American missionaries tell me that the education of women has been a critical subject of discussion among the inhabitants of Sivas and that part of Turkey. In the interior provinces it has been the common belief that women cannot learn to read under the most favourable circumstances; in intellectual ability it was customary to class them with animals. Not infrequently in conversation with men of the last generation the statement would be made that a girl could no more learn to read than a donkey, and at any rate, of what possible use in the world could a reading woman be? It was often asserted that, if women learned to read, the whole fabric of Turkish society would be overturned, since they would become independent, would be liable to talk back when beaten by their husbands, and make trouble for the family and the community. It was the general opinion that it was safer to leave women in ignorance, even if the point should be conceded that they were capable of learning anything under the most favourable conditions.
The first missionaries who went into the country fought these theories down, largely by hiring girls to attend school in order to demonstrate the fact that they can learn to read. The girls of Turkey are as bright as those of any country, and generally the languages of Turkey are easier to learn than English, so that in every case the missionary won. He was careful to select bright girls for the tests, and in no instance was there a failure. They demonstrated that it was possible for a girl to learn to read and that in very quick time. A little group of ten girls was gathered into a school in Sivas away back in 1864, and from that time to this the education of this sex has not been neglected. In two years that little school had thirty-two pupils. It became so popular that the Armenian bishop twice anathematized the school and its teachers, but that only tended to advertise it and the number of pupils rapidly increased.
The present High School for Girls, which had only four pupils in 1874 and was located in an old native house, has attained extensive influence and power, not only through the pupils themselves, but through the five hundred and sixty girls in various other schools in the city, all of which are affiliated with this high school, and those in other cities, like Gurum, Tokat, Divrik, Endires, Zara, etc., where all the teachers are its graduates. What is perhaps of equal importance is that the Gregorian priests have founded and are now carrying on similar schools for girls in many of the centres of population in the vilayet, in which the American methods have been adopted, American courses are taught, and American ideas about the education of women are accepted and are in practical operation. This recognition of missionary methods is as sincere as it is general; an imitation is the most genuine endorsement.
In addition to the medical and educational work it has been necessary for the American missionaries, especially in the interior towns of Turkey, during the last fifteen years, to open orphanages for the accommodation of the great number of children that have been left wholly destitute by the frequent massacres. This began in 1895, at the time of the great massacres which swept over so much of the Turkish Empire, when more than three hundred children were gathered into an orphanage in Sivas. Our missionaries were aided by helpers sent out from Switzerland under a Swiss committee, so that the work has become international in its character. These children have been given comfortable Christian homes and a modern education. It became necessary to introduce many forms of industry for them that they might not be idle and to enable them to bear at least a part of the expense of their support and schooling. Later this work was enlarged somewhat to include relief for widows.
As missionary enterprises, all these lines of work are connected with general Christian instruction in no way hostile to the belief and thoughts of the people. The instruction given has been constructive and helpful rather than destructive and combative.
Trebizond is the terminus of the northern caravan route from Persia, and about 30 per cent. of the commerce of the city is carried back and forth on camels. The road over which the caravans travel is the same that Xenophon followed in the retreat of the “Ten Thousand,” and it has been kept in fairly good condition all these centuries, although it is scarcely fit for vehicles. In former years about twenty thousand camels arrived annually at Trebizond, each carrying from four hundred to five hundred pounds. So much of the trade has been diverted through the Caucasus by the new Russian road from Teheran to Rescht and the railway through the Caucasus, that not more than eight thousand to ten thousand camels are employed at present.
The distances between the principal points along the caravan route are as follows:
| Miles | |
| From Trebizond to Erzroom | 198 |
| Erzroom to the Persian frontier | 156 |
| Persian frontier to Tabriz | 162 |
| Tabriz to Teheran | 344 |
| Total distance from Trebizond to Teheran | 860 |
The caravans usually take sixty days for the journey each way, twenty-four days from Trebizond to the frontier and thirty-six days from the frontier to Teheran.
Formerly travellers for Teheran used to go that way and made the journey upon swift-moving camels in about twenty days. The route to Persia via the steamers on the Black Sea to Batoum, the railway across the Caucasus, and steamers on the Caspian Sea is quicker, shorter, and cheaper, and hence the trade goes that way.