FOOTNOTES:
[1] For the benefit of other travellers I add that the dose of salol was ten grains every three hours. I found it equally efficacious afterwards in several cases of acute rheumatism with fever. I hope that the general reader will excuse the medical and surgical notes given in these letters. I am anxious to show the great desire for European medical aid, and the wide sphere that is open to a medical missionary, at least for physical healing.
[2] A few geographical paragraphs which follow here and on p. 35 are later additions to the letter.
[3] Although the correct name of this river is undoubtedly Kurang, I have throughout adopted the ordinary spelling Karun, under which it is commercially and politically known.
[4] Six Months in Persia.—Stack.
[5] From Kalahoma for the rest of the route the predatory character of the tribes, the growing weakness of the Ilkhani's authority, the "blood feuds" and other inter-tribal quarrels, and the unsettled state of the Feili Lurs, produced a general insecurity and continual peril for travellers, which rendered constant vigilance and precautions necessary, as well as an alteration of arrangements.
[6] A "Diz" is a natural fort believed to be impregnable.
[7] To English people the Bakhtiaris profess great friendliness for England, and the opinion has been expressed by some well-informed writers that, in the event of an English occupation of the country, their light horse, drilled by English officers, would prove valuable auxiliaries. I am inclined, however, to believe that if a collision were to occur in south-west Persia between two powers which shall be nameless, the Bakhtiari horsemen would be sold to the highest bidder.
[8] This untoward affair ended well, but had there been bloodshed on either side, had any one of us been killed, which easily might have been, the world would never have believed but that some offence had been given, and that some high-handed action had been the cause of the attack. I am in a position to say, not only that no offence was given, but that here and everywhere the utmost care was taken not to violate Bakhtiari etiquette, or wound religious or national susceptibilities; all supplies were paid for above their value; the servants, always under our own eyes, were friendly but reserved; and in all dealings with the people kindness and justice were the rule. I make these remarks in the hope of modifying any harsh judgments which may be passed upon any travellers who have died unwitnessed deaths at the hands of natives. There are, as in our case, absolutely unprovoked attacks.
[9] See [Appendix A].
[10] I am inclined to estimate the Bakhtiari population at a higher figure than some travellers have given. I took forty-three men at random from the poorest class and from various tribes, and got from them the number of their families, wives and children only being included, and the average was eight to a household.
[11] Book xvii. c. viii.
[12] I have since heard that this youth was an accomplice of a Burujird man in this theft, and of an Armenian in a robbery of money which occurred in Berigun.
[13] Throughout the part of Persia in which I have travelled I have observed a most remarkable discrepancy between the numbers of soldiers said to garrison any given place, and the number which on further investigation turned out to be actually there. It is safe to deduct from fifty to ninety per cent from the number in the original statement!
[14] On this journey of 400 miles from Burujird to the Turkish frontier near Urmi, I never heard one complaint of the tribute which is paid to the Shah. All complaints, and they were many, were of the exactions and rapacity of the local governors.
[15] North of Daulatabad, the route of last winter from Nanej to Kûm, the winter route from Kangawar to Tihran, was crossed. Although it is a "beaten track" for caravans, so far as I know the only information concerning it consists in two reports, not accessible to the public, in the possession of the Indian authorities.
[16] Hamadan is the fourth city in the Empire in commercial importance. She has a Prince Governor, 450 villages in the district, raises revenue to the amount of 60,000 tumans, of which only 11,000 are paid into the Imperial Treasury, and, as the ancient Ecbatana, the capital of the Median kings, she has a splendid history, but the few lines in which I recorded my first impressions are not an exaggeration of the meanness and unsavouriness of her present externals.
[17] For a detailed and most interesting account of these remarkable representations the reader is referred to Mr. Benjamin's Persia and the Persians, chap. xiii.
