The wheat crops are extraordinary; not only great in yield, but the grains often double the size of ordinary American wheat, as compared with specimens from the large and representative fields of Minnesota and Nebraska.
TAXATION.
But when this wheat is threshed out, the farmer cannot shovel it up and grind, or sell, or put it into bins; no indeed! He cannot take up a quart of it without permission from the government; for the government claims one-eighth of it as a tax,—it was always a “tithe” or tenth from the oldest historic times down to the present Sultan, but he raised the percentage to an eighth,—and it must stay on that exposed threshing floor, in rain or winds, or any sort of weather, till the tax-gatherer comes and measures it, which may be a week, or two weeks, or a month, and will be forever unless he is bribed to come. Nor is even this double tax all; the tax-gatherer is a tax farmer,—that is, he pays a lump sum to the government for the taxes of a district, and all he can get above that is so much profit to him; so if the grain on a threshing floor actually measures ten bushels, say, he will write it fifteen. After the farmer has paid first the tax on the land to the government direct, then the double, or rather treble, tax to the gatherer on the crops, more than half the income he can get from the land has gone to the government. I do not know an Armenian farmer who is not in debt; they work hard, but the products of their labor go to the government and the Kurds, and any one who complains is considered a revolutionist, and imprisoned or killed. The simple unvarnished truth is that an Armenian Christian has no rights of life or property whatever; and all he keeps of either (not very much) is what the regularly appointed officials or the self-appointed Kurdish fleecers choose to leave him.
This, however, is anticipating. I have only begun on the catalogue of taxes which strip most Armenians, and are intended to strip them, of everything but the means of sustaining life and perpetuating their race. When a boy is born, a poll-tax is laid on him,—two dollars on the average,—which must be paid every year as long as he lives, whether he remains in Armenia or leaves it. Of course, during boyhood the parents have to pay this tax on every male child; if a woman is widowed, she has to go on paying these capitation taxes just the same. They are assumed to be taxes in lieu of military service; the Sultan takes no soldiers from the Armenians,—does not dare,—and this poll-tax is used to raise and pay that very Turkish army which in return butchers the Armenians, just as the old tribute of Christian children was used to butcher their parents. (That the Armenians are unwarlike and would not make good soldiers is ridiculously untrue; many of the best soldiers and best officers, even commanders-in-chief, in the Russian service are Armenians.) When the boy has attained manhood he pays his own tax,—he must have a paper of citizenship, which must be renewed every year, and for which he must pay; but he is not allowed to leave the country without providing absolute security, either in property or bondsmen, for paying that tax through life, wherever he may be. Of course this is utterly impossible in most cases,—men of property do not often migrate, and men without property do not easily get people to be responsible for lifelong obligation to let them emigrate; which is one chief reason why so few Armenians, except banished ones, or runaways, are seen in foreign countries. Furthermore, as I have said, he must pay for a passport every time he stirs from home. Land, houses, cattle, crops, are all separately taxed. Suppose an Armenian owns a vineyard. First, the land is taxed; there is a separate tax for irrigation, a third for the grapes, a fourth if you make wine from them. In all, a vineyard pays five taxes, and the government gets more than the owner.
Why don’t they emigrate? ask my American friends. I have given one explanation. Pharaoh would not permit the Hebrews to go away, nor will the Sultan permit the Armenians. Another reason is that even if one has property, it is very hard to sell it. Turks have no money and Armenians no confidence. And to run away to a foreign country, whose language you do not know, wholly without money, is so desperate a remedy that most of them shrink from it.
THE CLIMATE.
Armenia, in my belief, is the healthiest country in the world; I do not say one of the healthiest, but the very healthiest. The climate is excellent all the year round, and, though the winters are severe, and much of the country is covered with snow, yet on account of the elevation—being several thousand feet above sea level, and in latitude 36° to 42°, or say from North Carolina to Massachusetts—the air is dry, pure, and agreeable, a preventative of disease, and conducive to longevity. The dread disease, consumption, does not exist there, while dyspeptics, if any are to be found, must have been imported. The perfect type of physical vigor is to be seen there. Generally the Armenians are tall, powerful, and ruddy cheeked, full of endurance and energy. Shrewd and enterprising they are, as reputed; but pure and honest too. They are longer lived than any other people. I have known Armenians of 115 and even 125 years of age; one old lady of my acquaintance at 115 was full of life and fun; I have seen her dance at wedding festivities like a girl of 15. An old gentleman of 125 was my neighbor; he worked on his farm as if he were not over 25. He could run and jump and was as gay as a boy, and greatly enjoyed children’s society. If the people of Armenia could have the same government, the same encouragements, the same freedom from horrible fears, as the people of the United States, they would live many, many years longer than they do, till it might be necessary to kill the old folks in order to get rid of them. The most of the American missionaries in Armenia would be sure to echo these words. A returned missionary gave a striking testimony to this effect. He was addressing the students of the Chicago Theological Seminary, and spoke as follows:—“Before I became a missionary I had very poor health; most of my family died of hereditary consumption, and I was attacked by it. My physicians strongly protested against my becoming a missionary, saying that if I went to a foreign land I would grow worse, and probably die there. I paid no attention to this; I presumed they were right, but I was determined to go anyway, and if I must die, to die in my chosen work. When I offered myself to the American Board, I was allotted to Armenia, and thither I went; my disease disappeared and now I am as healthy as any missionary in the world. You see how stout and vigorous I look, and I do not expect to die soon. But I feel sure that if I had stayed in America to save my life, I should have lost it before this time.” He is still living in Armenia, and I hope will live to be over a hundred, as many of the natives do.
The reader will smile at all this as the patriotic boastfulness of an Armenian, and say perhaps that he can make as fabulous declarations for his own land, wherever he may be; but such claims cannot be substantiated by records and personal observations as these for Armenia can. Take the Bible; some of the Patriarchs lived to be 700, 800, one even to 969, if indeed he ever died a natural death; some were taken up to heaven without knowing death; and all these long lives, as will be shown, were lived in Armenia. God’s judgment was good. He did not create man in America, Europe, or India, or anywhere but in Armenia. He came down there from Heaven, planted the Garden of Eden there, and from the dust of that land created the first man. When the race had become sinful and only Noah’s family were preserved, the ark was not brought to rest on the Rockies, the Alps, or the Himalayas, but on Ararat in Armenia.