patriarchate, after having undergone certain modifications concerning secular affairs only, was presented to his imperial majesty, and, having been approved by his imperial majesty, the imperial decree, making a law of the features contained in it, was issued to be handed to your beatitude. in enclosing to you the above-mentioned constitution, we commission you to superintend the perfect execution of those features according to the high will of the august emperor. 1863, march 17. introduction the privileges granted by the ottoman empire to its non-mohammedan subjects are in their principles equal for all, but the mode of their execution varies according to the requirements of the particular customs of each nationality. the armenian patriarch is the head of his nation, and in particular circumstances the medium of the execution of the orders of the government. there is, however, in the patriarchate a religious assembly for religious affairs and a political assembly for political affairs. in case of necessity these two assemblies unite and form the mixed assembly. both the patriarch and the members of these assemblies are elected in a general assembly composed of honourable men of the nation. as the office and duties of the above assemblies and the mode of their formation are not defined by sufficient rules, and for this reason different inconveniences and special difficulties in the formation of the general assembly have been noticed, as each community is bound according to the new imperial edict (hatti humayun, 6/18 feb. 1856) to examine within a given time its rights and privileges, and after due deliberation to present to the sublime porte the reforms required by the present state of things and the progress of civilisation of our times, as it is necessary to harmonise the authority and power granted to the religious chief of each nationality with the new condition and system secured to each community, a committee of some honourable persons of the nation was organised, which committee prepared for the nation the following constitution. armenian national constitution fundamental principles 1. each individual has obligations towards the nation. the nation, in its turn, has obligations towards each individual. again, each individual and the nation have their respective rights over one another. hence the nation and its constituents are bound together by mutual duties, so that the duty of the one is the right of the other. 2. it is the duty of each member of the nation to share according to his means in the expenses of the nation, willingly to accept any services asked of him by the nation, and to submit to its decision. these duties of the individual are the rights of the nation. 3. the duties of the nation are to care for the moral, intellectual, and material wants of its members, to preserve intact the creed and traditions of the armenian church, to diffuse equally the knowledge necessary to all men among the children of both sexes and of all classes, to watch over the prosperity of national institutions, to increase the national income in any possible lawful way and wisely to administer the national expenses, to improve the condition of those who have devoted themselves for life to the service of the nation and to secure their future, to provide for the needy, peaceably to adjust the disputes that may arise among the members of the nation--in a word, to labour with self-denial for the progress of the nation. these obligations on the part of the nation are the rights of its members. 4. the authority which is appointed to represent the nation and to supervise and administer the regular performance of these mutual obligations is called the national administration. to this body is committed, by especial permission of the ottoman government and by virtue of the constitution, the care of the internal affairs of the armenians of turkey. 5. in order that the administration may be national it should be representative. 6. the foundation of this representative administration is the principle of rights and duties, which is the principle of justice. its strength is to be found in the plurality of voices, which is the principle of legality. chapter i the central national administration i. the patriarch of constantinople his election and resignation article 1.--the patriarch of constantinople is the president of all the national assemblies and the representative of their executive authority, and in particular circumstances he is the medium of the execution of the orders of the ottoman government. hence the person to be elected as patriarch should be a man worthy of the confidence and respect of the whole nation, and he should possess all the qualifications and dignity required by his position. he should belong to that class of bishops who have always been considered as candidates for the office. at the same time he should be worthy of the perfect confidence of the government, an ottoman subject beginning at least with his father and above thirty-five years of age. article 2.--in case of vacancy of the patriarchal throne, in consequence of the death or resignation of the patriarch, or from any other cause, the political and religious assemblies meet and elect a representative (locum tenens), and request the sublime porte to confirm their choice. the general assembly elects the patriarch, but the religious and political assemblies have the right by a list of candidates to express their opinion in regard to the merits of the candidates. the election of the patriarch will take place in the following manner:-in the first place the representative (locum tenens) prepares a list of all the bishops within ottoman territory, indicating opposite each name their qualifications in the sense of the first article, and presents it to the religious assembly. the religious assembly convokes a general meeting of ecclesiastics and prepares a list of candidates by secret ballot--that is, each member present writes on a slip of paper the names of all the bishops that he does not consider unfit from a religious point of view. a list of these names is prepared in the order of the number of votes received by each. the representative presents this list to the political assembly. this assembly, after an investigation into the political merits of the persons indicated, elects by a majority of votes five candidates and presents this list to the general assembly. at the same time the first list prepared by the general religious assembly should be hung in the hall of the general assembly. the general assembly, after learning from these two lists the opinions of the competent assemblies concerning the religious and political qualifications of the candidates, elects the patriarch by secret ballot and by a majority of the votes. the general assembly may give its votes to a person outside the list presented by the political assembly, but the name of that person must have been indicated in the list prepared by the general assembly of the ecclesiastics. no one can be elected whose name is not on that list. if no majority of votes be obtained on the first ballot, the names of those two who have received the largest number of votes are announced by the representative to the general assembly, and the second ballot should be on those two names. for this second ballot those of the national deputies who cannot be present may forward their votes in a sealed and signed letter addressed to the assembly, or to the representative, or to the chairman of the general assembly. the counting of votes is done by the officers of the general assembly in the presence of four ecclesiastical and four lay members of the assembly who act as inspectors. in case after a second ballot the two candidates receive the same number of votes, then one of them is elected by lot. article 3.--after the election a report is prepared, signed by all those present, and it is presented to the sublime porte by the representative, and the election of the patriarch is confirmed according to the ancient custom by an imperial edict. article 4.--the general assembly sends a written invitation to the person elected as patriarch if he be present in the capital, or a special delegate if he be out of constantinople. on receiving this invitation the newly-elected patriarch comes to the patriarchate, and in the cathedral, in the presence of the general assembly, takes a solemn oath in the following words: "before god and in the presence of this national assembly i publicly vow to remain faithful to the government and to my nation, and faithfully to see to the maintenance of the national constitution." herewith the office of the representative comes to an end. upon the invitation of the sublime porte the new patriarch is admitted to the presence of his majesty the sultan, his office is formally confirmed, and he visits the sublime porte to announce it. article 5.--should the patriarch act contrary to the rules of the constitution he is liable to impeachment. article 6.--only the general assembly and the political and religious assemblies have the right to bring a charge against the patriarch. the accusing or protesting assembly, with the permission of the sublime porte, asks the patriarch to convoke the general assembly. should the patriarch refuse to do so, this fact again is reported to the sublime porte, which then issues a permit for the general assembly to hold a sitting under the presidency of the oldest bishop in constantinople. the general assembly chooses five of its ecclesiastical and five lay members to constitute a committee of ten, among whom, however, there shall be none of those who have accused or protested. this committee, after investigating the charges, gives a report to the general assembly which decides the question by a secret vote. the documents containing this decision should be signed by all who have voted in favour of this decision. if the resignation of the patriarch be thus decided upon, the two chairmen of the two assemblies, accompanied by the presiding bishop, wait upon the patriarch and present to him this document. the patriarch on learning the will of the nation is bound to resign. if, however, he does not agree to resign, the matter is reported to the sublime porte, which deposes the patriarch. article 7.--the ex-patriarch after his abdication becomes like one of the diocesan bishops, and the necessary steps will be taken for him by the mixed assembly. office and obligations article 8.--the duties of the patriarch are to act according to the principles of the constitution and to watch diligently over the exact execution of all its points. the patriarch refers all business that comes before him to the assembly to which it belongs for investigation and decision. the takrirs and other official papers of the patriarch cannot be valid and admissible if they be not also sealed and signed by the assembly that has given the decision. if there be any urgent business for the consideration of which it might be impossible to await the day of the meeting of the assembly, or even to convoke an extraordinary meeting, the patriarch may do what is necessary, taking the responsibility upon himself. but he is bound to make a due record of what he may have done, and to present it for confirmation in its next meeting to the assembly under the jurisdiction of which the case may come. article 9.--the patriarch before signing any papers containing the decisions of the general assembly taken in his absence may make his observations concerning them and submit the case to a second consideration, but after this revision he is bound to sign those papers if he does not find there anything contrary to the requirements of the constitution. article 10.--the patriarch may propose to the competent assembly or council the dismissal of any ecclesiastic, teacher, agent of a church, monastery, school, or hospital who has not acted in accordance with the principles of the constitution. article 11.--the patriarch himself has no right to dissolve and change the religious and political assemblies and the councils belonging to them, but, if he notice in any of them conduct contrary to the constitution, first he demands an explanation of the chairman of the assembly or the council. the second time he warns him, but the third time he applies to the general assembly if the accused be one of the national assemblies, or to the political assembly if he be one of the councils, and, giving his reasons, he proposes the dissolution of the accused council or assembly. article 12.--the patriarch having a salary appointed to him from the national treasury provides himself for the internal expenses of the patriarchate. ii. the bureau of the patriarchate article 13.--there will be a bureau at the patriarchate for all necessary national documents. this bureau will be divided into three departments:-i. the department of correspondence, for the documents sent by the patriarchate and for those received there. ii. the department of registration, to arrange the papers belonging to the national assemblies and councils. iii. the department of census, to record births, marriages, and deaths. from the last department are issued the papers needed for travelling or other personal transactions; also certificates for births, marriages, and deaths. article 14.--the patriarchal bureau will have a chief who is responsible for all its transactions. the political assembly elects him and the patriarch nominates him. this chief is also the secretary of the general assembly. it is his duty to see that every year he be supplied with copies of the records of births and deaths both in constantinople and in the provinces, which records he shall have inscribed in the books of the general census of the patriarchal bureau. he should be well versed in the armenian language, and practised in the french and turkish languages. article 15.--this bureau will have a sufficient number of secretaries. these secretaries also must be well acquainted with the armenian language, and every one must possess all the necessary qualifications for his position. each secretary is responsible in his department to the assembly or council to which he belongs. all of them are responsible to the chief of the bureau. article 16.--all papers issued at the office of the census must be confirmed by the patriarchal seal and by the signature of the chief of the bureau. iii. the patriarch of jerusalem article 17.--the patriarch of jerusalem occupies for life the chair of st. james. he is at the same time the manager of all the holy places belonging to the armenians in jerusalem, and the president of the brotherhood of the monastery of st. james. it is his duty to act in accordance with the regulations of the monastery of jerusalem, and to watch over the faithful execution of those regulations. article 18.--in case the patriarch of jerusalem act contrary to the regulations of his monastery he will be liable to have a charge brought against him. article 19.--a charge can be brought against the patriarch either by the brotherhood of the monastery, or by the religious and political assemblies of constantinople. in such a case the general assembly is convoked, and, if after an investigation the charge should appear well founded, the general assembly, in accordance with the sixth article concerning the patriarch of constantinople, will act as the case requires either by sending an admonition to the patriarch, or by compelling him to abandon his office, when his office will be given over to a representative whom the general assembly shall elect from amongst the brotherhood by a secret vote. article 20.--in case of the death of the patriarch of jerusalem, the brotherhood elects one of its members as representative, and he is confirmed by the national assemblies. article 21.--the patriarch of jerusalem is elected by the national assemblies of constantinople, but the brotherhood has the right to express its opinion in regard to the merits of candidates. immediately after the death of the patriarch, the representative convokes a general meeting of the brotherhood. this meeting prepares a list of names, just as this is done by the general religious assembly of constantinople for the election of the patriarch of constantinople, but the list prepared by the brotherhood should contain at least seven names. this list is signed by the brotherhood and sent to the patriarchate of constantinople. article 22.--the person to be elected as patriarch of jerusalem should be at least thirty-five years of age, born an ottoman subject, and a bishop or doctor (vardapet) belonging to the brotherhood, and not separated from it. persons who, by the consent of the patriarch of jerusalem, have been employed by the assemblies of constantinople in some national office are not to be considered as having been separated from the brotherhood. article 23.--the mixed assembly, composed of the religious and political assemblies, examines the merits of the persons indicated in the above-mentioned list, and, choosing three candidates, presents their names to the general assembly. the list sent by the brotherhood should be kept hung in the hall of the general assembly. taking into consideration the opinions expressed both by the brotherhood and by the two national assemblies, the general assembly elects by secret vote, and by the majority of votes, the one whom it regards as the worthiest in respect of learning as well as of good character. in the general assembly no votes should be given for any person whose name is not indicated in the list presented by the brotherhood. iv. national religious assembly article 24.--the religious assembly consists of fourteen worthy ecclesiastics, who should be at least thirty years old and ordained at least five years ago. article 25.--the general religious assembly by a secret vote elects three times the number of the members of the national assembly, and signs this list and presents it to the national general assembly. the general assembly by a secret vote elects out of this list the members of the religious assembly. the report is presented by the patriarch to the sublime porte, and the members of the religious assembly thus elected are confirmed by imperial edict. article 26.--the religious assembly is dissolved in a body once in two years, at the end of april, and is re-elected in the beginning of may. the members of this assembly cannot be re-elected immediately, but only after the lapse of two years. article 27.--when there are as many as three members of this assembly wanting, either in consequence of resignation or from some other cause, others are elected by the general assembly to take their places, but until this election shall have taken place, the majority of the whole number is to rule. article 28.--the religious assembly undertakes the general inspection of all the religious affairs of the nation. its duties are to develop in the nation the religious sentiment, to preserve intact the profession and traditions of the armenian church, to promote the good order of churches and ecclesiastics, and to try to improve the present condition of ecclesiastics, and to secure the welfare of their future. it should visit from time to time the national schools and supervise the teaching of the christian doctrines, in order to educate worthy and active doctors (vardapets) and priests, and when investigating any religious disputes that may arise in the nation, it should decide them according to the laws of the church. article 29.--when the religious assembly cannot itself decide a purely religious question, it convokes all the bishops in constantinople, the preachers of all the churches, the head priests, and if necessary the metropolitans of the dioceses in the vicinity, to a general religious assembly. should this general assembly consider the question beyond its jurisdiction, then the question is referred to the oecumenical katholikos (at edgmiatsin). article 30.--all kinds of reports of the religious assembly should always be signed by the majority of its members. article 31.--the authorisation for ordaining vardapets, whether in constantinople or in the provinces, is given by the national religious assembly. the authorisation for ordaining priests in constantinople is also given by the same religious assembly, and in the provinces by the local religious assemblies. article 32.--no authorisation for ordaining a new priest is granted until the priests of the church and the council of the quarter send a written application urging the necessity of such authorisation. article 33.--the religious assembly elects the preachers (vardapets) for the churches in constantinople as well as their head priests, and the patriarch nominates them. article 34.--all elections in the religious assembly are by secret ballot. article 35.--the religious assembly should prepare a set of rules with the object of improving the present condition of ecclesiastics, and of securing their future welfare, so that they may perform gratuitously their spiritual affairs. v. the political assembly article 36.--the political assembly consists of twenty laymen well acquainted with the national affairs and with the laws of the government. article 37.--the members of the political assembly are elected by the general assembly by secret ballot and by a majority of votes, and, the report having been presented to the sublime porte by the patriarch, they are confirmed in their office by an imperial edict. article 38.--the political assembly is dissolved once in two years, at the end of april, and the re-election takes place in the beginning of may. the members of this assembly may be re-elected after the lapse of two years, and, though for the first two years they cannot be candidates for the political assembly, still they may be employed in any other national office. article 39.--if any member of the political assembly shall have been absent from the sittings three times successively without sending a written explanation, a letter is sent to him by the chairman of the assembly asking for an explanation of his absence. if no answer be received he is notified by a second letter that in case of his absence at the next sitting he will be considered as having resigned. article 40.--when there are as many as three members wanting in the political assembly either in consequence of resignation or from some other cause, others are elected by the general assembly to take their places, but until this election shall have taken place the majority of the whole number is to rule. article 41.--the political assembly undertakes the general superintendence of the political affairs of the nation. its duties are to promote the good order and progress of the nation, to examine carefully any useful projects presented to its consideration by the councils under its inspection and to facilitate their execution. article 42.--the political assembly refers the questions presented for its consideration to the councils to which they belong, and it is only after having heard the opinion of those councils that it can take action. and though it has the right to refuse for good reasons the decision taken by any of these councils, yet it cannot by itself make a different arrangement in regard to the case in question, but it should once more refer it to the same council. neither can the political assembly change or dissolve any of the national councils so long as they do not act contrary to the fundamental principles of the constitution. but in case of a default of this kind the assembly demands in the first instance an explanation from the chairman of the council in question. the second time it sends a written warning, and on the third occasion it may change the members of the council, provided always that it shall explain in its biennial report to the general assembly its reasons for so doing. article 43.--should the political assembly consider the solution of any question presented to its consideration beyond its jurisdiction, it refers such question to the general assembly. vi. councils and committees organised by the political assembly article 44.--the political assembly should organise four councils for educational, economical, and judicial affairs, and for the inspection of monasteries, and three committees for financial administration. the term of office of the members of these councils and committees is two years, but half of their numbers must be changed at the end of each year. the president of the judicial council is the vicar of the patriarch of constantinople. 1. the educational council article 45.--the educational council consists of seven well-educated laymen. its object is the general inspection of the education of the nation. its duties are to promote good order in the national schools, to help the societies that have for their object the promotion of the education of both sexes, to improve the condition of teachers and to care for their future, to raise well-qualified teachers and to encourage the preparation of good text-books. the educational council gives certificates to those students who have finished their course in a national school. it selects the text-books and holds annual examinations. but the supervision of the religious instruction belongs to the religious assembly, which assembly selects the text-books for religious learning and the teachers, holds examinations and distributes certificates. 2. the economical council article 46.--this council is to consist of seven well-qualified laymen whom the political assembly elects by a plurality of votes. it is to this council that belongs the general inspection of the financial administration of all national institutions in constantinople and their properties. it is its duty to watch over the interests of these institutions. it is its duty to see that each national estate is provided with the proper title-deed. copies of the title-deeds of all national real estates in the provinces should be kept in the bureau of the patriarchate. no selling or buying of national property is allowed without the knowledge of this council and without the consent of the political assembly and the confirmation of such consent by the seal of the patriarch. in constantinople and in its vicinity no national building can be constructed or repaired without the knowledge of this council and without the consent of the political assembly. it is also the duty of this council to inspect the financial administration of the committees on finances, on wills, and on the hospital, and to examine at certain times the books of the councils of different quarters, and present a report to the political assembly. two months before the beginning of a new year it should ascertain from the committee on finances the incomes and expenses for the coming year, prepare a budget, and present it to the political assembly. 3. the judicial council article 47.--the judicial council is composed of eight persons versed in law, married, and at least forty years of age, four of whom should be ecclesiastics, and the other four laymen. the vicar of the patriarch is the president of the judicial council, and all the members are elected by the mixed assembly by the plurality of votes. the function of this council is to settle family disputes, and to examine and decide any questions referred to it for solution by the sublime porte. in case the judicial council should consider any question beyond its capacity, then, according to the nature of the question, it recommends that it should be referred to the political or to the mixed assembly. should any person protest against the decision taken by this council, the question is examined again by one of the above-mentioned assemblies as the case may require. 4. council for monasteries article 48.--the monasteries are the property of the nation. hence the supervision and control of their administration and the management of their finance belong to the nation. inasmuch as it is necessary for each monastery to have its own particular regulations, the mixed assembly, consisting of the political and religious assemblies of the central administration, with due consideration of the opinions of the brotherhood of each monastery, and of the opinions of the council for monasteries, prepares a set of rules and presents it to the general assembly for confirmation. the fundamental principles for such rules are:-i. the special management of each monastery belongs to its brotherhood, but the right of the general superintendence of them all belongs to the central administration, of which the council for monasteries is the executive body. ii. the abbot of each monastery is elected by its brotherhood, and is confirmed by the patriarch with the consent of the mixed assembly of the central administration. the person to be elected abbot should be over thirty years of age, a vardapet (doctor), and a subject of the ottoman empire. iii. all monasteries are obliged to promote the moral improvement of the nation. hence each one, according to its capacity, should have a seminary, a library, a printing office, a hospital, and other similar useful establishments. the council for monasteries is composed of seven persons elected by the political assembly by plurality of votes. its functions and duties are to superintend the execution of the rules of each monastery, to ascertain the revenues and the expenditure, and to arrange and regulate it all. this council elects from the brotherhood of each monastery the managers of the affairs of the monastery. these should perform their duties under the presidency of the abbot and in accordance with the rules of the monastery, and at stated times should give an account of their doings to the council for monasteries. 5. the committee on finance article 49.--the committee on finance consists of seven persons versed in financial affairs, who are elected by the political assembly by plurality of votes. its function is the administration of the national central treasury. the revenues of this treasury are the general national taxes, the incomes of the bureau of the patriarchate of constantinople, and the donations or wills to the nation without the specification of a place. its expenditure consists of the usual expenses of the patriarchate and its bureau, the pecuniary aids granted to the national institutions under the immediate care of the central administration, and to needy quarters, and other casual expenses. the committee collects the revenues and dispenses the expenditure with the knowledge of the council for the general administration of finance and with the consent of the political assembly. it is its duty to keep the accounts of the treasury according to the strictest rules of book-keeping, and periodically to present the budget to the council of the general administration of finance, which council, after the necessary examination of it, communicates such budget to the political assembly. 6. the committee on wills article 50.--the committee on wills consists of seven persons--three ecclesiastics and four laymen--elected by the mixed assembly by plurality of votes. its function is the management of wills in favour of the nation. its duties are to superintend the execution of the wills in strict accordance with the object and intention of the makers of the wills. special rules for the guidance of this committee should be prepared by the mixed assembly with the aid of this same committee and the general committee for finance, and they are to be confirmed by the general assembly. this committee on wills should periodically present its accounts to the general council of finance, which council, after the necessary examination, should communicate its report to the political assembly. 7. the trustees of the hospital article 51.--the trustees of the hospital shall be nine persons elected by the political assembly by plurality of votes. two of these persons should be physicians furnished with diplomas. the duties of these trustees are to manage the national hospital, its estates and revenues, and to administer it with these incomes and with the aids received from the central treasury. this establishment should contain four departments, one for the care of the sick who are poor, the second for helpless old men, the third for the insane, the fourth for the education of orphans. the arrangements and administration of this establishment should always be managed according to medical and hygienic laws. these trustees are responsible to the general council of finances for the financial management of this establishment, and to the educational council for the educational department of it, and they should furnish periodically an account to these councils. vii. councils of quarters article 52.--these councils consist of five to twelve members according to the locality. their duties are the management of the affairs of their quarter, the care of the church and schools, the care of the poor and the investigation and settlement of disputes that may rise among their people. article 53.--each quarter should have a treasury under the management of its council. the income of this treasury is derived from the tax paid by the people of the quarter, the revenues of the church and the school, gifts or wills. its expenses are the expenses of the school and aid given to the poor. these councils should keep a regular register of all births, marriages, and deaths in their respective quarters. article 54.--these councils are directly responsible to the different central councils for their different departments. for the management of schools they are responsible to the educational council, for financial affairs to the council of finances, for judiciary affairs to the judiciary council. they should furnish periodically an account to each one of these councils. article 55.--these councils are elected by the people of the quarters, and whosoever shall not be deprived (according to the 67th article of the constitution) of the right of voting can take part in their election. article 56.--the rules to guide these councils are to be prepared by the political and religious assemblies. the office of these councils lasts four years. they are changed in the beginning of the fifth year, and their members may be immediately candidates for re-election. viii. the national general assembly--its organisation and its duties article 57.