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:—