ARMENIA IN THE MOUNTAINS.
The following tour through the heart of Armenia and part of Kurdestan is prepared that the reader may follow more easily the course of the whirlwind of death and desolation that was soon to sweep down from the upper valleys of Ararat far out upon the plains until it met the cyclone from the West and enveloped the whole land in misery, destitution and despair, filled all the air of heaven with the shrieks and agonies of the tortured and the dying martyrs for the faith once delivered to the saints.
We enter the valley at Kharput or Harpoot, which is situated in the valley of the Murad, the eastern branch of the Euphrates river. Coming into the valley from the west, we find ourselves in the midst of a well-cultivated district, and as we advance the villages become numerous. The city is situated upon rising ground, which is bounded by a long line of steep, flat-topped heights. The approach from the south presents a most striking appearance as we ascend by a steep, winding path the narrow ravine reaching up to the plateau above, where at the base of the ruined walls of a medieval castle, nestle the buildings of a part of the Armenian quarter—the rest of the city spreading out to the verge of the hill.
From this height, a thousand feet above the lower ground, there is a superb prospect over the rich plain studded with villages and bounded on the south by the Taurus range, which contains the sources of the Tigris and separates this country from the lowlands of Mesopotamia. To the east and west lie an expanse of undulating ground, stretching on the one hand towards the Murad, into which this district drains, on the other in the direction of the Euphrates. The length of this plain to the foot of the Taurus is about fifteen miles, while the Murad is about the same distance eastward. This plain is a most beautiful sight in the spring time, when the whole is one vast carpet of green. According to the natives, the number of the villages it contains is three hundred and sixty-five, and they also claim this place was the site of Eden—they even point out the place where Adam first saw the light. The houses of the missionaries of the American Board and the college buildings, all of which were laid in ruins, were built not far from the edge of the high precipitous cliff and commanded this beautiful prospect. The elevation of Kharput, or Harpoot, is about four thousand five hundred feet above sea level. From its strategic position it has been occupied by a city from very early times. It is now the leading city in the province and has about five thousand houses—five hundred Armenian, the rest Turkish, while the villages in the plains are occupied almost entirely by the Armenians. These villages were almost swept off the earth during the Harpoot massacres. The Armenian College was the finest in Eastern Turkey and the value of mission property destroyed was upwards of $80,000.
MAP OF TURKEY IN ASIA.
A day’s journey up the eastern branch of the Euphrates brings us to the Castle-rock of Palu. This rock is nine hundred feet above the river and on its summit is the town of about one thousand five hundred houses. Palu has the honor of being the dwelling place of St. Mesrob, the saint who invented the Armenian alphabet about 406 A. D., and translated the Scriptures into that tongue. His name is still in great repute in his native country.
If we should leave the valley of the Euphrates to the northward, five hours of steep climbing would bring us to the top of the mountain ridge that overlooks the great plain of Moush, which stretches forty miles away to the eastward towards Lake Van. From the top of this ridge to the Monastery of St. John the Baptist the road is one of the most beautiful in all Armenia, as it follows a terrace path along the mountain side through low forests, commanding a succession of beautiful views into the valley of the Euphrates. On rounding a shoulder of the mountain we have the first sight of the towers of the monastery, which occupies a small table of ground with very steep slopes both above and below it, at an elevation of six thousand feet above the sea and about two thousand above the plain.
This Monastery was founded by St. Gregory the Illuminator, the Apostle of the Armenians, having in residence before the massacres twenty Monks and one hundred lay brethren under the care of the Superior. Some of these priests were highly educated, speaking French fluently beside Armenian and Turkish. But all these monasteries were utterly destroyed by the Kurds in the late savage raids.
The town of Moush is nearly a day’s ride up the Euphrates valley from the point where the road down the mountains from the Monastery reaches the river. The plain is one of great beauty—quite productive, growing fine harvests of wheat. Fine gardens are found about the villages which nestle in the ravines which put up into the Taurus mountains on the south side of the plain. At the head of one of these narrow valleys is the city of Moush of three thousand houses, about one-fourth of them belonging to Armenians. The hillsides are devoted to gardens and vineyards which flourish here, though the elevation is four thousand feet above the sea. This plain was swept with the wind of desolation at the time of the Sassoun massacre.
As we continue our journey up the valley we rapidly rise above the plain into the mountains which separate the valley of Moush from Lake Van.