--the national general assembly is composed of 140 deputies, of whom i. one-seventh, that is twenty, are ecclesiastical deputies elected by the ecclesiastics in constantinople. ii. two-sevenths, that is forty, are deputies from the provinces. iii. four-sevenths, that is eighty, are deputies elected by the different quarters in constantinople. article 58.--the members of the religious and political assemblies attend the sittings of the general assembly, but if they are not elected deputies they have no vote in the general assembly. article 59.--the general assembly can have no sitting if the majority of its members, that is at least seventy-one persons, be not present. article 60.--the functions of the general assembly are to elect the patriarchs, to participate in the election of the katholikos, to elect the chief functionaries of the nation and the members of the religious and political assemblies; to oversee the administration of the national councils, to settle questions which belong to these councils but are considered beyond their capacity, and to preserve the national constitution intact. article 61.--the general assembly will have a sitting i. once in two years, according to the old custom, in the latter part of the month of april, to hear the biennial report of the national administration, to examine the general account of revenues and expenditures managed by financial functionaries, to elect new members for the religious and political assemblies, to settle the national taxation for the next two years. these biennial sittings should close within two months. the members of the national administrative assemblies who are at the same time deputies in the general assembly can take part in the discussions in these sittings, but cannot vote in any question except those of taxation and election, ii. to participate in the election of the katholikos, iii. to elect the patriarch of constantinople, and the patriarch of jerusalem, iv. to settle any discord between the patriarch and the political or religious assemblies. in such cases the parties in discord may take part in the discussions in the general assembly, but can give no votes, v. to revise the national constitution, finally, for any question the decision of which belongs to the general assembly. but in case of such extraordinary sittings notice is given to the sublime porte and its consent is previously obtained. article 62.--the patriarch convokes the general assembly with the consent of the political or of the religious assembly, or even at the request of the majority of the members of the general assembly. but before convoking such an extraordinary sitting the reasons for it should be explained to the sublime porte and its consent obtained. the election of ecclesiastical deputies article 63.--all the ecclesiastics in constantinople, at the invitation of the patriarch, come together in a certain place, and by secret voting and by the majority of votes elect the ecclesiastical members of the national general assembly from bishops, vardapets, and priests; but the candidates should not be holding any office in the provinces. they should be at least thirty years of age, ordained at least five years ago and under no accusation. article 64.--the office of the ecclesiastical deputies lasts ten years, and once in two years the fifth part of them is changed. this fifth part is changed by lot during the first eight years. all those who have ceased to be members either by lot or at the end of the ten years may be re-elected immediately. the election of lay deputies--qualifications for candidates and election article 65.--the national tax and personal merits are considered the basis of the right of being electors. in order to have the right of an elector a person should pay annually at least seventy-five piasters as national tax. those whose personal merits entitle them to be electors are persons employed in government bureaux and in other government offices, physicians with diplomas, authors of useful books, school teachers, persons who have rendered some valuable service to the nation. article 66.--persons who are twenty-five years of age are entitled to be electors, provided they be ottoman subjects. article 67.--the following are deprived of their right:-i. those convicted of a crime, who, according to the penal laws of the country, are considered as morally dead. ii. persons who have been condemned by some national council for fraud in the administration of national affairs and who have been deprived by a decision of one of these councils of their right to hold any national office. iii. those who are undergoing a corrective punishment by the courts of the government and whose term is not yet finished. iv. the insane whose complete recovery is not legally confirmed. article 68.--candidates are all those members of the nation who have attained their thirtieth year, are ottoman subjects acquainted with the laws of the country and with national affairs, and who are not deprived of their right according to the 67th article of the constitution. but at least seven of the eighty deputies to be elected by the different quarters in constantinople should be persons holding a certain rank. the manner of election article 69.--the national political and religious assemblies, with the chairmen of different councils, hold a sitting once every two years, in the first part of the month of february, to prepare the list of the deputies to be elected by the quarters of constantinople and by the provinces, and with the aid of the general census kept in the bureau of the patriarchate they decide the number of deputies to be elected by each quarter or by each province, taking as their basis for the quarters in constantinople the number of the electors, and for the provinces the number of the inhabitants. the number of deputies thus decided upon should be communicated by the patriarch to each quarter or province. the office of the deputies lasts ten years, and once in two years the fifth part of the deputies elected by the quarters of constantinople and by the provinces is changed; the election of this fifth part should take place once in two years by the quarters or by the provinces alternately. the turn of this alternation should be decided by lot during the first eight years, on condition that in case the number of electors in a quarter or the number of the population in a province is diminished or increased, the number of the deputies to be elected by the quarter or the province in question should be diminished or increased proportionately. those who are to take the places of the deputies deceased or resigned should be elected every year two months before the beginning of a new year. the deputies of the quarters should be elected by the inhabitants of constantinople. but the deputies of the provinces should be elected by the general assembly of each province. article 70.--the deputies of the quarters or of the provinces need not necessarily be the inhabitants of the same quarter or of the same province, provided they live in constantinople, are well acquainted with the national affairs of the quarter or of the province they represent, and have, by their love for their nation, by their honesty and justice, deserved the esteem and confidence of their electors. the national deputies are not regarded in the general assembly as the deputies of any particular locality, but as the deputies of the nation, all enjoying the same equal rights. article 71.--the patriarch sends a communication to every quarter in constantinople, in the month of february, in regard to the one-fifth of the deputies to be elected by them every two years, giving notice of the number of the deputies to be elected by each one, and reminding them of the qualifications of electors and candidates. on receiving this communication, the councils in the quarters undertake the election of the deputies, but during the process of the election the preacher of the quarter, or in his absence the head of the priests, will preside, and from three to six honourable inhabitants of the place are added to the number of the council. the electoral council thus formed ascertains the number of those who have the right of election in their quarter, prepares in alphabetical order a list of electors, and causes it to be hung for eight days in the council hall, which is to be kept open during all this time. the electoral council, in order to facilitate the decision of electors, prepares a list of candidates in three times the number required, and causes this list also to be hung in the council hall; the electors, however, are in no way bound to follow this list. in the provinces the members of the provincial general assemblies are elected in the same way. the voting article 72.--a week after the list of electors has been exposed, on a sunday morning after service the voting is begun in the council hall in the following manner. the president of the council of the quarter, the list of electors in hand, calls upon the electors in turn, who, after having signed their names in the list of electors, write on a piece of paper as many names as there are deputies required, one under the other, indicating before every name the surname, residence, and profession, fold the paper, and drop it in the box that is prepared especially for this purpose. but if the electors for some reason or other cannot personally come to the council hall, they send their votes enclosed in a letter, which they should sign. article 73.--voting is secret, so the voters should write their papers alone, so that no one else can see the names they write. article 74.--the voting should close the same day that it begins. no elector who does not present his vote that day has any right to protest afterwards. article 75.--no one can vote in two quarters at the same time. article 76.--if the quarters and dioceses that are united for election are near each other, then the electors come together for voting. but if they are far from each other each quarter or diocese holds its own voting, and then the results of the votes of the two parties are united. article 77.--after the voting is over, the same day and in the same sitting, in the presence of the council of the quarter the box is opened, and the votes are counted by officers specially appointed for this purpose and sufficient in number for the number of voters. should any discrepancy be discovered, and should the council of the quarter have any suspicion of fraud, a second ballot is appointed to be held on some other day before the next sunday. in the same way, if the required number of deputies be not obtained the first time, a second ballot is held for the rest some other day. article 78.--if it so happen that one of the voters has written on his paper more names than are required, the superfluous names are to be rejected. in the same way are to be rejected all papers where the names are not written one under the other. article 79.--those are elected as deputies who have received the largest number of votes exceeding half the number of the voters, and if two persons have received the same number of votes the older one is to be elected. article 80.--if no majority be obtained on the first ballot, the council of the quarter announces the names of the two persons who have obtained the largest number of votes, and the second ballot should be on those two names. article 81.--the council of each quarter presents to the patriarch the names of those who have been elected deputies in its quarter in an especial report, in which should be exactly indicated the names of those elected, their surnames, residence, profession, and all the circumstances of the election. the patriarch presents this report to the political assembly, which examines it and verifies the qualifications of those elected. after that the patriarch announces officially to every one of the deputies his legal election, and invites them to hold a sitting of the general assembly on a certain day. article 82.--the general assembly in its first sitting hears the reports examined by the political assembly, and confirms the elections and declares the general assembly legally organised. the general assembly can begin its meetings when the majority of the deputies of constantinople are elected without awaiting the end of the provincial elections, the results of which will be meanwhile communicated to constantinople. article 83.--if a deputy be elected by several quarters or provinces he himself decides which of the elections he shall accept, and, in case he decline to decide, the general assembly decides by lot. article 84.--the list of the deputies should be hung in the hall of the general assembly made out in alphabetical order, and before each name should be indicated resignation, death, and anything else that may happen. this list should be revised once in two years. chapter ii general laws for assemblies and councils article 85.--every assembly and council will have its officers, that is a chairman, a secretary, and sometimes also a second chairman and a second secretary. all these, of course, should be elected from the members of the assembly. these officers are elected only for one year, but they may be re-elected. article 86.--no meeting can be held without the presence of the majority. article 87.--a question should be put to vote only after it has been thoroughly examined and discussed, and all decisions should be taken by plurality of voices. in case of a tie, should the president be present the decision will depend upon his vote, and, if absent, it will depend upon the vote of the chairman. article 88.--in order to arrive at a decision in regard to a question discussed in the mixed assembly, each of the two assemblies should vote separately. if the majority of both have arrived at the same decision, then the question is settled. but if the decisions be different, it is considered as difference of opinion, and consequently the final settlement of the question is referred to the general assembly. in order that the mixed assembly may have a legal meeting the majority of both assemblies should be present. article 89.--invitations should be sent to the members from the patriarchate at least six days before the day of the meeting. chapter iii national taxation article 90.--every member of the nation who is of age and capable of earning money is bound to participate in the national expenditure by paying a tax. this tax is annual, and the basis of its distribution is the capacity of the individual. article 91.--there are two kinds of national taxes--one general, for general expenses and collected by the patriarchate for the national central treasury, the other special, for the special expenses of each quarter, and collected by the councils of the quarters for their private treasuries. article 92.--the distribution and manner of collection of the general taxes for constantinople are settled by the political assembly and confirmed by the general assembly. but the special taxes are arranged by the council of each quarter. in the same way are managed the provincial general taxes and the special taxes for each locality. article 93.--the general assembly will decide and the sublime porte will confirm the manner of distribution and collection of the tax which the provinces have thus far been paying to the treasury of the patriarchate. chapter iv national provincial administration article 94.--the metropolitan is the president of provincial assemblies and has their executive power under his control. his duty is to see that the constitution is preserved in the provinces. article 95.--the metropolitan cannot reside in monasteries and thus be far from the place of his office, but he will live in the official residence of the metropolitan, where the provincial assemblies also hold their meetings. when a metropolitan is at the same time an abbot he can carry on the two offices simultaneously if the monastery be only one day's journey from the metropolis, paying occasional visits to the monastery, but if the distance be more than one day's journey, he should appoint a representative in the monastery, and he himself should reside in the city. in case of need, however, he can visit any part of his diocese. article 96.--every quarter in the provinces should have in the same way as those in constantinople its council, its treasury, and its officers. in the metropolis there should be political and religious assemblies, and under the direction of the political assembly there should be a provincial treasury; there should be also a provincial bureau, where should be kept all the census books of all the people of the diocese. article 97.--the election of the metropolitan is carried on in the provincial general assembly in the same way as the patriarchs, and the report of the election is sent to the patriarch by the mixed assembly. the patriarch, with the consent of the mixed assembly of the national central administration, confirms the election and gives due notice of it to the sublime porte in order to obtain official authorisation. article 98.--the provincial assemblies are to be organised on the same plan as those of the central administration and have the same functions and duties. but the number of the members of the provincial assemblies will be fixed once for all according to the proportion of the inhabitants of each province. until the national taxation be fixed in the provinces, the electors of the provincial general assembly should be only those who belong to the first, second, and third classes of tax-payers to the government. and the manner of the organisation of these assemblies will be decided according to the population of each diocese by the central administration after due consultation with metropolitans. chapter v revision of the constitution article 99.--the fundamental principles of the national constitution are unchangeable. but if experience should make it desirable to modify certain points the general assembly will, five years after the forming of the constitution, organise a committee of revision. this committee shall consist of twenty members--three from the political assembly, three from the religious assembly, two from each of the four councils, and besides these six from the general assembly or outsiders. this committee shall report the necessary changes, which, after being ratified by the general assembly, shall be presented to the sublime porte and put in force according to the imperial edict. [322] appendix ii chemical constitution of some armenian lakes samples of water from lakes van, nazik, bulama (gop), and from two lakes in the nimrud crater were collected by us, carefully sealed, and submitted as soon as possible to the late mr. william thorp, b.sc., for analysis. unfortunately the samples were not large enough to permit of more than a single analysis in each case, estimating the various constituents in succession. hence it was not possible to examine for ammonia or organic matter, or for certain compounds of which slight traces may have been present. with regard to lake van, three previous analyses of its water have been made at various times, and the following tables have been prepared in order to facilitate comparison. lake van. quantities of solids in solution estimated in parts per 100,000 parts of water. ==================+==================+============+============+========== |chancourtois.[323]| abich.[324]| serda.[325]| thorp. +==================+============+============+========== chlorine | 566.679 | 488.182 | 579.114 | 568.9 carbonates | 329.057 | 249.448 | 328.637 | 320.565 sulphates | 212.773 | 188.476 | 198.467 | 203.4 phosphates | ... | ... | 0.146 | 0.05 nitrates | ... | ... | ... | ... soda | 1206.370 | 862.848 | 1040.864 | 1115.916 potash | 29.742 | 29.238 | 52.809 | 39.919 magnesia | 26.211 | 21.250 | 27.311 | not de | | | | termined lime | ... | ... | 5.240 | ... strontia | ... | ... | 0.063 | ... iron oxide | ... | ... | 0.303 | ... manganese oxide | ... | ... | 0.223 | ... ammonia | ... | ... | 0.573 | ... silica |} 18.000 | trace | 7.284 | 7.53 alumina |} | 3.58 | 0.347 | 1.01 total solids in solution | 2260.000 | 1734.21 | 2110.979 | 2248.9 suspended matter | ... | ... | a little | 0.39 | | | organic | | | | matter | ==================+==================+============+============+========== calculated composition in parts per 100,000. ===================+==================+========+=========+========== | chancourtois. | abich. | serda. | thorp. ===================+==================+========+=========+========== | | | | sodium chloride | 938.000 | 810.67 | 953.835 | 938.837 sodium carbonate | 861.000 | 543.84 | 714.426 | 773.110 sodium sulphate | 333.000 | 258.68 | 266.527 | 369.095 potassium sulphate | 55.000 | 54.06 | 97.655 | 73.819 magnesium carbonate| 55.000 | 40.71 | 57.308 | not | | | | determined magnesium sulphate | ... | 22.67 | ... | not | | | | determined calcium carbonate | ... | ... | 4.692 | ... calcium sulphate | ... | ... | 5.928 | ... calcium phosphate | ... | ... | 0.319 | ... strontium sulphate | ... | ... | 0.111 | ... iron carbonate | ... | ... | 0.488 | ... manganese carbonate| ... | ... | 0.360 | ... ammonium chloride | ... | ... | 1.699 | ... silica |} 18.000 | 3.58 | 7.284 | 7.53 alumina |} | | 0.347 | 1.01 nitrates | ... | ... | ... | 0.05 percentage of | | | | solids in | | | | solution | 22.6% | 17.34% | 21.10% | 22.48% ===================+==================+========+=========+========== the specific gravity of the water was determined by chancourtois as 1.0188, and by abich as 1.0189, both at 19° c. as abich points out, the water of lake van is nearly identical in composition with that of some of the soda-lakes at the south-eastern foot of ararat, in the araxes plain. in some of these the chloride, in others the carbonate, and in others again the sulphate of sodium is the predominating constituent. probably the composition of the waters of lake van vary somewhat in different parts of the lake; abich's sample was certainly less saline than those of the other analysts. the following analyses of the extraordinarily saline waters of lake urmi are appended for contrast rather than for comparison with those of lake van. lake urmi. quantities of solids in solution estimated in parts per 100,000 parts of water. ===========+===================+========================== | abich.[326] | günther and manley.[327] +===================+========================== chlorine | 12,686.8 | 8,536 sulphates | 929.03 | 631.2 soda | 10,106.4 | 6,814 potash | ... | 140.2 magnesia | 1,099.3 | 626.6 lime | 37.7 | 70.6 |traces of bromides | traces of barium. | ... | no traces either of | | bromine or iodine. ===========+===================+========================== in this case abich's sample was a stronger solution than günther's, the percentage of solid salts being 22.28 and 14.89 respectively. yet the relative proportion of the various salts is very similar, as shown by the following comparison of percentages:-====================+========+===================== | abich. | günther and manley. +========+===================== sodium chloride | 86.37 | 86.203 magnesium chloride | 6.94 | 6.816 ,, sulphate | 6.08 | 4.150 calcium chloride | 0.27 | ... ,, sulphate | 0.34 | 1.151 potassium sulphate | ... | 1.741 +========+===================== | 100.00 | 100.061 ====================+========+===================== the specific gravity in the two cases were determined as 1.175 and 1.113 respectively. the remaining four analyses by mr. thorp were made from our small samples of water taken from fresh-water lakes. quantities estimated in parts per 100,000. ======================+==============+=============+================+================ | | | nimrud crater, | nimrud crater, | lake bulama. | lake nazik. | large lake. | warm lake. ======================+==============+=============+================+================ chlorine | 0.35 | 1.50 | 2.15 | 4.25 sulphates | ... | ... | ... | ... nitrates | 0.05 | 0.05 | 0.08 | 0.05 sodium and potassium | | | | carbonates | 8.80 | ... | ... | 91.13 magnesia | 1.29 | ... | ... | ... lime | 2.71 | 3.32 | ... | 5.82 iron oxide | 0.60 | 0.01 | ... | 0.08 silica | 3.5 | ... | ... | 13.8 alumina | 1.71 | 0.24 | ... | 0.68 total solids | | | | in solution | 25.86 | 18.74 | 39.41 | 114.43 suspended matter | 21.33 | 0.36 | 1.88 | 2.18 ======================+==============+=============+================+================ the water of lake bulama is slightly ferruginous and yet slightly alkaline. the unpleasant odour from the lake doubtless arose from the fermentation of much vegetable matter in suspension and solution; it could not be due to sulphur compounds, since there is an absence of sulphates, and the low proportion of chlorine indicates freedom from animal contamination. lake nazik.--a soft water, with very little contamination. nimrud crater.--an accident to the sample of water from the large lake caused the loss of the iron, alumina, lime, and magnesia estimations. some vegetable matter occurred in suspension. the water of the warm lake is slightly alkaline, but the ratio of the potassium to the sodium could not be determined. it was rather turbid owing to fine fragments of vegetable matter. it is scarcely conceivable that it can possess healing properties. bibliography in the following bibliography [328] an attempt has been made to make the sections relating to travel and topography as complete as possible. the other sections are not exhaustive; but they perhaps include the more important and most recent sources of information. works written in armenian and russian have, with certain exceptions, been excluded, as well as those dealing with the armenian mediæval kingdom of cilicia. i. travel and topography general authorities. ritter (k.) die erdkunde von asien, berlin, 1832-59, 2nd edit., 18 vols. 8o and index. saint martin (j.) mémoires sur l'arménie, paris, 1818, 2 vols. 8o. (in armenian) alishan (l.) (mekhitarist), province of shirak, venice, 1881; province of ararat, venice, 1890; province of sisacan, venice, 1893. early travel. rubruck (william of) (guillaume de ruysbroeck or rubruquis; flemish monk (franciscan); envoy to khan of tartary from pope innocent vi. and louis ix.; travelled across armenia in 1254.) new translation from latin by w. rockhill. hakluyt soc. ser. 2, iv. lond. 1900, 8o. marco polo (venetian merchant; travelled in tartary, india, persia, and across armenia to trebizond, 1271-95.) first ed. in italian, venice, 1496. eng. trans. with notes by col. h. yule, lond. 1871, 2 vols. 8o. many other editions. odericus of pordenone (italian franciscan; travelled across armenia c. 1318; a few lines only.) italian in ramusio, vol. ii. venice, 1583, fol. latin and english in hakluyt's voyages, lond. 1809-12. jordanus (dominican missionary c. 1330; travelled in armenia, short account.) mirabilia descripta: the wonders of the east. trans. from latin by h. yule, hakluyt soc. vol. xxxi. lond. 1863, 8o. clavijo (ruy gonzalez de) (castilian ambassador to khan of tartary, 1403-6.) historia del gran tamerlan, e itinerario, ec., seville, 1582, fol. eng. trans. by clements markham, hakluyt soc. vol. xxvi. lond. 1859, 8o. zeno (caterino) (venetian envoy to persia, 1471-73.) ramusio, vol. ii. venice, 1583, fol. eng. trans. by c. grey, hakluyt soc. vol. xlix. lond. 1873, 8o. barbaro (josafa) (venetian envoy to persia, 1471-87.) venice, 1543; and in ramusio, vol. ii. venice, 1583, fol. eng. trans. by w. thomas, hakluyt soc. vol. xlix. lond. 1873, 8o. contarini (ambrosio) (venetian envoy to persia, 1473-77.) venice, 1524; and in ramusio, vol. ii. venice, 1583, fol. eng. trans. by w. thomas, hakluyt soc. vol. xlix. lond. 1873, 8o. anonymous venetian merchant (travelled from aleppo to persia viâ bitlis and lake van, 1507-20.) ramusio, vol. ii. venice, 1583. eng. trans. by c. grey, hakluyt soc. vol. xlix. lond. 1873, 8o. newberie (john) (english merchant; travelled from tabriz to erzinjan by erivan and erzerum, 1580-82.) purchas's pilgrims, pt. ii. bk. ix. ch. iii. lond. 1625, fol. cartwright (john) ("the preacher," english; travelled from aleppo to ispahan viâ bitlis and lake van about 1600?) lond. 1611; purchas's pilgrims, pt. i. vol. ii. bk. ix. lond. 1625, fol.; and churchill's collection of voyages, vol. vii. lond. 1707-47. rhodes (alessandro de) (jesuit missionary, 1618-53.) relazione de' felici successi della sante fede predicata da padri della comp. di giesu nel regno di tunchino, milan, 1651, 8o; voy. et miss. du père a. de rhodes, s.j., en la chine et autres royaumes de l'europe avec son retour par la perse et l'arménie, lille, 1884. poser (h. von) reyse von constantinopel aus, durch die bulgarey, armenien, persien und indien (1621), jena, 1675, 4o. tavernier (j. b.) voyages en turquie, en perse et aux indes (1631-64), paris, 1676, 3 vols. 4o. english translations, lond. 1678 and 1684. (many other editions.) philippi (f.) (carmelite monk.) itinerarium orientale ... (1640), lyons, 1649, 8o. evliya. travels in europe, asia, and africa in the 17th century. (trans. from the turkish by ritter, joseph von hammer), lond. 1840, 4o. boullaye le gouz. les voyages et observations du sieur de la boullaye le gouz gentilhomme angevin (1647), paris, 1653, 4o. poullet. nouvelles relations du levant (deuxième partie) (1658), paris, 1668, 12mo. melton (e.) eduward meltons, engelsch edelmans, zeldzaame en gedenkwaardige zee-en-land-reizen door egypten, west-indien, perzien, turkyen, oost-indien, etc. (1660-77), amsterdam, 1681, 4o. chardin (jean) voyages en perse et autres lieux de l'orient (1666-77), lond. 1686 (1st vol.); amsterdam, 1711, 10 vols. 12mo; nouv. éd. par langlès, paris, 1811, 10 vols. 8o. eng. trans. lond. 1720, 2 vols. 8o. jesuit missions (erivan, erzerum, bitlis, 1682 seq.) villotte (père) voy. d'un miss. de la comp. de jésus en turquie, en perse, en arménie, en arabie, et en barbarie, paris, 1730, 12mo. fleurian (t. c.) estat présent de l'arménie, paris, 1694, 8o. lettre du père monier } lettres édifiantes, vols. mémoire de la mission d'erzeron } iii. and iv. paris, 1780, mémoire de la mission d'erivan } 12mo. journ. du voy. d'erzeron à trébizonde } monier (père) relation de l'arménie in bernard's recueil de voyages au nord, vol. vi. pp. 1-116, amsterdam, 1729, 12mo. chinon (g.) (capuchin missionary.) relation nouvelle du levant ... religion, gouvernement et coutumes des perses, des arméniens et des gaures, lyons, 1671, 8o. careri (g. f. gemelli) giro del mondo (1693) (trebizond, erzerum, kars, erivan, nakhichevan), naples, 1699, 7 vols. 8o. eng. trans. in churchill's voyages, vol. iv. lond. 1774, etc. de bèze (père) (jesuit.) astronomical observations at trebizond and erzerum (1698), published by p. gouye in hist. de l'acad. de sciences, pp. 85-6, paris, 1699. schillinger (f. c.) persianische und östindianische reise, vom jahr 1699 bis 1702, nuremberg, 1707, 8o. tournefort (j. pitton de) relation d'un voyage du levant (1701-2), paris, 1717, 2 vols. 4o. eng. trans. ozell (j.), lond. 1741, 3 vols. 8o. lucas (paul) voyage au levant (palu-erzerum, 1700), the hague, 1705, 2 vols. 8o. ferrières-sauveboeuf (comte de) voyages ... en turquie, en perse et en arabie (1782-89), paris, 1790, 2 vols. 8o. travel in the nineteenth century. abbott (k. e.) notes of a tour in armenia in 1837, jour. r. geog. soc. xii. pp. 207-20, lond. 1842. abich (h.) geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, 3 parts and atlas, vienna, 1878-87, 4o and fol. aus kaukasischen ländern: reisebriefe herausgegeben von frau abich, vienna, 1896, 2 vols. 8o. geolog. natur des armen. hochlandes (festrede) (1843), dorpat, 4o pam. geolog. beobacht. auf reisen in den gebirgsländern zwischen kur u. araxes (1867), tiflis, 4o pam. krystallinischer hagel in thrialethischen gebirge, (1871), tiflis, pam. ein bergkalk-fauna aus der araxesenge bei djoulfa in armenien (1878), vienna, 4o. in publications of acad. imp. des sciences de st. pétersbourg-ruines d'ani (lettre et rapport par brosset, 1845), bull. hist. phil. ii. 369-76. natronseen auf der araxes-ebene (1846), bull. phys.-math. v. 116-25. geol. skizzen aus transkauk. (arm. plateau) (1846), bull. phys.-math. v. 321-43. meteorol. stationen in transkauk. (1848), bull. phys.-math. vii. 260-88. meteorol. u. klimatol. beobacht. in transkauk. (1850), bull. phys.-math. ix. 1-45. soda der araxes ebene(1850), bull. phys.-math. viii. 333-36. derniers tremblements de terre dans la perse septent. et dans le caucase (lake urmi and ararat) (1855), bull. phys.-math. xiv. 49-72. schwefelreiches tufgestein in der thalebene von dyadin (1855), bull. phys.-math. xiv. 142-44. vergleich. chem. untersuch. der wässer des caspischen meeres, urmia u. van-sees (1856), mémoires, sér. 6, vii. 1-57. das steinsalz u. seine geol. stellung im russ. arm. (1856), mémoires, sér. 6, vii. 59-150. tremblement de terre à tébriz en 1856 (1857), bull. phys.-math. xvi. 337-52. vergleich. geol. grundzüge des kauk. arm. u. nordpers. gebirge (prodromus) (1858), mémoires, sér. 6, vii. 301-534. occupations au cauc. (1859), bull. de l'acad. i. 209-12. recherches géol. en transcauc. (lettre 1860), ibid. i. 449-52. communication sur divers phénomènes, volcan de tandourek; géologie du lac d'ourmiah, ibid. 1863, vii. 119-24. in journal of r. geog. soc. london-climatology of the caucasus (1851), xxi. 1-12. in zeits. deuts. geolog. gesell. berlin-salzsee von urmiah (1854), vi. 256. letter to herr ritter, sept. 1859, xi. 480-84. letter to herr rose, jan. 1860, xi. 484-86. das thrialethische thermalquellen-system (1877), xxix. 820-29. in bull. de la soc. de géologie de france, paris-voy. en géorg., en turq. et en perse en 1862 (tendurek dagh) (1864) sér. 2, xxi. 213-20. in mitt. k. k. geog. gesell. vienna-erdbeben, vulkanische erschein, u.s.w. in den kauk. ländern (1869), iii. 166-75. in publications of k. k. geolog. reichsanstalt, vienna-die armenisch-georgischen trachyte (1869), verh. p. 232. die reihen-vulkangruppe des abul u.s.w. (1870), jahrb. xx. 275-78. mitt. aus dem kauk. (1877), verh. 29-35. hügel bei digala am ourmia-see (1877), verh. 67-69. in bull. soc. imp. des naturalistes, moscow-ein vermeintlicher thätiger vulkan an den quellen des euphrat. (tendurek dagh) (1870), xliii. 