[18] Since I returned I have been asked more than once, "What are the results of missions in Hamadan?" Among those which appear on the surface are the spiritual enlightenment of a number of persons whose minds were blinded by the gross and childish superstitions and the inconceivable ignorance into which the ancient church of S. Gregory the Illuminator has fallen. The raising of a higher standard of morals among the Armenians, so that a decided stigma is coming to be attached to drunkenness and other vices. The bringing the whole of the rising generation of Armenians under influences which in all respects "make for righteousness." The elevation of a large number of women into being the companions and helps rather than the drudges of men. The bestowing upon boys an education which fits them for any positions to which they may aspire in Persia and elsewhere, and creates a taste for intellectual pursuits. The introduction of European medicine and surgery, and the bringing them within the reach of the poorest of the people. The breaking down of some Moslem prejudices against Christians. The gradually ameliorating influence exercised by the exhibition of the religion of Jesus Christ in purity of life, in ceaseless benevolence, in truthfulness and loyalty to engagements, in kind and just dealing, in temperance and self-denial, and the many virtues which make up Christian discipleship, and the dissemination in the city and neighbourhood of a higher teaching on the duties of common life, illustrated by example, not in fits and starts, but through years of loving and patient labour.
[19] Apparently it was always thus, for on a tablet at Persepolis occurs a passage in which the vice of lying is mentioned as among the external dangers which threatened the mighty empire of the Medes and Persians. "Says Darius the king: May Ormuzd bring help to me, with the deities who guard my house; and may Ormuzd protect this province from slavery, from decrepitude, from lying; let not war, nor slavery, nor decrepitude, nor lies obtain power over this province."
[20] I have very great pleasure in acknowledging a heavy debt of gratitude to Persian officials, high and low, for the courtesy with which I was uniformly treated. It is my practice in travelling to make my arrangements very carefully, to attend personally to every detail, and to give other people as little trouble as possible, but in Persia, when off the beaten track, the insecurity of some of the roads, the need of guards at night when one is living in camp, and the frequent insubordination and duplicity of charvadars render a reference to the local authorities occasionally imperative; and not only has the needed help been given, but it has been given courteously, and I have always been treated as respectfully as an English lady would expect to be in her own country.
[21] The general verdict of travellers in Persia is, that misrule, heavy taxation, the rapacity and villainy of local governors, and successive famines have reduced its small stationary population to a condition of pitiable poverty and misery, and this is doubtless true of much of the country, and of parts of it which I have traversed myself. But I can only write of things as I found them, and on this journey of 300 miles from Hamadan to Urmi I heard comparatively little grumbling. Many of the villages are contented with their taxation and landlords, in others there are decided evidences of prosperity, and everywhere there is abundance of material comfort, not according to our ideas, but theirs. As to clothing and food, the condition of the cultivators of that part of western Persia compares favourably with that of the rayats in many parts of India. But just taxation and a complete reform in the administration of justice are needed equally by the prosperous and unprosperous parts of Persia.
[22] The truth is that since Persia broke the power of the Kurds ten years ago, at the time of the so-called Kurdish invasion, she has kept a somewhat tight hand over them, and her success in coercing them indicates pretty plainly what Turkey, with her fine army, could do if she were actually in earnest in repressing the disorder and chronic insecurity in Turkish Kurdistan.
[23] While I was sleeping in a buffalo stable in Turkey two buffaloes quarrelled and there was a terrible fight, in which the huge animals interlocked their horns and broke them short off, bellowing fearfully. It took twenty men with ropes, or rather cables, two and a half inches in diameter, which are kept for the purpose, to separate them; and their thin skins, sensitive to insect bites and all irritations, were bleeding in every direction before they could be forced apart.
[24] Christian women and girls share the work of the fields with the men.
[25] It is a pleasant duty to record here the undeserved and exceeding kindness that I have met with from the American, Presbyterian, and Congregational missionaries in Persia and Asia Minor. It is not only that they made a stranger, although a member of the Anglican Church, welcome in their refined and cultured homes, often putting themselves to considerable inconvenience in order to receive me, but that they ungrudgingly imparted to me the interests of their work and lives, helping me at the cost of much valuable time and trouble with the complicated and often difficult arrangements for my farther journeys, showing in every possible way that they "know the heart of a stranger," being themselves "strangers in a strange land." Specially, I feel bound to acknowledge the kindness and hospitality shown to me by the Presbyterian missionaries in Urmi, who were aware that one object of my journey through North-West Persia was to visit the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Missions, which work on different and, I may say, opposite lines from their own.
