The wretched poverty of the people of this place made a very painful impression on me. They may have exaggerated when they told me how terribly they are oppressed by the Kurds, who, they say, last year robbed them of 900 sheep and this year of 300, twenty-five and some cattle having been driven off a few days before, but it is a simple fact that the night of my visit the twenty-four sheep for which there was no room in the stable were carried away by a party of well-armed Kurds in the bright moonlight, the helpless shepherds not daring to resist. It is of no use, they say, to petition the Government; it will not interfere. The Kurds come into their houses, they say, and terrify and insult their women, and by demands with violence take away all they have. They say that the money for which they have sold their grain, and which they were keeping to pay their taxes with, was taken by the Kurds last week, and that they will be cruelly beaten by the zaptiehs because they cannot pay. Their words and air expressed abject terror.[49]
Their little church is poorer than poverty itself, a building of undressed stone without mortar, and its length of thirteen feet includes the rude mud dais occupied by the yet ruder altar. Its furniture consists of an iron censer, an iron saucer containing oil and a wick, and an earthen flagon. There are no windows, and the rough walls are black with candle smoke. The young man who showed the church took a Gospel from the dais, kissing the cross upon it before handing it to me, and then on seeing that I was interested went home and brought a MS. of St. Matthew's Gospel, with several rudely-illuminated scenes from our Lord's life. "Christos," he said with a smile, as he pointed to the central figure in the first illustration, and so on as he showed me the others, for in each there was a figure of the Christ, not crowned and risen, but suffering and humiliated. Next morning, in the bitter cold of the hour before sunrise, the clang of the mallet on the sounding-board assembled the villagers for matins, and to the Christ crowned and risen and "sitting on the right hand of power" they rendered honour as Divine, though in the midst of the grossest superstition and darkness, and for Him whom they "ignorantly worship" they are at this moment suffering the loss of all things. Their empty sheepfold might have been full to-day if they had acknowledged Him as a Prophet and no more.[50]
Leaving this wretched hamlet, where the unfortunate peasants are as avaricious as they are poor and dirty, and passing a Kurdish village with a stone fort picturesquely situated, we crossed a pass into a solitary valley, on which high rounded hills descend in harmonised buffs and browns, both hills and valleys covered with uncut hay. The zaptiehs said that this was a specially dangerous place, and urged the caravan to its utmost speed. We met three Armenian katirgis in their shirts. They complained most bitterly that they had been robbed an hour before of five mules with their equipments, as well as of their clothing and money. The ascent and the very tedious descent of the Kasrik Kala Pass brought us into the large and fertile plain of Haizdar, the "plain of the Armenians," sprinkled with Armenian villages, and much cultivated.
Mirza and one zaptieh had gone back for a blanket which had been dropped, and after halting in an orchard till I was half-frozen I decided to proceed without them, having understood that we could reach Van in three hours. I started my party by signs, and after an hour's riding reached a village where Johannes spoke fluently in an unknown tongue, and the zaptieh held up five fingers, which I learned too late meant that Van was five hours off. I thought that they were asking for instructions, and at every pause I repeated Van.
After a brief consultation we went up among the hills, the young Kurdish katirgi jumping, yelling, singing, and howling, to keep his mules at a trot, the zaptieh urging them with his whip, and pointing ominously at the fast sinking sun. On we clattered with much noise, nor did we slacken speed till we gained a high altitude among desert solitudes, from which we looked down upon the Dead Sea of Van, a sheet of water extending in one direction beyond the limits of vision, lying red and weird, with high mountains jutting into it in lofty headlands hovered over by flame-coloured clouds. High up along the mountain side in a wavy line lay the path to Van in the deepening shadows, and the zaptieh, this time holding up three fingers, still urged on the caravan, and the Kurd responded by yells and howls, dancing and jumping like a madman.
Just as it was becoming dark, four mounted men, each armed with two guns, rode violently among the mules, which were in front of me, and attempted to drive them off. In the mêlée the katirgi was knocked down. The zaptieh jumped off his horse, threw the bridle to me, and shouldered his rifle. When they saw the Government uniform these Kurds drew back, let the mules go, and passed on. The whole affair took but a few seconds, but it was significant of the unwillingness of the Kurds to come into collision with the Turks, and of the power the Government could exercise in the disturbed districts if it were once understood that the marauders were not to be allowed a free hand.
After this attack not a word was spoken, the bells were taken off the mules, the zaptieh, as fine and soldierly a man as one could wish to see, marched in front, quiet and vigilant, and so in a darkness in which I could not see my horse's ears we proceeded till, three hours later, the moon rose as we entered Van. It was one of the eeriest rides I ever made, and I had many painful reflections on having risked through ignorance the property of my faithful Kurdish katirgi. The first light of Van was a welcome sight, though after that there was a long ride to "the gardens," a large wooded suburb chiefly inhabited by Armenians, in which the American missionaries live. Dr. Reynolds, the medical missionary, has given me a most hospitable welcome, though his small house is more than full with new arrivals from America. I wanted to re-engage my jolly katirgi for Bitlis, but he went back at once with the zaptieh, and after the obvious perils of the road it would not have been fair to detain him. Visitors are scarce here. Van does not see more than one non-official European in three years. The Vice-Consul says that he should have doubted the sanity of any one who had proposed to travel from Urmi to Van by the route I took, but now that the journey is safely over I am glad that no one at Urmi knew enough to dissuade me from it. The Vice-Consul and all the mission party are as kind as they can be, and Van is for me another oasis.
I. L. B.
LETTER XXXI