1-17. see also for this petermann's mitth., gotha, 1871, xvii. 71-73. see also under ararat. ainsworth (w. f.) travels and researches in asia minor, mesopotamia, chaldea, and armenia, lond. 1842, 2 vols. 8o. travels in the track of the ten thousand, lond. 1844, 8o. the sources of the euphrates, geog. jour. vi. pp. 173-77, lond. 1895. alcock (t.) travels in russia, persia, turkey, and greece (1828-29) [n. p.], 1831, 8o. alishan (l.) physiographie de l'arménie, venice, 1861, 8o. anon. pachalik d'akhal-tsikhe, nouv. annales de voyage, xliii. p. 110, paris, 1829. de la ville d'erivan, capitale de l'arménie russe, jour. asiat. xii. sér. 2, pp. 254-62, paris, 1833. aus dem tagebuch einer reise nach west und nord persien, das ausland (series of articles), augsburg, 1850. transcaucasia, georgia, and armenia, edinburgh rev. cii. pp. 520-41, edinburgh, 1855. excursions in armenia, fraser's mag. lv. pp. 602-11, lond. 1857. l'arménie pittoresque, venice, 1871, obl. fol. ein besuch bei den kurden auf dem alagös, das ausland, lii. p. 475, augsburg, 1879. zur statistik des gebietes von kars, russische rev. xxii. pp. 281-84, st. pet. 1883. quer durch armenien, globus, lviii. pp. 68 and 83, brunswick, 1890. excursions du 7e congrès géologique international (geology of neighbourhood of kutais and tiflis), st. pet. 1897. aucher-eloy (p. m. r.) relations de voyages en orient de 1830 à 1838 (revues et annotées par jaubert), paris, 1843, 2 vols. 8o. baer (k. e. von) der alte lauf des armenischen araxes, 1857, 8o pam. barkley (h. c.) a ride through asia minor and armenia, lond. 1891, 8o. bélanger (c.) voyage aux indes orientales (1825-29), paris, 1831, 8 vols. 8o. belck (w.) archäologische forschungen in armenien, verh. gesell. für anthrop. etc. pp. 61-82, berlin, 1893. untersuchungen und reisen in transkaukasien, hoch-armenien und kurdistan, globus, lxiii. pp. 349-52, 369-74; lxiv. pp. 153-58, 196-202, brunswick, 1893. die niveau-schwankungen des goektschai-sees, globus, lxv. pp. 301-3, brunswick, 1894. armenien und seine bewohner, mitth. geog. gesell. xi. pp. 176-79, hamburg, 1896. belck (w.) and lehmann (c. f.) reisebriefe ... armenischen expedition (1898-99), mitth. geog. gesell. xv. pp. 1-23, 189-221; xvi. 16-70, hamburg, 1898-99; see also under vannic inscriptions. bell (m. s.) reconnaissances in mesopotamia, armenia, kurdistan, and azarbaijan (1885-86), simla, 1889, large 8o. around and about armenia, scottish geog. mag. vi. pp. 113-35. edinburgh, 1890. bent (j. t.) the two capitals of armenia (sis and etchmiadzin), eastern and western rev. lond. 1892. travels among the armenians, contemporary rev. pp. 695-709, lond. 1896. berlin (--) extrait du journal d'un voyage de paris à erzeroum, jour. asiat. sér. 4, xix. pp. 365-78, paris, 1852. besse (j. c. de) voyage en crimée au caucase, en géorgie, en arménie, en asie mineure et à constantinople, en 1829 et 1838, pour servir à l'histoire de hongrie, paris, 1838, 8o. bianchi (a. de) viaggi in armenia, kurdistan e lazistan, milan, 1863, 8o. bigham (c.) a ride through western asia, lond. 1897, 8o. binder (h.) au kurdistan, en mésopotamie et en perse. paris, 1887, 8o. bishop (j. b.) journeys in persia and kurdistan (1890), lond. 1891, 2 vols. 8o. blau (o.) brief von erzeroum, 1857, zeits. deuts. morg. gesell. xi. p. 733, leipz. 1857. vom urmia-see nach dem van-see, petermann's mitth. ix. pp. 201-10, gotha, 1863. bluhm (j.) routen im türkischen armenien, zeits. allgem. erdk. xvi. sér. 2, pp. 346-57, berlin, 1864. bodenstedt (f.) tausend und ein tag im orient, berlin, 1850, 8o. boré (e.) arménie (vol. viii. of l'univers), paris, 1838, 8o. correspondance et mémoires d'un voyageur en orient (1837-40), paris, 1840, 2 vols. 8o. borne (g. von dem) der jura am ostufer des urmiasees, halle, 1891, 4o pam. brant (j.) journey through a part of armenia and asia minor (1835), jour. r. geog. soc. vi. pp. 187-223, lond. 1836. notes of a journey through a part of kurdistan (1838), jour. r. geog. soc. x. pp. 341-432. lond. 1840. brosset (m. f.) voyage archéologique en transcaucasie or rapports sur un voy. arch. dans la géorgie et dans l'arménie (includes "ani" by khanikoff and "etchmiadzin" by brosset, reprinted from rev. archéologique, paris, 1858), st. pet. 1849-51, 3 vols. 8o and atlas. les ruines d'ani, st. pet. 1860, 4o and atlas. in journal asiatique, paris-description des principaux fleuves de la grande arménie, d'après le djihan-numa de kiatib tchélébi, par a. jaubert avec la trad. d'un fragment arménien du docteur indjidjian, sér. 2, xii. 458-70, 1833. in publications of acad. imp. des sciences de st. pétersbourg-notice sur edchmiadzin (1840), bull. scient. vii. 44-64. la plus ancienne inscrip. armén. connue (1857), bull. hist.-phil. xiv. 118-25 and 168. voy. du p. sargis dchalaliants dans la grande arménie (1859), bull. hist.-phil. xvi. 201-5. exam. crit. de la "descrip. de la grande arménie" du p. l. alichan, rel. à la topog. d'ani (1862), bull. de l'acad. iv. 255-69. inscript. recueillies par kästner et berger (1864), bull. de l'acad. vii. 275-77. inscript. géorg. et autres recueillies par le p. nersès sargisian (1865), mémoires, viii. monuments géorg. photographiés par m. jermakof (1871), bull. de l'acad. pp. 433-64 and 526-48. browne (w. g.) in walpole's travels in various countries, pp. 176-80, lond. 1820. browne (e. g.) a year among the persians, lond. 1893, 8o. browski (l. e.) der obere tigris, globus, liii. p. 43, brunswick, 1888. bryce (j.) transcaucasia and ararat, lond. 1877, 8o; 4th edit. revised with supp. chapter on armenian question, lond. 1896, 8o. buhse (--) vorläufiger botanischer bericht über meine reise durch einen theil armeniens (1847), bull. phys.-math. acad. sc. vii. pp. 101-8, st. pet. 1848. burgin (g. b.) my visit to armenia, quiver, p. 528, lond. 1897. butyka (d.) das ehemalige vilayet derssim, mitth. k. k. geog. gesell. xxxv. sér. 2. pp. 99-126 and 194-210, vienna, 1892. meine reise von kharput nach diarbekir (1881), deuts. rundschau für geog. xv. pp. 151-60, 214-22, vienna, 1893. cameron (g. p.) personal adventures and excursions in georgia, circassia, and russia, lond. 1845, 2 vols. 8o. cappelletti (g.) l'armenia, florence, 1841, 8o. ceyp (a. j.) ein besuch der euphratquellen, globus, lix. pp. 349-50, brunswick, 1891. chahan de cirbied (j.) tableau général de l'arménie, paris, 1813, 8o. chantre (mme. b.) a travers l'arménie russe, paris, 1893, large 8o. chantre (e.) exploration dans le kurdistan et l'arménie, comptes rend. congrès nat. soc. franç. de géog. lyons, 1881. de beyrout à tiflis à travers la syrie, la haute mésopotamie et le kurdistan, tour du monde, lviii. pp. 209-304, paris, 1889. excursions en transcaucasie, bull. soc. géog. pp. 546-66, lyons, 1893. rapport sur une mission scientifique en arménie russe, paris, 1893, 8o. see also under armenian people. chesney (f. r.) expedition to the euphrates and tigris, lond. 1850, 2 vols. 4o and maps. narrative of euphrates expedition, lond. 1868, 8o. cholet (a. p. de) voyage en turquie en asie, arménie, kurdistan et mésopotamie, paris, 1892, 8o. clayton (e.) the mountains of kurdistan. alpine jour. xiii. pp. 293-300, lond. 1887. consular experiences in turkey, proc. r. artillery institution, xxiv. pp. 427-43, woolwich, 1897. cole (g. r. fitz-roy) transcaucasia, lond. 1877, 8o. corpi (f. m.) the catastrophe of kantzorik (mud avalanche, aug. 1889), quart. jour. geol. soc. xlvi. pp. 32-35, lond. 1890. curzon (r.) armenia; a year at erzeroom, and on the frontiers of russia, turkey, and persia, lond. 1854, 8o. dalyell (r. a. o.) earthquake of erzerûm, june 1859, jour. r. geog. soc. xxxiii. pp. 234-37, lond. 1863. depaubourg (w.) blick auf armenien, erman's russische archive, iv. pp. 373-77, berlin, 1844. develay (a.) autour des lacs de van et d'ourmiah, rev. scient. xlix. pp. 553-57, paris, 1892. deyrolle (t.) voyage dans le lazistan et l'arménie (1869), tour du monde, xxix. pp. 1-32, and xxx. pp. 257-88, and xxxi. pp. 369-416, paris, 1875. dieulafoy (jane) la perse, la chaldée et la susiane ... (tiflis, erivan, nakhichevan, edgmiatsin, 1881), paris, 1887, 4o. dilke (a. w.) the caucasus (tiflis, lake gökcheh, erivan, edgmiatsin, elizabetpol, baku), fortnightly rev. pp. 451-70, lond. 1874. donaldson (e. b.) the caucasus: a journey to the garden of eden, frank leslie's popular monthly, xxxvi. p. 433, new york, 1893. dove (h. w.) neuere arbeiten über das kaspische meer, den urmia und van seen, zeits. allgem. erdk. i. sér. 2, pp. 194-200, berlin, 1856. mittheilung aus erzerum über das erdbeben von 2 juni 1859, zeits. allgem. erdk. vii. sér. 2, p. 67, berlin, 1859. du bois (f.) excursion aux rapides de l'araxe, 1834, nouv. annales de voyage, lxx. pp. 314-38 and lxxii. pp. 5-30, paris, 1836. dubois de montpéreux (f.) voyage autour du caucase (1833-34), paris, 1839-43, 6 vols. 8o, and atlas fol. dulaurier (e.) tableau topographique de la province de siounik ou sisagan dans l'arménie orientale, nouv. annales de voyage, p. 259. paris, 1853. topographie de la grande arménie (trans. of a small portion of alishan's large work), jour. asiat. xiii. sér. 6, pp. 385-446, paris, 1869. dupré (a.) voyage en perse (1807-9), paris, 1819, 2 vols. 8o; and see gamba. eastwick (e. b.) three years' residence in persia (tiflis, erivan, 1860), lond. 1864, 2 vols. 8o. etiévant (c. a.) fragment du journal d'un voyageur en arménie, paris, 1861, 12mo. flandin (e.) souvenirs de voyage en arménie et en perse, rev. des deux mondes, x. pp. 651-81, paris, 1851. fontanier (v.) rapport sur l'arménie, etc., bull. soc. géog. xi. sér. 1, pp. 113-24, paris, 1829. voyages en orient (deuxième voyage en anatolie, 1830-33), paris, 1834, 8o. fowler (g.) three years in persia, with travelling adventures in koordistan (1831-36), lond. 1841, 2 vols. 8o. fraser (j. b.) a winter's journey from constantinople to tehran (1834), lond. 1838, 2 vols. 8o. frédé (p.) voyage en arménie et en perse, paris, 1885, 8o. freshfield (d. w.) travels in the central caucasus and bashan, including visits to ararat, etc., lond. 1869, 8o. freygan (m. et mme.) letters from the caucasus, etc., 1811-12 (original in french, hamburg, 1816), lond. 1823, 8o. gallois (e.) la traversée du caucase par la route de géorgie (tiflis, erivan, ararat), annuaire du club alpin français, xxii. 339-59, paris, 1895-96. gamba (--) voyage dans la russie méridionale ... provinces situées au delà du caucase (1820-24, appendix by adrien dupré), paris, 1826, 2 vols. 8o. garcia ayuso (f.) iran o' del indo al tigris. descripcion geográfica de los paises iranios, afghanistan, beluchistan, persia y armenia, madrid, 1876. gardane (a. de) journal d'un voyage dans la turquie d'asie et la perse, 1807-8, paris and marseilles, 1809, 8o. gerstenberg (k. von) das älteste salzbergwerk der erde, das ausland, xlv. pp. 913-15, augsburg, 1872. goebel (a.) quellwässer aus nordpersien nebst betrachtungen über die herkunft der soda und des glaubersalzes in den seen von armenien, bull. phys.-math. acad. sc. xvii. pp. 241-53, st. pet. 1858. golovin (i.) the caucasus, lond. 1854, 8o. gordon (c. g.) letters from the crimea, the danube, and armenia (1854-58), lond. 1884, 8o. günther (r. t.) contributions to the geography of lake urmi and the neighbourhood, geog. journ. xiv. pp. 504-23, lond. 1899. hahn (c.) künstliche inseln in den seen des armenischen hochlands, das ausland, lxiv. p. 98, stuttgart, 1891. hamilton (w. j.) account of the ruins of the city of anni in armenia, trans. r. inst. british architects (1835-36), i. pp. 100-4, lond. 1839. researches in asia minor, pontus and armenia, lond. 1842, 2 vols. 8o. harris (w. b.) from batum to baghdad viâ tiflis, tabriz, and persian kurdistan (1895), lond. 1896, 8o. harris (j. r. and h. b.) letters from armenia, new york, 1897, 8o. haurand (r.) meine reise im kaukasus und in armenien, wurttembergischen verein für handels-geog. p. 51, stuttgart, 1888. haxthausen (a. v.) trans-kaukasia (completed in 1849). leipz. 1856, 2 vols. 8o. eng. trans. by taylor (j. e.) transcaucasia, sketches of the natives and races between the black sea and the caspian, lond. 1854, 8o. heidenstamm (c. p. v.) in swedish: notes of a journey from turkey to persia (1834), upsala, 1841, 8o. hepworth (g.) through armenia on horseback, lond. 1898, 8o. heyd (w.) alte handelsstrassen von basra nach trapezunt und tana, zeits. gesell. erdk. xxii. pp. 338-44, berlin, 1887. hodgetts (e. a. brayley) round about armenia (1895), lond. 1896, 8o. hoffmann (l. f.) moeurs, usages et coutumes des populations du vilayet de van, le globe, bull. soc. de géog. de genève, iii. sér. 5, pp. 118-29, geneva, 1891-92. hommaire de hell (x.) les steppes de la mer caspienne, le caucase, la crimée et la russie méridionale (1838), paris, 1843-45, 8o. lettre adressée à m. daussy, bull. soc. géog. ix. sér. 3. pp. 119-27, paris, 1848. voyage en turquie et en perse (1846-48), paris, 1854, 3 vols. 8o. hughes (t. m'k.) notes on some volcanic phenomena in armenia, nature, lvii. pp. 392-94, lond. 1898. jaremba (--) (visit to warm springs and natural bridge over the euphrates at diadin), das ausland, p. 576, augsburg, 1832. jaubert (a.) voyage en arménie et en perse (1805-6), paris, 1821, 8o. see also aucher eloy; brosset (description des principaux fleuves de la grande arménie). johnson (j.) a journey from india to england, through persia, georgia, russia, etc. (1817), lond. 1818, 4o. khanikof (n.) inscriptions musulmanes d'ani et les environs de baku, bull. hist. phil. acad. sc. vi. pp. 193-200, st. pet. 1849. excursion à ani (1848), rev. archéol. xv. pp. 401-20, paris, 1858; and see brosset, voy. archéol. kiepert (h.) nachträgliches über hoch-armenien und den rückzug der griechen unter xenophon (nach w. strecker), zeits. gesell. erdk. xviii. pp. 388-92, berlin, 1883. kinneir (j. m.) geographical memoir of the persian empire, lond. 1813, 4o. journey through asia minor, armenia, and koordistan (1813-14), lond. 1818, 8o. klaproth (j.) description de l'arménie russe (d'après les notions publiées en russie), nouv. ann. voy. lxi. pp. 286-312, paris, 1834. (see also schobert.) koch (k.) reise durch russland nach dem kaukasischen isthmus, 1836-38, stuttgart, 1842-43, 8o. armenisch-kaukasiche reise des prof. koch und dr. rosen (nachrichten von k. ritter). monatsb. verhand. gesell. erdk. sér. 2, i. pp. 179-88, berlin, 1844. reise im pontischen gebirge und türkischen armenien, weimar, 1846, 8o. die kaukasischen länder und armenien in reiseschilderungen von curzon, k. koch, etc., leipz. 1865, 8o. der kaukasus: landschaftsund lebens-bilder aus dem nachlasse von k. k. berlin, 1882, 8o. kolenati (f. a.) die bereisung hoch-armeniens (natural history and ethnology), dresden, 1858, 8o. kotschy (t.) neue reise nach klein-asien, petermann's mitth. vi. pp. 68-77, gotha, 1860. kotzebue (m. von) narrative of a journey into persia ... yermoloff's embassy (1817), lond. 1819, 8o (germ. ed. weimar, 1819). krahmer (d.) die altarmenische haupstadt ani, globus, lxviii. pp. 263-67, brunswick, 1895. langlois (v.) topographie de la petite et de la grande arménie par nersès, dr. sarkisian, jour. asiat. ix. sér. 6, pp. 256-60, paris, 1867. laval (l. de) besuch bei khan mahmud und halil bey in kurdistan, das ausland, pp. 1339 and 1343, augsburg, 1845. schreiben aus amasia über eine reise von erzerum durch das dudschikgebirge nach dyarbekir, das ausland, pp. 1363 and 1367, augsburg, 1845. layard (a. h.) discoveries in the ruins of nineveh and babylon, with travels in armenia, etc. (1849), lond. 1853, 8o. lefèvre-pontalis (c.) de tiflis à persépolis, paris, 1894, 8o. loftus (w. k.) on the geology of portions of the turko-persian frontier, quart. jour. geol. soc. xi. pp. 247-344, lond. 1855. lumsden (t.) a journey from merut in india to london, through arabia, persia, armenia, georgia, etc. (1819-20), lond. 1822, 8o. lyall (r.) travels in russia, the krimea, the caucasus, and georgia [includes trans. and abridgment of journal of general yermólofs embassy to persia (1817) (vol. ii. pp. 85 seq.)], lond. 1825, 2 vols. 8o. lycklama a nijeholt (s. m.) voyage en russie, au caucase et en perse, dans la mésopotamie, le kurdistan, la syrie, la palestine et la turquie (1866-68), paris, 1872-75, 4 vols. 8o; and see malte-brun (v. a.), bull. soc. géog. vii. sér. 6. pp. 647-55, paris, 1874. lynch (h. f. b.) queen lukeria of gorelovka, harper's mag., lond. and new york, 1896. lynch (t. k.) letter on consul taylor's journey to the source of the euphrates (an active volcano: the soonderlik dagh), proc. r. geog. soc. xiii. p. 243, lond. 1869; and see rorit. m'coan (j. c.) our new protectorate, turkey in asia, its geography, races, resources, and government, lond. 1879, 2 vols. 8o. macdonald (a.) the land of ararat, lond. 1893, 8o. macdonald (r.) personal narrative of military travel and adventure in turkey and persia, edinburgh, 1859, 8o. macgregor (c. m.) life and opinions (edited by lady macgregor) (journey in armenia (1876) and memorandum on a. as theatre of war, vol. ii. ch. i. and appendices), edinburgh, 1888, 2 vols. 8o. markoff (e.) geophysik des goktschasees, freiburg, 1896, 4o. maunsell (f. r.) kurdistan (bingöl dagh, lake van, bitlis, sert, etc.), geog. jour. iii. 81-95, lond. 1894. geography of eastern turkey in asia (aldershot military soc.), aldershot, 1894. eastern turkey in asia and armenia, scott. geog. mag. xii. pp. 225-41, edinburgh, 1896. menant (j.) a travers l'arménie russe, nouv. rev. lxxxvi. pp. 23-37, paris, 1894. mielberg (j.) magnetische beobachtungen im armenischen hochlände, 1887, repertorium für meteorologie, xii. p. 19, st. pet. 1889. mignan (r.) a winter journey through russia, the caucasian alps, and georgia ... into koordistan (1829), lond. 2 vols. 8o. millingen (f.) la turquie sous le règne d'abdul-aziz, paris, 1868, 8o. wild life among the koords, lond. 1870, 8o. moltke (h. von) briefe über zustände und begebenheiten in der türkei (1835-39), berlin, 1841, 8o. moltke und mühlbach zusammen unter dem halbmonde (von r. wagner), berlin, 1893, 8o. monteith (w.) journal of a tour through azerdbijan and the shores of the caspian, jour. r. geog. soc. iii. pp. 1-58, lond. 1833. notes sur la position de plusieurs anciennes villes situées dans les plaines d'ararat et de nakhtchévan et sur les bords de l'araxe, nouv. ann. voy. xxxii. sér. 5, pp. 129-79, paris, 1852. morgan (e. d.) the mountain systems of central asia, scott. geog. mag. x. pp. 337-52, edinburgh, 1894. morier (j.) journey through persia, armenia and asia minor to constantinople (1808-9), lond. 1812, 4o. a second journey through persia, armenia, and asia minor to constantinople (1810-16), lond. 1818, 4o. moritz (a.) lebenslinien der meteorologischen stationen am kaukasus (1858), mém. des savants, acad. imp. sc. viii. pp. 525-36, st. pet. 1859. materials for a climatology of the caucasus, pt. i. meteorological observations. in russian and german, tiflis, 1871-75, 8o. morrison (m. a.) beyond the frosty caucasus, sunday mag. lond. 1892. mounsey (a. h.) journey through the caucasus and the interior of persia (tiflis, erivan, edgmiatsin, tabriz, 1865), lond. 1872, 8o. müller-simonis (p.) and hyvernat (h.) du caucase au golfe persique à travers l'arménie, le kurdistan, et la mésopotamie (1888-89), paris, 1892, large 4o. naumann (e.) vom goldnen horn zu den quellen des euphrat, munich, 1893, 4o. reisen in anatolien, brunswick, 1895, 8o. nefediew (--) erivan, das ausland, pp. 461-66, augsburg, 1839. nolde (e.) reise nach innerarabien, kurdistan und armenien (1892), brunswick, 1895, 8o. ouseley (sir w.) travels in various countries of the east (1811-12), lond. 1819-23, 3 vols. 4o. owerin (a.) cirkulation des wassers des goktscha-sees in transkaukasien, petermann's mitth. iv. p. 471, gotha, 1858. palgrave (w. g.) monastery of sumelas, fraser's mag. lxxxiii. p. 195, lond. 1871. vestiges of glacial action in north-eastern anatolia, nature, pp. 444, 536, lond. 1872. pauli (g.) von wan bis an den tigris, westermann's monatshefte, xliv. no. 67, pp. 73-83; no. 68, pp. 178-91, brunswick, 1878. von täbris bis wan, mitth. geog. gesell. xi. pp. 46-89, lübeck, 1887. percy (earl) highlands of asiatic turkey, lond. 1901. petersen (w.) artwin, das ausland, lvi. p. 886, stuttgart, 1883. aus transkaukasien und armenien, leipz. 1884, 8o. pichon (j.) itinéraire de djoulfa à roudout-kalé par l'arménie, la géorgie, l'imérétie et la mingrélie, rev. de l'orient, pp. 108-21, paris, 1856. pisson (g.) de trébizonde à bitlis par erzeroum, tauris et van, bull. soc. géog. commerciale, xiv. pp. 97-107, paris, 1891-92. races des hautes vallées du tigre et de l'euphrate, rev. scient. xlix. pp. 557-60 and 581-88, paris, 1892. pohlig (h.) entstehungs-geschichte des urmiasees, verhand. natur. verein, p. 19, bonn, 1886. ueber der sevanga see, verhand. natur. verein, p. 174, bonn, 1886. von batum über tiflis und erivan nach nordpersien, westermann's monatshefte, pp. 57-68, 189-99, brunswick, 1888. pollington (viscount, afterwards 4th earl of mexborough) journey from erz-rum to aleppo (1838), jour. r. geog. soc. x. pp. 445-54, lond.; pub. separately, lond. 1841, 8o. pollington (viscount, afterwards 5th earl of mexborough) half round the old world, tour in russia, the caucasus, persia, and turkey (1865-66), lond. 1867, 8o. porter (sir r. k.) travels in georgia, persia, armenia, ancient babylonia, etc. 1817-20, lond. 1821-22, 4o. price (w.) journal of travels of the british embassy to persia, thro' armenia and asia minor, lond. 1833, 2 vols. fol. radde (g.) die vegetation der erde, vol. iii., pflanzenverbreitung in den kaukasusländern ... bis zur scheitelfläche hocharmeniens, leipz. 1899, 8o. in petermann's mittheilungen, gotha. briefe über seine bereisung in hoch-armenien (1871), xviii. 206-9, 1872. (with dr. sievers) reisen in armen. hochlande (1871), xviii. 367 and 445, 1872; xix. 174-83, 1873. (with dr. sievers) reisen in hoch-armenien (1874), xxi. 56-64 and 301-10, 1875. (with dr. sievers) reisen in kaukasien und dem armen. hochlande (1875), xxii. 139, 1876. die ebene des oberen frat. xxiii. 260-67, 1877. der bin-göl-dagh, der tausend seen-berg, das quellgebiet des aras. xxiii. 411-22, 1877. vier vorträge über dem kaukasus (1873-74), ergänzungsband, viii. 1-71, 1874. reise im russ. karabagh (1890), ergänzungsband xxi. 1-56, 1889-90. rassam (h.) asshur and the land of nimrod (excavations at van, 1877-80), new york, 1897, 8o. rohrbach (p.) aus turan und armenien (russian provinces, 1897), preussische jahrbücher, xc. pp. 101-32; 280-310; 435-85. berlin, 1897. rorit (m. p.) identification of the mount théchés of xenophon (trans, by t. k. lynch), jour. r. geog. soc. xl. pp. 463-73, lond. 1870. rottiers (--) itinéraire de tiflis à constantinople, brussels, 1829, 8o. saad (l.) zwei türkische städtebilder aus der gegenwart (erzerum; trapezunt), petermann's mitth. xlii. pp. 282-90, gotha, 1896. saint martin (v. de) histoire des découvertes géographiques (asie mineure), paris, 2 vols. 1845-46, 8o. site d'armavir, la plus ancienne cité royale de l'arménie; site de l'ancienne artaxata, nouv. ann. voy. xxxii. sér. 5, pp. 180, 199, paris, 1852. artaxata, ancienne ville d'arménie; armavir, athenæum français, paris, 1853. sandreczky (c.) reise nach mosul und durch kurdistan nach urumia, stuttgart, 1857, 8o. schachtachlinski (m.) aus dem leben eines orientalischen kleinstaates an der grenze russlands, das ausland, lx. pp. 23-26, stuttgart, 1887. schobert. travels in the caucasus and georgia in 1807-8 (trans. from the german of j. klaproth), lond. 1814, 4o. schulze (a.) eine reise nach kurdistan, das ausland, lxi. pp. 721-24, 752-54, stuttgart, 1888. schweiger-lerchenfeld (--von) erzerum und erzingdjan, das ausland, li. pp. 253-55. stuttgart, 1878. seidlitz (n. von) das türkische grusien (trans. from the russian of bakradse), russische rev., st. pet. 1877. zwischen kura und araxes, russische rev. xviii. 5 articles, st. pet. 1881. pastuchows besteigung des alagös, globus, lxx. pp. 85-90, brunswick, 1896. sheil (lady) glimpses of life and manners in persia (ani, gümri), lond. 1856, 8o. shiel (j.) journey from tabriz, through kurdistan, viâ vân, bitlis, etc. (1836), jour. r. geog. soc. viii. p. 54, lond. 1838. sieger (r.) die schwankungen der hocharmenischen seen seit 1800 in vergleichung mit einigen verwandten erscheinungen, mitt. geog. gesell., vienna, 1888. die schwankungen der armenischen seen, globus, lxv. pp. 73-75, brunswick, 1894. sievers (g.) (see radde.) sijalski. erinnerungen aus armenien (erivan, etc.), das ausland, pp. 949, 955, 965, 970, augsburg, 1839. slater (e. t.) ani, armenia, ludgate, lond. 1897. smith (e.) and dwight (m. g. o.) missionary researches in armenia with memoir on armenia by j. conder, lond. 1834. 8o. southgate (h.) tour through armenia, kurdistan, persia, and mesopotamia, new york, 1840, 2 vols. 8o. sstebnizki (j.) das pontische gebirge, petermann's mitth. xxviii. p. 329, gotha, 1882. stocqueler (j. h.) fifteen months' pilgrimage ... journey from india to england through parts of turkish arabia, persia, armenia, etc. (1831-32), lond. 1832, 2 vols. 8o. strecker (w.) topographische mittheilungen über hoch-armenien, berlin, 1861, 8o. das obere zab-ala gebiet und routiers von wan nach kotur, petermanns mitth. pp. 257-62, gotha, 1863. beiträge zur geographic von hoch-armenien (ebene v. erzerum; quelle des euphrat; bingöl dagh; rückmarsch der zehntausend), zeits. gesell. erdk. iv. pp. 144-62 and 512-38, berlin, 1869. ueber die wahrscheinliche ältere form des wan-sees, zeits. gesell. erdk. iv. pp. 549-52, berlin, 1869. nachträgliches über hocharmenien und den rückzug der griechen unter xenophon, zeits. gesell. erdk. xviii. pp. 388-92, berlin, 1883. street (o.) changes in the physical geography of the ancient home of man in central and western asia, jour. amer. geog. soc. xii. pp. 193-216, new york, 1880. stuart (--) journal of a residence in northern persia, and the adjacent provinces of turkey (1835), lond. 1854, 8o. suter (h.) journey from erz-rum to trebizond (1838), jour. r. geog. soc. x. pp. 434-44. lond. 1840. svoboda (--) among kurdish brigands in armenia, wide world mag. iv. 178, lond. 1899. sykes (m.) through five turkish provinces (bitlis, van, erivan, 1899), lond. 1900. tancoigne (j. m.) lettres sur la perse et sur la turquie d'asie, paris, 1816, 2 vols. 8o. narrative of a journey into persia (1807) (from the french), lond. 1820. taylor (j. g.) sources of the tigris, proc. r. geog. soc. ix. pp. 36-40, lond. 1863. travels in kurdistan, with notices of the sources of the eastern and western tigris, and ancient ruins in their neighbourhood, jour. r. geog. soc. xxxv. pp. 21-58, lond. 1865. journal of a tour in armenia, kurdistan, and upper mesopotamia (1866), jour. r. geog. soc. xxxviii. pp. 281-361, lond. 1868. tchihatcheff (p. de) asie mineure, paris, 1853-69, 8 vols. 8o, and atlas, 4 vols. 4o. études sur la végétation des hautes montagnes de l'asie mineure et de l'arménie. comptes rend. acad. des sc., and printed separately (pam. 8o), paris, 1857. sur l'orographie et la constitution géologique de quelques parties de l'asie mineure et de l'arménie; sur la géologie et l'orographie d'une partie de l'arménie, comptes rend. acad. sc. xlvii. pp. 446-48, 515-17, paris, 1858. reisen in kleinasien und armenien (itineraries, 1847-63), petermann's mitth., ergänzungsband iv. pp. 1-68, gotha, 1867. telfer (j. b.) the crimea and transcaucasia, lond. 1876, 2 vols. 8o. teule (j. c.) pensées et notes critiques ... voyages dans l'empire du sultan de constantinople, paris, 1842, 2 vols. 8o. texier (c.) description de l'arménie. la perse et la mésopotamie (1839), paris, 1842, 2 vols. fol. in bulletin de la société de géographie, paris-exploration de l'arménie, du kurdistan et de la suziane, sér. 2, xiv. 376-80, 1840. renseignements archéol. et géog. sur quelques points de l'asie mineure, de l'arménie et de la perse, sér. 2, xv. 26-38, 1841. notice sur erzéroum, fragment d'un journal de voyage 1839-40, sér. 2, xx. 213-28, 1843. itinéraires en arménie, en kurdistan et en perse, sér. 2, xx, 229-52, 1843. notice géog. sur le kourdistan, sér. 3, i. 282-314, 1844. thielmann (m. g. f. von) streifzüge im kaukasus, in persien und in der asiatischen türkei (1872-73), leipz. 1875, 8o. eng. trans. heneage (c.), lond. 1875, 2 vols. 8o. tiele (c. p.) western asia, according to the most recent discoveries, rectorial address, leyden univ. feb. 1893 (trans. by e. taylor), lond. 1893, 8o. tomaschek (w.) sasun und das quellengebiet des tigris, vienna, 1895, 8o. tozer (h. f.) turkish armenia and eastern asia minor, lond. 1881, 8o. ussher (j.) a journey from london to persepolis, including wanderings in daghestan, georgia, armenia, etc., lond. 1865, 8o. vambéry (a.) life and adventures (trebizond, erzerum, tabriz, 1862), lond. 1886, 8o. vecchi (f. de) and osculati (g.) giornale di corovana o viaggio nell' armenia, persia ed arabia, milan, 1847. vereschaguine (b.) voyage dans les provinces du caucase (1864-65) (molokans, dukhobortsy, etc.), tour du monde, xix. 6 articles, paris, 1869. vizetelly (e.) a winter ride in armenia, eng. ill. mag. pp. 135-41. lond. 1896. voulzie (g.) a travers l'arménie russe, rev. française de l'etranger et des colonies, xix. pp. 170-76, paris, 1894. wagner (m.) mittheilungen eines deutschen reisenden aus dem russischen armenien, das ausland (series of articles), augsburg, 1846. reise nach dem ararat und dem hochland armenien (1843) (widermann u. hauff's reisen u. länderbeschreibungen, lief. 35), stuttgart, 1848; ararat and the armenian highlands (review of above), blackwood's mag. lxv. pp. 577-89, edinburgh, 1849. der kaukasus und das land der kosaken (1843-46), leipz. 1850, 12o. beiträge zur kenntniss der naturverhältnisse im türkisch-armenischen hochlande, das ausland (series of articles), augsburg, 1851. reise nach persien und dem lande der kurden (1843), leipz. 1852, 2 vols. 8o. travels in persia, georgia, koordistan, from the german of dr. m. wagner, lond. 1856, 3 vols. 8o. walpole (f.) the ansayrii and the assassins, lond. 1851, 3 vols. 8o. warkworth (lord) notes from a diary in asiatic turkey (1897-98), lond. 1898, 1 vol. 4o. see percy. weber (w.) tremblements de terre en arménie (1888), la nature, 2o semestre, august, p. 211, paris, 1888. weeks (e. l.) from the black sea to the persian gulf by caravan (1892), harper's mag. xxvi. pp. 651-71, 813-35, lond. and new york, 1893. from the black sea through persia and india (1892), new york, 1896, 8o. wilbraham (r.) travels in the trans-caucasian provinces of russia (1837), lond. 1839, 8o. wolff (joseph) the koolagh; or snowstorm at erzroom, constitutional press mag. pp. 211-14, lond. 1860. wünsch (j.) reise in armenien und kurdistan, mitth. geog. gesell. sér. 2, xxvi. pp. 409-12, 487-96, 513-20, vienna, 1883. die flussläufe des kömür, gerdschanis und kelkit, mitth. geog. gesell. sér. 2, xvii. pp. 201-19, vienna, 1884. die quelle des westlichen tigrisarmes und der see gölldschik, mitth. geog. gesell. sér. 2, xxviii. pp. 1-21, vienna, 1885. das quellgebiet des östlichen tigrisarmes, petermann's mitth. xxxv. 115, 139, gotha, 1889. ein kleinasiatisches stadtbild (wan), oesterreichische monatsschrift für den orient, pp. 73-78, vienna, 1889. yermólof (general) see lyall. yorke (v. w.) journey in the valley of the upper euphrates, geog. jour. viii. pp. 317 and 463, lond. 1896. ararat. abich (h.) geologische forschungen, part ii. section "das erdbeben von arguri 1840." see supra. die besteigung des ararat (1845), baer u. helmersen's beiträge zur kenntniss des russ. reiches, xiii. pp. 41-72, st. pet. 1849, 8o. in ephemeriden der geog. gesell. zu berlin-sendschreiben an a. v. humboldt über das erdbeben von arguri, 1845. in monatsb. über die verh. der gesell. f. erdkunde zu berlin-geognost. reise zum ararat u. verschüttung des thales von arguri (1840), sér. 2, iv. 28-62, 1847. geognost. wanderungen durch den kauk. u. zum ararat, sér. 2, iv. 143-64, 1847. in bull. de la soc. de géog. paris-hauteurs absolues du système de l'ararat, sér. 4, i. 66-78, 1851. notice explic. d'une vue du cône de l'ararat, sér. 4, i. 515-25, 1851. in bull. de la soc. de géologie de france, paris-observations sur le mont ararat, sér. 2, viii. 265-71, 1850-51. in sitzungsb. der k. akad. der wissenschaften, vienna-fulguriten im andesit des kleinen ararat, lx. 150-62, 1869. eng. trans. lond. 1869, 8o pam. in zeits. deuts. geolog. gesell. berlin-der ararat in genetischer beziehung, xxii. 69-91, 1870. in bull. de l'acad. de st. pétersbourg-zur geologie des südöst. kauk. (gletscherende in der jakob-schlucht am grossen ararat), x. 21-40, 1866. ueber die lage der schneegrenze u. die gletscher der gegenwart in kauk. (1877) (glacier of akhury) xxiv. 258-82, 1878. allen (t. g.) and sachtleben (w. l.) across asia on a bicycle (ascended ararat, july 1891), new york, 1894, 8o. anon. der ararat (legends), das ausland, 4 articles, munich, 1830. erk-ura (akhury), die armenische kolonie auf dem berge ararat, das ausland, pp. 729-30, munich, 1834. major voskoboinikoff's official account of earthquake of akhury in 1840, from "the times," athenæum, feb. 20, p. 157, lond. 1841. visit to ararat, fraser's mag. lx. 111-21, lond. 1859. arzruni (a.) reise nach süd-kaukasien (ascent of the little ararat), verhand. gesell. erdk. xxii. pp. 602-11, berlin, 1895. baker (g. p.) ascent of ararat, alpine jour. pp. 318-27, lond. 1879. berens (k.) zwei besteigungen des ararat im jahre 1835, zweite besteigung (from st. petersburger zeitung, in brit. mus. library), st. pet. 1838, 8o. brosset (m. f.) note sur le village arménien d'acorhi et sur le couvent de st. jacques (earthquake of 1840), bull. scient. acad. sc. viii. pp. 41-48, st. pet. 1841. bryce (j.) ascent of ararat, alpine jour. viii. pp. 208-13, lond. 1877. armenia and mount ararat, proc. r. geog. soc. xxii. pp. 169-86, lond. 1878. transcaucasia and ararat. see supra. chantre (madame) a travers l'arménie russe. see supra. chantre's reisen am ararat, globus, lxii. pp. 246-50 and 278-81, brunswick, 1892. chantre (e.) rapport sur une mission scientifique dans l'asie occidentale ... les régions de l'ararat ..., archives miss. scient. et litt. x. sér. 3. pp. 199-264, paris, 1883. l'ararat, annales de géog. iii. pp. 81-94, paris, 1893. dubois de montpéreux (f.) voyage au caucase. see supra. dwight (h. g. o.) armenian traditions about mount ararat, jour. amer. orient. soc. pp. 189-91, new york, 1856. ebeling (m.) der "begräbnisplatz" und die inschriften auf dem kleinen ararat, verhand. gesell. erdk. xxv. 130-32, berlin, 1898. der ararat, zeits. des deuts. u. österr. alpenvereins, xxx. 144, graz, 1899. edwards (b. b.) ascents of mount ararat, biblical repos. and quar. observer, vii. pp. 390-416, andover and boston, 1836. freshfield (d. w.) early ascents of ararat, alpine jour. viii. pp. 213-21, lond. 1877; and see supra, travels in the central caucasus. friederichsen (m.) russisch-armenien und der ararat, mitth. der geog. gesell. xvi. 1-15, hamburg, 1900. khodzko (j.) ascent of ararat in 1850. fr. trans. of account in russ. journal the caucasus, no. 80, 1850, pub. by longuinoff in bull. soc. géog. paris, sér. iv. i. 55-65, 1851; fr. trans. of russ. official account, pub. by brosset in journal of st. petersburg, nov. 1850, no. 227, pp. 1910-13; account communicated by khodzko to the club alpin upon his election as an honorary member, annuaire du club alpin français, iii. pp. 377-89. paris, 1876. könig (c.) die ersten besteigungen des ararats, aus allen welttheilen, xxv. pp. 3-14, leipz. 