GEORGE H. FILIAN.
MAP OF ARMENIA.
I.
THE LAND OF ARMENIA.
PHYSICAL FEATURES.
Where is Armenia? It seems a simple question, yet during my lecturing in the United States I have met far more people who did not know than who did. That is natural enough, for until the late horrors, it seemed little more than a name of old history, of no present importance; but there is a further reason. The present Sultan forbids the use of the name altogether, and insists on the district being termed Kurdistan, or called by the names of its vilayets, Diarbekr, Van, Erzroom, etc. Many maps do not have the name Armenia at all. A few years ago, when the missionaries of the American Board were organizing the college at Harpoot, now so bloodily famous, they named it Armenia College; but the Sultan forbade it on the ground that there was no longer an Armenia, and the use of the name would encourage the Armenians[1] to revolt. The missionaries were forced to change the name to Euphrates College. If any Turkish subject uses the word, he is fined and imprisoned; if it is used in any book, the book is confiscated, and the author banished or killed. The study of Armenian history is forbidden to the Armenians; they must be kept in ignorance about their own land, so that many of them do not know where Armenia was or what Armenia is. A letter directed to any person or place in Armenia will never reach its destination; for the Turkish postal authorities recognize no such address. There is still another cause for the widespread ignorance concerning Armenia. It has been partitioned between three different powers, Turkey, Russia, and Persia. The northern part, from Batoum on the Black Sea to Baku on the Caspian,—the river Araxes being the boundary to near Mt. Ararat,—belongs to Russia; the southeastern course of the Araxes from near Mt. Ararat, to Persia; the largest and most fertile part, the western, from Mt. Ararat to the Black Sea and the Kizil-Irmak to Turkey. But at the time of its greatest extent and power, when its people were great and its kings were great, long before Alexander’s conquest,—Armenia covered about 500,000 square miles, and stretched from the Black Sea and the Caucasus on the north to Persia, and Syria on the south, from the Caspian and a much smaller Persia on the east, to Cilicia and far beyond the Halys (Kizil-Irmak) on the west, but including also old Media and a part of Mesopotamia.