A few hours’ ride from Nurshin, the last Armenian village, takes us through a mountain pass about six thousand feet high, into the territory of the Kurds—Kurdestan.
We take this way that we may more readily understand how the Kurds and the Turks could make such awful havoc of the Armenians when they were “let loose” upon them.
When the head of this pass is reached, we are at a point of some geographical interest. It is one of Nature’s great crossroads. The waters from this mountain plateau, flow north and westward down the valley of Moush into the Euphrates, another valley opens eastward and downwards into Lake Van, and another southwards into the Tigris. It is somewhat similar to the water shed in the Rocky Mountains above Leadville, Col., where, from the same marshy plateau, the waters flow southward, forming the Arkansas, and so through the Royal Gorge, into the plains of Colorado eastward, and also westward and southward into the Grand River, through a most magnificent and beautiful Canon, past Glenwood Springs and so into the Colorado River and the Gulf of California.
Let us turn southward and make an excursion to Bitlis before resuming the journey to Van. At various points in this high mountain valley are massively built stone Khans which are intended as refuges for travelers at unfavorable seasons of the year. They make considerable pretensions to architectural beauty, having portals and arched recesses and are of great antiquity. Three hours’ hard riding down a bare stony valley would bring us to the entrance of Bitlis.
Armenian Women, Province of Van.
When approached from this side Bitlis comes upon us as a surprise, for until you are within it, there is nothing but a few trees to suggest that an inhabited place is near. It lies completely below the level of the upper valley which here suddenly makes a sheer descent so that the river which has now been swelled into a fair sized torrent, breaks into rapids and cataracts in its passage through the town. In the middle of the place it is joined by another stream from the mountains towards the northwest: and the buildings climb up the hillsides at the meeting of these valleys, rising one above another with a striking effect. Thus the Tigris breaks its way through deep chasms below, and for several days’ journey descends with great rapidity to the lower country. We will be struck with the massiveness of the stone built houses with large courts and gardens and abundance of trees surrounded with strong walls, the coping stones of which are constructed so as to rise to a sharp angle at the top.
In the middle of the town between the two streams rises the castle, occupying a platform of rock, the sides of which fall away precipitously and like all the cliffs around have vertical cleavings. The space which it covers is large, and it forms a very conspicuous object with its square and circular towers following the broken surface of the ground. There is a dull tone however, about the town, because of the brown sandstone which is used in its construction, being of the same hue as the bare mountains about it.
Remember that now we are on the southern slope of the mountains facing Arabia, and the climate is milder than in the Valley of Moush. The elevation is four thousand seven hundred feet and the thermometer rarely falls below zero in winter.
At Bitlis is a missionary station in charge of Rev. Mr. Knapp. The Kurdish mountains rise about the city in bare, cold grandeur. These summits are the conclusion of the Taurus Chain. They are the Niphates of antiquity, on the highest peak of which Milton makes his Satan to alight. [Par. Lost III. 741, “Nor stayed, till on Niphates’ top he lights.”]
The Castle is said to have been built by Alexander the Great. Bitlis was the site of an ancient Armenian city and was strongly fortified in the days of the Saracens. It recently contained thirty thousand inhabitants, ten thousand being Armenians. This city was the scene of a terrible slaughter and being determined that the Armenians who were left should perish by starvation, the Porte placed Mr. Knapp under arrest for treason and ordered him taken to Constantinople for trial before United States Minister Terrell.
Returning up to the head waters of the Tigris we next see a level plain extending eastward, hemmed in on either side by lofty mountains. Here in August are wheatfields extending up the hillsides to quite an elevation, showing what the harvests of that region might become under safe and careful husbandry.
Five hours’ journey from Bitlis brings us to the opening of the valley eastward, and as mountain ranges go sweeping around to the north and to the south, suddenly Lake Van bursts upon our astonished vision in all its beauty and grandeur. Fed by the snow upon the mountains, but with no visible outlet, Lake Van is about twice the size of Lake Geneva, as it lies in a hollow of these highlands five thousand feet above the tide. Its extreme length is ninety miles, its breadth where widest is thirty miles. This mountain lake is only five hundred feet lower than the highest sources of the Tigris. On the northwestern shore of the lake are the remarkable ruins of the very ancient Armenian city of Akhlat, on the North Mount Sipan, an extinct volcano with most imposing form and lofty summit, while on the southeastern shore is the Castle rock of Van, which, without exaggeration may be spoken of as one of the wonders of the world from its extraordinary formation, its rock-hewn chambers and its cuneiform inscriptions.