1894. leclercq (j.) histoire des ascensions de l'ararat, comptes rend. congrès intern. géog. 1891, v. pp. 713-22, berne, 1892. voyage au mont ararat, paris, 1892, 8o. lynch (h. f. b.) ascent of mount ararat, scribner's mag. xix. pp. 215-35 (reprinted in mountain climbing, 1897), lond. and new york, 1896. markoff (e.) expédition scientifique au caucase, ascension du grand ararat [with ascent of little ararat by e. de kovalevsky and note on glacier in chasm of akhury], bull. soc. roy. belge de géog. xii. pp. 577-92, brussels, 1888. eine besteigung des grossen ararat, das ausland, xiii. p. 244, stuttgart, 1889. la température minima au sommet du grand ararat, comptes. rend. congrès intern. géog. 1891, v. pp. 723-25, berne, 1892. oswald (a.) eine besteigung des ararat (1897) (summits of great and little ararat), jahrb. schweiz. alpenclub, xxxv. pp. 157-83, berne, 1899-1900. parrot (f.) hauteur du mont ararat (note based on letter from m. gamba, french consul at tiflis), nouv. ann. voy. xliv. pp. 393-95, paris, 1829. reise zum ararat, berlin, 1834, 8o. eng. trans. cooley (w. d.) journey to ararat, lond. 1845, 8o. rickmer-rickmers (w.) ararat, zeits. des deuts. und österr. alpenvereins, xxvi. pp. 315-26, graz, 1895. seidlitz (n. von) pastukhoff's besteigung des ararats, aug. 1893 [from zapiski cauc. sec. imp. russ. geog. soc. xvi. pp. 422-42], globus, lxvi. pp. 309-15, brunswick, 1894. séverguine (basile) sur les pierres alumineuses des monts ararats (read 1810), mém. acad. sc. st. pét. vol. iii. series 5, pp. 209-14. seymour (h. d.) his few lines about his ascent of ararat in 1845 are to be found in freshfield's early ascents of ararat, alpine journal, viii. p. 215, lond. 1877. spassky-avtonomov (k.) ueber eine neue ersteigung des ararat, august 1834, magazin für die literatur des auslands, no. 34, berlin, 1835. stuart (r.) ascent of ararat (1856), proc. r. geog. soc. xxi. pp. 77-92, lond. 1877 (see also freshfield's early ascents of ararat, alpine jour. 1877). venukoff (--) observations thermométriques sur le sommet de l'ararat, comptes rend. acad. sc. cix. paris, 1894. weidenbaum (--) der grosse ararat und die versuche zu seiner besteigung (trans. by h. hofmann from the russian zapiski imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sec. xiii. 1884), mitth. vereins erdk. 133-202, leipz. 1884. see also supra gordon (c. g.), letters from the crimea, etc.; tournefort (j. p. de), voy. du levant; wagner (m.), reise nach dem ararat. the russian-speaking reader may be referred to kaulbar's aperçu des trav. géog. en russie, st. pet. 1889, 8o; mejoff, la littérature russe sur la géog. 1865-83; miansaroff, bibl. caucasica, st. pet. 1874-76, 8o; and to the following periodicals (the list of articles is not exhaustive, but indicates sources of information). imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sec.--izvestiya, khodzko, iv. 1875; vii. 1882-83; zapiski--khodzko, vi. 1864; weidenbaum, xiii. 1884; pastukhoff, xvi. 1894. russ. soc. technology cauc. sec.--zapiski, khodzko, viii. 1876. almanac of the caucasus, 1882, biog. of j. khodzko. tiflis gazette, no. 39, 1829, parrot. military journal, st. pet. 1831, parrot. bibliothèque pour la lecture, st. pet. 1835, xii. saveliev. gazette of st. petersburg, 1840, no. 267, gelmersen. journal des mines, st. pet. 1841-43. wagner. annales de la patrie, xxxviii. and l'abeille du nord, 7 and 8, st. pet. 1845, spassky-avtonomov. le messager historique, xlvi. st. pet. 1891, paquirev. russo-turkish wars. anon. coup d'oeil sur les provinces nouvellement conquises par les russes, venice, 1828, 12o. remarques topographiques sur quelques cantons transcaucasiens et sur la perse (par un médecin de l'armée russe 1827-28), nouv. ann. voy. xlv. pp. 343-60, paris, 1830. théâtre de la guerre dans la turquie d'asie, nouv. ann. voy. xlii. pp. 192-205, paris, 1829. armstrong (t. b.) journal of travels in the seat of war, during the last two campaigns of russia and turkey, lond. 1831, 8o. chesney (f. r.) russo-turkish campaigns of 1828 and 1829, lond. 1854, 8o; and in german in "das türkische reich in historisch-statistischen schilderungen," leipz. 1854. fonton (f. p.) la russie dans l'asie mineure, ou campagnes du maréchal paskévitch en 1828 et 1829, paris, 1840, 8o. monteith (w.) kars and erzeroum; campaigns of prince paskiewitch in 1828-29, lond. 1856. 8o. notes on georgia and the new russian conquests beyond the caucasus, and descriptions of frontier of russia and persia as settled in 1828-29, privately printed, n.d. 8o pam. neumann (c. f.) die operations-linie des generals paskewitsch in asien, allgem. preussische staats-zeitung, no. 254, 13th sept.; no. 255, 14th sept., berlin, 1829. steinle (n.) die russisch-türkischen kriege in europa und asien, ulm, 1854, 8o. uschakoff. geschichte der feldzüge des generals paskewitsch in der asiatische türkei (1828-29), leipz. 1838. anon. visit to kars while in the hands of the russians (june 1856), fraser's mag. lv. 160-173, lond. 1857. duncan (c.) a campaign with the turks in asia, lond. 1855, 2 vols. 8o. lake (a.) kars and our captivity in russia, lond. 1856, 8o. sandwith (h.) narrative of the siege of kars, and travels in armenia and lazistan, lond. 1856, 8o. anon. la guerre d'orient en 1877-78, paris, 1888. etude critique des opérations en turquie d'asie (1877-78), constantinople and leipz., 1896, 8o. forbes (a.) and others. daily news correspondence of the war between russia and turkey, lond. 1878, 2 vols. 8o. greene (f. v.) the russian army and its campaigns in turkey in 1877-78, lond. 1880, 8o. norman (c. b.) armenia and the campaign of 1877, lond. 1878, 8o. ryan (c. s.) and sandes (j.) under the red crescent (english surgeon at plevna and erzerum, 1877-78), lond. 1897, 8o. williams (c.) the armenian campaign (1877), lond. 1878, 8o. dottain (e.) la turquie d'asie d'après le traité de berlin, rev. de géog. iii. pp. 204-18, paris, 1878. kiepert (h.) die neue russisch-türkische grenze in asien, globus, xxxiv. p. 102, brunswick, 1878. petermann (a.) map of districts acquired by russia by the berlin treaty of 1878, petermann's mitth. xxiv. p. 321, plate 16, gotha, 1878; see also ibid. pp. 365-68, and plate 20, and p. 393. sstebnizki (j.) die russisch-türkische grenze in klein-asien nach dem berliner tractat von 1878, petermann's mitth. xxviii. pp. 129-32, gotha, 1882. data for map. khodzko (j.) die russischen aufnahmen im kaukasus (trigonometrical survey), petermann's mitth. x. pp. 361-67, gotha, 1862. osten-sacken (c. von) die internationale aufnahme der türkisch-persischen grenze, petermann's mitth. xi. pp. 131-33, gotha, 1865. staritzky. die katastral vermessung transkaukasiens, petermann's mitth. x. pp. 84-86, gotha, 1864. tschirikow (e. i.) ueber die arbeiten der persisch-türkischen gränz-commission, erman's archive für wissenschaftliche kunde von russland, xix. pp. 218-24, berlin, 1860. positions: gedeonoff (d.) in russian. geographical position of 50 points in turkish armenia and kurdistan from astronomical observations made in 1889. (extracted from zapiski of war-topographical bureau, 1891.) st. pet. 1891, 4o pam. glascott (a. g.) positions in kurdistan astronomically determined, jour. r. geog. soc. x. p. 432; note respecting the map of kurdistan, ibid. pp. 433-34, lond. 1840. kulberg (p. p.) in russian. astronomical work in the district of kars and in asiatic turkey (1878). (note on this article with positions of places in armenia in petermann's mitth. 1880, p. 154. the field telegraph was used to ascertain longitude.) izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. vi. part i. tiflis, 1879. struve (f. g. w.) astronomical positions in european turkey, mount caucasus and asia minor (1828-32). (extracted from the bulletin of the academy of st. pet. by h. g. hamilton.) jour. r. geog. soc. viii. pp. 406-11, lond. 1838. altitudes: abich (h.) ein cyclus fundamentaler barometrischer höhenbestimmungen auf dem armenischen hochlande, mém. acad. sc., sér. 7, xxvii. pp. 1-55, st. pet. 1880. höhen auf dem wege von erzerum nach olti und artvin, verhand. gesell. erdk. xi. pp. 302-303, berlin, 1884. tables of heights in armenia. in his geolog. forsch. part ii. pp. 367-87. see supra. anon. resultate von höhenbestimmungen im kaukasus, in transkaukasien und in persien, erman's archive, f. wiss. kunde von russland, p. 266, berlin, 1854. charkowsky (p. von) in russian. list of barometrical altitudes in trebizond vilayet (1881-82), izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. vi. part. i. tiflis, 1879. see zeits. gesell. erdk. berlin, 1884, pp. 255-56, for same in german. in russian. altitudes of peaks, passes, etc. on route from rize through kyan village to erzerum, izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. vi. append. 2, pp. 63-64, tiflis, 1879-81. glamasdin (--) in russian. heights in the vilayet of trebizond registered by aneroid in 1882, izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. viii. p. 76, tiflis, 1884-85. ilyin (p. a.) in russian. list of altitudes in asiatic turkey barometrically determined (1882), izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. viii. pp. 80-82, tiflis, 1884-85. (germ. trans. by r. kiepert in verh. gesell. erdk. berlin, 1884, pp. 300-302.) kiepert (richard) höhenmessungen in armenien und persien. translations of three lists of altitudes in the izvest. i. r. g. soc. cauc. sec.: 1. by d. m. lupandin, 1881; 2. p. f. stepanoff, 1881; 3. positions and altitudes in the district of kars. zeits. gesell. erdk. xviii. pp. 76-80, berlin, 1883. kusikoff (n. s.) in russian. altitudes in asiatic turkey determined by aneroid (1880-81), izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. viii. pp. 78-79, tiflis, 1884-85. (germ. trans. by r. kiepert in verh. gesell. erdk. berlin, 1884, pp. 298-99.) in russian. altitudes in asiatic turkey and persia, barometrically determined (1884), izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. viii. pp. 339-43, tiflis, 1884-85. altitudes in government of erivan and asiatic turkey determined in 1884, izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. ix. pp. 202-204, tiflis, 1886-88. in russian. altitudes in asiatic turkey, van, bitlis, kharput, and erzerum vilayets, determined in 1885, izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. ix. pp. 392-93, tiflis, 1886-88. routes: haussknecht (c.) routen im orient (1865-69) nach dessen original-aufnahmen redigirt von h. kiepert, berlin, 1882. tchihatcheff (p. von) itinerar der kleinasiatischen reise im jahre 1858 (vom verf. durch c. ritter mitgetheilt; anmerkungen und karte von h. kiepert), zeits. allgem. erdk. vi. p. 275, berlin, 1859. reisen und forschungen in klein-asien (1848-58), petermann's mitth. vi. p. 313, gotha, 1860. see also strecker under travel in the nineteenth century. maps: map of the turco-persian frontier made by russian and english officers in the years 1849-55 (4 miles = 1 inch), southampton, 1873. orographical map of asiatic turkey, from the latest sources, coloured to show contours (described in petermann's mitth. 1882, p. 430), tiflis, 1882. reconnaissance survey of north-west azerbaijan (1894). in library of r.g.s., london. carte de la turquie d'asie (sans l'arabie), scale 1:1,000,000, paris, 1897. calvert (h. c.) map of the country to the north of erzerum (1857). in library of r.g.s., london. khanikoff (n.) map of aderbeijan, compiled principally from personal observations and surveys made in the years 1851-55, berlin, 1862. kiepert (h.) nouvelle carte générale des provinces asiatiques de l'empire ottoman (sans l'arabie) (railways to 1898), berlin. memoir über die construction der karte von klein-asien und türkisch-armenien in 6 blätt. von v. vincke, fischer, v. moltke, und kiepert, berlin, 1854, 8o. statistics. cuinet (v.) la turquie d'asie, paris, 1890-95. 4 vols. 4o. hippius (a.) statistische tabellen von transkaukasien (from izvest. cauc. sec. russ. g. soc. 1889), petermann's mitth. xxxv. p. 178, gotha, 1889. klein (d.) l'arménie et les arméniens (estimate of the numbers of the armenian people), l'exploration, iv. pp. 267-72, paris, 1877. kondratenko (e.) ethnographical maps of transcaucasia (scale 20 versts=1 inch), zapiski imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. xviii. supplement, tiflis, 1896. kutschera (h.) administrative eintheilung und bevölkerung der asiatischen türkei, oesterreichische monatsschrift f. d. orient, pp. 153-57, vienna, 1877. macgregor (c. m.) history, ethnography, topography and resources of part of asiatic turkey and caucasia, calcutta, 1872, 8o. michelsen (e. h.) das türkische reich in historisch-statistischen schilderungen, art. iv., leipz. 1854. mordtmann (a. d.) officielle bevölkerungsziffern aus der asiatischen türkei (from turkish newspaper vakyt, 1879), zeits. gesell. erdk. ii. pp. 132-37, berlin, 1880. ravenstein (e. g.) the populations of russia and turkey, jour. statistical soc., lond. 1877. schweiger-lerchenfeld (f. von) das neue vilajet wan, oesterreichische monatsschrift für den orient, pp. 42-45, vienna, 1877. seidlitz (n. von) volkszählung in tiflis, 1864, petermann's mitth. xi. p. 233, gotha, 1865. ethnographie des kaukasus (with coloured map), petermann's mitth. xxvi. p. 340, gotha, 1880. selenoy (g. l.) and seidlitz (n. von) die verbreitung der armenier in der asiatischen türkei und in transkaukasien, petermann's mitth. xlii. pp. 1-10, gotha, 1896. stebnitzky (h. j.) uebersicht der kaukasischen statthalterschaft, petermann's mitth. xi. p. 121, gotha, 1865. supan (a.) vertheilung der armenischen bevölkerung in türkisch-armenien, kurdistan und transkaukasien (nach cuinet, selenoy und seidlitz entworfen), petermann's mitth. xlii. gotha, 1896. statistische notizen über die kaukasus-provinzen, erman's archive f. wiss. kunde von russland, p. 196, berlin, 1854. die bevölkerung der stadt tiflis (1876), russische rev. xvi. st. pet. 1880. in russian. statistics of transcaucasia derived from the family lists of 1886, pub. by order of the civil government of the caucasus by the transcaucasian statistical committee, tiflis, 1893, 4o. see also the caucasus calendar, published yearly at tiflis. note on russian census of 1897 giving populations of transcaucasia, petermann's mitth. xliii. pp. 132-34, gotha, 1897. see also under political: british parl. papers, various estimates of the population of certain provinces of asiatic turkey. maloma (j. d.) in russian. list of inhabited places in districts of bayazid and alashkert, izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. v. pp. 288-302, tiflis, 1877-78. yeritzoff (a. d.) in russian. list of inhabited points of erzerum province, izvest. imp. russ. geog. soc. cauc. sect. viii. append. 2, pp. 1-160, tiflis, 1884-85. blau (o.) ueber rechtschreibung und deutung türkischer ortsnamen, namentlich in klein-asien. note on above by dr. h. barth, petermann's mitth. viii. pp. 45-51 and 183-84, gotha, 1862. dwight (h. g. o.) orthography of armenian and turkish proper names, jour. amer. orient. soc. iv. pp. 119-21, new york, 1854. nallino (c. a.) la transcription des noms géographiques arabes, persans et turcs, bull. soc. khédiviale géog. pp. 205-31, 1894. for commerce, etc., see trade reports (british) from h.m.'s consuls at erzerum, trebizond, and diarbekr, commencing with those of 1854 from erzerum and trebizond (laid before parliament in 1856, command no. 2078), and with that of 1856 from diarbekr (laid in 1857, no. 2285). the reports previous to these are full of interest, but have not been published. reports on special subjects by h.m.'s consuls have from time to time been issued, but do not yet appear to have been indexed. ii. armenian people anon. statistische beschreibung der provinz nachitschevan (population, climate, commerce, etc.), das ausland, pp. 191-92, munich, 1834. the people of turkey, by a consul's daughter, edited by s. l. poole, lond. 1878, 8o. arzruni (g.) (in armenian) economic position of the armenians in turkey. lecture delivered at tiflis, 1880, tiflis, 1894, 8o. translations: german--die ökonomische lage der armenier in der türkei, st. pet. 1880, 8o. french--les arméniens en turquie, leur situation économique, jour. de l'orient de vienne, ii. (4 articles). vienna, 1881. burgin (g. b.) an armenian wedding, chambers's jour., edinburgh, 1896. the armenian at home, cassell's family mag., lond. 1897. conybeare (f. c.) armenia and the armenians, national rev. xiv. pp. 295-315, lond. 1889. filian (g. h.) armenia and her people: the story of armenia told by an armenian scholar, hartford, u.s.a. 1896, 8o. gatteyrias (j. a.) l'arménie et les arméniens, paris, 1882, 8o. macfarlane. moeurs arméniennes, demande de mariage, nouv. ann. de voy. xlix. 118-21, paris, 1831. nazarbek (a.) through the storm: pictures of life in armenia, lond. 1899, 8o. noguères (e.) arménie (géographie, histoire, religion, moeurs, littérature, situation actuelle), paris, 1897. orden (--) die armenischen frauen, globus, lxx. 214-17, brunswick, 1896. rohrbach (p.) armenier und kurden, verh. gesell. erdk. xxvii. pp. 128-33, berlin, 1900. schweiger-lerchenfeld (f. v.) armenien: ein bild seiner natur und seiner bewohner, jena, 1878, 8o. telfer (j. b.) armenia and its people (country, history, inhabitants, commerce, social customs, etc.), jour. soc. arts, xxxix. pp. 567-84, lond. 1891. ter-mowsesjanz (p.) das armenische bauernhaus; culturgeschichte der armenier, vienna, 1892, 4o. ubicini (a.) les arméniens sous la domination ottomane, rev. de l'orient, i. p. 81, paris, 1854. lettres sur la turquie (vol. ii. armenia), paris, 1851, 2 vols. 12o. eng. trans. by lady easthope, lond. 1856. wolkoff (--) die völkerschaften im heutigen kleinasien (from the russian of wronchenko). das ausland (series of articles), augsburg, 1841. zwiedenek (f. von) türkisch-armenien und seine bewohner, oesterreichische monatsschrift für den orient, pp. 1-6, 37-43, vienna, 1891. missionary enterprise. for roman catholic missions previous to the 19th century, see account of dominican mission in 14th century in sukias somal's quadro della storia letteraria di armenia, venice, 1829, pp. 130 and 201. [see also galanus (c.) under armenian church, and sommaire historique des missionaries de l'ordre de saint dominique en l'arménie majeure, n.p., n.d. (in bibl. nat. paris)]. for jesuit and other missionaries, see under early travel. for r.c. missions in the 19th century, consult bulletin de l'oeuvre des écoles d'orient, paris, 1871 ff. annales de l'ass. pour la prop. de la foi, paris and lyons, 1834 ff. missions catholiques, lyons. catholic world, new york. barnum (h. n.) scenes in armenia and mesopotamia, amer. miss. herald, pp. 456-60, boston, 1888. the kuzzel-bash koords, amer. miss. herald, pp. 343-46, boston, 1890. bassett (j.) persia, the land of the imams (trebizond, erzerum, lake urmi, 1871), new york, 1886, 8o. chambers (w. n.) fifty years at erzeroom, 1839-89, amer. miss. herald, pp. 490-94, boston, 1890. cole (r. m.) story of bitlis station, koordistan, amer. miss. herald, pp. 357-60, boston, 1892. dwight (h. g. o.) christianity revived in the east (protestants in armenian church), new york, 1850, 12mo; new ed., christianity in turkey, lond. 1854, 8o. kimball (g.) dr. grace kimball and her relief work at van, amer. rev. of revs. april, new york, 1896. parmelee (m. p.) life scenes among the mountains of ararat, mass. sabbath school soc., boston, 1868. pischon (c. n.) die protestantischen armenier (detailed account of protestant enterprises in armenia in 19th century), berlin, 1863, 8o. pfeiffer (f.) die armenier in der türkei (verein f. d. evangelischen armenier), berlin, 1863, 8o. raynolds (g. c.) the station of van, eastern turkey, amer. miss. herald, lxxxviii. pp. 186-89, boston, 1892. smith (e.) and dwight (h. g. o.) missionary researches in armenia, lond. 1834, 8o. west (m. and a.) the romance of missions; life and labour in the land of ararat, new york, 1876, 8o. wheeler (c. h.) ten years on the euphrates; letters from eden (account of kharput and district), boston, 1868. wheeler (s. a.) daughters of armenia, new york, 1877, 8o. wolff (joseph) missionary labours, lond. 1835. wood (g. w.) article "armenians" in cyclopædia of missions (protestant missions from 1830-54), new york, 1860. various. boré (e.) de la chaldée et des chaldéens, rev. française, xii. pp. 390-441, paris, 1839. broussali (j.) l'arménie et ses traditions, la tradition, ii. pp. 114-18, paris, 1888. chantre (e.) premiers aperçus sur les peuples de l'arménie russe, bull. soc. d'anthrop. ix. 81-85, lyons, 1890. recherches anthropologiques sur les tatars aderbeidjanis de transcaucasie ou turcomans iranisés, bull. soc. d'anthrop. xi. pp. 28-44, lyons, 1892. recherches anthropologiques dans l'asie occidentale, 1890-94, lyons, 1895, 8o. les arméniens; esquisse historique et ethnographique, bull. soc. d'anthrop. xv. pp. 49-101, lyons, 1897. chopin (--) de l'origine des peuples habitant la province d'arménie, bull. scient. acad. sc. viii. pp. 17-20, st. pet. 1841. de morgan (j.) note sur l'usage du système pondéral assyrien dans l'arménie russe, à l'époque préhistorique, rev. archéologique, xiv. pp. 177-87, paris, 1889. note sur les nécropoles préhistoriques de l'arménie russe, rev. archéologique, xv. pp. 176-202, paris, 1890. mission scientifique au caucase--vol. i. les premiers âges des métaux dans l'arménie russe; vol. ii. recherches sur les origines des peuples du caucase, angers, 1890. ellis (g.) memoir of a map of the countries between the black sea and the caspian, lond. 1788, 4o. french trans. in de sainte croix's mémoires hist. et géog. sur les pays situés entre la mer noire et la mer caspienne, paris, 1797, 4o. ellis (r.) the armenian origin of the etruscans, lond. 1861. jensen (p.) hittiter und armenier, strasburg, 1898, 8o. kiepert (h.) ueber älteste landesund volksgeschichte von armenien, monatsbericht k. preuss. akad. wiss. pp. 216-42, berlin, 1869. langlois (v.) note sur l'inscription arménienne d'un bélier sépulchral à djoulfa, rev. de l'orient, sér. 3, ii. pp. 135-38, paris, 1855. lenormant (f.) ararat and eden [a biblical study], contemporary rev. xl. pp. 453-78, lond. 1881. luschan (-von) die wandervölker kleinasiens, verhand. gesell. für anthrop. p. 167, berlin, 1886. murr (j.) wo steht die wiege der menschheit? vom pflanzengeographischen standpunkte aus beantwortet, innsbruck, 1891, 8o pam. schweiger-lerchenfeld (-von) zur völkerstellung der armenier, oesterreichische monatsschrift f. d. orient, pp. 189-93, vienna, 1877. alishan (l.) armenian popular songs, venice, 1852, 8o. anon. armenian folk songs (by e. c.), fraser's mag. new series, xiii. pp. 283-97, lond. 1876. basset (r.) les anciens chants historiques et les traditions populaires de l'arménie, rev. des traditions populaires, xi. p. 322, paris, 1896. bayan (g.) armenian proverbs and sayings, venice, 1889, 24o. chahan de cirbied (j.) mémoire sur le gouvernement et la religion des anciens arméniens, mémoires de la société des antiquaires de france, ii. pp. 262-311, paris, 1820. dulaurier (e.) études sur les chants historiques et les traditions populaires de l'ancienne arménie, jour. asiatique, sér. 4, xix. pp. 5-58, paris, 1852. chants populaires de l'arménie, rev. des deux mondes, xiv. pp. 224-55, paris, 1852. emin (j. b.) recherches sur le paganisme arménien (trans. from russian by de stadler), rev. de l'orient, sér. 3, xviii. pp. 193-244, paris, 1864. garnett (l.) the women of turkey and their folklore, lond. 1880, 8o. gelzer (h.) zur armenischen götterlehre, berichte verh. k. sächs. gesell. wiss., phil.-hist. cl. xlviii. pp. 99-148, leipz. 1897. haigazn (e.) légendes et superstitions de l'arménie, rev. des traditions populaires, x. pp. 296-97, paris, 1895. kanewski (c.) ueberreste des heidenthums bei den armeniern, das ausland, pp. 320-21, augsburg, 1840. lalayantz (e.) légendes et superstitions de l'arménie, rev. des traditions populaires, x. pp. 1-5, 119-20, 193-97, paris, 1895. les anciens chants historiques et les traditions populaires de l'arménie, rev. des traditions populaires, xi. pp. 1-12, 129-38, 337-51, paris, 1896. mourier (j.) contes et légendes du caucase traduits: contes arméniens, paris, 1888, 8o. nève (f.) les hymnes funèbres de l'église arménienne (trad. sur le texte arménien du charagan), louvain, 1855, 8o. petermann (j. h.) ueber die musik der armenier, zeits. deuts. morg. gesell. v. pp. 365-72, leipz. 1851. stadler (a. de) sur l'ancienne religion des arméniens païens, paris, 1864, 8o. see emin. tcheraz (m.) l'orient inédit (folklore, etc.), l'arménie (series of articles), lond. 1889. notes sur la mythologie arménienne, trans. oriental congress, 1892, ii. pp. 822-45, lond. 1893. bischoff (f.) das alte recht der armenier in polen, oesterr. blättern f. literatur, nos. 28, 33, 37, 39, vienna, 1857. das alte recht der armenier in lemberg, sitzungsb. akad. wiss., phil.-hist. classe, xl. pp. 255-302, vienna, 1862. brosset (m. f.) détails sur le droit public arménien, extraits du code géorgien du roi wakhtang, jour. asiat. sér. 2, ix. pp. 21-30, paris, 1832. kohler (j.) das recht der armenier, zeits. f. vergleichende rechtswissenschaften, vii. pp. 385-436, stuttgart, 1888. brosset (m. f.) monographie des monnaies arméniennes, bull. scient. acad. sc. vi. pp. 33-64, st. pet. 1837. langlois (v.) numismatique de l'arménie dans l'antiquité, paris, 1859, 4o. sibilian (c.) numismatique arménienne, rev. de l'orient, sér. 3, xii. pp. 193-205, paris, 1860. thomas (e.) early armenian coins, in collection of miscellaneous essays on oriental subjects, p. 62, lond. 1868. anon. the hidden church on russian soil. ii. the douthobortsi, by a russian, theosophical rev. xxv. pp. 201-13, lond. 1899. tchertkoff (v.) and tolstoy (l.) christian martyrdom in russia (the dukhobortsy), lond. 1897. see also vereschaguine (b.) under travel in the nineteenth century. anon. die deutschen kolonisten in transkaukasien (statistics of german colonies), russische rev. xv. pp. 108-13, st. pet. 1886. bent (j. t.) notes on the armenians in asia minor, jour. manch. geog. soc. pp. 220-22, manchester, 1890-96. goehlert (v.) die armenier in europa und insbesondere in oesterreich-ungarn, das ausland, lix. 489-91, stuttgart, 1886. stark (h. h.) armenians in india, calcutta rev., calcutta, 1894. le brun (c. de) voyages ... en perse, etc. (armenians of julfa, portrait of armenian woman, vol. i. pp. 232 seq.), amsterdam, 1718, 2 vols. fol. nicolay (--) schiffart in die türckey ... (short account of armenia, picture of an armenian merchant), nuremberg, 1572. papazean (--) national antiquities of armenia. collection of photographs, chiefly of monasteries, descriptive text in armenian. (in oriental reading room, brit. mus.). vagharshapat (edgmiatsin), 1889-92, obl. fol. racinet (m. a.) le costume historique, vol. iii. (pictures of armenians and kurds), paris, 1888. iii. armenian literature brosset (m. f.) collection d'historiens arméniens, st. pet. 1874-76, 2 vols. 8o. dulaurier (e.) recherches sur la chronologie arménienne, paris, 1859, 4o. recueil des historiens des croisades, documents arméniens, paris, 1869, fol. gelzer (h.) article "armenien" in real-ency. f. protestantische theologie, leipz. 1897. see also krumbacher, geschichte der byzantinischen litteratur, zweite auflage, munich, 1898, being vol. ix. of i. von müller's handbuch d. klass. altertums-wissenchaft. langlois (v.) collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'arménie, paris, 1867-69, 2 vols. large 8o. neumann (c. f.) versuch einer geschichte der armenischen litteratur, leipz. 1836, 8o. nève (f.) l'arménie chrétienne, louvain, 1886, 8o. patkanean (k.) catalogue de la littérature arménienne depuis le commencement du ive siècle jusque vers le milieu du xviie, bull. acad. sc. ii. pp. 49-91, st. pet. 1860. in russian. bibliographical sketch of the historical literature of armenia (from trans. of intern. congress of orientalists, st. pet. 1876, pp. 455-511), st. pet. 1880, 8o. sukias somal (p.) quadro della storia letteraria di armenia, venice, 1829, 8o. brosset (m. f.) variétés arméniennes (secret ciphers and arab figures), bull. acad. sc. vii. pp. 90-99, st. pet. 1864. revue de la littérature historique de l'arménie, bull. acad. sc. xxii. pp. 303-12, st. pet. 1877. dashian (j.) katalog der armenischen handschriften in der k. k. hof-bibliothek zu wien (deutsch-armenisch), vienna, 1891. katalog der armenischen handschriften in der mechitharisten bibliothek zu wien (deutsch-armenisch), vienna, 1895. dulaurier (e.) littérature arménienne, rev. de l'orient, sér. 3, iii. pp. 95-106, paris, 1856. kalemkiar (g.) katalog der armenischen handschriften in der k. hofund staatsbibliothek zu münchen (deutsch-armenisch), vienna, 1892. korganof (--) lettre de m. korganof, procureur du synode arméno-grégorien à l'académie (catalogue of library at edgmiatsin, notice of brosset's articles, etc.), bull. hist.-phil. acad. sc. i. pp. 59-64, st. pet. 1844. langlois (v.) mémoire sur les origines de la culture des lettres en arménie, rev. de l'orient, sér. 3, xiv. pp. 200-23, paris, 1861. mourier (--) la bibliothèque d'etchmiadzine et les mss. arméniens (armenian miniature painting, trans. from russ. of uvarov in trans. of archæological congress at tiflis, published at moscow, 1882), tiflis, 1885. schrumpf (g. a.) on the progress of armenian studies, trans. oriental congress, 1892, i. pp. 540-53. lond. 1893. strzygowski (j.) das etschmiadzin-evangeliar, beiträge sur geschichte der armenischen, ravennatischen und syro-ägyptischen kunst, vienna, 1891. tcheraz (m.) les études arméniennes en europe, l'arménie, jan. 15, seq., lond. 1890. armenian writers translated agathangelos. fifth century. history of king tiridates and the conversion of armenia to christianity by st. gregory the illuminator, constantinople, 1709; venice, 1862. new edition of greek text by de lagarde (p.), göttingen, 1887. translations: ital.--tommaseo (n.) storia di agathangelo, venice, 1843, 8o. french, with greek text, in langlois' collection. see supra. gutschmid (a. von) agathangelos, kleine schriften iii., leipz. 1892, 8o. anania of shirak (astronomer and mathematician) 7th century. calendar, venice, 1821; st. pet. 1877. brosset (m. f.) extrait d'un manuscrit arménien relatif au calendrier géorgien, jour. asiat. x. sér. 2, pp. 526-32, paris, 1832. anonymous. 5th century. life of st. nerses the great and genealogy of the family of st. gregory the illuminator, venice, 1853. translation: french.--in langlois' collection. arakel of tauris. 17th century. history, 1602-61, amsterdam, 1669. translation: french--in brosset's collection. see supra. brosset. des historiens arméniens des xviie et xviiie siècles, mém. acad. sc. xix. sér. 7, pp. 1-60, st. pet. 1873. aristakes of lastivert. 11th century. history of the invasion of the seljuk turks, venice, 1845. translation: french--prudhomme (e.) rev. de l'orient, sér. 3, xv. pp. 343-70; xvi. pp. 41-59, 158-84, 268-86, 289-318; xvii. pp. 5-33, paris, 1863-64. asoghigh (stephanos) of taron. 11th century. universal history, from the creation to a.d. 1004, paris, 1854; st. pet. 1885. translation: french--(books i. and ii.) dulaurier (e.), paris, 1883, 8o. chamchean (michael) 18th century. history of armenia from b.c. 2247 to a.d. 1780, venice, 1784-86, 3 vols. 4o. translation: english (abridged)--avdall (j.), calcutta, 1827, 2 vols. 8o. david anyaght (the philosopher) 5th century. theological and philosophical treatises and translations. neumann (c. f.) mémoire sur la vie et les ouvrages de david, philosophe arménien du ve siècle, jour. asiat. iii. sér. 2, pp. 49-86; 97-153, paris, 1829. eghishe or elisoeus. 5th century. history of vardan and of the wars of the armenians, constantinople, 1764. translations: english--neumann (c. f.), lond. 1830, 4o. italian--cappelletti (c.), venice, 1840, 8o. french--karabaghy (g.) soulèvement national de l'arménie chrétienne au ve siècle contre la loi de zoroastre, paris, 1844, 8o, and in langlois' collection. nève (f.) l'arménie chrétienne, pp. 299-316. see supra. eznik koghbetzi (of kolb or kulpi) 5th century. refutation of various sects, smyrna, 1761; venice, 1826. translations: french--le vaillant de florival (p. e.), paris, 1853, 8o, and in langlois' collection (book ii.). german--(book iv.) neumann (c. f.) zeits. f. d. hist. theologie, i. pp. 71-78. leipz. 1834. dulaurier (e.) cosmogonie des perses d'après eznig, auteur arménien du ve siècle, rev. de l'orient, sér. 3, v. pp. 253-62, paris, 1857. wickering (a. de) eznik de gog'ph et son traducteur français, rev. de l'orient, sér. 3, iii. pp. 207-16, paris, 1856. faustus of byzantium. 4th and 5th centuries. history of armenia, a.d. 317-85, constantinople, 1730. translations: french--in langlois' collection. german--lauer (m.), cologne, 1879. latin--fragments in procopius, de bello persico. menevischean (p. g.) faustus von byzanz und dr. lauer's deutsche uebersetzung, zeits. f. d. kunde des morgenlandes, iii. pp. 51-68, vienna, 1889. see gelzer (h.) die anfänge der armen. kirche, berichte der k. sächs. gesell. wiss. pp. 109-74, leipz. 1895. ghevond or levond. 8th century. history of the invasion of armenia by the arabs, paris, 1856. translation: french--chahnazarian, paris, 1856, 8o. gregory the illuminator. 3rd century. discourses attributed to, venice, 1838; vagharshapat, 1896. translation: german--schmid (j. m.), regensburg, 1872, 8o. gregory magistros. 11th century. poems, venice, 1868. letters, not published. langlois (v.) mémoire sur la vie et les écrits du prince grégoire magistros, jour. asiat. xiii. sér. 6, pp. 4-64, paris, 1869. gregory of narek. 10th century. prayers, venice, 1784. homilies and odes, venice, 1827. collected works, venice, 1840. nève (f.) l'arménie chrétienne, pp. 256-68. hethum ii. (king of cilicia) 14th century. poem on the history of armenia, published with the armenian bibles of amsterdam, 1666, constantinople, 1705; venice, 1733. translation: french--in dulaurier's recueil. see supra. langlois (v.) extrait du poème du roi héthoum ii., bull. acad. sc. iv. p. 289, st. pet. 1862. indgidgean (l.) 19th century. ancient armenia, venice, 1835, 4o. translation: italian--cappelletti (g.), turin, 1841, 3 vols. geographical description of ancient armenia, venice, 1822, 4o. brosset. description de l'ancienne géorgie turke, comprenant le pachalik d'akhaltzikhé et le gouria, jour. asiat. xiii. sér. 2, pp. 459-87, paris, 1834. john katholikos. 