[26] The name of the town and lake is spelt variously Urmi, Urumi, Urumiya, Ourmia, and Oroomiah. The Moslems call it Urumi, and the Christians Urmi, to which spelling I have adhered.
[27] At the present time, when the persecution of the Stundists in Russia is attracting considerable attention, it may interest my readers to hear that one of the earliest promoters of the Stundist movement was Yacub Dilakoff, a Syrian, and a graduate of the Old American College. He went to Russia thirty years ago, and was so horrified at the ignorance and gross superstition of the peasantry that he studied Russian in the hope of enlightening them, and to aid his purpose became an itinerant hawker of Bibles. The "common people heard him gladly," and among both the Orthodox and the Lutherans prayer unions were formed, from which those who frequented them received the name by which they are known, from stunde, hour.
Dilakoff, whom the Stundists love to call "our Bishop," has been thrown into prison several times, but on his liberation began to teach among the sect of the Molokans in the Crimea and on the Volga with such success that sixteen congregations have been formed among them. His zeal has since carried him to the Molokan colonies on the Amoor, where he has been preaching and teaching for three years with such remarkable results as to have received the title of "a Modern Apostle."
[28] In twenty-eight years after its establishment a conference of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, all of whom had received ordination in the Old Church, with preachers, elders, and missionaries, met and deliberated. "This conference adopted its own confession, form of government, and discipline——at first very simple. Some things were taken from the canons and rituals of the Old Church, others from the usages of Protestant Churches. The traditions of the Old Church were respected to some extent; for example, no influence has induced the native brethren to remit the diaconate to a mere service in temporalities. The deacons are a preaching order."
Of the subsequent history of this church the same authority writes as follows:——
"The missionaries in 1835 were welcomed by the ecclesiastics and people, and for many years an honest effort was made to reform the old body" (the Syrian Church) "without destroying its organisation. This effort failed, and a new church was gradually formed for the following reasons——
"(1) Persecution. The patriarch did all in his power to destroy the Evangelical work. He threatened, beat, and imprisoned the teachers and converts, and made them leave his fold. (2) Lack of discipline. The converts could no longer accept unscriptural practices and rank abuses that prevailed, and it became evident that there was no method to reform them. At every effort the rent was made worse. (3) Lack of teaching. The converts asked for better care, and purer and better teaching and means of grace than they found in the dead language, rituals, and ordinances of the Old Church.
"The missionaries were slow in abandoning the hope that the Nestorian Church would become reformed and purified; but their hope was in vain, their efforts therefore have been not to proselytise, but to leaven the whole people with Christian truth. The separation was made in no spirit of hostility or controversy. There was no violent disruption. The missionaries have never published a word against the Old Church ecclesiastics or its polity.
"The ordination of the Old Church has always been accepted as valid. The missionaries and the evangelical bishops have sometimes joined in the ordination services, and it would be difficult to draw the line when the Episcopal ordination ceased and the Presbyterian began in the Reformed body.
"The relation of the Presbyterian mission work to the old ecclesiastics is thus something different from that found among any other Eastern Christians. The Patriarch in office fifty years ago was at first very friendly to the missionaries, and personally aided in superintending the building of mission houses. Subsequently he did all in his power to break up the mission. The Patriarch now in office has taken the attitude of neutrality, with frequent indications of fairness and friendliness toward our work.
"The next in ecclesiastical rank is the Mattran (Syriac for Metropolitan), the only one left of the twenty-five Metropolitans named in the thirteenth century. The present incumbent recently made distinct overtures to our Evangelical Church to come to an understanding by establishing the scriptural basis of things essential, and allowing liberty in things non-essential. He fails, perhaps, to understand all the scriptural issues between us, but he has a sincere desire to walk uprightly and to benefit his people.
