Good coal lies under much of this country; the writer having actually seen one six-foot seam that crops out at four several points along a line of sixty miles, and is probably continuous in other directions also. It is of course quite unworked at present. Turkish political economy teaches that for so long as the coal is there, it is safe, and a solid national asset. If, however, you dig it up and burn it, it is gone and cannot be replaced. Besides, mining concessions, or anything else likely to bring in the foreigner, are anathema to the Ottoman and are never granted if they can possibly be avoided.
TRAVELLING IN LOWER TKHUMA.
No. 14
The principal landmark in the Sapna valley is the town of Amadia; a city set on a hill indeed—perched on the summit of a great isolated knoll which juts out from the mountains behind it like a bastion from the curtain of a fortress. The slopes of this knoll are surmounted by a cresting of limestone precipice, so even and continuous round the whole circuit of the level summit that it looks from a little distance like a prodigious artificial wall. The place must have been a notable stronghold even in Assyrian[{321}] days, as a much battered bas-relief on the rock face by the main gate testifies: but the ramparts which Nature has given it were always sufficient protection; and, except at the two entrance gateways, no further defences were required. It is now but a group of mean hovels, no more than a rather large village; but it ranks in the Sapna valley as the metropolis of the country-side.
Amadia is the only seat of Ottoman Government in the neighbourhood; and for this reason it was in its vicinity that a “Station” of the Archbishop’s Assyrian Mission was established when it was desirable to find some centre reasonably accessible for the mountaineers of Tyari and Tkhuma. This establishment caused a most natural fluttering of the dovecotes in that respectable and old-fashioned neighbourhood. That the Kurds should feel eminently disgusted was only to be expected. Good respectable brigands as they were, and had been for generations, and having a vested interest in the perpetuation of conditions that made their ancient trade profitable; what else could they be expected to feel, at the advent of a Frank who was not only unraidable personally, but whose mere presence made it appreciably more difficult to raid others? Formerly if there had ever been questions about the appropriation of sheep (which did not happen often), it was always easy to persuade the kaimākām to do nothing, and report nothing. An Englishman, however, was in touch with his Consul, (accursed institution), and that Consul with the Vali; and Valis have a way of not sympathizing with a Kurdish gentleman’s necessities, unless you purchase that sympathy rather expensively.