10th century. history of armenia from the origin of the world to a.d. 925, jerusalem, 1843. translation: french--saint martin (j.), paris, 1841, 8o. boré (e.) de l'action du christianisme sur la société arménienne, jour. asiat. i. sér. 3, pp. 209-38, paris, 1836. nève. l'arménie chrétienne, pp. 317-40. kirakos of gandzak. 13th century. history of armenia, a.d. 300-1265, moscow, 1858; venice, 1865. translations: french--brosset, deux historiens arméniens, st. pet. 1870-71, 2 vols. 4o; dulaurier (extracts) in recueil, and in jour. asiat. xi. sér. 5, paris, 1858. see brosset, additions à l'histoire de la géorgie, hist. ancienne, pp. 412-37, st. pet. 1851. koriun. 5th century. life of st. mesrop, venice, 1833. translations: german--welte, tubingen, 1841. french--in langlois' collection. lazar of pharpi. 5th century. history of armenia, a.d. 388-485, venice, 1783. translation: french--in langlois' collection. karabaghy (g.) abrégé de la vie ... du prince vahan le mamigonien, paris, 1843, 8o. maghakia abegha. 13th century (?). history of the nation of archers (invasion of the mongols to a.d. 1272), st. pet. 1870. translation: french--brosset, additions a l'histoire de la géorgie, hist. ancienne, pp. 438-67, st. pet. 1851, 4o. mattheos of edessa. 12th century. chronicle from a.d. 952-1136, continued by gregory the priest to 1162, jerusalem, 1869. translation: french--dulaurier, paris. 1858, 8o. chahan de cirbied. notice de deux manuscrits arméniens contenant l'histoire de matthieu eretz, paris, 1812, 4o. dulaurier. recueil, pp. 1-201. nève. l'arménie chretienne, pp. 341-70. mkhithar of ayrivank. 13th century. chronological history to a.d. 1289, moscow, 1860. translation: french--brosset, mém. acad. sc. xiii. sér. 7, pp. 1-110, st. pet. 1869. brosset. etudes sur l'historien arménien mkhitar d'aïravank, bull. acad. sc. viii. pp. 391-416, st. pet. 1865. moses of khorene. date uncertain. history of armenia, amsterdam, 1695; venice. 1843. translations: latin (with armenian text)--whiston (g. and g.), lond. 1736, 4o. italian--cappelletti (g.), venice, 1841, 8o. tommaseo (n.), venice, 1849-50, 8o. german--lauer (m.), regensburg, 1869. french (with armenian text)--le vaillant de florival (p. e.), paris, 1841, 2 vols. 8o; and in langlois' collection, vol. ii. see also, for his sources, ibid. vol. i. translations of mar apas catina, bardesanes, the pseudo-bardesanes, lerubna of edessa, the pseudo-agathangelos, and list of lost fragments of greek historians preserved in the writings of armenian authors. baumgartner (a.) dr. m. lauer und das zweite buch des moses chorenazi, leipz. 1885. burckhardt (--) review of carrière's légende d'abgar (sources of moses of khorene), byzantinische zeitschrift, pp. 426-435, leipz. 1807. carrière (a.) moïse de khoren et les généalogies patriarcales, paris, 1801, 8o. nouvelles sources de moïse de khoren, vienna, 1893, 8o, and supplément, 1894. la légende d'abgar dans l'histoire d'arménie de moïse de khoren, paris, 1895, 8o. gildemeister (j.) pseudokallisthenes bei moses von khoren, zeits. deuts. morg. gesell. xl. pp. 88-91, leipz. 1886. gutschmid (a. von) moses von khoren, klein-schriften, iii. pp. 332-38, leipz. 1892, and in english in encyclopædia britannica, lond. 1883. ueber die glaubwürdigkeit der armenischen geschichte des moses von khoren, kleine schriften, iii. pp. 282-331, leipz. 1892. khalathianz (g.) zur erklärung der armenischen geschichte des moses von chorene, zeits. f. d. kunde des morgenlandes, vii. pp. 21-28, vienna, 1893. langlois (v.) étude sur les sources de l'histoire d'arménie de moïse de khorene, bull. acad. sc. iii. pp. 531-83, st. pet. 1861. petermann (--) die schriftlichen quellen des moses chorenensis, berichte verhand. akad. wiss. pp. 87-104, berlin, 1852. saint martin (j.) notice sur la vie et les écrits de moïse de khoren, jour. asiat. ii. sér. 1, pp. 322-44, paris, 1823. vetter (p.) das sibyllen-zitat bei moses von choren, theol. quartalschrift, pp. 465-74, tubingen, 1892. das buch des mar abas von nisibis (sources of moses of khorene), stuttgart, 1893. geography, marseilles, 1683; lond. 1736, 4o, with latin trans.; paris, 1819, 8o, with french trans.; venice, 1881, 8o, with french trans. translations: latin--whiston (g. and g.), lond. 1736, 4o. french--saint martin (j.) in mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. ii., paris, 1819, 8o; soukrean (a.), venice, 1881, 8o. treatise on rhetoric, venice, 1796, 1843. baumgartner (a.) ueber das buch "die chrie," zeits. deuts. morg. gesell. xl. pp. 457-515, leipz. 1886. nerses clayetzi (of romkla) or snorhali (the gracious), katholikos. 1066-1173. elegy on the fall of edessa, madras, 1810; calcutta, 1832; paris, 1828. poems, venice, 1830. pastoral letter with latin translation, venice, 1830. synodal address and letters, venice, 1848. prayer (translated into thirty-six languages), venice, 1810, 1862, 1882. translations: latin--cappelletti (j.) opera omnia, venice, 1833. french--(synodal address) dulaurier (e.) histoire, rites, dogmes et liturgie de l'église arménienne; (elegy on the fall of edessa) extracts in dulaurier's recueil, pp. 223-268, paris, 1855. avdall (j.) memoir of life and writings of st. nierses clajensis, surnamed the graceful, pontiff of armenia, jour. asiat. soc. bengal, v. pp. 129-57, calcutta, 1836. monike (d. g. v.) nierses klaietsi ... und dessen gebete, zeits. f. hist. theol. i. pt. ii. pp. 67-104, leipz. 1832. nève (f.) le patriarche nerses iv. dit schnorhali, l'arménie chrétienne, pp. 269-86. nerses of lambron. 12th century. synodal address to council of romkla, venice, 1787. treatise on the institutions of the church, venice, 1847. letters, etc. (with letters of gregory tegha) (katholikos, 1173-80), venice, 1838. translations: italian--(synodal address) aucherian (p.) (with armenian text), venice, 1812. german--(synodal address) neumann (c. f.), leipz. 1834. french--in dulaurier's recueil: reflections sur les institutions de l'église (extraits); lettre adressée au roi léon ii. orbelean stephanos. 13th century. history of siunia, paris, 1859; moscow, 1861. translations: french--brosset, st. pet. 1864-66, 2 vols. 4o. brosset. projet d'une collection d'historiens arméniens inédits, bull. scient. acad. sc. viii. pp. 177-89 and ix. pp. 253-68, st. pet. 1841-42. traduction de l'histoire d'etienne orbélian, bull. acad. sc. vi. pp. 500-1, st. pet. 1863. histoire des princes orbélians, ibid. viii. p. 177, 1865. see also saint martin, mém. sur l'arménie, paris. 1819, vol. ii. pp. 1-300, for french trans. of a work attributed to stephanos orbelean, published in madras, 1775, about which see sukias somal, quadro della storia letteraria di armenia, pp. 119-20, venice, 1829, 8o. samuel of ani. 12th century. history to a.d. 1179 (continued by unknown author to a.d. 1337), vagharshapat, 1893. translations: latin--zohrab, milan, 1818; and in migne's patrologiæ cursus completus, ser. græca, xix. pp. 599-742, paris, 1844-64. french--in brosset's collection. brosset. samuel d'ani, revue générale de sa chronologie, bull. acad. sc. xviii. pp. 402-42, st. pet. 1873. dulaurier. recueil, pp. 445-68; and see his recherches sur la chronologie arménienne. sebeos. 7th century. history of heraklius, constantinople, 1851; st. pet. 1879. translations: russian--patkanean (k.), st. pet. 1862. german--(part) hübschmann (h.) zur geschichte armeniens und der ersten kriege der araber, leipz. 1875, 8o. prudhomme (e.) essai d'une histoire de la dynastie des sassanides, etc., jour. asiat. sér. 6, vii. pp. 101-238, paris, 1866. sembat (the constable) 13th century. chronicle, moscow, 1856; paris, 1859. translation: french--dulaurier, recueil, pp. 605-80; langlois (part), mém. acad. sc. sér. 7, iv. st. pet. 1862. thomas artsruni. 9th and 10th centuries. armenian history with an account of the artsruni family (continued by later writers), constantinople, 1852. translation: french--in brosset's collection. brosset. notice sur l'historien arménien thomas ardzrouni, bull. acad. sc. v. pp. 538-54, st. pet. 1863. sur l'histoire composée en arménien par thomas ardzrouni, ibid. xiv. pp. 438-32, 1870. néve. histoire de la maison des ardzrounis, muséon, vi. pp. 373-77, louvain, 1887. thomas metsobatzi. 15th century. history of timur, paris, 1860; tiflis, 1892. néve. etudes sur thomas de medzoph et sur son histoire de l'arménie au xve siècle, paris, 1855, 8o. exposé des guerres de tamerlan et de schah-rokh dans l'asie occidentale d'après la chronique arménienne inédite de thomas de medzoph, brussels, 1860, 8o. quelques épisodes de la persécution du christianisme en arménie au xve siècle, louvain, 1861, 8o. sources arméniennes pour l'histoire des mongols, l'arménie chrétienne, pp. 371-82. ukhtanes of edessa. 10th century. history of the religious separation of the armenians and georgians, vagharshapat, 1871. translation: french--brosset (m. f.) deux historiens arméniens, st. pet. 1870-71 (2 vols.) brosset (m. f.) etudes sur l'historien arménien ouktanès, bull. acad. sciences, xiii. pp. 401-54, st. pet. 1869. vardan the great. 13th century. history, edited by emin, with russian translation, moscow, 1861; venice, 1862. dulaurier. les mongols d'après les historiens arméniens (extrait de l'histoire universelle de vartan), jour. asiat. sér. 5, xvi. pp. 273-323, paris, 1860. recueil, pp. 431-43. brosset. analyse critique de l'histoire de vardan, mém. acad. sc. sér. 7, iv. pp. 1-30, st. pet. 1862. geography (attributed to vardan), constantinople, 1728. translation: french (with armenian text)--saint martin, in mém. sur l'arménie, vol. ii. paris, 1819. fables (attributed to vardan), st. pet. 1899 (n. marr). translation: french--saint martin, jour. asiat. sér. i. paris, 1825. see sukias somal's quadro, p. 111. conybeare (f. c.) review of "the fables of wardan," by n. marr, folk lore, pp. 462-75, lond. 1899. zenob of glak. 4th century. history of taron, attributed to zenob of glak, and continued by john mamikonean, 7th century, constantinople, 1719; venice, 1843. translations: french--prudhomme (e.) jour. asiat. sér. 6, ii. pp. 401-75, paris, 1863. and in langlois' collection. english--avdall (j.) memoirs of a hindoo colony in ancient armenia, jour. asiat. soc. of bengal, calcutta, 1836. stackelberg. review of "zenob of glak" (vienna, 1893) by khalatheantz (chalatiantz) in modern armenian, byzantinische zeitschrift, pp. 368-70, leipz. 1895. brosset's collection, vol. ii., also contains translations of certain writers of the 17th and 18th centuries. see also his histoire de la géorgie (st. pet. 1851), voyage archéologique, and ruines d'ani (supra, travel in nineteenth century) for translated extracts from armenian writers. history artemi of vagharshapat. memoirs of his life (trans. from armenian). english, lond. 1822, 8o; german by busse, halle, 1823, 8o. brosset (m. f.) inscriptions arméniennes de bolghari, bull. scient. acad. sc. iii. pp. 18-21, st. pet. 1838. notice historique sur les couvents arméniens de haghbat et de sanahin, bull. scient. acad. sc. x. pp. 303-36, st. pet. 1842. inscriptions arméniennes, bull. acad. sc. i. pp. 399-413. st. pet. 1860. listes chronologiques des princes et métropolites de la siounie, jusqu'à la fin du xiiie siècle. bull. acad. sc. iv. pp. 497-562, st. pet. 1862. description of the armenian convents of haghbat and sanahin by the vardapet john of the crimea. in armenian and russian with appendix in french, mém. acad. sc. vi., st. pet. 1863. chahan de cirbied (j.) histoire arménienne (détails sur les changements politiques en géorgie et en arménie dans les premières années du xixme siècle), paris, 1818, 8o. chahnazarian (--) esquisse de l'histoire de l'arménie, coup d'oeil sur l'arménie ancienne et sur son état actuel, paris, 1856, 8o. daghbaschean (h.) gründung des bagratidenreiches durch aschot bagratuni, berlin, 1893. défrémery (--) fragments de géographes et d'historiens arabes et persans inédits, relatifs aux anciens peuples du caucase et de la russie méridionale, jour. asiat. sér. 4, xiv. pp. 447-513; xvi. pp. 50-75, 153-201; xvii. pp. 105-162, paris, 1849-50-51. dulaurier (e.) étude sur l'organisation politique, religieuse et administrative du royaume de la petite arménie (valuable for its bearings on armenia proper), jour. asiat. sér. 5, xvii. pp. 377-437; xviii. pp. 289-357, paris, 1861. kazem-beg (m. a.) derbend-nâmeh (conquest of armenia by the arabs in 8th century), eng. trans. from the turkish, mém. acad. sc. pp. 435-711, st. pet. 1851. klaproth (j. von) mémoire de jean ouosk'herdjan, prêtre arménien (events in armenia in 18th century; monastery of haghbat; inscriptions at marmashen, ani, haghbat, etc.), in mém. relatifs à l'asie, vol. i. pp. 224-309, paris, 1824. extrait du derbend-nâmeh ou de l'histoire de derbend (trans. from the turkish), jour. asiat. sér. 2, iii. pp. 439-67, paris, 1829. aperçu des entreprises des mongols en géorgie et en arménie dans le xiiime siècle, paris, 1833, 8o. langlois (v.) place de l'arménie dans l'histoire du monde, rev. de l'orient, sér. 3, iv. pp. 321-331, paris, 1856. lettre sur l'histoire politique, religieuse et civile des arméniens à l'époque des croisades, bull. acad. sc. iii. pp. 241-248, st. pet. 1861. neumann (c. f.) geschichte der uebersiedlung von 40,000 armeniern, welche im jahre 1828 aus der persischen provinz aderbaidschan nach russland anwanderten (from the russian of s. glinka), leipz. 1834, 8o. petermann (h.) beiträge zu der geschichte der kreuzzüge aus armenischen quellen, abh. k. akad. wiss. pp. 81-186, berlin, 1860. petermann (j. h.) de ostikanis, arabicis armeniæ gubernatoribus, berlin, 1840 4o. see also brosset, hist. de la géorgie, hist. ancienne, additions, etc., pp. 249 seq. saint martin (j.) histoire des révolutions de l'arménie sous le règne d'arsace ii., pendant le ive siècle, jour. asiat. sér. 2, iv. pp. 402-52; v. pp. 161-207, 336-74, paris, 1829-30. serpos (g. de) compendio storico di memorie cronologiche concernenti la religione e la morale della nazione armenia, suddita dell' impero ottomano, venice 1786, 3 vols. 12o. iv. vannic inscriptions sayce (a. h.) the cuneiform inscriptions of van, jour. r. asiat. soc. xiv. pp. 377-732; xx. pp. 1-48; xxv. pp. 1-37; xxvi. pp. 691-732, lond. 1882-88-93-94. belck (w.) and lehmann (c. f.) pending the publication of a comprehensive account of the travels and researches of these, the most recent workers in this field of discovery, references are here given to various periodicals in which they have recorded their work up to the present time:-verhand. der berliner gesell. für anthrop. etc. 1892, pp. 477-88; 1893, pp. 61-82, 217-24, 389-400; 1894, pp. 213-41, 479-87; 1895, pp. 578-92, 592-601, 601-16; 1896, pp. 309-21, 321-27, 586-89; 1897, pp. 302-8; 1898, pp. 522-27, 568-92; 1899, pp. 193-94, 411-20. zeits. für ethnologie (berl. gesell. für anthrop. etc.), 1892, pp. 122-52; 1899, pp. 99-132. zeits. für assyriologie (berlin, etc.), 1892, pp. 255-67; 1894, pp. 82-99, 339-60; 1897, pp. 113-24, 197-206; 1899, pp. 307-22. sitzungsb. der k. preuss. akad. der wiss. (berlin), 1899, pp. 116-20, 745-49; 1900, pp. 619-33. nachrichten der k. gesell. der wiss. zu göttingen, phil.-hist. classe, 1899, pp. 80 seq. recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptienne et assyrienne (paris), 1896, pp. 209-17. mittheilungen der geog. gesell. (hamburg), 1898, pp. 1-23, 189-221; 1899, pp. 16-70. globus (brunswick), 1893, pp. 153-58. deutsche rundschau (berlin), 1894, pp. 402-18. hyvernat (h.) l'histoire ancienne de l'arménie et les inscriptions cunéiformes du bassin de van (in müller-simonis's du caucase au golfe persique), paris, 1892, 4o. basmadjian (k. j.) note on the van inscriptions, jour. r. asiat. soc. xxi. ser. 3, pp. 579-83, lond. 1897. brosset (m. f.) notice sur deux inscriptions cunéiformes (armavir), bull. acad. sc. v. pp. 428-35, st. pet. 1863. rapport sur diverses inscriptions (armavir), bull. acad. sc. vii. pp. 275-77, st. pet. 1864. sur l'histoire ancienne de l'arménie, bull. acad. sc. xvi. pp. 332-40, st. pet. 1871. de saulcy. recherches sur l'écriture cunéiforme assyrienne; inscriptions de van, paris, 1848, 8o. ducreux (c.) l'arménie primitive, rev. encyclopédique, pp. 336-37, paris, 1897. grotefend. (inscription of isoglu, discovered by mühlbach), original papers of syro-egyptian soc., lond. 1840. guyard (s.) les inscriptions de van, jour. asiat. xv. sér. 7, pp. 540-43, paris, 1880. etude sur les inscriptions de van (mélanges d'assyriologie), paris, 1883, 8o. 1. notes sur quelques particularités des inscriptions de van. 2. inscriptions de van; les estampages de m. deyrolle, jour. asiat. i. sér. 8, pp. 261, 517, paris, 1883. note sur quelques passages des inscriptions de van, jour. asiat. ii. sér. 8, p. 306, paris, 1883. etudes vanniques, jour. asiat. iii. sér. 8, pp. 499-517, paris, 1884. hincks (e.) on the inscriptions at van, jour. r. asiat. soc. ix. ser. 1, pp. 387-449, lond. 1848. jensen (p.) die sitze der urarto-chalder zur zeit tiglathpileser's i., zeits. assyriologie, xi. pp. 306-9, berlin, 1897. kästner. see brosset, supra, notice sur deux inscriptions cunéiformes (armavir), and rapport sur diverses inscriptions (armavir). layard (sir a. h.) discoveries in the ruins of nineveh and babylon (excursion to van), lond. 1853, 8o. lenormant. lettres assyriologiques, i. pp. 113-64, paris, 1871, 4o. lerch. see brosset, supra. notice sur deux inscriptions cunéiformes (armavir). maspero (g.) histoire ancienne des peuples de l'orient classique; vol. iii. les empires, paris, 1899, large 8o. meyer (e.) geschichte des alterthums, vol. i. stuttgart, 1884, 8o. mordtmann (a. d.) entzifferung und erklärung der armenischen keilinschriften von van und der umgegend, zeits. deuts. morgenländ. gesell. xxvi. pp. 465-696; xxxi. pp. 406-38, leipz. 1872 and 1877. mühlbach. (inscription of isoglu), monatsb. verh. gesell. erdk. i. pp. 70-75, berlin, 1840. müller (d. h.) eine neue keil-inschrift von van, oesterreichische monatsschrift f. d. orient, vienna, 1885. neue van-inschriften (ashrut-darga) (armavir), oesterreichische monatsschrift f. d. orient, vienna, 1886. die keilinschrift von aschrut-darga, vienna, 1886. drei neue inschriften von van, vienna oriental jour. i. pp. 213-19, vienna, 1887. die keil-inschrift von aschrut-darga, denkschriften der wiener akad. der wiss., vienna, 1888. nikolsky (m. v.) (in russian) the cuneiform inscriptions of the country beyond the caucasus, moscow, 1896, 4o. patkanoff (k.) de quelques nouvelles inscriptions cunéiformes découvertes sur le territoire russe, le muséon, ii. p. 358, louvain, 1883. rawlinson (sir h.) notes on a journey from tabriz, etc. (kelishin stele, pp. 12 and 21), jour. r. geog. soc. x., lond. 1840. saint martin (j.) notice sur le voyage littéraire de m. schulz en orient et sur les découvertes ... dans les ruines de la ville de sémiramis en arménie, jour. asiat. ii. sér. 2, p. 160, paris, 1828. sayce (a. h.) on the cuneiform inscriptions of van, kuhn's zeits. f. vergleich. sprachforschungen, xxiii pp. 407-9, berlin, 1877. les inscriptions vanniques d'armavir; inscriptions vanniques d'armavir et de tsolakert, le muséon, ii. pp. 5-9 and 358-64, louvain, 1883. deux nouvelles inscriptions vanniques, le muséon, iii. pp. 222-24, louvain, 1884. deux nouvelles inscriptions vanniques (ashrut darga and armavir), le muséon, v. pp. 374-78, louvain, 1886. inscription of menuas, king of ararat, in the vannic language, records of the past, i. ser. 2, pp. 163 seq., lond. 1890. the great inscription of argistis on the rock of van; monolith inscription of argistis, king of van, records of the past, iv. ser. 2, pp. 114-46, lond. 1890. presidential address to the philological society (1888) transactions of phil. soc., lond. 1891. early israel and the surrounding nations, lond. 1899, 8o. scheil (fr. v.) note sur l'expression vannique "gunusa haubi," recueil des travaux rel. à la philologie et à l'archéologie égypt. et assyr. xiv. p. 124 (ed. by g. maspéro, paris, 1880, ff.), paris, 1892. la stèle de kel-i-chin, ibid. xiv. pp. 153-60, paris, 1893. 1. inscription vannique de melasgert. 2. notes d'épigraphie et d'archéologie assyrienne, ibid. xviii. pp. 75-80, paris, 1896. schrader (e.) die namen der meere in den assyrischen inschriften, abhandl. k. akad. wiss. pp. 169-95, berlin, 1878. zur geographie des assyrischen reichs, sitzungsberichte k. preuss. akad. wiss. pp. 321-44, berlin, 1890. schulz (f. e.) mémoires sur le lac de van et ses environs (1827-28), jour. asiat. ix. sér. 3, pp. 257-323, paris, 1840. streck (m.) das gebiet der heutigen landschaften armenien, kurdistan und westpersien nach den babylonisch-assyrischen keilinschriften, zeits. assyr. xiii. pp. 57-110; xiv. pp. 103-72, berlin, 1898. v. armenian church anon. narratio de rebus armeniæ, in la bigne's maxima bibliotheca veterum patrum, vol. xii. pp. 814-17, lyons, 1677, fol. ecclesiæ armeniacæ canones selecti, in mai's scriptorum veterum nova collectio, vol. x. pp. 269-316, rome, 1838, 4o. bianchini (p.) the armenian liturgy, with european musical notation, in armenian, english, french, and italian, venice, 1876, 4o. de la croix (--) la turquie chrestienne sous la protection de louis-le-grand, contenant l'estat présent des nations et églises grecque, arménienne et maronite, paris, 1695, 1715, 12mo. katerjian (j.) de fidei symbolo quo armenii utuntur observationes, vienna, 1893, 8o. dadian (b.) l'église d'arménie, revue de l'orient, sér. 3, ii. pp. 217-26, paris, 1855. dulaurier (e.) histoire, rites, dogmes et liturgie de l'église arménienne, paris, 1855, 12o. fortescue (e. f. k.) the armenian church (history, calendar of festivals, translation of liturgy, notes on rites and ceremonies, account of position of patriarchates and relations with the turkish government and rome), lond. 1872, 8o. gelzer (h.) der gegenwärtige bestand der armenischen kirche, zeits. f. wiss. theologie, xxxvi. pp. 163-71, berlin, 1893. die anfänge der armenischen kirche, berichte verh. sächs. gesell. wiss. phil. hist. cl. pp. 109-74, leipz. 1895. article "armenien" in real-ency. f. protestantische theologie, leipz. 1897. issaverdentz (j.) the armenian ritual, venice, 1872-76, 16o. armenia and the armenians, part iii., ecclesiastical history, venice, 1875, 16o. jacob (r. p.) the ordinal of the holy apostolic church of armenia, indian church quart. rev. xi. pp. 211, 363, 465, 1899. malan (s. c.) life and times of st. gregory the illuminator, lond. 1868, 8o. divine liturgy of the armenian church (the introduction contains an interesting description of the ritual at edgmiatsin, translated from the account of an eye-witness (muravieff)), lond. 1870, 8o. mesrop and sahak. rituel arménien, ouvrage classique ive siècle, comprenant toutes les cérémonies sacramentales de l'église arménienne; composée d'abord par les ss. pp. mesroob et sahac et augmenté depuis par st. j. mandaghuni et autres, venice, 1831-40, 8o. neale (j. m.) history of the holy eastern church, general introduction, vols. i. and ii., lond. 1850, 8o. nève (f.) constantin et théodose devant les eglises orientales, louvain, 1857, 8o pam. reprinted in l'arménie chrétienne. louvain, 1886, 8o. picart (b.) cérémonies et coutumes de tous les peuples du monde; vol. iii. pp. 210-32, de la créance et des coutumes des arméniens, amsterdam, 1733. eng. trans. lond. 1736. ricaut (p.) the present state of the greek and armenian churches, lond. 1679, 8o. tchéraz, minas. l'église arménienne, son histoire, ses croyances, le muséon, xvi. pp. 222-42, louvain, 1897. ter-mikelian (a.) die armenische kirche in ihren beziehungen zur byzantinischen, vom iv. bis xiii. jahrhundert, leipz. 1892, 8o. balgy (a.) historia doctrinæ catholicæ inter armenos unionisque eorum cum ecclesia romana in concilio florentino, vienna, 1878. d'avril (a.) documents relatifs aux églises d'orient et à leurs rapports avec rome, paris, 1885. galanus (c.) conciliatio ecclesiæ armenæ cum romana, rome, 1650. vol. i. was republished under title historia armena ecclesiastica et politica, cologne, 1686. vernier. histoire du patriarcat arménien catholique, paris, 1891, 8o. boré (e.) st. lazare de venise, venice, 1835, 8o. langlois (v.) notice sur le couvent de st. lazare, venice, 1863, 1891, 12o. le vaillant de florival (p. e.) mekhitaristes de saint lazare, venice, 1841, 1856, 12o. conybeare (f. c.) the key of truth (paulicians), oxford, 1898, 8o. lombard (a.) pauliciens, bulgares et bons-hommes en orient et en occident, geneva and basle, 1879. ter-mkrttschian. die paulikianer im byzantinischen kaiserreiche und verwandte ketzerische erscheinungen in armenien, leipz. 1893, 8o. vi. political engelhardt (e.) la turquie et le tanzimat (histoire de réformes dans l'empire ottoman depuis 1826), paris, 1884, 2 vols. 8o. holland (t. e.) a lecture on the treaty relations of russia and turkey, 1774-1853, lond. 1877, 8o. the european concert in the eastern question, a collection of treaties and other public acts, oxford, 1885, 8o. rolin-jaequemyns (m. g.) l'arménie, les arméniens et les traités, paris, 1887, 8o. eng. trans., lond. 1891, 8o. anon. rapports sur l'oppression des arméniens en arménie, lond. 1877, 8o. the armenian question, by an eastern statesman, contemporary rev. xxxvii. pp. 533-47, lond. 1880. quelques indications sur les réformes à introduire dans l'administration de l'arménie, constantinople, 1880, 8o pam. mémoire sur la question arménienne, présenté aux grandes puissances à l'occasion du congrès de berlin, constantinople, 1880, 12o pam. la question arménienne. note collective addressée à la sublime porte, constantinople, 1880, 8o pam. the case for the armenians, lond. 1893, 8o. atrocities, armenian and others, lond. 1895, 4o pam. violations of the hatti-humayum, new york, 1895. the armenian question, by a diplomatist, new rev. xii. pp. 62-66, lond. 1895. our obligations to armenia, macmillan's mag. vol. lxxi. pp. 340-45, lond. 1895. historical sketch of armenia and the armenians in ancient and modern times, with special reference to the present crisis, by an old indian, lond. 1896, 8o. la vérité sur les massacres d'arménie (rapports de témoins oculaires, correspondances particulières), par un philarmène, paris, 1896, 8o. armenia and the powers: from behind the scenes, contemporary rev. lxix. pp. 628-43, lond. 1896. the constantinople massacre, contemporary rev. lxx. pp. 457-65, lond. 1896. the two eastern questions (by w.), fortnightly rev. lix. pp. 193-208, lond. 1896. england's policy in turkey (by a turkish officer), fortnightly rev. lix. pp. 286-90, lond. 1896. lord rosebery's second thoughts (by diplomaticus), fortnightly rev. lx. pp. 615-25, lond. 1896. the eastern question, blackwood, clx. pp. 847-58, edin. 1896. achguard (k. s.) les arméniens de turquie (rapport du patriarche arménien (nerses) de constantinople à la sublime porte. trad. de l'arménien), paris, 1877, 8o. apcar (s.) the armenians and the eastern question (series of letters by an armenian and text of "mémoire" addressed to the cabinets of europe), lond. 1878, 8o. argyll (8th duke of) our responsibilities for turkey, facts and memories of forty years, lond. 1896, 8o. balgarnie (f.) interview with professor and madame thoumaian, great thoughts, v. pp. 88-90, lond. 1895. benjamin (s. g. w.) the armenians and the porte, atlantic monthly, lxvii. pp. 524-30, boston (mass.) 1891. bent (j. t.) travels among the armenians, contemporary rev. lxx. pp. 695-709, 1896. bishop (i. l.) the shadow of the kurd, contemporary rev. lix. pp. 642-54; and 819-35, lond. 1891. bowles (t. g.) the cyprus convention, fortnightly rev. lx. pp. 626-34, lond. 1896. broussali (j.) revendications des arméniens, rev. française, iii. pp. 507-21, paris, 1886. bryce (j.) the armenian question, the century, li. pp. 150-54, new york, 1895. clinch (b. j.) the christians under turkish rule, amer. catholic quart. rev. xxi. pp. 399-409, philadelphia, 1896. collet (c. d.) the new crusade against the turk, i. and asiat. quart. rev. ix. pp. 53-56, lond. 1895. cons (e.) armenian exiles in cyprus, contemporary rev. lxx. pp. 888-95, lond. 1896. coode (g. b. m.) the armenian church, its history and its wrongs, new rev. ix. pp. 207-210, lond. 1893. creagh (j.) armenians, koords and turks, lond. 1880, 2 vols. 8o. dadian (m. b.) la société arménienne contemporaine, rev. des deux mondes, lxix. pp. 903-28, paris. 1867. davey (r.) turkey and armenia, fortnightly rev. lvii. p. 197, lond. 1895. des coursons (r. de) la rébellion arménienne, paris, 1895, 8o. d'estrey (h. meyners) caucase et arménie, avenir de la question d'orient, annales de l'extrême orient, ix. 4 articles, paris, 1886-7. dicey (e.) nubar pasha and our asian protectorate (trans. of his memorandum on administration of turkish armenia), nineteenth cent. iv. pp. 348-559, lond. 1878. dillon (e. j.) the condition of armenia, contemporary rev. lxviii. pp. 153-189, lond. 1895. dillon (e. j.) armenia: an appeal, contemporary rev. lxix. pp. 1-19, lond. 1896. the fiasco in armenia, fortnightly rev. lix. pp. 341-58, lond. 1896. dulaurier (e.) la société arménienne au xixme siècle, sa situation politique, religieuse et littéraire, rev. des deux mondes, sér. 2, xix. pp. 209-65, paris, 1854. engelhardt (e.) l'angleterre et la russie à propos de la question arménienne (extrait de la rev. de droit international, tome xv.), brussels and leipz. 1883, 8o. eynaud (--) les arméniens dans l'arménie turque (french foreign office paper on condition of armenian people, their numbers, commerce, industries, local government, etc.), bull. soc. géog. sér. 5, xviii. pp. 337-57, paris, 1869. geffcken (f. h.) turkish reforms and armenia, nineteenth century, vol. xxxviii. pp. 991-1000, lond. 1895. ghulam-us-saqlain. the mussalmans of india and the armenian question, nineteenth century, xxxvii. pp. 926-39, lond. 1895. gladstone (w. e.) the armenian question, lond. 1895, 8o pam. the massacres in turkey, nineteenth century, xl. pp. 676-80, lond. 1896. greene (f. d.) the armenian crisis and the rule of the turk, lond. 1895; revised edition, new york, 1897. guinness rogers (j.) the massacres in turkey, nineteenth century, xl. pp. 654-59, lond. 1896. harris (j. r.) letters from the scene of the recent massacres in armenia, lond. 1897, 8o. harris (w. b.) an unbiased view of the armenian question, blackwood's mag. pp. 483-92, edinburgh, 1895. haweis (h. r.) a persian on the armenian massacres, new century rev. i. pp. 70-76, lond. 1897. heyfelder (o.) die armenier mid ihre zukunft, deuts. rundschau, xii. pp. 343-51, vienna, 1890. hobart pasha. an anglo-turkish alliance, nineteenth century, xvii. pp. 575-82, lond. 1885. hodgetts (e. a. b.) armenia (massacres; russian policy), twentieth century, no. 3, pp. 405-12, lond. 1895. hron (k.) material zur beurtheilung der armenischen frage, allgem. zeitung, beilage 241-42, tubingen, 1895. kélékian (d.) la turquie et son souverain, nineteenth century, xl. pp. 689-98, lond. 1896. khalil khalid. the armenian question, i. and asiat. quart. rev. x. pp. 469-72, lond. 1895. knapp (g.) the story of an armenian refugee nat. mag. vi. p. 3, boston (mass.), 1897. lamy (t. g.) la question arménienne (position of armenian catholics), rev. catholique, aug. and dec. 1874 and jan. 1875, louvain, 1874-75. lanin (e. b.) armenia and the armenian people, fortnightly rev., lond. 1890. lepsius (j.) armenia and europe: an indictment, lond. 1897. lynch (h. f. b.) the armenian question, contemporary rev., 3 articles, june, july, september, lond. 1894. the armenian question: europe or russia? contemporary rev. pp. 270-76, lond. 1896. maccoll (m.) england's responsibility towards armenia, lond. 1895, 8o pam. the constantinople massacre, contemporary rev. lxviii. pp. 744-60, lond. 1895. armenia and the transvaal, fortnightly rev. lix. pp. 313-29, lond. 1896. malcolm (j. a.) an armenian's cry for armenia, nineteenth century, xxviii. pp. 640-47, lond. 1890. marillier (l.) la question arménienne (statistics of massacres), rev. chrétienne, sér. 3, iv. pp. 401-20, paris, 1896. nazarbek (a.) armenian revolutionists upon the armenian problem, lond. 1895, 8o pam. prudhomme (e.) constitution nationale des arméniens (trad. de l'arménien), rev. de l'orient, sér. 3, xiv. pp. 1-18, 9-107, paris, 1861. [this constitution appears to have been drawn up in 1860, and promulgated in may of the same year. it is much the same as that printed in the appendix to the present work, but is differently arranged. the article contains a list of the constituencies with their representation.