"Of the bishops, three have been united with the Reform, and died in the Evangelical Church. The three bishops in Kurdistan are friendly, and give their influence in favour of our schools.
"A large majority of the priests or presbyters of the Old Church, in Persia at least, joined the Reform movement, and as large a proportion of the deacons. In all, nearly seventy of the priests have laboured with the mission as teachers, preachers, or pastors, and more than half of these continue, and are members of our Synod. In some places the Reform has gathered nearly all the population within its influence. In many places it is not unusual to find half the population in our winter services. On the other hand, there are many places where the ecclesiastics are immoral and opposed, and ignorance and vice abound, and the Reform moves very slowly."
[29] "By God's help: (1) To raise up and restore a fallen Eastern Church to take her place again amongst the Churches of Christendom. (2) To infuse spiritual life into a church which the oppression of centuries has reduced to a state of weakness and ignorance. (3) To give the Chaldæan or Assyrian Christians (a) a religious education on the broad principles of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; (b) a secular education calculated to fit them for their state of life, the common mistakes and dangers of over-education and of Europeanising education being most carefully guarded against. (4) To train up the native clergy, by means of schools and seminaries, to be worthy to serve before God in their high vocation, and to rise to their responsibilities as leaders and teachers of the people in their villages. (5) To build schools, of which at present there are none, owing to the extreme poverty and misery of the people. (6) To aid the Patriarch and Bishops by counsel, by encouragement, and by active support. (7) To reorganise the Chaldæan Church upon her ancient lines, to set in motion the ecclesiastical machinery now rusty through disuse, and to revive religious discipline amongst clergy and laity. (8) To print the ancient Chaldæan service-books. They are now only in MS., and the number of copies is totally insufficient for the supply of the parish churches."
[30] "Old Syriac as a lesson means reading portions of Holy Scripture, and translating them into modern Syriac."
[31] The absolute fact, however, is that Christian nations have not shown any zeal in communicating the blessings of Christianity to Persia and Southern Turkey. England has sent two missions—one to Baghdad, the other to Julfa. America has five mission stations in Northern and Western Persia, but not one in Southern Turkey or Arabia.
The populous shores of the Persian Gulf, the great tribes of the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Ilyats of Persia, the important cities of Shiraz, Yezd, Meshed, Kashan, Kûm, Kirmanshah, and all Southern, Eastern, and Western Persia (excepting Hamadan and Urmi), are untouched by Christian effort! Propagandism on a scale so contemptible impresses intelligent Moslems as a sham, and is an injury to the Christianity which it professes to represent.
[32] A name usually applied to the Roman Uniats at Mosul.
[33] The mode of building mud houses was described in Letter VI. vol. i. p. 149.
[34] Dr. Labaree, whose experience stretches back for thirty years, writes of the races under Persian rule in the Province of Azerbijan in the following terms: "The Nestorians and Armenians of Persia in common with their Mohammedan neighbours suffer from the evil forms of society and government which have been bequeathed to them from the earliest dawnings of history. Landlordism in its worst forms bears sway. The poor rayat or tenant must pay his landlord one-half or two-thirds of all the produce of his farm. Aside from his poll tax he must pay a tax on his house, his hayfields, and his fruit trees, and on all his stock with the exception of the oxen with which he tills the soil. But this is not all. He is virtually at the mercy of his Agha, which translated literally means master, a word which most correctly describes the relation of the landlord to his peasants. By law he may require from each of his rayats three days of labour without pay. In reality he makes them work for him as much as he sees fit. He helps himself to what he pleases whenever he makes them a visit. He sells them grain and flour above the market price. He ties them up and beats them for slight offences. And to all this and much else must the poor peasant submit for fear of worse persecutions if he complains. In these respects Moslem, Christian, and Jew suffer alike."
[35] Later, I heard the same accusation brought against the Persian Kurds by a high official in Constantinople.
[36] The national customs of the Syrians are endless, and in many ways very interesting. They are treated very fully in a scarce volume called Residence in Persia among the Nestorians, by Dr. Justin Perkins.
