There is a café every few yards on every street, where it seemed as if the entire male population were sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. We saw a few nargiles—those long-tubed water pipes which are generally associated with cross-legged Turks—in Constantinople, but did not find one anywhere else. I suppose they are out of style, for all the Turks that we met were smoking cigarettes instead.
Quantities of licorice root are shipped from Samsoun. It grows wild in the mountains. The quality, as well as the value, might be improved by cultivation, but such a thing has never been attempted on a large scale. The sheep upon the mountain sides furnish cargoes of wool, and the cattle we saw grazing in large herds add many hides, but tobacco is the chief article of export from Samsoun, and a boy who voluntarily attached himself to our party and followed us along, chattering as he went, told us that a large establishment surrounded by a high wall belonged to Americans.
How a Turkish lad, who presumably had never been out of his native place, could have identified us as Americans is remarkable, for in Oriental countries, even in China and Japan, the natives are seldom able to distinguish between Uncle Sam and John Bull; but, nevertheless, we acted on the welcome information and soon found three fellow-countrymen representing the American Tobacco Company purely for the purpose of buying cigarette material, and, in 1909, they shipped $397,000 in tobacco from that port alone. There are several other buyers for the American market, but they come and go with the season.
The tobacco produced around Samsoun is light of colour, and of fine flavour, especially suited for cigarettes. There is a great difference in the quality according to the care and cultivation, and the Americans have persuaded a few of the farmers to improve their methods and implements. They told me that twice the present crop might be produced from the same area if half the care and skill were expended upon it that the Cuban planters give to their tobacco. Samsoun expects to be the northern terminus of one of the railways which have been authorized by the Turkish Parliament.
If you will look on your map you will notice that Asia Minor is that part of Turkey which projects into the Mediterranean on the Asiatic side, an almost square peninsula about three hundred miles each way. It is bounded on the north by the Black Sea, on the east by Armenia and Kurdistan, on the south by Syria and the Mediterranean and on the west by the Ægean Sea. The western portion of Asia Minor is called Anatolia. It is densely settled by Turkish farmers who cultivate the ground in a primitive, awkward way, but do not realize more than half the value of their labour; first, because of their primitive tools and instruments and their imperfect cultivation, and, second, because there are no transportation facilities by which they can send their produce to market. There are two railways running into the interior from the Mediterranean coast, furnishing communication for about 10 per cent. of the population. Throughout 90 per cent. of Asia Minor the only way of travelling is on the back of a horse or a donkey and the only facility for moving freight is by caravans of camels, which are slow and very expensive. For these reasons the inhabitants depend to a great extent upon their own resources. They make everything they wear except cotton fabrics and have very little to ship away.
Almost directly south of Samsoun, about a hundred miles, is the Marsovan station of the American Board, first occupied in 1852, and for fifty-eight years the headquarters of missionary work, not only for that important city, but for a wide reach of country, including Samsoun, Amasia, and other important towns. The work has naturally been built up by a process of growth. Little day schools, teaching reading, writing, and spelling in the vernacular, have developed into two great institutions: Anatolia College, with its extensive buildings devoted to the collegiate training of young men, and the Girls’ High and Boarding School, an institution quite by itself, giving nearly the same complete course of study that is given to the young men.
These two schools have ample grounds and are both adding gradually to their large plants. The college for young men will soon have $30,000 worth of new buildings, which amount will erect about eight times as much as in the United States. The girls’ school has completely outgrown its large plant, completed only a few years ago, and is adding substantial new buildings.
The college for boys has in a peculiar way taken hold upon southern Russia. Three or four years ago Russian students began to come across the Black Sea, and have doubled in number every year since. It was feared at first that they might be unruly and disorderly, or perhaps revolutionary in their tendencies, but, quite contrary to expectations, they have proved to be among the most steady, earnest, able students the college has had. Like Robert College, at Constantinople, Anatolia has Greek, Mohammedan, and Armenian students. Greeks are not found in colleges east of Marsovan, to any extent.
The college has also, as a part of its organization, a large medical department with extensive hospitals and a nurses’ training school under the direction of two efficient American physicians, Dr. Jesse K. Marden and Dr. Alden R. Hoover, assisted by a large native medical staff.
Patients come to the hospital at Marsovan from a wide area of country and it is reaching not only the Armenians but the Mohammedan classes. The medical service has an unmeasured influence upon the people of the country and makes an impression which no other form of missionary work can possibly do. The people know when they are ill and want medicines, but they are not often aware when they are ignorant and need educating or are morally in need of spiritual uplift. When they meet with severe accidents, as so frequently occurs in that country, or when they are racked by disease, they quickly learn that relief can be found at the mission hospital at Marsovan, and some means of reaching there is devised. They often go on a rude cart, sometimes upon the back of some animal, or, if they live upon a possible road, in a Turkish araba or hooded “carry-all.” They find their way to the hospital and there receive the kind treatment which belongs to every hospital, but especially to the missionary hospital in a non-Christian land. After treatment, they return to their homes full of enthusiasm and gratitude for what they have seen and received.