--note by h. f. b. l.] rafiuddin (a.) a moslem view of abdul hamid and the powers, nineteenth century, xxxviii. pp. 156-64, lond. 1895. a moslem's view of the pan-islamic revival, nineteenth century, xlii. pp. 517-26, lond. 1897. ramsay (w. m.) two massacres in asia minor, contemporary rev. lxx. pp. 435-48, lond. 1896. rassam (h.) the armenian difficulty: results of a local enquiry, i. and asiat. quart. rev. ix. pp. 42-47; x. pp. 49-57, lond. 1895. sadik effendi. the armenian agitation: a reply to mr. stevenson, m.p., new rev. ix. pp. 456-65, lond. 1893. safir (--) the armenian question, i. and asiat. quart. rev. ix. pp. 48-52, lond. 1895. salmoné (h. a.) the real rulers of turkey, nineteenth century, xxxvii. pp 719-33, lond. 1895. the massacres in turkey, nineteenth century, xl. pp. 671-75, lond. 1896. sandwith (h.) how the turks rule armenia, nineteenth century, iii. pp. 314-29, lond. 1878. sevasly (m.) the armenian question, new rev. i. pp. 305-16, lond. 1889. shaw lefevre (g.) constantinople revisited, nineteenth century, xxviii. pp. 927-44, lond. 1890. stevenson (f. s.) the armenian church, its history and its wrongs, new rev. ix. pp. 201-6, lond. 1893. the armenian agitation: a rejoinder to sadik effendi, new rev. ix. pp. 648-54, lond. 1893. armenia, contemporary rev. lxvii. pp. 201-209, lond. 1895. troshine (y.) a bystander's notes of the armenian massacre at constantinople, scribner, xxi. pp. 48-67, new york and lond. 1897. vámbéry (h.) das nationale erwachen der armenier, allgem. zeitung, 1890, 224-25; beilage 188-89, tubingen, 1890. zur armenischen frage, deuts. rev. xx. may, pp. 228-44, stuttgart, 1895. vartooguian (a. p.) armenia's, ordeal, new york, 1896, 8o. watson (w.) the purple east. a series of sonnets on england's desertion of armenia, lond. 1896, 8o. woods (h. f.) (woods pasha) the truth about asia minor, lond. 1890, 8o pam. see also the newspaper l'arménie (french and english), editor m. tcheraz, published in london from nov. 1889 onwards; and the bull. de l'oeuvre des écoles d'orient, vols. xviii. and xix., for letters from the scenes of the armenian massacres from r. catholic clergy and others, paris, 1895-98. british parliamentary papers despatch from the marquis of salisbury enclosing a copy of the treaty signed at berlin, 13th july 1878, turkey, 1878, no. 38. correspondence respecting the condition of populations in asia minor and syria, turkey, 1879, no. 10; 1880, nos. 4 and 23; 1881, no. 6. correspondence relating to the asiatic provinces of turkey, turkey, 1889, no. 1 (trial of moussa bey); continued, 1890, no. 1; 1890-91, no. 1, and 1892, no. 1; 1889, no. 1; 1895, no. 1, part i. (events at sassoon and commission of enquiry at mush), continued, part ii.; 1896, nos. 3, 5, 6. correspondence respecting the kurdish invasion of persia, turkey, 1881, no. 5. correspondence respecting the introduction of reforms in the armenian provinces of asiatic turkey, turkey, 1896, no. 1; correspondence relative to the armenian question, 1896, no. 2. notes [1] the following are my estimates of the mileage distances along our route from karakilisa to akantz:- distances. karakilisa-tutakh 23 miles tutakh-köshk 11 ,, köshk-patnotz 17 ,, patnotz-akantz 36 ,, ------- total 87 miles. [2] at the time of taylor's journey (1868) there were some 13,500 karapapakhs in the mutesarriflik of chaldir, which comprised the towns of olti, ardahan and ardanuch. the mutesarriflik of kars counted 12,900 of this people, and that of bayazid 2500 (archives of british consulate at erzerum). [3] temperature at 9 p.m. 53° f., and at 6.30 a.m. 41°. none of my readings at karakilisa reached as high as the first of these, though some were taken in the middle of the day. [4] the comparison was also suggested to koch, as he approached sipan from the side of melazkert (reise im pontischen gebirge, p. 428). [5] upon my ascent of sipan during my second journey it was ascertained that the highest ridge of rock, as seen in this illustration, is not actually the southern rim of the crater. it is merely the side of the flat-topped mass of lava, upon which is situated the eastern summit. the western summit is just visible in this illustration. [6] mignan tells us that he purchased a gelding at sulimanieh which carried him from baghdad to tiflis across kurdistan in 16 days, a distance of at least 800 miles (winter journey, etc., london, 1839). i have heard of similar feats in the east, but have not been anxious to place the veracity of my informants to the test. [7] la turquie d'asie, paris, 1892, vol. ii. p. 710, "tout près d'akantz, à 2 kilomètres vers l'est, se trouve une montagne qui renferme une carrière de pierre calcaire, de 3 kilomètres d'étendue, large d'environ 300 mètres. le sommet de cette montagne se termine par un vaste plateau couvert des ruines d'une ville antique nommée zernak qui fut très florissante. les rues de la dite ville sont larges et coupées à angle droit; on retire de ses édifices de belles pierres siliceuses régulièrement taillées dont on se sert pour les nouvelles constructions." [8] cuinet (op. cit.) goes quite astray in his statistics both of the caza and town. he estimates the mussulman inhabitants of the whole caza at only 5129. akantz and the villages between it and the lake would alone contain as many or more. [9] i do not think that vivien de saint martin is justified in supposing that the town which was destroyed by the georgians in a.d. 1209 was situated in a different locality from that occupied by these ruins (nouveau dictionnaire de géographie universelle, paris, 1879-95, sub voce ardjiz). [10] schulz, in journal asiatique, paris, 1840, series 3, vol. ix. p. 322. sayce, the cuneiform inscriptions of van, in journal of the royal asiatic society, 1882, vol. xiv. pp. 649 seq., and 1888, vol. xx. pp. 3 and 19. [11] according to dr. belck (verhandlungen der berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, etc., 1895, heft vi. p. 599) the third tablet can never have possessed an inscription. [12] see especially müller-simonis, du caucase au golfe persique, paris, 1892, p. 393. [13] müller-simonis, op. cit. pp. 292 and 555. [14] verhandlungen der b. g. für anthropologie, 1898, heft vi. p. 591. these travellers add yet another name to the supposed ruins, viz. that of sirnakar. [15] verhandlungen der b. g. für anthropologie, 1898, heft vi. p. 573. [16] see the extract from ibn-alathir in fragments de géographes et d'historiens arabes et persans inédits, by defrémery, in journal asiatique, paris, 1849, series 4, vol. xiii. p. 518. [17] saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. i. p. 136. we know that ani was a fairly populous town long after the date when it was formerly supposed to have been deserted. [18] marco polo, yule's translation, london, 1874, vol. i. p. 47; and "merchant in persia" in italian travels in persia, hakluyt society, london, 1873, p. 160. the other six castles were tadvan, vostan, van, berkri, adeljivas and akhlat. [19] loftus, who visited arjish in 1852, has collected the facts relative to the inundation (quarterly journal of geological society, london, 1855, vol. xi. p. 319). [20] it may help to advance the study of the changes of level in the waters of lake van if i record that at the time of our visit (november 2) the island of ktutz was almost a peninsula. the monks told us that in a few weeks' time the long neck of sand which almost joined it to the land would be exposed from end to end. in spring the waters cover it. [21] this rock, a specimen of which i brought home, may be described as a compact limestone, largely consisting of foraminifera and fragments of mollusca and other invertebrate organisms. [22] the long pole shown in the picture projecting against the sky serves as a lever for lifting the bucket. [23] the measurements of the interior are as follows:--pronaos, length 36 feet 2 inches by 34 feet 4 inches. church proper, length to head of apse, 40 feet 7 inches (25 feet 10 inches to the daïs supporting the altar, and 14 feet 9 inches from the daïs to the wall of the apse); breadth, 24 feet 8 inches. [24] the reader of early travels in the east will be familiar with the figure of the european watch and clock maker, to whom he is introduced in some distant city of asia. [25] strabo, xi. 529. this account exactly corresponds to the phenomena presented by lake urmi, and it is impossible to apply it to lake van as ritter (erdkunde, ix. p. 784) has done. it is quite true that strabo has already six chapters back mentioned and described the former under the name of spauta, which is quite likely a misprint for kapauta, a corruption of the armenian name kapotan, which, in turn, is evidently derived from the armenian word kapoyt, signifying blue (saint martin, mémoires, i. p. 59). in that passage he rightly places the lake in the atropatian media; while in chapter 529 he speaks of it under a different name, that of mantiane, and says that it extends as far as atropatia. but that the mantiane, as described by strabo, is not our lake van, and that the latter is in many respects most faithfully portrayed by him under the name thopitis in sentences immediately following, there can, i think, be little doubt. [26] liddell and scott, sub voce nitron. [27] pliny, hist. naturalis, vi. ch. 31, translated by philemon holland, london, 1635. i have myself added the sentences in brackets. [28] i have derived these particulars not from personal observation, but for the greater part from the notices of abich (vergleichende chemische untersuchungen der wasser des caspischen meeres, urmia und van-see's, mém. acad. sc. st. petersburg, 1859, series 6 math. et phys. vol. vii. pp. 22 seq.); loftus (quarterly journal geological soc. london, 1855, vol. xi. pp. 306 seq.); and mr. r. t. günther (geographical journal, november 1899, and proceedings of the royal society, october 1899). [29] brandt and wagner quoted by sieger (die schwankungen der hocharmenischen seen, vienna, 1888, p. 22). [30] dr. w. belck in globus, 1894, vol. lxv. p. 302; a. owerin in petermann's mittheilungen, 1858, p. 471; professor hughes in nature, february 1898. [31] the traveller journeying along the güzel dere on the way from van to bitlis cannot fail to be impressed by the insignificance of the water-parting between the small stream, called sapor su, tributary to lake van, and the brooks which find their way to the tigris. [32] to the analysis of my sample by mr. william thorp i append that of dr. serda of strasbourg from one brought by m. müller-simonis from van and published on p. 258 of du caucase au golfe persique, paris, 1892. i have also thought it well to include the analysis published by mr. günther of the water of lake urmi. these will be found in the appendix to this volume. small lakes impregnated with soda have been found along the south-east foot of the ararat fabric on the right bank of the araxes. from sodas so derived an excellent soap used to be made in alexandropol, and, for all i know, may be still manufactured there. the same practice is related of the inhabitants of van. see abich's article (op. cit. pp. 32 seq.), and loftus (op. cit. p. 320). [33] it must, however, be noted that certainly in the case of lake van no islands are found far from the shore. the last rise in level took place about 1895; and in that year there was an earthquake at adeljivas. the inhabitants of uran gazi on the slopes of sipan assured us that this earthquake produced a rise in level of the jil göl, adjacent to the village. [34] the subject is fully discussed by abich (op. cit.) and by dr. sieger (die schwankungen der hocharmenischen seen seit 1800, vienna, 1888, and globus, 1894, vol. lxv. pp. 73-75). notable contributions have been made by loftus (op. cit.), by strecker (zeitschrift der gesell. für erdkunde, berlin, 1869, pp. 549 seq.) and by dr. belck (globus, vol. lxiv. pp. 157 seq. and vol. lxv. pp. 301 seq.; zeitschrift für ethnologie, berlin, 1898, p. 414). [35] it will, however, be observed that there is a discrepancy between the condition of lake gökcheh and that of lake van during the seventies and eighties. the testimony of general schindler and of dr. rodler is in favour of the view that lake urmi was in agreement with lake van during the same period (sieger, die schwankungen, etc., p. 18). [36] loftus, op. cit. p. 319. [37] globus, 1894, vol. lxv. pp. 301 and 303. [38] geographical journal, november 1899, p. 513. [39] zeits. gesell. f. erdkunde, berlin, 1869, vol. iv. p. 550. [40] indications of a similar rise in the norm of the level of lake göljik in the southern peripheral region have been noted by prof. josef wünsch (mitth. der k. k. geog. gesellschaft, vienna, 1885, vol. xxviii. pp. 15-17). [41] moses of khorene, i. 18. [42] ibid. i. 3. [43] see the memoir of saint martin by brosset prefixed to vol. xiii. of lebeau's histoire du bas-empire, and saint martin's article in the journal asiatique for 1828. [44] journal asiatique, paris, 1828, vol. ii. series 2, pp. 160-188. [45] layard, discoveries in the ruins of nineveh and babylon, london, 1853, p. 394. [46] "on the inscriptions of van," journal of royal asiatic society, 1848, vol. ix., two papers read by dr. hincks on 4th december 1847, and 4th march 1848. [47] journal asiatique, paris, 1880, vol. xv. series 7, pp. 540-543. [48] professor sayce's papers are contained in the journal of the royal asiatic society, vol. xiv. 1882; vol. xx. 1888; vol. xxv. 1893; vol. xxvi. 1894. they should be referred to in the first instance by the student who wishes to penetrate further into the subject. [49] to the names of belck, guyard, lehmann, and sayce, should be added that of professor d. h. müller of vienna, the author of several papers on the subject, of which the most important is entitled "die keilinschrift von aschrut-darga, entdeckt und beschrieben von professor j. wünsch, publicirt und erklärt von dr. d. h. müller," vienna, 1886. [50] so we read in the newly-acquired text of the stele at topsana (sidikan), near rowanduz:--"urzana, son of shekikajana, fled to khaldia; i, rusas (i.e. rusas i. of van) marched as far as the mountains of assyria" (dr. belck in zeitschrift für ethnologie, berlin, 1899, p. 116). [the translation of this passage appears, however, to have been altered by messrs. belck and lehmann. see sitzungsberichte der k. k. preuss. akad., berlin, june 1900. it would appear natural that the khaldians should have called their land after their god, and dr. belck (loc. cit.) appears to entertain no doubt upon the point. on the other hand prof. sayce informs me that he has never found the name khaldia in the vannic inscriptions; and that in assyrian khaldia signifies the god khaldis.] [51] cedrenus, hist. ii. 774. [52] saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. i. pp. 131 and 138. cp. moses of khorene, iii. 35, "inhabiting van in the province of dosp" with the title of the king in the inscriptions "king of biaina inhabiting the city of dhuspas." [53] professor sayce makes the suggestion (journal of royal asiatic society, 1882, vol. xiv. p. 394). the expression bitani seems to have been loosely used; but it appears to have been applied to the peripheral region south of lake van, and it may survive in the name of the river bohtan. [54] messrs. belck and lehmann adopt a later date, viz. c. 1000 b.c. see verhandlungen der berl. gesell. für anthropologie, 1898, p. 569. [55] recently discovered by messrs. belck and lehmann (verhandlungen der berl. gesell. für anthropologie, 1898, p. 574). [56] great confusion has been caused by the fact that the assyrians had no distinctive names for the two great lakes. the subject is elucidated by schrader (die namen der meere in den assyrischen inschriften, abh. berl. akad. wiss., 1877, berlin, 1878, pp. 169 seq.; zeitschrift für assyriologie, 1886, pp. 81 seq.; sitzungsberichte der k. pr. ak. wiss. berlin, 1890, pp. 321 seq.) and by dr. belck in verhandlungen (ut supra), 1894, p. 485. [57] see vol. i. ch. xxi. p. 423. [58] i retain the former spelling of the names of shamshi-hadad and hadad-nirari. [59] an admirable account of the operations of tiglath-pileser iii. is given by professor lehmann in the verhandlungen der berl. gesell. für anthropologie, 1896, pp. 321 seq. the scheme of the defences of the vannic kings is ably elucidated by dr. belck (zeitschrift für assyriologie, 1894, vol. ix. p. 350, note). [60] his next successor, ispuinis, is styled king of nairi in the kelishin inscription and king of biaina in that of ashrut darga. the succeeding monarchs are kings of biaina, inhabiting the city of dhuspas (van). [61] the best account of the shamiram-su or canal of menuas is that given by dr. belck (zeitschrift für ethnologie, 1892, pp. 137 seq.). i am under the impression that the greater part of the waters of the canal still find their way to the quarter of van called shamiram. [62] perhaps dr. belck, to whose penetration this discovery is due, has a little exaggerated his point when he assumes the necessity of an interval of 5 kilometres between the former site of the garden town and the rock of van (zeitschrift für assyriologie, 1894, p. 350). it would seem, rather, that the present quarter of shamiram represents a portion of the old settlement as watered by the menuas canal. [63] "set up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her (sc. babylon), call together against her the kingdoms of ararat, minni and ashchenaz ..." (jeremiah li. 27). the latter kingdom seems to have been situated between the medes at hamadan and the minni. [64] it must always be remembered that such enterprises are due with us to the energy of individuals, rarely encouraged and inspired by our learned societies or assisted financially by our government. i trust, however, that the trustees of the british museum will awake to the fact that excavations of the most comprehensive order can now be conducted in armenia, and that the soil is practically virgin. with the assistance of the german embassy at constantinople messrs. belck and lehmann were enabled not only to dig down the hill of toprak kala to the solid rock, but also, as it would appear, to transport their finds to berlin. [65] i cannot discover that any report of these excavations has ever been published. but, since writing this chapter, mr. hormuzd rassam's book, asshur and the land of nimrod (new york, 1897), has come into my hands. mr. rassam's excavations on the hill of toprak kala took place in 1880, and some account of them may be found in his work, pp. 377-8. [66] for the excavations at toprak kala the various writings of messrs. belck and lehmann should be consulted (verhandlungen der berl. gesell. für anthropologie, 1895, pp. 612 seq., and 1898, pp. 578 seq. cp. also zeitschrift für assyriologie, 1894, pp. 356 and 357, note). for the canal and the city of rusas or new dhuspas see their remarks in zeitschrift für ethnologie, 1892, pp. 141 seq.; verh. der berl. gesell. für anth. 1892, pp. 477 seq.; 1893, pp. 220, 222, 223; 1898, p. 576; zeitschrift für assyr. 1894, pp. 349 seq., and 1899, p. 320. [67] this is evidently the older form of the legend of semiramis in armenia. the christian hierarchy softened down or obliterated the coming to life again of ara. [68] the name of this goddess only occurs in one inscription, viz. sayce, no. xxiv.; and it is interesting to observe that this is an inscription of menuas. the name is written ideographically like that of istar in assyrian and is rendered saris by professor sayce. it is noticeable that sariduris or sarduris is the name borne by three of the vannic kings. [69] the cuneiform inscriptions of van, journal of royal asiatic society, 1882, vol. xiv. p. 678. the languages are babylonian, persian and "protomedic," placed in parallel columns. [70] professor sayce (early israel, london, 1899, pp. 238-239) adopts this date and considers that the classical writers confounded the scythians with the medes. a priori this view would seem probable, having regard to the natural evolution of the history of the times. [71] according to herodotus (vii. 73) the armenians were phrygian colonists and were armed in the phrygian fashion. the view of the ancients seems to have been that the phrygians, as well as the asiatic thracians, had migrated from europe into asia minor. [72] herodotus, i. 72 and 194; v. 49 and 52. in the catalogue of the satrapies of the empire of darius armenia is joined with the unknown district of pactyica (iii. 93). in the behistun inscriptions of darius, the persian and scythic texts everywhere employ armenia for the more ancient assyrian title urardhu. [73] for the certain identification of the alarodians with the inhabitants of the kingdom of urardhu or ararat, see sir. h. rawlinson's essay in rawlinson's herodotus, vol. iv. p. 245. [74] herodotus, iii. 94, and cp. vii. 79. [75] ibid. i. 104. [76] professor rawlinson would identify the saspeires with the iberians of later writers (rawlinson's herodotus, vol. iv. p. 233). in view of the prevailing opinion that the old vannic language has some affinity with modern georgian, this identification is most interesting. ispir is situated on the threshold of the northern peripheral region, on the river chorokh. [77] xenophon, cyropædeia, bk. iii. chs. 1, 2 and 3. [78] zeitschrift für ethnologie, 1892, p. 131; verhandlungen der berl. gesell. für anthropologie, 1892, p. 487, 1895, pp. 578 seq., 1896, p. 320; zeitschrift für assyriologie, 1894, pp. 82 seq., and p. 358, note 1. [79] narrative of the embassy of ruy gonzalez de clavijo, translated by c. r. markham, hakluyt society, london, 1859. [80] xenophon, anabasis, iv. ch. 3, v. ch. 5, vii. ch. 8. [81] the remarks of layard (nineveh and its remains, london, 1849, vol. i. p. 257) and badger (the nestorians and their rituals, london, 1852, pp. 177 seq.) serve to illustrate the complexity of this question. [82] compare the remarks of sir h. rawlinson (rawlinson's herodotus, iv. p. 248) and of professor lehmann (verhandlungen der berl. gesell. für anthropologie, 1895, p. 580). [83] vol. i. ch. xvi. p. 286. [84] xenophon, cyropædeia, bk. iii. ch. ii. 23. [85] verhandlungen der berl. gesell. für anthropologie, 1898, p. 591. i would especially refer my reader to dr. belck's remarks upon this subject in the same publication, 1895, p. 606. [86] while this chapter is going through the press some further articles by drs. belck and lehmann come into my hands. these deal with their recent journeys and researches in armenia (sitzungsberichte der k. p. ak. wiss. berlin, 1899, pp. 116 seq. and pp. 745 seq.; the same publication for 1900, pp. 619 seq.). [87] messrs. belck and lehmann commence the sequence: 1. lutipris, 2. sarduris i., 3. arame, 4. sarduris ii., thus attributing to their sarduris i. the inscriptions which record the construction of the walls from the rock of van to the harbour. they suppose a sarduris ii., son of arame, as the antagonist of shalmaneser ii., and suggest that sarduris i. was the contemporary of ashur-nasir-pal ii. (885-860 b.c.) (zeitschrift für assyriologie, 1897, p. 201). this arrangement throws back lutipris to about 900 b.c. they promise us an essay upon the subject (see verhandlungen der berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, 1894, p. 486; z. assyr. 1897, pp. 200, 201, 202). at present i do not feel convinced by the grounds they have brought forward. no inscriptions of this sarduris ii. have been discovered; nor does any mention appear to be made of works by a predecessor of the same name or by arame in the inscriptions near the tabriz gate at van which they have discovered (see under ispuinis infra). of lutipris no inscriptions exist; he is only known as the father of sarduris. pending further enquiry the hypothesis of professor sayce seems to me to hold the field: "i am more inclined to conjecture that sarduris i. was the leader of a new dynasty; the ill success of arrame in his wars with the assyrians forming the occasion for his overthrow ... the introduction of a foreign mode of writing into the country looks like one of those innovations which mark the rise of new dynasties in the east. the consolidation of the power of darius hystaspis was, we may remember, accompanied by the introduction of the cuneiform alphabet of persia" (j.r.a.s. 1882, p. 406). to this i should like to add that it seems consonant with the true order of events that not until after the defeat of arame was the site of van most happily selected as a sure stronghold against assyrian attacks--a choice which was largely instrumental in producing the extraordinary development of the northern kingdom under ispuinis, menuas, and argistis. [88] may arzasku have been situated in the great plain at the southern foot of the ararat system, now known as the district of alashkert? the inscription of shalmaneser runs: "from dayaeni (which dr. belck identifies with the district about the modern delibaba) i struck camp and approached arzasku, the capital of the urardhian arame. the urardhian arame was filled with fear ... and deserted his city. to the mountains adduri he fled up; behind him i followed; a great battle i fought in the mountains.... arame was compelled, in order to save his life, to take refuge in an inaccessible mountain." dr. belck suggests that adduri may have been the name applied by the khaldians to ararat and the ararat system; and that it may survive in the modern akhury or arguri (v. anth. 1893. p. 71). [89] v. anth. 1896, pp. 323 and 325. the translation is, however, open to question. [90] the inscription is contained on one face of a recumbent stone which can with difficulty be distinguished from the boulders lying round. the stone has been well shaped and dressed. the characters have been much mutilated by the figure of a cross which has been incised upon the face of the stone. the first line evidently contains the name of sarduris, while the second was probably occupied by that of argistikhinis, or the son of argistis. in line 7 a conquest is recorded, and in line 8 occurs the name of alusia. professor sayce has kindly supplied this brief account of the contents, and i trust that he will publish the text. [91] arakel, ap. abich, geolog. forsch. in den kauk. länd. vienna, 1882, part ii. p. 440. [92] saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, i. 138. [93] moses of khorene, ii. 8. [94] ibid. ii. 19. [95] faustus of byzantium, iv. 55. [96] vol. i. ch. xviii. pp. 357, 359. [97] merchant in persia (italian travels in persia, hakluyt society, 1873, pp. 179 seq.). the kurd is called zidibec. [98] von hammer, geschichte des osm. reiches, iii. 145. [99] ritter, erdkunde, ix. 980. but the date he gives, viz. 1636, will not suit the chronology. [100] brant in journal of r. geog. soc. 1841, vol. x. [101] taylor in archives of the british consulate at erzerum. report of march 18, 1869. the estimates of jaubert in 1805 (voyage en arménie, etc. p. 138), and of layard in 1850 (nineveh and babylon, p. 392), appear to have reference to the walled town only. the former counts 15,000 to 20,000 souls, the majority armenian. the latter says that van may contain from 12,000 to 15,000 inhabitants. shiel's figure for the population, including the suburbs, in 1836, of 12,000 people, "of whom 2000 are armenians," is plainly in error (j.r.g.s. 1838, vol. x.). vital cuinet (la turquie d'asie, paris, 1892, vol. ii. pp. 654, 691), whose statistics i have seldom found reliable, includes 500 jews in the population of van--the remnant of the colony transported thither by the arsakid tigranes. my enquiries in several quarters elicited replies that no jews were known to inhabit either the town or the caza, but that there were 25 families at bashkala. with regard to any special elements in the population of the town and caza of van i was informed as follows:--there may be some few score circassians; but there is no regular circassian settlement here. the armenians are practically all gregorians. of chaldæan christians, whether adherents of their old faith or converts to roman catholicism, only a few stray individuals would be found in the town of van. but i was informed of a settlement of them--nestorians--about the shores of lake archag, north-east of van. [102] du caucase au golfe persique, paris, 1892, p. 190. [103] one lira or turkish pound contains 100 piastres and is equal to 18 shillings. [104] i append the names and situations of the armenian schools. private schools are marked with a p. ===================+========+========+=================================== | no. of | no. of | name of school. | male | female | where situated. | pupils | pupils | ===================+========+========+=================================== 1. arakh | 450 | 150 | arakh quarter of the gardens. 2. norashen | 300 | ... | norashen quarter of the gardens. 3. yisusean | 200 | 100 | walled city. 4. hankusner | ... | 250 | hankusner quarter of the gardens. 5. sandukhtean | ... | 150 | norashen ,, ,, ,, 6. khach-poghan | 155 | ... | central avenue of gardens. 7. lusavorchean p.| 90 | 30 | ,, ,, ,, 8. haykavank | 85 | 15 | haykavank quarter. 9. paragamean p. | 50 | 25 | norashen quarter of gardens. 10. pusantean p. | ... | 75 | ,, ,, ,, 11. lukasean | 45 | 10 | norshen-sufla quarter of gardens. +========+========+ | 1375 | 805 | ===================+========+========+=================================== [105] the text of the slab in this mosque (which he calls the kurshun mosque) has been copied and published by dr. belck in the zeitschrift für assyriologie, 1892, vol. vii. pp. 257 seq. see also verhandlungen der berl. gesell. für anthropologie, 1898, pp. 570, 575 (sayce, no. lxxx., journal r.a.s. 1894, p. 707). [106] for the cuneiform inscriptions in surb paulos (boghos) see schulz's memoir, pp. 298-99; layard, nineveh and babylon, p. 400 (i do not know why he calls it the church of st. peter and st. paul); verhandlungen der berl. gesell. für anthropologie, 1898, pp. 570 and 573, and zeitschrift für assyriologie, 1899, p. 320. they are being subjected to fresh examination by messrs. belck and lehmann (sayce, nos. xxxi. and xxxii.). in addition to these i noticed a mutilated inscription on a stone in the doorway of surb vardan (see verh. anthrop. 1898, p. 572), and two inscribed slabs in the apse of the ruined surb petros, one in fair preservation (sayce, no. xlviii.). i was unable to penetrate into the chapel of surb sahak, into the walls of which similar fragments of the stelai of the vannic kings have been inserted (sayce, nos. xlv. and xlvi.). [107] the most detailed, as well as the most lucid and impressive, account of the gurab, or rock of van, is still that of schulz (journal asiatique, 1840, vol. ix. ser. iii. pp. 264 seq.). but the remarks of layard (nineveh and babylon, pp. 395 seq., with woodcuts of the rock chambers), tozer (turkish armenia, london, 1881, pp. 347 seq.) and müller-simonis (du caucase au golfe persique, paris, 1892, pp. 246 seq.) may be consulted. the only entrance to the citadel is by a path which is conducted up the western declivities of the rock from a point closely adjacent to the gate called iskele in the north-west angle of the fortified town. in schulz's time this path ascended in a north-easterly direction between a double row of modern walls, composed for the most part of mud. after following these walls for some little distance it arrived in front of a solid wooden door, studded with large nails and strengthened by bars of iron. this gate afforded access to the castle, and was never opened except by an express order from the pasha. the castle enclosure was flanked by walls of greater height and solidity than those without; it contained a number of modern buildings, such as barracks, a small mosque, and a powder magazine. mr. tozer was shown a very deep naphtha well in this neighbourhood, running down vertically into the rock. the oil, which he describes as a brown, half liquid mixture, could be reached by means of a pole. the house of the commandant and the prison are situated within the enclosure, where may be seen a number of old bronze cannons, curiously ornamented and quite obsolete. schulz describes the antiquities upon this portion of the rock as consisting of two groups of cave chambers. 1. the southern front of a mass of rock which immediately adjoins the most elevated part of the whole formation--that part which lower down displays the tablet of xerxes, and which is crowned by the powder magazine--has been hewn down in a vertical direction for a space of about 60 feet. nearly in the centre is situated an open doorway, surmounted by a smaller aperture to admit light. both openings have been damaged by human hands, evidently with intention; and no trace of any ornaments or inscriptions remains. the doorway conducts into a vaulted cave chamber, some 45 feet long and 25 feet high. the rock has been less carefully worked than in the case of the caves of khorkhor. nearly in front of the entrance, a second doorway in the opposite wall gives access to a smaller apartment, 20 feet long and 10 feet broad, called the neft koïou or spring of naphtha, the fumes of which fill the room. at the time of schulz's visit this inner chamber was nearly filled up by a structure in kiln-burnt bricks and very hard mortar, of which the purpose was not apparent. 2. quite close to the neft koïou, in the block of limestone, adjoining it on the left hand, which rises from the tablet of xerxes to the powder magazine, may be seen a hole of irregular shape and some 3 feet in diameter, through which one crawls into a group of five rock chambers, of which the largest is 30 feet long and 20 feet broad. the walls of these caves are rudely fashioned, without ornament or niches. in one of them schulz found human bones. perhaps the most remarkable and certainly the most famous series of such excavations upon the rock of van are known by the name of the caves of khorkhor. they are situated in the steep south-west side of the mass, overlooking a garden which in schulz's time belonged to the pasha, but which is now in a desolate and weed-grown condition. the garden bears the same name as the caves--a name of which the etymology is neither armenian nor turkish, and which, according to professor sayce, may perhaps be taken back to the word kharkhar, signifying to excavate, found in vannic texts (j.r.a.s. 1882, p. 572). the chambers are visited from the same side as the citadel, and at first by the same path. the remains of steps and of even spaces, hewn out of the rock, suggest that one of the principal approaches to the platform in antiquity was taken by this way. but, after following this avenue for some little distance, you turn to the right, leave the stairs, and clamber along the side of the rock, until you emerge through a fissure upon the southern face and see the garden at your feet. from here a staircase of twenty steps, almost obliterated in some places, slopes along the face of a mass of precipitous crags, in which is placed the entrance to the chambers. the limestone has been carefully flattened and polished, and is covered with inscriptions outside. at the commencement of the stair is seen a little grotto, containing a seat which commands fine views over town and plain. on the right of the grotto is a long inscription in three columns, separated from one another by vertical lines. it has suffered not a little from the impact of cannon balls; but is still in a fairly legible condition. it records the conquests of argistis i. (sayce, nos. xxxvii. xxxviii. xxxix.). the continuation of this record is found a little further on, at the end of the stair, and after turning an angle of the rock. it is incised upon the outer face of the polished limestone about the doorway to the caves (sayce, nos. xl.