[37] On this subject there can be no better authority than the Hon. George N. Curzon, M.P., who after careful study has estimated the total population of Persia at over nine millions.
[38] In The Caliphate, its Rise, Decline, and Fall, a valuable recent work, its author, Sir W. Muir, K.C.S.I., dwells very strongly on the narrowing influence of Islam on national life, and concludes his review of it in the following words: "As regards the spiritual, social, and dogmatic aspect of Islam, there has been neither progress nor material change. Such as we found it in the days of the Caliphate, such is it also at the present day. Christian nations may advance in civilisation, freedom, and morality, in philosophy, science, and the arts, but Islam stands still. And thus stationary, so far as the lessons of its history avail, it will remain." In a chapter at the end of his book he deals with polygamy, servile concubinage, temporary marriages, and the law of divorce, as cankering the domestic life of Mohammedan countries, and infallibly neutralising all civilising influences.
[39] I have since heard that these Kurds, a short time afterwards, betrayed some Christian travellers into the hands of some of their own people, by whom they were robbed and brutally maltreated.
[40] I give the story as it was repeatedly told to me. It was a very shady and complicated transaction throughout.
[41] Dr. Cutts, in his interesting volume, Christians Under the Crescent in Asia, gives the following translation of one of the morning praises, which forms part of the daily prayer. The earlier portion is chanted antiphonally in semi-choirs—
"Semi-choir—1st. At the dawn of day we praise Thee, O Lord: Thou art the Redeemer of all creatures, give us by Thy mercy a peaceful day, and give us remission of our sins.
"2d. Cut not off our hope, shut not Thy door against our faces, and cease not Thy care over us. O God, according to our worthiness reward us not. Thou alone knowest our weakness.
"1st. Scatter, O Lord, in the world love, peace, and unity. Raise up righteous kings, priests, and judges. Give peace to the nations, heal the sick, keep the whole, and forgive the sins of all men.
"2d. In the way that we are going may Thy Grace keep us, O Lord, as it kept the child David from Saul. Give us Thy mercy as we are pressing on, that we may attain to peace according to Thy will. The Grace which kept the prophet Moses in the sea, and Daniel in the pit, and by which the companions of Ananias were kept in the fire, by that Grace deliver us from evil.
"Whole choir.—In the morning we all arise, we all worship the Father, we praise the Son, we acknowledge the Holy Spirit. The grace of the Father, the mercy of the Son, and the hovering of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person, be our help every day. Our help is in Thee. In Thee, our true Physician, is our hope. Put the medicine of Thy mercy on our wounds, and bind up our bruises that we be not lost. Without Thy help we are powerless to keep Thy commandments. O Christ, who helpest those who fulfil Thy will, keep Thy worshippers. We ask with sighing, we beseech Thy mercy, we ask forgiveness from that merciful One who opens His door to all who turn unto Him. Every day I promise Thee that to-morrow I will repent: all my days are past and gone, my faults still remain. O Christ, have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me."
[42] About Christmas 1890 in Constantinople I had an opportunity of laying the state of the Gawar Christians and the reduction of the garrison of Diza before His Highness Kiamil Pasha, then Grand Vizier. He appeared deeply interested, and said that it was the purpose of his Government to send troops up to the region as soon as the roads were open. Since then I have heard nothing of these people, but to-day, as this sheet is going to press, I have received the following news from Dr. Shedd of Urmi: "You will be glad to know that Gawar is very much changed for the better. The Turkish Governor has been removed, and another of far better character and ability has the post. The Kurdish robbers have been arrested, and their leader, Abdurrahman Bey, killed."—November 2, 1890.
[43] The complaints to which I became a listener were made by maleks, bishops, priests, headmen, and others. Exaggerations prevail, and the same story is often told with as many variations as there are narrators. I cannot vouch for anything which did not come under my own observation. Some narratives dissolved under investigation, leaving a mere nucleus of fact. Those which I thought worthy of being noted down—some of which were published in the Contemporary Review in May and June in two papers called The Shadow of the Kurd—were either fortified by corroborative circumstances, or rest on the concurrent testimony as to the main facts of three independent narrators.