Coming down to the lake on its western shore and skirting it northwards, the little valleys are found full of copious springs surrounded by willows and poplars and an abundance of most luxuriant grass. Orchards filled with walnut, plum and apricot trees delight the eyes, and the apricots also the palate, being of excellent flavor. The ruins of Akhlat may be said to consist of three parts, the gardens on the upper, the ruined city on the second level and the castle one half mile distant on the lake shore. In the steep sandstone cliffs which wall in the ruined city, are numerous caves and also many artificial chambers, some of which were inhabited as late as 1880 as many doubtless now are in all parts of the mountains by the destitute Armenians. The most of the ruins here are of a Saracenic style of architecture. The castle is a large rectangular fortress measuring six hundred yards from the sea to the crest of the hill and three hundred yards across, having two gates which stand opposite to one another in the middle of the eastern and the western wall. Two ancient mosques, some fruit trees and ten inhabited cottages are the inventory of its contents. We must cut short the trip up Mount Sipan which is fourteen thousand feet high, for the sail in a very cumbrous craft across the lake to the city of Van.
It takes about four hours’ sailing to reach the landing place which is about a mile from the city proper. Immediately from the shore rises a curious mass of rocks commanding a most beautiful view. The slopes of the sides are protected by a succession of irregular walls, whose long outline is diversified by towers and other fortifications, and a minaret.
This rock is three hundred feet high and runs due east from the lake about two-thirds of a mile. At either end it rises by a gradual ascent and on its summit are two forts and a central castle. The city which is an irregular oblong lies entirely beneath this rock to the south, and is enclosed by lines of Turkish walls with battlements. The famous inscriptions are found for the greater part on this side of the rock, the most important one occupying an inaccessible position halfway up the face of the cliff.
This inscription is trilingual being written in three parallel columns and is much later in date than some of the others that are found there. It commemorates the exploits of Xerxes the son of Darius, and is very nearly word for word the same as those of that king at Hamadan and Persepolis.
When it was copied, a telescope was required to read it.
Here we see the Turks in large turbans and flowing robes, wild looking Kurds in sheepskin jackets, Persians in tall felt hats, and the Armenians in their more moderate dress.
There is a Christian assistant-governor here. He is supposed to have much power, but in reality has very little, being not much more than a convenient agent to the Governor. But his position has this advantage that he is only removable by the central Government at Constantinople, and not at the will of the Pasha for the time being. The assistant-governor is an Armenian and speaks both French and Italian well. The city contains about thirty thousand population of whom three-fourths are Armenians. On account of the nearness of the Persian frontier which is only sixteen hours off (about fifty miles) there is kept in the city a garrison of four hundred soldiers.
The view from the summit is most enchanting for on the one side lies the expanse of the blue sparkling lake with its circuit of mountains—not unlike Great Salt Lake with the Wasatch Mountains to the east and the beautiful plain stretching to the north and the south, and the Mountains away to the west. The fortifications at the shore end of the rock are of most massive stones, and are attributed to Semiramis, as in old Armenian books Van was called Shemiramagard or The City of Semiramis who made of it her summer capital.
The story of her love for the King of Armenia may be familiar. She had heard of the remarkable personal beauty and wisdom of Ara the King and sent Ambassadors offering him her hand and crown and love, and upon his spurning the offer and the dishonorable proposals attending it, she declared war against him giving orders that the King should not be slain. She was greatly distressed when she heard he had fallen in battle and before she left for Nineveh she had six hundred architects and twelve thousand workmen employed in erecting this new city for her summer residence.
The gardens of Van which stretch for several miles to the south and southeast were her glory and pride. Copious rivulets and streams with careful irrigation have made these gardens famous throughout the East.
Van was the only city which successfully resisted the Kurdish cavalry and the Turkish soldiers. It became the center also of Dr. Kimball’s great relief work which was carried on through the generous aid furnished by the Relief Fund of the Christian Herald of New York.
The mountains of Ararat, rise about sixty miles north of Lake Van. After crossing the mountain divide which separates the watershed of Van from that of Ararat, a valley opens out to the northeast. It was one of the highways for the armies of the middle ages and the head of the valley was once a strongly fortified city. Here were erected the fortresses that protected the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire when it stood at the zenith of its power.