-xliv.; see also hyvernat's memoir in müller-simonis, op. cit. p. 531). this aperture, some 6 feet by 5 feet in dimensions, leads into a chamber 32 feet long, 19 feet broad, and 10 1/2 feet high, which again communicates with four lesser rooms. the walls are hewn out with extraordinary care, and ten niches or oblong recesses, 3 feet high and 2 feet broad, are distributed over the sides of the principal apartment about 3 1/2 feet above the ground. incisions with holes in the centre are placed in the spaces between each pair of niches, and may have held metal lamps. the floor has been excavated in two places into squares a few inches deep. the smaller rooms are furnished with recesses similar to those described. one of them adjoins a space resembling the head of a pit or shaft, which, however, has been completely filled in with rubble. it probably represents a subterraneous communication with a spring which gushes from the foot of the rock in the garden below. the remaining excavations and inscriptions are disposed as follows over the circumference of the ridge:--1. east of the khorkhor, but on the same south face, and approached from the side of the gate of tabriz, you easily recognise a partly natural and partly artificial platform, fairly high up on the rock. a spacious doorway connects this ledge with a cave of which the dimensions, according to my own measurements, are 31 feet by 21 feet. this chamber communicates with three smaller grottos, one approached by a door in the wall opposite the entrance, and the other two by similar apertures in the adjacent walls. the three subsidiary rooms are long and narrow. the one opposite the entrance contains a daïs and steps at its narrow west end; and that on the left hand is furnished with recesses at each extremity. lower down on the side of the rock one observes a small aperture to which it is possible to gain access. it only measures some 4 feet by 3 feet. in the stone above has been hewn a long but shallow recess, about 3 feet in width. one wonders whether it may have been destined to receive a coffin. the hole gives access to a chamber 23 feet 7 inches in length and 14 feet in breadth. three sides are furnished with recesses 2 feet 6 inches in depth, placed 3 feet 4 inches from the ground. 2. inscription on the rock near the gate of tabriz, much effaced, but copied and deciphered by messrs. belck and lehmann. it contains the names of the kings menuas and ispuinis, together with those of the father of ispuinis, sarduris, and his grandson inuspuas (verhandlungen der berl. gesell. für anthropologie, 1898, pp. 571, 575). the same travellers mention the discovery by them of three new inscriptions on the ridge, which appear, however, to be of minor importance (ibid. p. 571). 3. on the northern face of the rock, not far from the tabriz gate and below the line of fortifications, are situated two artificial recesses at an interval of about twenty paces. that on the right contains a long inscription upon the wall which is on your left as you stand within the recess; it records conquests by sarduris ii. (sayce, no. xlix.). this grotto bears the name of khazane-kapusi or gate of treasure. 4. on the same side, a short distance further west, and upon a surface which has been hewn down vertically and flattened, are seen three tablets incised into the rock, one of them being on a level with the base of the ridge. each member of the group contains an inscription; and the three inscriptions have one and the same text. it is of menuas, and appears to commemorate a restoration of the tablets by that monarch (sayce, no. xx.). 5. on the same side, near the summit, and almost directly above the grotto khazane kapusi (hyvernat ap. müller-simonis, op. cit. p. 548), is a large cave, at present comprised within the fortifications, and inaccessible from below. on the right of the entrance is an inscription of king menuas, purporting that a series of chambers were constructed by him as tombs in this place (sayce, no. xxi.). [108] the armenian gentleman in whose company i visited the locality regarded ak köpri as a turkish misnomer for ak karapi, a word which he derived from kar, a stone, and ap, narrow way in armenian. the word would signify the narrows of the white crag, or the narrow way separating the crag from the hill. that is a sample of armenian etymologies. another derivation is from ak kirpi, the white hedgehog. [109] sayce, no. v. it is an inscription of ispuinis and menuas, and is known locally as meher kapusi (the gate of meher, derivation unknown) or choban kapusi (the shepherd's gate; so called from a shepherd to whom the "open sesame" of the treasure-house, which the slab is supposed to seal, is said to have been revealed in sleep. he entered; but forgot the talisman, and never returned). [110] since i have mentioned the name of daniel vardapet it is only just that i should add that he stated to me that the press had been hired. [111] the inside dimensions of this chapel are: extreme length from recess to recess, 38 feel 7 inches, and extreme breadth, 30 feet. [112] see vol. i. ch. xvi. p. 237. [113] the statement of layard (nineveh and babylon, p. 409) that the church is a modern edifice is scarcely correct, and is quite erroneous if it be taken to include the inner sanctuary or chapel. [114] for the history of the mediæval kings of vaspurakan who flourished in the tenth century, i would refer my reader to vol. i. ch. xviii. of the present work, to the second volume of chamchean (history of armenia, translated by avdall, calcutta, 1827, pp. 65 seq.) and to saint martin's translation of the history of john katholikos, who was an eye-witness of the events which he records during this period, and one of the principal actors in them (paris, 1841. see the index, sub voce gagig). the vivid narrative of the last of these writers transports us into that distant age. the eagle which was the emblem of the princes of the artsruni dynasty appears to have been connected with the ancient prerogative of their family to be the bearers of the golden eagle before the king (see saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. i. p. 424). i have already related how the present ruler of the armenian church has taken revenge upon the last of the kings of this dynasty for his cowardly cession of his dominions to the byzantine emperor (see vol. i. ch. xvi. p. 237). [115] the following are the intermediate distances along the track according to my estimates:--van to artemid, 8 miles; artemid to vostan, 15 miles; vostan to akhavank (iskele), 8 miles; akhavank (iskele) to enzakh, 13 1/2 miles; enzakh to kindirantz, 17 miles; kindirantz to garzik, 9 miles; garzik to sach, 16 miles; sach to bitlis, 11 miles--total, 97 1/2 miles. as far as the promontory of surb the path either leads over little plains interposed between the lake and the mountains, or crosses the rocky spurs which descend from the range into the waters, forming promontories. of these spurs the most formidable is that which is scaled beyond enzakh (pass, 7600 feet); but the descents to the plains of kindirantz and surb are both long and arduous. beyond surb the track for the first time follows along the base of an almost vertical parapet of mountain, rising immediately from the water's edge. this romantic course is pursued for some distance west of garzik; when the lake is left behind, the güzel dere is entered, and you pass almost imperceptibly from the basin of lake van into that of the tigris. it now only remains to cross from the güzel dere into the valley of bitlis, which is done by way of the bor pass, 7490 feet. on the whole the route along the southern shore of lake van is by no means an easy one. the principal difficulties to an engineer occur between enzakh and the güzel dere. [116] the compiler of the index to ritter's erdkunde confuses this artemid with the artemita hê en tê babylônia of strabo xi. 519, which, according to ritter (ix. 508), is probably identical with the artemita in apolloniatis of isidorus charax (mansiones parthicæ, c. 2 in geographi græci minores, paris, 1882), and is to be sought in the district watered by the river diyala, which joins the tigris near baghdad. an armenian artemita is mentioned by ptolemy (c. 13, section 21, and c. 8, section 13, edit. nobbe, leipzic, 1843). schulz tells us that the present village was in his time sometimes called atramit (he himself writes it artamit) "par une transposition de lettres qui rappelle un nom fort significatif dans l'ancienne mythologie orientale" (journal asiatique, 1840, ser. 3, vol. ix. p. 310). the same traveller was rewarded for his researches in the vicinity by some interesting finds. in a little valley about 1 1/4 miles west of the village (une demi lieue), and about a hundred paces from the lake (environ une centaine de pas au dessus du lac), among a quantity of blocks of stone, fallen from the hill above, he discovered a cuneiform inscription, engraved upon one of these blocks. professor sayce translates this inscription as follows:--"belonging to menuas of the mother taririas, this monument the place of the son of taririas she has called" (the cuneiform inscriptions of van, journal r. asiatic society, london, 1882, vol. xiv. p. 529). dr. belck, on the other hand, would render it:--"this abode, which belongs to tarias, daughter of menuas, is called the palace of tarias" (verhandlungen der berliner gesellschaft für anthropologie, 1895, p. 608). at a little distance from this block schulz found another inscription, which, owing to exposure to damp, was scarcely distinguishable. he describes it as being engraved on a large stone on the left hand of an ancient aqueduct, built up of several layers of massive stones, several five or six square feet in height. they are irregular in shape and not connected by cement; but are held together by their own weight. the conduit which they enclose is square in form, and of sufficient height and breadth to enable one to stand up inside it. schulz endeavoured to penetrate within it, but was unable to proceed further than some twenty paces, the passage being obstructed by a large block which had fallen in from the colossal wall (schulz, op. cit. p. 313). the hillside above this little valley separates it, he goes on to say, from a kind of upper terrace, over which runs the way from van to vostan, among masses of rock, detached from the adjacent heights. between these rocks flows the shamiram su, an artificial channel which has its source some nine leagues south of van, and which, after passing through the gardens of artemid, has been conducted to the immediate neighbourhood of the city, where it debouches into the lake. so far as schulz was able to follow its course, it was nowhere embanked by masonry (ibid. p. 313). it was on this terrace, at a distance of 1 1/4 miles (une demi lieue) from artemid in a south-westerly direction, immediately by the side of this shamiram su, and on the road between van and vostan, that he discovered the important inscription which reads according to professor sayce:--"to the children of khaldis the gracious menuas, the son of ispuinis, this memorial has selected. of menuas the memorial he has named it. to the children of khaldis, the multitudinous, belonging to menuas, the king powerful, the king of multitudes, king of the land of biainas, inhabiting the city of dhuspas. menuas says--whoever this tablet carries away, whoever removes the name, whoever with earth destroys, whoever undoes this memorial; may khaldis, the air god, the sun god, the gods him in public, the name of him, the family of him, the land of him, to fire and water consign" (sayce, op. cit. pp. 527-28). messrs. belck and lehmann render the word translated by prof. sayce as memorial: canal, aqueduct. the rock upon which the inscription was found is known under the name of kiziltash from its reddish hue. in the village of artemid itself schulz saw the remains of the wall of an ancient edifice on the summit of the cliff. according to armenian tradition it was formerly a residence of the armenian kings. below it he found an ancient conduit (schulz, ibid. p. 311). i have summarised schulz's account afresh because ritter's summary of it (erdkunde, x. 294) misled me. the inscription on the kiziltash has been photographed by m. müller-simonis, and reproduced in his book (du caucase au golfe persique, paris, 1892, p. 252). professor sayce conjectures that these inscriptions served to commemorate the completion of the works connected with the shamiram su, and even goes so far as to suggest that the monuments erected by queen taririas may have given rise to the traditions about a great queen which in the course of time became transferred to the mythical semiramis (op. cit. p. 529). dr. belck has within recent years found four more inscriptions in or near artemid which have been translated by sayce (journal r. asiatic soc. 1893, pp. 8 seq.). two are without importance; the remaining two are in the sense of the inscription on the kiziltash, and are therefore canal inscriptions. among the notices of artemid contained in the works of travellers, a few useful remarks may be gleaned. shiel (journey in 1836) tells us that in his time it was a large armenian village of about 350 houses. brant (1838) speaks of it as populous, and alludes to the quantity of fruit which was grown there. he approached it from the side of vostan and the anguil su, after crossing which he came upon the shamiram su, which he describes as an open canal, supported by a wall in some places. schulz was impressed by the squalor of the houses; according to him it was peopled half by armenians and half by mussulmans; the latter dwelt below the cliff, on the border of the lake (schulz, op. cit. p. 310). ussher (before 1865) calls it an armenian village, and adds--"the flat summit of the rocky hill, on the slope of which the village stood, was surrounded by an ancient wall, built of huge stones laid one upon another without mortar or cement of any kind, and resembling somewhat in appearance cyclopean remains" (from london to persepolis, london, 1865, p. 324). müller-simonis (op. cit. p. 270) speaks of the "grandes substructions du caractère le plus ancien" which support the shamiram su at a certain point three-quarters of an hour on the further side of artemid, coming from van. [117] see fig. 108, p. 2. [118] for mahmudia and a striking photograph of the castle there, see binder (au kurdistan, paris, 1887, pp. 123 seq.). [119] the course of the shamiram su has been followed and described by dr. belck (zeitschrift für ethnologie, berlin, 1892, pp. 137 seq.). it is carried across the anguil su or khoshab by means of a conduit, made of wood, which spans the stream. [120] clarified fat or butter, which is generally used for cooking purposes in the east. [121] i would refer my reader for further information concerning the origin of the patriarch etc. of akhtamar to ritter (erdkunde, vol. x. p. 261), and to the authorities there cited. [122] an inscription over the door of the narthex is to the effect that it was constructed by thomas, katholikos of akhtamar, in the year of the armenian era, 1212 (a.d. 1762). [123] in the geography ascribed to vardan, a work of the thirteenth century (translated by saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. ii. p. 429), it is said of akhtamar: "on y trouve l'admirable monastère de la croix bâti par kagig, roi des ardzrouniens." according to chamchean, quoted by saint martin (op. cit. vol. i. p. 140), the monastery was founded in a.d. 653 by a prince of the reshtuni family, named theodore. we are informed by thomas artsruni (ninth century) that king gagik brought the stone for building this church all the way from the province of aghznikh, extending to the tigris and now comprised within the vilayet of diarbekr. [124] layard, nineveh and babylon, london, 1853, pp. 199 and 414. i would ask my reader to compare the illustration of the bronze bull's head with the head in my photograph (fig. 141) on the right hand or north of the furthest recess of the apse. [125] but the stone which layard saw in the portico has probably been removed to the library. [126] of these one was circular in form. if it be the same as sayce's no. xxix. (op. cit. vol. xiv. p. 537) it is an inscription of menuas recording a visit to the island. [127] ussher (op. cit. p. 332) tells us that the kurds had carried off many manuscripts which they destroyed from sheer wantonness, using the covers to make soles for their boots. [128] i will not attempt to explain or reconcile with one another the maps of kiepert, cuinet, and glascott (journal r.g.s. 1840, vol. x.), and the surveys of hommaire de hell (extrait du voyage en turquie, etc., paris, 1859) and others. such is the ignorance of one's guides that one cannot do more than question them closely as to the names of villages and put down the information without much confidence in its exactness. what is true of the names of villages is also true of mountains. that portion of the range which lies on the west of mount ardos is named karkar in kiepert's map; a friend of mine who had travelled in the country knew it under the name of varkar. i was not made acquainted with either of these names. [129] cuinet places the population of kindirantz at 4064 souls, which is absurd. nor are there any jews in the place. his statistics for the caza include 600 gypsies and some yezidis; but the kaimakam assured me that 100 was a better figure for the gypsies, while he was not aware of the presence of any yezidis. [130] it does not pretend to be more than a very rough sketch plan. it indicates the various mahallas or quarters. [131] merchant in persia, in italian travels in persia, hakluyt society, london, 1873, p. 157. [132] tavernier, edition of paris, 1679, vol. i. book iii. p. 303. [133] fleurian, estat présent de l'arménie, paris, 1694. [134] grammatica e vocabulario della lingua kurda composti dal p. maurizio garzoni, roma, 1787. see ritter, erdkunde, vol. ix. pp. 628, 630. [135] abulfeda quotes ibn hauqual and azizi to the effect that bitlis was a small and prosperous town seven parasangs distant from akhlat. he adds that in his time it was surrounded by a semi-ruinous wall. [136] saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. i. p. 103. [137] shiel in journal r.g.s. 1838, vol. viii. p. 73. [138] macdonald kinneir, journey through asia minor, armenia, and kurdistan, london, 1818, pp. 393 seq. [139] brant in j.r.g.s. vol. x. pp. 379 seq. [140] archives of british consulate at erzerum. [141] in detail the figures are: mussulmans, 27,673; gregorian armenians, 15,317; armenian catholics, 130; armenian protestants, 647; syrians, 342. males and females are given separately in the rough census on which these statistics repose; and, owing to the difficulty of access to the women, the latter are always in an apparent minority. [142] vital cuinet (la turquie d'asie, paris, 1892) gravely asserts that there exist 283 scholastic establishments in the vilayet of bitlis, with 309 teachers and 18,858 pupils of either sex! [143] boré, corr. et mémoires, paris, 1840, vol. i. pp. 398, 399. [144] rhétoré, les missions catholiques, paris and lyons, 1881, pp. 565-567. [145] the sources of the euphrates, in journal r.g.s. 1895, pp. 173 seq. mr. ainsworth conjectures that the water of this well, which he describes as a crater fountain having a basin 220 feet in circumference, comes from lake van. i should doubt it. the same careful observer is not quite right in speaking of it as "the source" of the kara su. it is no doubt one of the sources, but the morkh su, already mentioned, is the first of these westward-flowing streams. for further particulars in regard to the pool of norshen see chap. xviii. p. 317 of the present volume. [146] i am indebted to the excellent yusuf, dragoman of the british consulate at erzerum and my friend from childhood, for a copy and translation of this inscription: "in the name of god, the merciful and most compassionate, this is the tomb of the great emir, melik-ul-umara, karanlai agha, who was taken from this place of corruption to the place of mercy and immortality, a moslem, believer in one god, on the 5th day of ramazan in the year 689." [147] my photograph of the belle of gotni displays such a lack of good features that i must refrain from reproducing it for fear of belying my impression. in its place i offer a picture of one of the best-looking of her less flourishing comrades. [148] it would probably be safe to say that the armenian element predominates in the plain proper, and the kurdish element in the villages bordering upon the plain along the southern border range. writing in 1838, consul brant reported as follows: "in the whole plain of mush there are not any mohammedan peasants intermingled with the armenians: a fact which would clearly point out this country as belonging rather to armenia than to kurdistan; indeed the tent-dwelling kurds are evidently intruders, and the stationary kurds, it cannot be doubted, belonged originally to the nomad race" (j.r.g.s. 1840, vol. x. p. 347). [149] i refer the reader with some hesitation to cuinet's account of this monastery (la turquie d'asie, paris, 1892, vol. ii. p. 584, vilayet de bitlis). see also saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. ii. pp. 431, 467. [150] brant in journal r.g.s. 1840, vol. x. p. 351. koch in the forties estimated the population at 1000 mohammedan and 415 armenian families, or a total of about 8000 souls (reise im pontischen gebirge, etc., weimar, 1846, p. 405). [151] archives of the british consulate at erzerum. [152] for the catholics of mush and mush plain, see boré (correspondance et mémoires, paris, 1840, vol. i. p. 398), and smith and dwight (missionary researches in armenia, london, 1834, p. 429). they have evidently increased in numbers since the time of these writers. [153] the subject is discussed by ritter, erdkunde, vol. x. p. 816. [154] saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. i. p. 102. [155] this total is distributed, according to my estimates, as follows:- mush-surb karapet 25 miles surb karapet-gumgum 28 1/2 ,, gumgum-khinis 24 ,, khinis-kulli 23 1/2 ,, kulli-mejitli 13 ,, mejitli-hasan kala 22 1/2 ,, hasan kala-erzerum 23 ,, ------------ total 159 1/2 miles. [156] i should like to refer my reader to mr. ainsworth's valuable book (travels and researches in asia minor, etc., london, 1842, vol. ii. p. 383) for a description of the two interesting old bridges which he found, one spanning the murad, some distance east of our ford, and the other a former bed of the kara su. see also koch, reise im pontischen gebirge, etc., weimar, 1846, pp. 410, 411. [157] the head man in a christian village is called kiaya, and in a moslem village mukhtar. he is responsible to government. there is no official chief of agglomerations of villages, like the russian pristav. [158] the accepted average elevation of the plain of mush appears to be 4200 feet. the readings of my barometers agree fairly well with this figure. [159] i have already mentioned the presence of gypsies in the caza of garchigan. i did not meet with any during my first journey. [160] see the account of zenobius of glak as given in the pages of ritter (erdkunde, vol. x. pp. 553 seq. and 703), and of langlois (collection des historiens de l'arménie, paris, 1867, vol. i. pp. 344 seq.). zenobius is reputed to have been the first bishop of this monastery. i must add that the work purporting to have been written by zenobius and called history of taron, from which ritter quotes and which is translated in langlois--and which the monks of surb karapet prize so highly--is regarded by modern scholars as a collection of legends made in the eighth or ninth centuries, and valueless as a historical document (see gelzer, die anfänge der armenischen kirche, in verhandlungen der könig. sächs. gesellschaft der wiss. zu leipzig, phil.-hist. klasse, 1895, p. 123). a much more trustworthy account of the doings of st. gregory in this neighbourhood is that given in the agathangelus treatise. i have summarised it in vol. i. ch. xvi. pp. 295, 296. [161] for some account of the doings of all these worthies see the history of john mamikonean (translated in langlois, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 361 seq.). [162] the older names are glak vank (from its first abbot), and innaknean vank (nine sources). [163] the moment that i placed my route on my map, i discovered that not the chaoush but my compass had misled me. the direction, as plotted, was quite wrong, as also were the shoots to known landmarks. happily i was able to fix the position of dodan with some confidence during my second journey; and the route has been adjusted accordingly. it is evident that the rocks of the plateau behind surb karapet must be heavily charged with magnetite. [164] from norshen in the east to the passage out of the murad at gurgur is a distance of about forty-five miles. brant, adopting different results, and possibly different measurements, ascribes to the plain of mush a length of "nearly forty miles" (j.r.g.s. 1840, vol. x. p. 352). [165] this altitude was ascertained, and the natural features, described with so much hesitation in the present chapter, were elucidated during the second journey (see ch. xxi.). [166] brant, op. cit. pp. 347 seq. [167] but i must record the fact that the people of bashkent, when asked the name of their plain, replied, khinis ova. [168] i have not reproduced my photograph of khamur, for a view of which i may refer my reader to ch. xii. fig. 177, p. 252. [169] in consul brant's time (1838) khinis belonged to the pashalik of mush, and was supposed to contain no more than 130 houses. it is described as "a most wretched town" (op. cit. p. 345). [170] i have decided, after all, not to reproduce this photograph. [171] it is interesting to compare brant's account of kulli in 1838. his words are:--"it formerly contained a great many armenian families. i was told that 200 emigrated to georgia, and only about 15 mohammedan families now reside among extensive ruins" (op. cit. p. 344). in 1893 the transformation has been completed, and kulli has become a kurdish village. the successive steps of the process, which is of general application, may be defined as follows: 1. emigration or disappearance of armenians (friends of turkey make excuses). 2. lapse into barbarism: enrolment of hamidiyeh (friends of turkey exult). 3. standing nuisance at the doors of russia (a heavy calm). 4. russian conquest (turkey disappears, her friends having preceded her). [172] see ritter (erdkunde, vol. x. pp. 390 seq.), and brant (op. cit. p. 341). hamilton (researches in asia minor, etc., london, 1842, vol. i. p. 185) throws doubt upon the popular belief that this and similar castles were built by the genoese; but i know not upon what foundation he may have based his scepticism. [173] which, by the way, is, i believe, made in england out of cloth. quousque tandem! [174] i will again cite brant's account, written in 1838:--"the greater portion of the armenian peasantry emigrated into georgia when the russian army evacuated turkey, after the peace of adrianople; in consequence of which emigration, the population of the villages has been much diminished, and there is a great deal of ground uncultivated for want of hands" (op. cit. p. 341). [175] the season was, it is true, rather exceptional. but it is a noteworthy fact that all these great plains--mush, khinis, pasin--were without snow at this advanced date. already in march the snow begins to melt. [176] brant estimates the distance between hasan kala and erzerum at only eighteen miles (op. cit. p. 341). if he is speaking of the distance by road he makes, i think, a considerable error. my own estimate is twenty-three miles. [177] the cone of sheikhjik was visited by dr. wagner in the forties and has been described by him at some length (reise nach persien, leipzig, 1852, vol. i. pp. 231 seq.). [178] smith and dwight, missionary researches in armenia, london, 1834, p. 62. [179] the jesuit father, thomas charles fleurian (estat présent de l'arménie, paris, 1694, 8vo, p. 81), speaks of erzerum as "capitale de la haute arménie sous la domination du grand seigneur ... une fort grande ville ... fort peuplée et fort riche; c'est le centre du commerce de tous ces païs-là. les caravanes qui vont de perse à alep, ou à smirne, ou à constantinople; ou celles qui viennent de ces mêmes endroits en perse passent toutes à erzerom." [180] tournefort, voyage au levant, paris, 1717, vol. ii. p. 279, and cp. schillinger, persianische und ost-indianische reise, nürnberg, 1707, 8vo, p. 81. it is a relief to read the warm sentiments of tournefort towards mr. prescot (such was the name of the british agent) in contrast to the verjuice with which our contemporary french travellers think it their duty to steep their pens when speaking of english enterprise or its agents in distant lands. the contrast enables us to measure the difference between the france of louis xiv. and that of the presidents. [181] brant in journal r.g.s. 1836, p. 201. [182] smith and dwight in op. cit. p. 64. there were also 645 families of armenian catholics and 50 of greeks. the remainder were mussulmans. [183] c. f. neumann, geschichte der uebersiedlung von 40,000 armeniern welche im jahre 1828 aus der persischen provinz adebaidschan nach russland anwanderten (from russian of s. glinka), leipzig, 1834, 8vo. [184] brant, loc. cit. it is generally supposed that not less than 60,000 armenians, headed by their bishop, accompanied the retirement of paskevich's army. [185] smith and dwight, op. cit. p. 441. [186] the plain of erzerum may be said to commence on the west at the village of titgir. [187] the excursion to the dümlü dagh is a favourite one in summer. the sources of the kara su, or western euphrates, have been visited and described by wagner (reise nach persien, leipzig, 1852, vol. i. pp. 237 seq.) and by strecker (zeitschrift für erdkunde, berlin, 1869, pp. 159 seq.). for a catalogue of the various species of birds found in the marshes of the kara su or in the neighbourhood of erzerum see curzon, armenia, london, 1854, chap. x. pp. 143 seq. [188] for the citadel and old walls of erzerum the following works may be consulted:--reyse von constantinopel, etc., by the hoch edelgeborener herr heinrich von poser und gross-nedlitz, jena, 1675, 4o; tournefort, voyage au levant, paris, 1717, vol. ii. pp. 260 seq.; morier, journey through persia, armenia, etc., london, 1812, pp. 320 seq.; macdonald kinneir, journey through asia minor, armenia, etc., london, 1818, pp. 366 seq.; hamilton, researches in asia minor, pontus and armenia, london, 1842, vol. i. pp. 178 seq.; texier, description de l'arménie, paris, 1842, part i. pp. 68 seq.; koch, reise im pontischen gebirge und türkischen armenien, weimar, 1846, pp. 274 seq., and curzon and wagner in operibus citatis. koch informs us of a cufic inscription on the watch-tower in the citadel which was copied by his companion, dr. rosen. he adds that it would be published in due course. [189] dalyell in journal r.g.s. 1863, p. 235; dove, zeitschrift für erdkunde, berlin, 1859, p. 67. the older travellers mention the circumstance that the houses in erzerum were constructed of wood. now they are all built of stone. [190] i would refer my reader to the accounts of hamilton, texier, curzon, koch and tozer. [191] the merchant in persia, who travelled in the early part of the sixteenth century, noticed the emblem of an eagle with two heads and two crowns on the buildings of diarbekr, once the capital of the ortukids, and mistook it for the imperial arms. see the translation of his work by charles grey (italian travels in persia, hakluyt society, london, 1873). [192] koch, reise im pontischen gebirge, etc., weimar, 1846, p. 284. [193] hamilton was informed by his guide that the chifteh minareh itself was built by a sultan of iran "570 years ago." that was in 1836. the same traveller speaks of a building in erzerum somewhat resembling chifteh minareh but with one minaret only. it seems to be the same as that described by texier under the name of mourgo-serai. i was assured that no such edifice exists at the present day. [194] samuel of ani in migne, patrologiæ cursus completus, series græca, paris, 1857, vol. xix. p. 706. [195] see also vol. i. ch. xvi. p. 261. [196] procopius, de bell. pers. lib. i. c. 10. the student must be careful to distinguish this theodosiopolis from the fortress of the same name on the khabur. the letter of the emperor to the patriarch isaac is given by moses of khorene, lib. iii. c. 57. [197] moses of khorene, lib. iii. c. 59. thousands of eggs are still collected in these marshes during spring by the inhabitants of the plain of erzerum. the hot springs mentioned are evidently those of ilija, a good hour's drive to the west of erzerum. [198] nöldeke, article "persia" in ency. brit. 9th edit. vol. xviii. p. 611; procopius, de edificiis, iii. c. 5. [199] procopius in loc. cit. in the time of justinian the frontier of roman armenia skirted the persian frontier from the city of amida (diarbekr) as far as theodosiopolis (ibid. iii. c. 1). [200] indgidgean, ap. neumann, quoted by ritter, erdkunde, vol. x. p. 759. [201] issaverdens, armenia and the armenians, venice, 1878, p. 109. [202] indgidgean in op. cit. [203] cedrenus, edit. bekker, p. 463; see gibbon, decline and fall, ch. liv. [204] constantine porphyrogenitus, de adm. imp. c. 45. [205] von hammer, geschichte des osm. reiches, vol. i. p. 25. [206] kyriakos, ap. ritter, erdkunde, vol. x. p. 760. [207] travels of evliya, translated by von hammer, london, 1850, vol. ii. p. 108. [208] abulfeda, annales, edit. reiske, iv. p. 367. for a plan and account of the ruins of the southern arzen see taylor in j.r.g.s. vol. xxxv. pp. 26 seq. evliya speaks of four towns bearing the name of erzen, viz. erzen in mesopotamia, erzen akhlat, erzen rum, commonly called erzerum, and erzenjan (von hammer's translation, ii. 202). the word erzen or arzen is discussed by boré, corr. et mémoires, paris, 1840, vol. i. pp. 184 seq. strecker (zeitschrift für erdkunde, berlin, 1869, pp. 152, 153) seeks to identify our artze or artsn with the site of the modern village of karars near the right bank of the kara su or euphrates, north-west of erzerum. [209] cedrenus, pp. 772, 773. he speaks of artze as a kômopolis in the neighbourhood of theodosiopolis which is described as a strong fortress. a vivid contemporary and native account of the sack of artze is furnished by the armenian historian, aristakes of lastivert. see prudhomme's translation in the revue de l'orient, paris, 1863, vol. xvii. pp. 275 seq. [210] saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. i. p. 68; tournefort, voyage du levant, paris, 1717, vol. ii. p. 276. [211] erzerum is also known to armenian writers under the name of karnoy kaghak (kalak) or town of karin, from which the name of kalikala, used by arabic authors, is probably derived. d'anville is certainly in error when he seeks to identify theodosiopolis with hasan kala in pasin. [212] since writing this description, general sir charles wilson's most admirable handbook for asia minor (london, murray, 1895) has come into my hands. he gives the distance between erzerum and trebizond, measured in miles along the chaussée, at 199 1/4 miles. another account makes the