In some cases I was asked to lay the statements before the British Consul at Erzerum, with the names of the narrators as the authority on which they rested, but in the greater number I was implored not to give names or places, or any means of identification. "We are in fear of our lives if we tell the truth," they urged. Sometimes I asked them if they would abide by what they told me in the event of an investigation by the British Vice-Consul at Van. "No, no, no, we dare not!" was the usual reply. Under these circumstances, the only course open to me is to withhold the names of persons and places wherever I was pledged to do so, but as a guarantee of good faith I have placed the statements, confidentially, with the names, in the hands of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
[44] For the correction of my very imperfect investigations into the religious customs of the Syrians, I am indebted to a very careful and learned paper by Canon Maclean, Some Account of the Customs of the Eastern Syrian Churches, originally published in the Guardian, and now to be obtained at the office of "The Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians, 2 Deans Yard, Westminster."
[45] A singular legend is told regarding the origin of the sacred leaven and the sacred oil.
The Syrians say that as our Lord went up out of the Jordan after His baptism John the Baptist collected in a phial the baptismal water as it dropped from His sacred person, giving it before his death to St. John the Evangelist. At the Last Supper (the legend runs) our Lord gave to John two loaves, putting it into his heart to preserve one. At the Cross, when this same apostle saw the "blood and water," he took the phial from his bosom and added the water from the pierced side to the water of baptism, dipping the loaf at the same time in the blood. After the Day of Pentecost the disciples, before going forth to "disciple" the nations, ground John's blood-dyed loaf to powder, mixed it with flour and salt, divided it among themselves, and carried it forth to serve as leaven for ever for the bread of remembrance. In like manner they took of the mingled water of the phial, and mixing it with oil of unction, divided it, and preserved it for the perpetual sanctification of the waters of baptism.
[46] A portion of one of the latter follows:—
The newly dead.—"Hail, my brethren and friends who sleep. Open the door that I may enter in and see your ranks."
Those in Hades.—"Come, enter and see how many giants are sleeping here, and have been made dust and rust and worms in the bosom of Sheol. Come, enter and see, O child of death, the race of Adam: see and gaze where thy kind dwells. Come, enter and see the abundance of the bones and their commingling. The bone of the king and the bone of the servant are not separated. Come, enter and see the great corruption we are dwelling in."
The mourners.—"Wait for the Lord, who will come and raise you by His right hand."
Translations of the Liturgies are to be found in Dr. Badger's valuable book, The Nestorians and their Rituals.
[47] In the winter of 1887 and the spring of 1888 every effort was made by Fikri Pasha, the Turkish Governor of this district, but a Kurd by race, to dislodge Mr. Browne from his position in the mountains. "Soldiers were continually sent to inquire into his plans; he was accused of practising without a diploma as a medical man, because he gave a few simple remedies to the natives in a country destitute of physicians, and his position became well-nigh intolerable when he found that his host, Mar Shimun, was being insulted and punished for harbouring him, and that the native Christians were being made to suffer for his residence among them. The Patriarch, however, stood firm. 'Your presence here,' said he to Mr. Browne, 'may save us from a massacre; and as for these troubles we must put up with them as best we can.' These words were verified a few months afterwards."—Mr. Athelstan Riley's Report on the Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians, 1888.
[48] Translation of a letter given to the author by His Excellency the Turkish Ambassador to the Court of Tihran.
"Among the honoured of English ladies is Mrs. Bishop. On this tour of travel she has a letter of recommendation from the Exalted Government of England, issued by the English Embassy in Tihran, and earnest request is made that in her passage through the Imperial Territory she be well protected. As far as zaptiehs are necessary let them be given for her safety, all necessary provision for her most comfortable travel be perfected, and all her requests from the High Government of the Osmanlis be met.
"That all courtesy and attention be shown to this distinguished lady, this letter is given from the Embassy at Tihran."