Continuing our journey northwards the upland pastures are soon reached and the Kurdish encampments with their black tents begin to be very numerous. But being armed with a firman from the Porte, and with an official escort we pass on without serious trouble. Now we come upon a large encampment with numerous tents stretching along the course of a clear mountain stream.
The men are a wild, surly looking set with hair streaming down in long straggling locks. All of course are fully armed. The possessions of these nomad Kurds may be seen about the encampment—sheep, goats, oxen, cows, herds of horses, big mastiff dogs and greyhounds clothed with small coats.
A first look at the Kurdish tents gives a person the idea that they are chilly habitations, but there are tents within tents or separate rooms partitioned off, having a plentiful supply of carpets, rugs and pillows that are very comfortable indeed even in the cold nights they have at that elevation of nearly eight thousand feet.
Resuming our journey and soon after crossing a ridge a thousand feet higher than the valley where we have rested—the whole mass of Ararat—not merely the snow capped dome—suddenly reveals itself from base to summit—a most splendid sight.
Although the summit of Great Ararat, which has an elevation of seventeen thousand nine hundred and sixteen feet, yields in height to the peaks of the Caucasus in the north and to Demavend (nineteen thousand four hundred feet) in the east, nearly five hundred miles away, yet, as Bryce in his admirable book has observed, there can be but few other places in the world where a mountain so lofty rises from a plain so low. The summit of Great Ararat has the form of a dome and is covered with perpetual snow; this dome crowns an oval figure, the length of which is from northwest to southeast, and it is therefore the long side of this dome which we see from the valley of the Araxes. On the southeast, as we follow the outline farther, the slope falls at a more rapid gradient of from thirty to thirty-five degrees and ends in the saddle between the two mountains at a height of nearly nine thousand feet. From that point it is the shape of the Little Ararat which continues the outline towards the east; it rises in the shape of a graceful pyramid to the height of twelve thousand eight hundred and forty feet, and its summit is distant from that of Great Ararat a space of nearly seven miles. The southeastern slope of the lesser Ararat corresponds to the northwestern slope of the greater mountain and descends to the floor of the river valley in a long and regular train.
This mountain forms the boundary stone of three great Empires, the northern slopes of Great Ararat belong to Russia, the southern slopes to Turkey, while a portion of Little Ararat belongs to Persia.
From Ararat it is a six days’ journey to Erzeroum along what may be called the roof of Western Asia—these elevated plains being about six thousand feet high, and forming the watershed between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. While its own barrenness is as wearisome to the eye as the plains of Wyoming from Laramie to the Wasatch Mountains, it is constantly sending forth its streams to fertilize the far off plains to the east and the south.
From the western slope of Ararat the Euphrates takes its rise—rapidly cuts for itself a deep bed through steep walls of rock. Half a day’s journey down the river brings us in sight of the Monastery of Utch Keliseh or “Three Churches.” Only one, however, can be discovered—but that is the finest Ecclesiastical building in all Ancient Armenia, though in a sad state of disrepair, having been sacked by the Kurds a few years ago.
It is built of large blocks of black and grey stone. It has both round and pointed arches; the western door has a rude cable moulding over it, and much interlaced ornament. But it would take the pen of a Ruskin and numerous photographs to make the stones of this old church as eloquent as the Stones of Venice, although the story they could tell would be far more tragic than any story told beside the murmuring waves of the Adriatic. These ruined Monasteries and Churches tell us of a superior order of architecture for the houses also in the days of prosperity, but now the poverty of the villagers is described by their dwellings which are sometimes large in area, with low stone wall, flat roofs, the living-room raised but a foot or two above the floor of the stables. Here they are obliged to live—during the bitter cold winter—the warmth from the presence of the cattle being necessary to keep themselves from perishing, and for the sake of the heat, the smells and the noises are endured. Another day’s travel will bring us through Delibaba pass which is a succession of hills and valleys leading into the plains northward. After many miles of travel across the broad plain through which runs the Araxes eastward, the steep climbing of two extended ridges brings us to the top of the mountain slope that stretches down into the plain of Erzeroum, the city being built on the hillsides before they sweep out into the plain.