total 196 1/2 miles. i enquired in official circles at erzerum whether there were extant any exact record of the distance; a search was made in the archives with a negative result. a certain proportion of the milestones are still erect; but many have disappeared, the course of the road has been changed in places, and the milestones have been replaced, probably in an arbitrary manner. my own record, which is based on careful estimates of pace and time, is as follows:--erzerum--ashkala, 33 miles; ashkala--pirnakapan, 10 miles; pirnakapan--southern kop khan, 2 miles; southern kop khan--kop pass, 5 1/2 miles; kop pass--northern kop khan, 5 1/3 miles; northern kop khan--maden khan, 6 1/2 miles; maden khan--baiburt, 10 3/4 miles; baiburt (bridge)--varzahan, 6 miles; varzahan--osluk khan, 6 miles; osluk khan--khadrak, 8 miles; khadrak--vavuk pass, 4 1/2 miles; vavuk pass--murad khan, 10 1/3 miles; murad khan--lower gümüshkhaneh, 16 1/4 miles; lower gümüshkhaneh--ardasa, 16 1/2 miles; ardasa--southern zigana hamlet, 9 1/2 miles; southern zigana village--zigana pass, 4 1/2 miles; zigana pass--upper hamsi keui, 10 1/8 miles; upper hamsi keui--jevizlik, 15 1/4 miles; jevizlik--trebizond, 20 miles. total, 199 3/4 miles. a carriage (victoria) can be obtained in trebizond. such a vehicle, drawn by two horses, together with a cart for the luggage with a team of three, costs for the whole journey £13 : 10s. but, if i may offer a recommendation to the traveller, it is to render himself independent of the chaussée by purchasing horses and riding. large deductions from the mileage may be made in this way, and the jolting avoided which is inseparable from a metalled road kept in bad repair. indeed wheeled traffic is as yet quite an anomaly both in turkey and in persia. on the other hand, it is extremely difficult to buy good horses in trebizond, although they may be readily purchased in erzerum. [213] according to strecker (zeit. erdk. berlin, 1869, vol. iv. p. 147) the serchemeh chai has a shorter course and brings less water than the kara su. i should consider that of these two uppermost constituents of the frat, the former has the greater average volume. [214] the basin of ashkala has been treated in its geological aspects by abich in his usually masterly manner (geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1882, pt. ii. sect. 1, pp. 100 seq.). [215] macdonald kinneir (journey through asia minor, etc., london, 1818, p. 358) seems to have mistaken this terjan range for that on the south of the murad. he is respectfully followed by the laborious ritter (erdkunde, vol. x. p. 743). but that erudite geographer, to whom we owe so much, should have been more careful to qualify the statement (p. 741) that the range which is crossed by the kop pass constitutes the "nordbegrenzung des armenischen plateaulandes." a few months' personal travel would have stood him in good stead after all his minute analysis of the works of travellers. [216] but one of them has already been drawn by layard (nineveh and babylon, p. 7); and i here reproduce a photograph taken during our second journey, which shows some interesting examples of old armenian tombstones with rams' heads in the cemetery of varzahan (fig. 173). [217] for the stages see ch. xi. p. 240. the route is shown on my map. [218] not that all the people one meets of distinctively greek type are christians. especially in the valleys most remote from the coast, as in that of the kharshut, the inhabitants of greek race have largely been converted to mohammedanism, or have become mohammedan for prudential or worldly motives. so complete has been the transformation in some places, that, when i asked my host at besh kilisa--a man whose physiognomy showed him to be a typical greek--to what nationality he belonged, he replied "osmanli." a section of the inhabitants of hamsi keui--a village south of the zigana--represent a transitional stage. their children are baptized, but a mollah recites prayers over them. they bear a mohammedan and a christian name, as, for instance, that of ahmed apostolos. when they die the papa and the mollah dispute the corpse. they have neither church nor mosque. when they meet a greek they bid him kallispera, and, when a mohammedan, merhaba. [219] the following are the stages:--jevizlik--sumelas, 10 1/2 miles; sumelas across the kazikly dagh to tashköpri, 11 miles; tashköpri viâ tshörak khan and across the kitowa dagh to mezere khan, 18 1/4 miles; mezere khan to baiburt, 17 1/2 miles. from baiburt the summer road to erzerum viâ the khosabpunar pass may be taken, the stages being:--baiburt--maden khan, 10 3/4 miles; maden khan to khosabpunar village on the south side of the pass (8600 feet), 28 miles; khosabpunar village viâ maimansur to erzerum, 29 miles. total distance from trebizond by this route, 145 miles, as against the 199 miles of the chaussée. see ch. x. p. 225. [220] the following are my estimates of the mileage distances along our route to khinis: erzerum--palandöken pass, 7 1/4 miles; palandöken pass--madrak, 8 miles; madrak--khedonun, 11 1/2 miles; khedonun--kherbesor, 8 3/4 miles; kherbesor--ali mur, 7 miles; ali mur--khinis, 18 miles. total, 60 1/2 miles. such estimates throughout this work are based on pace and on time occupied; and the results have been checked by the positions fixed by cross bearings. [221] the illustration was taken from a hill near khedonun, almost in the centre of the basin-like area. but the appearance both of basin and of mountain are substantially the same from the palandöken pass. i may refer my reader to the similar landscape taken in winter (ch. viii. fig. 161). [222] see ch. viii. p. 188. [223] the following were our stages to tutakh:--khinis--dedeveren, 17 miles; dedeveren--gunduz, 8 miles; gunduz--gopal, 9 miles; gopal--rashan, 8 1/4 miles; rashan--alkhes, 23 1/2 miles, several of which might have been saved; alkhes--tutakh, 18 1/2 miles. total, 84 1/2 miles. [224] see ch. viii. p. 178. [225] the subject is discussed, vol. i. ch. xxi. pp. 422 seq. [226] the stages are as follows:--tutakh--gargalik, 12 1/2 miles; gargalik--melazkert, 24 3/4 miles. total, 37 1/4 miles. [227] the calculation is based on the difference between the level of the lake (5637 feet) and that of the murad at the old bridge of melazkert (5174 feet). both levels were taken with the boiling-point apparatus. [228] the fall between tutakh and melazkert can only amount to about 100 feet. [229] this yusuf pasha is not the same as the yusuf bey who received me at köshk (see ch. ii. p. 16). [230] the original name is manazkert, which the turks have corrupted into melazkert. in the older name there perhaps lurks that of menuas, the vannic king, who reigned in the ninth century before christ (see ch. iv. p. 71). [231] saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. i. p. 251. [232] i have transcribed my impressions, as written on the spot. but it is possible that the present aspect of the walls as well as the bridge may be due to the mohammedan rulers of melazkert. the great tower in the citadel may well be later than the eleventh century. still there can be little doubt that the work was carried out by armenians, and in harmony with the original plan. unfortunately almost all the inscriptions have disappeared. we observed a slab of calcareous stone inserted in the north wall, and engraved with an arabic inscription, but it was much obliterated. a slab of the same material, and in the same condition, containing an inscription, probably in the syriac character, is built into the kaimakam's house. we were told that a number of inscriptions had been abstracted by the son-in-law of raouf pasha, vali of erzerum. outside the citadel, lying upon the ground, we examined a well-preserved cuneiform inscription, engraved upon two sides of a block of granitic rock, unlike any stone found here. i was under the impression that it had already been discovered and translated; so we did not take a copy. i now find that we should have done well to copy it. scheil (recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égypt. et assyr., paris, 1896, vol. xviii. pp. 75-77) describes and translates an inscription which, he says, was recently discovered at melazkert by the district engineer, but he does not mention the exact locality. it is an inscription of menuas, recording a restoration. within the citadel, near our encampment, one of those large stones which have been elsewhere described, incised with the elaborate traceries of an armenian cross, was seen among the debris. it was in excellent preservation, having only recently been dug out in situ. [233] our stages were:--melazkert--demian, 10 miles; demian--akhlat (erkizan), 20 1/2 miles. [234] coracias garrulus, belonging to a family closely allied to the kingfishers and bee-eaters. but what hideous names have been given to this beautiful bird! [235] the credit of whatever information we already possess is due, among modern travellers, almost exclusively to englishmen. i may cite brant (journal r.g.s. 1840, vol. x. pp. 406 seq.), layard (discoveries in the ruins of nineveh and babylon, london, 1853, pp. 24 seq.), and tozer (turkish armenia, london, 1881, pp. 315 seq.). the last of these writers does not appear to have read layard's account, which would have saved him some lengthy speculations. ritter (erdkunde, vol. x. p. 326) may also be consulted. [236] the white stone which may be seen inserted in the masonry of some of the tombs at akhlat is not a true marble, but a compact limestone, easy to chisel. it must have been brought from a distance, perhaps from the opposite shore of the lake, as we met with no such stone in situ during our wanderings. [237] i am indebted to my friend, mr. e. denison ross, for careful translations of these and the following inscriptions. [238] brant (op. cit. p. 407) attests its existence at the time of his visit. [239] woodcuts of this tomb are given by layard (op. cit. p. 24) and by müller-simonis (op. cit. p. 313). [240] madavantz belongs to the caza but not to the casaba, or home district, of akhlat. [241] geography, attributed to vardan ap. saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, vol. ii. p. 429. one of these monasteries contained the leather girdle of st. gregory, and another was consecrated by the saint himself. [242] constantine porphyrogenitus, de adm. imp. c. 44, in vol. iii. p. 196 of the bonn edition. [243] lane-poole, mohammedan dynasties, london, 1894, p. 118. [244] deguignes, hist. des huns, paris, 1756, vol. i. p. 253; lane-poole, op. cit. p. 170. [245] saint martin, quoting chamchean, hist. vol. iii. p. 221. [246] layard (op. cit. p. 26) mentions a local tradition that all these tombs were built by sultans of the ak-kuyunli (white sheep) and kara-kuyunli (black sheep) turkomans. the inscriptions show that this cannot be the case. the venetian traveller barbaro, who visited the country during the first half of the fifteenth century, found it in the possession of the horde of the black sheep. they were driven out by the rival horde of the white sheep under uzun hasan (1466-1478). layard speaks of bayindar as a known sultan of the white sheep horde, i know not upon what authority. [247] von hammer, geschichte des osmanischen reiches, vol. iii. p. 143. akhlat appears to have contained the tombs of some of the ancestors of the ottoman ruling house (ibid. note to p. 144 on p. 676). [248] the merchant in persia (travels of italians in persia, hakluyt society, london, 1873, p. 160), who visited armenia in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, describes it as follows:--"this calata (sic) was anciently a large city, as can be seen by the buildings, but is now reduced to a small fortress." [249] the accuracy of the results obtained with our steward telemeter was well tested on nimrud by these cross-readings from salient points along the edge of the crater. the principal credit, however, for the excellent measurements, taken under great difficulties, owing to the uneven surface of the ground, is due to captain elliot, who was ably seconded by mr. oswald. [250] among craters similar in character to nimrud the best comparison would seem to be afforded by the crater lake of oregon (cascade range). the average diameter of this crater is a little more than 5 1/2 miles, and while the inner slopes around the lake are precipitous, those facing outwards to the platform upon which the crater is reared are gentle. the highest point is 8200 feet above the sea, and the lake has a depth of 2000 feet (see j. s. diller, american journal of science, 1897, p. 165). the well-known craters in the sandwich islands are much smaller than nimrud, the largest, kilauea, having a maximum diameter of 2 1/2 miles. [251] or it may merely represent the terminal walls of lava streams. [252] a single paragraph in an article by major clayton, r.a., entitled "the mountains of kurdistan" (alpine journal, aug. 1887), is the only account known to me of the interior of the nimrud crater. brant confines himself to the following grotesque description (journal r.g.s. 1840, vol. x. p. 378):--"the nimrud range (sic) runs nearly north and south, but at its southern extremity is terminated by a cross range (sic), called the kerkú tágh, running east and west." [253] merchant in persia, travels of italians in persia, hakluyt society, london, 1873, p. 159. [254] the name rava is sometimes applied to this plateau. [255] the kaimakam of akhlat, who knows the district well, assured us that there was a permanent outlet. layard, on the other hand, speaks of an intermittent one (discoveries in the ruins of nineveh and babylon, london, 1853, p. 21). i regret that i am unable to express certainty on the point. in the case of lake bulama, however, i am able to vouch for the fact that its waters find their way to the murad. [256] the following are the approximate distances along the route described in this chapter:--tadvan to norshen, 12 3/4 miles; norshen to nazik, 23 1/2 miles; akhlat to adeljivas, 15 miles. [257] oswald took several careful observations of the dip of these limestones. the norm was 50° south by east. [258] the best account of adeljivas is that of tozer (turkish armenia, london, 1881, p. 335). the width of the enclosure is given by him as 250 yards, on the side of the shore. the parallel lines of walls descend into the water. within the enclosure "one ancient mosque with a minaret remains, and also part of another considerable building. the mosque, which is now used as a storehouse for corn, appears to be of the same date as those in the castle of akhlat; it is massively built of stone, with but little ornament, and its arches are pointed and slightly ogived." müller-simonis has a nice woodcut (du caucase au golfe persique, paris, 1892, p. 301). [259] this is the height of the village of uran gazi. [260] it would require a series of very careful observations to determine whether this eminence--which i shall call the eastern summit--or the western summit of sipan be the higher. by boiling-point we obtained the following results:--eastern summit (4th august), 13,590 feet; western summit (5th august), 13,714 feet. but these readings were taken on different days. on the other hand, the aneroid registered:--eastern summit (4th august), 13,650 feet; eastern summit (5th august), 13,790 feet; western summit (5th august), 13,754 feet. at present the question must be left open--and indeed it is not of much importance. [261] such ziarets exist upon almost all the prominent mountains, great or small, in this part of armenia. the custom no doubt comes down from an epoch of nature-worship. [262] it will be recognised from the above description that the summit of sipan is much more basin-like than that of ararat. sipan probably possessed a crater in the proper sense. that of ararat is so much worn down that it can scarcely be said to exist. sipan appears to have been built up by successive lava streams, which became more and more viscous, until that finally emitted had no power to flow at all, and merely welled up, forming the circular mass on the east. the lava composing that mass is spongy and glassy, a glassy mica-andesite. the narrow ridge, upon which we camped, and which may represent the northern rim of the old crater, consists of a slabby rhyolite with impure obsidian; it is covered up with cindery slag. the western summit and surrounding rock is made up of a lava somewhat similar to that on nimrud--a dull impure obsidian with ill-developed spherulites; the flow structure is well marked. tuffs were nowhere to be seen. but a bastion on the northern side of the mountain was cloaked with grey pumice sand. the ascent of the mountain is described by brant (j.r.g.s. 1840, vol. x. pp. 409 seq.) and by tozer (turkish armenia, pp. 327 seq.). but they both largely underestimate the height. they appear to have been misled by the fact that the highest points are free from snow in midsummer; but the summit region in general is a mass of snow even at that season. on ararat such piles of rock, on which the snow has been unable to obtain a footing, are found quite near the summit, which is nearly 17,000 feet high. [263] the list is divided into cazas and villages:--adeljivas caza--1, uran gazi; 2, kogus. van caza--3, shikhare; 4, shikhuna; 5, azikare; 6, pakis. akhlat caza--7, kholik; 8, agjavireh; 9, yogurtyemes; 10, develik; 11, khanik. melazkert caza--12, serdut; 13, yarelmish; 14, kara ali; 15, simu. bulanik caza--16, gopo. khinis caza--17, lekbudagh. varto caza--18, charbahur; 19, charbahur tepe; 20, akhpoghan; 21, zirnek; 22, budag; 23, shekan; 24, aineh. in addition to these--i will not vouch for the spelling--there were, he said, to be found circassians on the side of erzerum. [264] the intermediate distances along the route described in this chapter were as follows:--uran gazi viâ leter and lake bulama to gop, 32 miles; gop to charbahur, deviating to the confluence of the bingöl su (khinis) with the murad, 52 3/4 miles; charbahur to gumgum, 6 3/4 miles; gumgum to gundemir, 9 1/4 miles. total, 100 3/4 miles. [265] mytilus (congeria) polymorphus. [266] layard (discoveries in the ruins of nineveh and babylon, london, 1853, p. 20) speaks of it under the name of the lake of shailu. [267] the distances are as follows:--gop to karaogli (including one considerable deviation), 12 3/4 miles; karaogli to shakhberat, 10 miles; shakhberat to charbahur, 30 miles. total, 52 3/4 miles. [268] a horse's knee would represent a depth of 1 foot 5 inches, and a horse's girth 2 feet 9 inches. [269] the lava may be described as a fine-grained augite-andesite, grey in colour with distinct augite crystals. it is slightly scoriaceous superficially. [270] existing literature on the subject is not satisfactory. i may cite the following:--koch, reise im pontischen gebirge, etc., weimar, 1846, pp. 365 seq., and p. 333; der kaukasus, landschaftsund lebens-bilder, by the same author, published posthumously, berlin, 1882. see the chapter entitled "der berg der tausend seen." p. de tchihatchef (1858), asie mineure, part iv., geology, paris, 1867, vol. i. pp. 279-285; kotschy, reise von trapezunt, etc., in petermann's mittheilungen, 1860; strecker, beiträge zur geographie von hoch-armenien, in zeitschrift der gesellschaft für erdkunde zu berlin, 1869, pp. 512 seq.; radde in petermann, 1877, pp. 411 seq. of these, radde's article is the most reliable, and is, indeed, a valuable contribution, so far as it goes. abich has endeavoured to make the best of these accounts. see geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1882, part ii. sec. 1, p. 77, and pp. 87 seq. [271] strecker, op. cit. p. 516. this writer calls the western summit toprak kala, or the earth castle. [272] a fairly compact augite-andesite. [273] w. gifford palgrave, in nature, vol. v. 1871-72, p. 444; and vol. vi. 1872, pp. 536 seq. [274] strecker (op. cit. p. 515) states that he found a stone three feet long and two feet broad, inscribed with cuneiform characters, lying on the ground in a depression east of kara kala. it was surrounded by the gravestones of a little cemetery. for an account of the inscription on our stone see ch. iv. p. 73. [275] see geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1882, vol. ii. pp. 7, 85, and 89. [276] both oswald and myself had read abich's account of this so-called crater. he appears to regard it as a volcanic crater in the strict sense. i am inclined to think that his drawing is very much exaggerated (geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1882, ii. theil, pp. 73 et seq.). [277] for the stages see ch. xi. p. 240. [278] an account of this route which i have before me gives the distance between rizeh and erzerum as only 119 miles. it leaves ispir (in the chorokh valley) a little to the east. [279] i must not omit to record the assistance which i have received from the map of h. kiepert, provinces asiatiques de l'empire ottoman. the sheets which cover the armenian country embody the results of my predecessors, which have been compiled with great judgment. i have also had access to two russian maps embracing portions of the country, (1) scale 10 versts = one inch, 1889, (2) scale 20 versts = one inch, 1899. but the map of kiepert with all its merit is necessarily sketchy; and the last russian map is flagrantly incorrect. [280] see the map of loftus in quarterly journal of the geological society, vol. xi. london, 1855, p. 247. [281] see the map of abich in geologische forschungen in den kaukasischen ländern, vienna, 1882, atlas, karte i.; and part ii. p. 141. [282] a fine view of the range at this point is displayed by abich, op. cit., atlas table iii. [283] abich, op. cit. part ii. p. 155. [284] abich, op. cit. part ii. p. 160. [285] e. clayton, the mountains of kurdistan, in the alpine journal, 1887. [286] for some account of the geology of azerbaijan see c. grewingk, die geognostischen und orographischen verhältnisse des nördlichen persiens, st. petersburg, 1853. [287] the best account of this country is that of j. g. taylor, j.r.g.s. vol. xxxviii. 1868. i may also refer my reader to two articles by dr. butyka (mitt. der k. k. geographischen gesellschaft in wien, vol. xxxv. 1892, pp. 99-126 and 194-210), who has collected the scanty notices of his predecessors and added his own experiences. i have made use of some unpublished material in the preparation of this part of my map; but it is far from satisfactory. [288] see the inscription and translation by professor sayce in the journal of the royal asiatic society, vol. xiv. 1882, no. xxxiii. p. 558. [289] tozer, turkish armenia and eastern asia minor, london, 1881, pp. 256 seq. [290] h. binder describes the route from mosul through amadia, julamerik, kochannes and mervanen to van (au kurdistan, en mésopotamie et en perse, paris, 1887). see also w. f. ainsworth, travels in asia minor, etc., london, 1842, vol. ii. pp. 179 seq., with geological section from mosul to lake urmi. [291] for the geology of the taurus between diarbekr and kharput an article by w. warington smyth in the quarterly journal of the geological society of london, 1845, vol. i. pp. 330 seq., may be consulted. i do not understand his statement that the breadth of the main ridge of taurus between arghana and kharput is nearly 50 miles. loftus (op. cit. p. 344) has drawn a geological section from bitlis through sert to jezireh-ibn-omar. like the zagros, the range may be said to consist in the main of nummulitic limestone. [292] abich, op. cit. part ii. p. 119 note. [293] i cannot speak with certainty as to the geological nature of the pir reshid dagh. [294] for tendurek, which appears to be in a solfataric condition, see abich's article in the bulletin of the french geological society, 2nd series, xxi. pp. 213 seq., and letter from t. k. lynch in p.r.g.s. xiii. pp. 243, 244. [295] the miocene deposits are found in the valleys, e.g. in those of the frat (western euphrates) and araxes. an interesting fact has been brought to my notice by mr. f. oswald, my friend and companion during my last journey. there may be seen in the tiflis museum the remains of a mammoth which was discovered in the lacustrine deposits of the alexandropol district. similar remains had already been found in deposits of similar character and age in the neighbourhood of khinis by colonel j. shiel. these are in the british museum, where they have been christened elephas armeniacus. [296] see blue-book, turkey, no. 6, 1881, p. 127. [297] the clause in the berlin treaty relating to the armenians is as follows:--article 61. "la sublime porte s'engage à réaliser sans plus de retard les améliorations et les réformes qu'exigent les besoins locaux dans les provinces habitées par les arméniens et à garantir leur sécurité contre les circassiens et les kurdes. elle donnera connaissance périodiquement des mesures prises à cet effet aux puissances qui en surveilleront l'application." the armenian delegates to the berlin congress presented a memoir to the european plenipotentiaries in which they set forth their cause. it is published by de la jonquière in his histoire de l'empire ottoman, paris, 1881, pp. 39-44. they also drew out a project for an organic regulation to be applied to the new province. it was to be administered by an armenian governor-general appointed by the porte with the consent of the powers. [298] the statistics of population were supplied by the patriarch nerses to mr. goschen. they may be found in blue-book, turkey, no. 23, 1880, p. 274. mr. goschen, writing to lord granville on 15th july 1880, says: "my strong feeling is that the powers cannot commit themselves to any plan until they know the real facts about the population. it would not do to build on a mistaken basis, and i feel convinced that no one has sure ground. the patriarch's figures are as exaggerated as those of the porte on the other side. again, how to deal with the nomad kurds? all must depend on the physical force of the two different races and religions. if the armenians should be in a minority it will be dangerous to give them the same institutions which we should give if they were in a majority, dangerous to themselves" (blue-book, turkey, no. 6, 1881, p. 16). and, again, in another despatch of 23rd july: "with regard to the actual project of reforms, the letter of the patriarch is conceived in such vague phrases that but little advantage is to be derived from it in elucidating the problem to be solved" (ibid. p. 20). [299] see lord granville's despatch, 10th february 1881: "in consequence of the objections raised by the german government, mr. goschen will not be instructed to put forward the armenian question immediately on his return to constantinople." [300] the figures for the town and merkez-caza of van are based on my own knowledge. those for the other cazas of van sanjak are the turkish official figures for 1890, except in the case of adeljivas caza, where i have substituted a private estimate. [301] the figures for bitlis vilayet are the turkish official figures for 1893. [302] the figures for kharput sanjak are an estimate made for me by consul boyajean of diarbekr, at the instance of consul r. w. graves. i had previously calculated that the christians were in a majority in that sanjak. the population of the dersim sanjak has been estimated from various sources. the estimate is little better than a guess. [303] the figures for caza palu have been furnished by consul boyajean. [304] the turkish official figures, as annexed to the british consular trade report for 1887, have been adopted for the vilayet of erzerum. except in the cases of van town and caza, and possibly in those of vilayet kharput and caza palu, a large percentage might be added to the figures above given in order to provide for the imperfect registration of females. under this head the figures for the other cazas of van might be increased by 10 per cent; those for bitlis vilayet by 13 per cent; and those for erzerum vilayet by 7 per cent. [305] the statistical area with which we are dealing for the turkish provinces measures 42,814 square miles. if we were to adopt the area delimited by the armenian delegates to the berlin congress, the proportion of christians to mohammedans would be still smaller. [306] it is interesting to compare these results, which were obtained quite independently and before i had seen his estimate, with the figures given by the late mr. taylor, for many years british consul for erzerum and the surrounding country. mr. taylor knew the country intimately, and had travelled extensively in it. on his figures are based those which have been given by his successors in office, and which appear in the blue-books. after making the necessary deductions for districts annexed to russia since the date of mr. taylor's reports, his estimate of the population, as adapted to the area with which we are dealing, is as follows:--turks, 348,350; kurds, 466,982; christians, 352,657--total, 1,167,989. this estimate corresponds in a satisfactory manner with mine, after we have made allowance for information, either new or more complete, which has appeared with reference to certain districts since taylor's time. the census shows that taylor under-estimated the turks who inhabit the northern cazas of erzerum vilayet. taylor also placed the kizilbash kurds of the dersim at 110,000. relying on more recent reports, i place them at 50,000. [307] consul taylor, in alluding to the kurds of the tableland, has written to the following effect: "the kurds inhabiting the erzerum districts, with the exception of the hakkiari, were originally immigrants from the vicinity of diarbekr; and there is only one tribe, the mamakanlu--said to be descended from the armenian mamikoneans--who are natives of the soil." [308] this tax is known in the country under the name of kishlak, or winter quarters. [309] vahan vardapet, in an armenian newspaper published in constantinople, the djeridei sharkieh, under date the 3/15 december 1886. [310] see curzon's persia, vol. i. p. 548. [311] ibid. vol. ii. p. 493. [312] 2 kings xix. 37; moses of khorene, i. 23. [313] saint martin, mémoires sur l'arménie, i. 163. [314] faustus of byzantium, iii. 9. [315] for instance the kurdish beys of zokh believe themselves to be descended from the dynasty of sanasar. again an armenian convent, called norshen, is held in reverence by both the armenian and kurdish inhabitants; and the name of that convent is believed to be a corruption of nor-shirakan or new shirak--a name applied to the country by the earliest armenian writers, agathangelus (ch. cxxvi.) and faustus (v. 9). [316] john katholikos, ch. xxviii. [317] see especially turkey, no. i. 1895, parts i. and ii. [318] it may be found among the archives of the british consulate at erzerum. [319] chesney, expedition for the survey of the rivers euphrates and tigris carried on by order of the british government, london, 1850, 2 vols. folio with maps; narrative of the euphrates expedition, london, 1868, 8vo. [320] "the preservation, so far as it is still possible, of the integrity of persia must be registered as a cardinal principle of our imperial creed." "i should regard the concession of a port upon the persian gulf to russia by any power as a deliberate insult to great britain, as a wanton rupture of the status quo, and as an intentional provocation to war; and i should impeach the british minister, who was guilty of acquiescing in such a surrender, as a traitor to his country." "it (i.e. the aggression of russia upon south persia and the persian gulf) can only be prosecuted in the teeth of international morality, in defiance of civilised opinion, and with the ultimate certainty of a war with this country that would ring from pole to pole."--curzon, persia and the persian question, london, 1892, vol. ii. pp. 603, 605, 465. may i, as a traveller, take the present opportunity of contributing my mite of gratitude to lord curzon for this considerable work? [321] "the amir of afghanistan," quarterly review, january 1901, p. 167. [322] the general assembly of the armenian nation met regularly in constantinople until 1892. some of the provincial assemblies still continue their meetings. but the constitution is practically in abeyance owing to the strained relations at present existing between the palace and the armenians. [323] comptes-rendus, acad. des sciences, paris, 1847, xxi. p. 1111. [324] vergl. chem. untersuch. d. wässer d. casp. meeres, urmia u. van-sees, mém. acad. sc. st. pétersbourg, 1859, séries 6, math. et phys. vol. vii. [325] müller-simonis, p., du caucase an golfe persique, paris, 1892, p. 258. [326] loc. cit. [327] proc. roy. soc. lxv. p. 312, london, 1899. [328] list of sources.--british museum library catalogues; royal geographical society, catalogues and publications; poole's index to periodicals, 1848-96; review of reviews, annual index, 1890-99; catalogue of york gate geographical library, lond. 1886; académie des sciences de st. pétersbourg, tableau général des publications (langues étrangères), st. pet. 1872. list of books in library of tiflis museum, kindly compiled for the author by dr. radde. petermann's mittheilungen, gotha, 1855-1900; bibliothèque asiat. et afric. (ternaux-compans h.), paris, 1841; bibliotheca geographica (1750-1856) (engelmann, w.), leipz. 1858; bibliotheca orientalis (zenker, j. t.), vol. ii. leipz. 1861; catalogue de la section des russicæ, st. pet. 1873; bibliographia caucasica et transcaucasica (miansarov, m.), st. pet. 1874-76; bibliographies géog. spéciales (jackson, j.) paris, 1881; orientalische bibliographie (müller, a.), 1887-96, berlin, 1897; bibliotheca geographica (baschin, o.), 1891-97, berlin, 1899; catalogue des livres de l'imprimerie arménienne de saint-lazare, venice, 1894. encyclopædias: zedler, leipz. 1732; ersch. u. gruber, leipz. 1820; m'clintock and strong, new york, 1867; ency. britannica, lond. 1875-89; brockhaus, leipz. 1882; meyer, leipz. 1885; dictionnaire de géog. paris, 1879-95; la grande encyclopédie, paris, 1887 seq.; real-ency. f. protestantische theologie (article armenien by gelzer), leipz. 1897. special bibliographies: dubois de montpéreux, voyage autour du caucase, paris, 1839-43; saint-martin (v. de), hist. des découv. géog. paris, 1846; müller-simonis, du caucase au golfe persique, paris, 1892; bibliographie analytique des ouvrages de m. f. brosset (1824-79), st. pet. 1887. authorities quoted by ritter, die erdkunde von asien, berlin, 1832-59; reclus, nouv. géog. universelle, paris, 1876-94; lanier, l'asie, paris, 1889.