As various statements purporting to be narratives of attacks made upon me in Turkey have appeared in Russian and other papers, I take this opportunity of saying that they are devoid of any foundation. I was never robbed while in the dominion of His Majesty the Sultan: courtesy was shown me by all the Turkish officials between the Persian frontier and Erzerum, and efficient escorts of steady and respectful zaptiehs were readily supplied.
[49] I must ask my readers to believe that I crossed the Turkish frontier without any knowledge of or interest in the "Armenian Question;" that so far from having any special liking for the Armenians I had rather a prejudice against them; that I was in ignorance of the "Erzerum troubles" of June 1890, and of yet more recent complications, and that the sole object of my journey by a route seldom traversed by Europeans from Urmi to Van was to visit the Patriarch of the Nestorians and the Kochanes station of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Church Mission, and that afterwards I travelled to Erzerum viâ Bitlis only to visit the American missionaries there. So far as I know, I entered Turkey as a perfectly neutral and impartial observer, and without any special interest in its Christian populations, and it is only the "inexorable logic of facts" which has convinced me of their wrongs and claims.
[50] In another village, a young man in speaking of their circumstances said: "We don't know much, but we love the Lord Jesus well enough to die for Him."
[51] Van may be considered the capital of that part of Kurdistan which we know as Armenia, but it must be remembered that under the present Government of Turkey Armenia is a prohibited name, and has ceased to be "a geographical expression." Cyclopædias containing articles on Armenia, and school books with any allusions to Armenian history, or to the geography of any district referred to as Armenia, are not allowed to enter Asia Minor, and no foreign maps which contain the province of Armenia are allowed to be used in the foreign schools, or even to be retained in the country. Of the four millions of the Armenian race 2,500,000 are subjects of the Sultan, and with few exceptions are distinguished for their loyalty and their devotion to peaceful pursuits.
The portion of Armenia which lies within the Turkish frontier consists for the most part of table-lands from 5000 to 6000 feet in elevation, intersected by mountain ranges and watered by several rivers, the principal of which are the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Aras. Of its many lakes the Dead Sea of Van is the principal, its dimensions being estimated at twice the area of the Lake of Geneva, and at eighty miles in length by twenty-five in breadth. From its exquisitely beautiful shores rise the two magnificent extinct volcanoes, the Sipan Dagh, with an altitude of over 12,000 feet, and the Nimrud Dagh, with a crater five miles in diameter and 1600 feet in depth, the top of its wall being over 9000 feet in height.
The Armenians claim an antiquity exceeding that of any other nation, and profess to trace their descent from Haik, the son of Togarmah, the grandson of Japhet, who fled from the tyranny of Belus, King of Assyria, into the country which in the Armenian tongue is known by his name, as Haikh or Haizdani. It may be said of the Armenians that the splendour and misery of their national history exceed those of any other race. Their national church claims an older than an apostolic foundation, and historically dates from the third century, its actual founder, S. Gregory the Illuminator, having been consecrated at Cæsarea as Bishop of Armenia in the second year of the fourth century. In the fifteenth century a schism brought about by Jesuit missionaries resulted in a number of Armenians joining the Church of Rome, and becoming later a separate community known as the "Catholic Armenian Church." Within the last half-century, under the teaching of the American missionaries, a Reformed Church has arisen, known as the Protestant Armenian Church, but with these exceptions the race and the national church may be regarded as one. The Armenians have had no political existence since the year 1604, but form an element of stability and wealth in Turkey, Russia, and Persia, where they are principally found.
Their language is regarded by scholars as an off-shoot of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Germanic group of languages. Their existing literature dates from the fourth century, and all that is not exclusively Christian has perished. Translations of the Old and New Testaments dating from the fifth century are among its oldest monuments, and the dialect in which they are written, and in which they are still read in the churches, known as Old Armenian, is not now understood by the people. During the last century there has been a great revival of letters among the Armenians, chiefly due to the Mekhitarists of Venice, and a literature in modern Armenian is rapidly developing alongside of the study and publication of the works of the ancient writers.