Erzeroum is the most important place in Armenia. The site is that of an ancient city as it commands the pass on the main line of communication between the Black Sea and Persia and is just on the edge of a wide and fertile plain.
The population which was once very large has declined of late years, and is now only about fifty thousand. About two-thirds are Armenians. Owing to its elevation, six thousand feet, and the fact that it lies on the north side of the range hence open to the blasts from the Black Sea it is very cold in winter. About two thousand of the people are Persians, and the great carrying trade is largely in their hands. They enjoy great freedom and consideration.
The journey from Erzeroum lies westward across the plain for three hours to the foot hills from which issue the “Hot Springs,” where Anatolius is said to have established his famous baths. In the mountains north of Erzeroum, six hours distant, are the sources of the western branch of the Euphrates River and from the warm springs the route lies along the hills overlooking the course of the winding river. Crossing the river the road skirts the broad and ever-winding valley of the Frat as this branch of the Euphrates is called at Erzeroum—until turning into a narrow rocky gorge the road begins to climb the sides of the lofty Kop Dagh which is the great barrier between Erzeroum and Baiburt on the road to Trebizond, and forms the watershed between the valleys of the Euphrates and the Black Sea. The road has been finely engineered and the rise is one of easy ascent, but the roadbed is somewhat out of repair, the smaller bridges are all but impassable. The higher the ascent the grander the views become over the successive mountain ranges to the south and the long depression that marks the course of the Frat, while the wild storms that go sweeping over the sky in that direction add to the grandeur of the effect. Imagine a sunset from the summit of this pass which is nearly eight thousand feet above sea level, and then the rapid plunge down the mountain side under deepening shadows to the large Khan at its base called Kop Khané, which is the natural starting point or resting place for all those who cross the pass of Kop Dagh.
This is a magnificent view across and down a wide valley bounded by lofty mountains, and through it runs the river Tchoruk, which flowing northwards then westward empties itself into the Black Sea at Batoum. The town of Baiburt lies on either side of this river. The river banks are flanked by extensive gardens with fruit and vegetables and large poplar plantations, while directly opposite stands the lofty castle hill crowned with a long and varied line of fortifications.
Baiburt is a considerable town of two thousand houses, three hundred of which are inhabited by Christians.
This fine old castle was built centuries ago by the Armenians, but had been captured and restored by the Seljukian Turks. But we will not linger longer here. A little farther on is the village of Varzahan which possesses some very interesting ruins of mediæval Armenian edifices of elaborate designs.
Our way now lies over granite mountains, wild and bare, though with some elements of grandeur about them. Large flocks of broadtailed sheep are feeding in the narrow valleys as we carefully pick our way along the road which is hardly more than a mountain path. The first view of the sea after crossing the chill, bleak mountains that divide Armenia from the coast, has a most inspiring effect. Away to the northeast rise the snow capped mountains of Lazistan, and completing all, the expanse of the soft, blue Euxine.
Our ride is now along terrace paths cut in the forests, everywhere embowered in trees. Every turn in the road opens up some new vista of beauty. The Greek villages on the hillsides present a prosperous appearance and an aspect of comfort. The faces that we see wear the bright, quick look which characterizes the Greek face. This is in striking contrast with the careworn look of the people of Armenia, where even the children had none of the brightness of other children: the life seemed too hard, the surroundings too dull, the lowering storms of persecution too near for even the children to smile.
The appearance of Trebizond as we approach it from the east is singularly pretty. The suburbs, on that side, are the starting places of the numerous caravans that are fitted out for Persia, then comes the extensive Christian quarters and the walled town inhabited by the Turks, which is the site of an ancient Byzantine city.
The total population is estimated at about thirty-two thousand, of whom two thousand are Armenians, seven or eight thousand Greeks, and the rest, with but a sprinkling of foreigners are Turks.
The city was glorious in the days of Tamerlane. Ancient writers were enthusiastic in their praises of its lofty towers, of the churches and monasteries in the suburbs; especially charming were its gardens and orchards and olive groves which the delightful but humid climate is so well suited to foster. Nature lovingly smiles upon it still, but the handful of scattered Christians, the ruins of stately churches and monasteries and walls all tell the same story of the conquest and heartless rule of the Turk, and emphasize with silent but pathetic eloquence the moaning cry for deliverance that rose up from prostrate and bleeding Armenia.
As we have traveled we have seen the helplessness of the unarmed Armenians when the Kurds went sweeping down the valleys upon the defenceless villages. How hopeless also any attempt at escape when the Kurds held possession of all the passes. Saddest of all there were no cities of refuge for them.
Van alone of all the cities of Armenia was able to resist and drive back the hordes of mountain warriors, yet her fertile plains were swept naked of their beautiful villages. Thousands of refugees were, however, kept alive by the generosity of the tender hearted in America as the chapter on Relief Work will graphically portray.
CHAPTER XI.
THE REIGN OF TERROR.
The time has come for every citizen to deliberately accept or repudiate his share of the joint indirect responsibility for a series of the hugest and foulest crimes that have ever stained the pages of human history. The Armenian people are being exterminated root and branch by Turks and Kurds—systematically and painfully exterminated by such abominable methods, and with such fiendish accompaniments as may well cause the most sluggish blood to boil and seethe with shame and indignation.
For the Armenians are not lawless barbarians or brigands: nor are the Turks and Kurds the accredited torch bearers of civilization. But even if the “rôles” of the actors in this hideous drama were thus distributed, an excuse might at most be found for severity, but no pretext could be discovered for the slow torture and gradual vivisection employed by fanatic Mohammedans to end the lives of their Christian neighbors. If for instance it be expedient that Armenians should be exterminated, why chop them up piecemeal, and in the intervals of this protracted process, banter the agonized victims who are wildly calling upon God and man to put them out of pain?
Why must an honest, hard workingman be torn from his bed or his fireside; forced to witness the violation of his own daughter by a band of all pitiless demons unable to rescue or help her, and then, his own turn come, have his hand cut off and stuffed into his mouth while a short sermon is being preached to him on the text: “If your God be God, why does He not succor?” at the peroration of which the other hand is hacked off, and then amid boisterous shouts of jubilation, his ears are torn from his head and his feet severed with a hatchet, while the piercing screams, the piteous prayers, the hideous contortions of the agonizing victim seem to intoxicate with fiendish delight the fanatic Moslems who inflict such awful cruelties. And why when the last and merciful blow of death is being dealt, must obscene jokes and unutterable blasphemies sear the victim’s soul and prolong his hell to the uttermost limits of time, to the very threshold of eternity? Surely, roasting alive, flaying, disembowelling, impaling and all that elaborate and ingenious aggravation of savage pain on which the souls of these human fiends seem to feast and flourish, have nothing that can excuse them in the eyes of Christians, however deeply absorbed in politics or money getting whether in Downing Street or in Wall Street.
But the Turk or Kurd is at his best only a Tartar utterly averse to all humanizing influence, and at his worst seems a fiend incarnate perpetrating and glorying in the horrors just enumerated, and in others so gross and vile that they can not be mentioned. But remember that while we may shut our ears to the horrid tale, innocent women and young children are enduring even unto the agonies of death outrages we can not imagine.
The Armenians constitute the sole civilizing force—nay with all their faults, the sole humanizing element in Anatolia: peaceful to the last limit of self sacrifice, law-abiding to their own undoing, and at the same time industrious and hopeful under conditions which would stagger the majority of mankind. At their best they are the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made. Most emphatically they are the martyr nation of the world.
They are Christians, believing as we believe that God has revealed Himself to the world in Jesus Christ for the salvation of men; and they have held fast to that faith in our common Lord in spite of disgrace and misery, in the face of fire and sword, in the extremest agonies of torture and death. Whether suffering death at the hands of the Persia Magi, or being built alive by Tamerlane into pyramids of hideous glory, scarcely a generation has passed to the grave without giving up its heroes and martyrs to the Cross of Christ. The murdered of Sassoun, of Van, or Erzeroum were also Christian martyrs: and any or all of those whose eyes have been gouged out, whose limbs were torn asunder from their bodies might have obtained life and comparative prosperity by merely pronouncing the formula of Islam and abjuring Christ. But instead of this, thousands have commended their souls to their Creator, delivered up their bodies to the tormentors, endured indescribable agonies, and died, like Christian martyrs, defying Heaven itself so to speak, by their boundless trust in God, though he seemingly does not hear their cries for deliverance.