[52] It has, however, received due attention both from scholars and antiquaries, and among the popularly-written accounts of it are very interesting chapters in Sir A. H. Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, and in a charming volume by the Rev. H. F. Tozer, Turkish Armenia and Eastern Asia Minor.
[53] An estimate by Mr. Devey, Her Britannic Majesty's Vice-Consul at Van, gives a population of only 250,000 for the whole vilayet.
[54] It does not present any difficulty to me that Xenophon omits all mention of the lake of Van, for a range of hills lies between it and the road. I have travelled over the track twice, and failed to see anything in the configuration of the country which would have led me to suppose that the region to the eastward was anything but a continuity of ranges of hills and mountains, and if the Ten Thousand took the route from the eastern head-waters of the Tigris to the Murad-chai at the farther end of the plain of Mush, directing all their investigations and inquiries in a westerly direction, there are very many chances against their having been informed, even by their prisoners, of the existence of the sea of Van.
[55] Paradise Lost, iii. 741, "Nor stayed, till on Niphates' top he lights."
[56] Akhlat was a place of immense importance in ancient days, and its history epitomises the vicissitudes of Armenia; Abulfeda, Bakani, Deguignes, Ritter, and Finlay in his History of Greece are among the best-known authorities on its history, and Mr. Tozer in his work on Turkish Armenia, p. 318, etc., gives an interesting popular sketch of the way in which it was conquered and reconquered by Saracens, Greeks, Kurds, Turks, Khoarasmians and Georgians, till eventually the Turks reconquered it from the Kurds. Its ancient Armenian name of Khelat is altogether unknown to its present inhabitants.
[57] Xenophon in his Anabasis describes the Armenian dwellings of his day thus:—
"Their houses were underground, the entrance like the mouth of a well, but spacious below; there were passages dug into them for the cattle, but the people descended by ladders. In the houses were goats, sheep, cows, and fowls, with their young. All the cattle were kept in fodder within the walls." I have not seen the entrance by a well, but have understood that it still exists in certain exposed situations. Xenophon mentions buried wine, and it is not unlikely that the deep clay-lined holes in which grain is stored in some of the villages are ancient cellars, anterior to the date when the Karduchi became Moslems and teetotallers.
[58] It was not possible to ascertain the accuracy of these narratives, and though many of them appeared to be established by a mass of concurrent and respectable testimony, I forbear presenting any of them to my readers, especially as the report presented to Parliament in January 1891 (Turkey, No. 1) not only gives, on British official authority, a mass of investigated facts, but states the case of the Armenian peasantry in language far stronger than any that I should have ventured to use.
[59] In a Minute by the late Mr. Clifford Lloyd (Turkey, No. 1, 1890-91, p. 80) the condition of the Christian peasant population of Kurdistan is summarised thus:—
"Their sufferings at present proceed from three distinct causes—
"1. The insecurity of their lives and properties, owing to the habitual ravages of the Kurds.
"2. The insecurity of their persons and the absence of all liberty of thought and action (except the exercise of public worship).
"3. The unequal status held by the Christian as compared with the Mussulman in the eyes of the Government."
[60] The reader will recollect that the "Erzerum troubles" so frequently referred to consisted of riot and bloodshed following upon a search for arms which was made under the floors of the Armenian Cathedral and the Sanassarian College, on the strength (it is said) of an anonymous telegram in June 1890. The lucid account given of this deplorable affair and of the subsequent inaction of the local Government by Her Britannic Majesty's Consul-General for Kurdistan, in the "White Book," to which allusion has been made, should be studied by all who are interested in the so-called "Armenian Question."
[61] In a despatch in the "White Book" (Turkey, No. 1, 1890-91) Mr. Clifford Lloyd sums up the condition of things in Kurdistan thus: "In a country such as this is, lawlessness is to be expected; but unfortunately in nearly every instance armed and ungoverned Kurds are the aggressors, and unarmed and unprotected Armenian Christians the victims."
[62] The itineraries will be found in [Appendix B].
[63] Probably the distance by this route is over-estimated, as it is the computation of the charvadars.