The apostacy to Islam by those who can no longer endure these horrors will, certainly, be laid at the doors of Christian Europe and America, who left them to perish in the direst, darkest hour of human history. All Christendom knows what they are suffering yet not a Christian power has said in words like solid shot: “These persecutions must cease.” Identity of ideals, aspirations and religious faith give this unfortunate but heroic people strong claims on the sympathy of the English-speaking peoples, for our ancestors whatever the form of their religious creed never hesitated to die for it, and whenever the breath of God swept over them breasted the hurricane of persecution.
But even in the name of a common humanity to say nothing of race or creed what special claims to our sympathy are needed by men and women whom we see, treated their masters, as in the dark ages the damned were said to be dealt with by the devils in the deepest of hell’s abysses? Our written laws condemn cruelty to a horse or cat or dog; our innate sense of justice would compel us to punish the man who should wantonly torture even a rat by roasting it alive. And yet we read of wounded Armenians being thrown into wells where kerosene was poured upon them and then being burned alive and we are as cool as ever. What more is needed to compel us to stretch out a helping hand to tens of thousands of virtuous women and innocent children to save them from protracted tortures with some of which the Gehenna of fire were a swift and merciful death.
Why is it that the sentimental compassion of England has not gone out into effective help to poor Armenia? For reason of “higher politics.” Her interests demand that the Turks and Kurds in whose soulless bodies legions of devils seem to have taken up their abode, shall be protected; the integrity of the Empire and the rule of Islam are essential—indispensable to Christian civilization, i.e., to England’s commercial prestige.
Armenian Mountaineer of Shadokh.
By the terms of the Berlin Treaty and the occupation of Cyprus, England bound herself to see to it that the Christian peoples under the rule of the Porte should have fair, humane treatment. This has been fully and clearly shown in our chapter on the Russo-Turkish war. At the close of that war (1878) the condition of Armenian Christians was from a humane point of view deplorable. Yet nothing was done—no efficacious step was taken to fulfil that solemn promise. Things were allowed to drift from bad to worse, mismanagement to develop into malignity, oppression merge into persecution, until just as in 1876 most solemn promises of reform were followed by the Bulgarian horrors, so the promises for reforms in Armenia after the Sassoun massacre were followed by the still more terrible atrocities which have not yet ceased.
The Turk knew that the powers would not agree in compelling the enforcement of the promises made. Time was needed. Yes time in which to slaughter and to starve the Armenians whom by the treaty of Berlin all the Great Powers were bound to protect in their rights.
But the unfortunate action and reaction of the English government made themselves immediately and fatally felt in the very homes and at the fireside of hundreds of thousands of Christian men and women driving them into exile, shutting them up in noisome prisons and subjecting them to every conceivable species of indignity, outrage and death. By pressing a knob in London, as it were, hell’s portals were opened in Asia Minor, letting loose legions of fiends in human shape who set about torturing and exterminating the Christians there. Nor was the government ignorant of the wide-reaching effects of its ill-advised action. It is on record that for seventeen years it continued to watch the harrowing results of that action without once interfering to stop it although at any moment during that long period of persecution it could have redeemed its promise and rescued the Christians from their unbearable lot.
Mr. Dillon says that if a detailed description were possible of the horrors which England’s exclusive attention to her 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, banished and 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 to do as if these Christian men and women were wasps and mosquitoes. Thousands of Armenians were thrown into prisons 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 killed or turned adrift, the wives and daughters falling victims to the foul lusts of these bestial murderers.
In a few years some of the provinces were decimated: Aloghkerd for instance being almost “purged” of Armenians. Over twenty thousand woe-stricken wretches once healthy and well-to-do, fled to Russia or Persia in rags and misery 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 very clothes they were wearing, most shamefully abused the wives and daughters and then drove them over the frontier to hunger and die. Those who remained behind for a time were no better off. Kurdish brigands lifted the last cow and goats of the peasants and carried away their carpets and their valuables. Turkish tax-gatherers followed after these, gleaning what the brigands had left, and lest anything should escape their avarice they bound the men, flogged them till their bodies were a bloody 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 hung the men whom they had thus beggared and maltreated from the rafters of their houses to witness with burning shame and impotent rage the hellish outrages of these fiends incarnate.
Terrible as these scenes are even in imagination, it is only proper that some effort should be made to realize the sufferings which have been brought down upon these thousands and hundreds of thousands of helpless men and women, and to understand somewhat of the shame, terror and despair that must take possession of the souls of Christians whose lives are a daily martyrdom of such unchronicled agonies, during which no ray of the life-giving light that plays about the throne of God ever pierces the mist of blood and tears that rises between the blue of heaven and the everlasting grey of the charnel house called Armenia.
These statements are neither rumors nor exaggerations concerning which we are justified in suspending judgment,—though the Turks long denied the reports of the Sassoun massacres. History has set its seal upon them. Diplomacy has slowly verified and reluctantly recognized them as accepted facts. Religion and humanity are now called upon to place their emphatic protest against them on record.
The Turks in their confidential moods have admitted these and worse acts of savagery. The Kurds glory in them at all times. Trustworthy Europeans have witnessed them and described them: and the Armenians have groaned over them in blank despair, and the sweat of their anguish has been blood.
Officers and nobles in the Sultan’s own cavalry regiments like Mostigo the Kurd, glory in the long series of crimes and outrages which have marked their career, and laugh to scorn the idea of being punished for robbing and killing the Armenians whom the Sublime Porte desires them to exterminate.
The stories of the Bulgarian atrocities were repeated here. It was the Armenians themselves who were punished if they dared complain when their own relatives or friends were murdered. And often they were punished on the charge of having committed these outrages themselves, or else on the suspicion of having killed the murderers who were afterwards found living and thriving in the Sultan’s employ, and were never disturbed there.
Three hundred and six of the principal inhabitants of the district of Khnouss in a piteous appeal to the people of England, wrote:—
“Year by year, month by month, day by day, innocent men, women and children have been shot down, stabbed, or clubbed to death in their houses and their fields, tortured in strange fiendish ways in fetid prison cells, or left to rot in exile under the scorching sun of Arabia. During that long and horrible tragedy no voice was raised for mercy, no hand extended to help us. * * * Is European sympathy destined to take the form of a cross over our graves.”
Now the answer has been given. What an answer! These ill-fated men might know that European sympathy has taken a different form—that of a marine guard before the Sultan’s palace to shield him and his from harm from without, while they proceed with their orgies of blood and lust within. They might know; only most of them have been butchered since then, like the relatives and friends whose lot they lamented and yet envied.
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 schoolmasters, 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 practised; 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.
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, and 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 his 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 heartrending 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.[1]
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. Dishonor menaced almost every girl and woman in the country. They could not stir out of their houses in the 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. Others would be abducted, and, having for weeks been subjected to the embrace 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 for ever. Little girls of five and six were frequently forced to be present during these horrible scenes, 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, Hussni 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 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.
What astonishes one throughout this long, sickening story of shame and crime is the religious faith of the sufferers. It envelops them like a Nessus’ shirt, aggravating their agonies by the fear it inspires that they must have offended in some inexplicable way the omnipotent God who created them. What is not at all wonderful, but only symptomatic, is the mood of one of the women, who, having prayed to God in heaven, discovered no signs of His guiding hand upon earth, and whose husband was killed in presence of her daughter, after which each of the two terrified females was outraged by the band of ruffians in turn. When gazing, a few days later, on the lifeless corpse of that beloved child whom she had vainly endeavored to save, that wretched, heartbroken mother, wrung to frenzy by her soul-searing anguish, accounted to her neighbors for the horrors that were spread over her people and her country by the startling theory that God Himself had gone mad, and that maniacs and demons incarnate were stalking about the world!
Such, in broad outline, has been the normal condition of Armenia ever since the Treaty of Berlin, owing at first to the disastrous action, and subsequently to the equally disastrous inaction of the British Government. The above sketch contains but a few isolated instances of the daily commonplaces of the life of Armenian Christians. When these have been multiplied by thousands and the colors duly heightened, a more or less adequate idea may be formed of the hideous reality. Now, during all those seventeen years, we took no serious step to put an end to the brigandage, rapes, tortures, and murders which all Christendom agreed with us in regarding as the normal state of things. No one deemed it his duty to insist on the punishment of the professional butchers and demoralizers, who founded their claims to preferment upon the maintenance of this inhuman system, and had their claims allowed, for the Sultan, whose intelligence and humanity it was the fashion to eulogise and admire, decorated and rewarded these faithful servants, making them participators in the joy of their lord. Indeed, the utter perversion of the ideas of justice and humanity which characterized the views of European Christendom during the long period of oppression and demoralization at last reached such a pitch that the Powers agreed to give the Sultan a “reasonable” time to reëstablish once more the normal state of things.