ing places. It is, therefore, necessary to go to the expense of hiring government guards, and to burden oneself with all articles likely to be needed on the way, tents, food supplies, cooking utensils, beds, etc., which also imply cooks, baggage horses, and grooms. Thus equipped, it is possible, after obtaining the necessary government permits, often a matter of vexatious delay, to move about the country. The ordinary rate is from twenty to thirty miles a day. With a good horse and no baggage I have gone three hundred and fifty miles, from Harpoot to Van, in eight days, but that was quite exceptional. In spring, swollen streams and mud, in summer, oppressive heat, and in winter storms are serious impediments. In the neighborhood of Bitlis the telegraph poles are often buried, and horses cannot be taken out of the stables on account of the snow. The mails are sometimes weeks behind, both in arriving and departing, and even Turkish lightning seems to crawl sluggishly along the wires. Turkish Armenia-by the way, "Armenia" is a name prohibited in Turkey-is a large plateau quadrangular in shape, and sixty thousand square miles in area, about the size of Iowa. It is bounded on the north by the Russian frontier, a line from the Black Sea to Mount

Ararat, by Persia on the east, the Mesopotamian plain on the south, and Asia Minor on the west. It contains about six hundred thousand Armenians, which is only one-fourth the number found in all Turkey. The surface is rough, consisting of valleys and plains from four to six thousand feet above sea level, broken and shut in by bristling peaks and mountain ranges, from ten to seventeen thousand feet high, as in the case of Ararat. Ancient Armenia greatly varied in extent at different epochs, reaching to the Caspian at one time, and even bordering on the Mediterranean Sea during the Crusades. It included the Southern Caucasus, which now contains a large, growing, prosperous and happy Armenian population under the Czar, whose government allows them the free exercise of their ancestral religion, and admits them to many high civil and military positions. The Armenians now number about four million, of whom two million five hundred thousand are in Turkey, one million two hundred and fifty thousand in Russia, one hundred and fifty thousand in Persia and other parts of Asia, one hundred thousand scattered through Europe, and five thousand in the United States.

The scenery, while harsh, owing to the lack of verdure, is on a grand scale. Around the shores of

ARMENIAN FAMILY, BITLIS.

The mineral resources are entirely untouched, because the Turks lack both capital and brains to develop them, and prevent foreigners from doing it lest this might open the door for further European inspection and interference with their methods of administering the country.

All local authority is practically in the hands of the Valis, provincial governors, who are sent from Constantinople to represent the sovereign, and are accountable to him alone. The blind policy which was inaugurated by the present Sultan of dismissing nonMoslems from every branch of public service-post, telegraph, custom-house, internal revenue, engineering and the like-has already been carried out to a large extent all over the empire, and especially in Armenia. The frequent changes in Turkish officials keeps their business in a state of "confusion worse confounded," and incites them to improve their chance to plunder while it lasts. Traces of the relatively large revenue, wrung from the people, and spent in improvements of service to them, are very hard to find.

THE INHABITANTS.

Probably one-half of the population of Turkish Armenia is Mohammedan, composed of Turks and Kurds. The former are mostly found in and near the

REBELS WHO WOULD NOT PAY TAXES.

of them go a great ways. They are a race of fine possibilities, as shown in the case of Saladin. But at present they resemble packs of human wolvesactive, cruel, proud, treacherous, and still calling themselves "lords of the mountains," though the Turks have largely broken their power and spirit during the past fifty years. They keep up a strict tribal relation, owing allegiance to their Sheikhs, some of whom are still strong and rich, and engage in bitter feuds with one another. They could not stand a moment against the Ottoman power if determined to crush and disarm them. But three years ago His Majesty summoned the chiefs to the capital, presented them with decorations, banners, uniforms and military titles, and sent them back to organize their tribes into cavalry regiments, on whom he was pleased to bestow the name "Hamidiéh," after his own. Thus, shrewdly appealing to their pride of race, and winking at their subsequent acts, the Sultan obtained a power eager in time of peace to crush Armenian growth and spirit, and a bulwark that might check, in his opinion, the first waves of the next dreaded Russian invasion.

The Armenians are generally known as being bright, practical, industrious and moral. They are of a very peaceable disposition, and entirely unskilled in the use of arms, the mere possession of which is

a serious crime in the case of Christians, although the Kurds are well equipped with modern rifles and revolvers and always carry them. Their great and fundamental weakness, seen through all their history, is a lack of coherence, arising from their exaggerated individualism. They have the distinction of being the first race who accepted Christianity, this having taken place when King Dertad and his people received baptism in 276 A.D., thirty-seven years before Constantine ventured to issue even the Edict of Toleration. Their martyr roll has grown with every century. The fact that the Armenian stock exists at all to-day, is proof of its wonderful vitality, and excellent quality. For three thousand years Armenia, on account of her location, has been trampled into dust both by devastating armies and by emigrating hordes. She has been the prey of Nebuchadnezzar, Xerxes and Alexander; of the Romans, the Parthians and Persians; of Byzantine, Saracen and Crusader; of Seljuk and Ottoman, and Russian and Kurd.* Through this awful record, the Christian church founded by Gregory, the "Illuminator," has been the one rallying point and source of strength, and this explains the tremendous power of the Cross on the hearts of all, even of the most ignorant peasant. The reader is now in a position to examine evidence as to the

TURKISH SOLDIER, REGULAR."

CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF THE LATE MASSACRE.

The first evidence is from a letter dated September 26, 1894, and written at Bitlis within a few miles of the scene, about ten days after the occurrence:

Troops have been massed in the region of the large plain (Moosh) near us. Some sickness broke out among them which took off two or three victims every few days. I suspect that one reason for placing quarantine was to hinder the information as to what all these troops were about in that region. There seems little doubt that there has been repeated in that region back of Moosh what took place in '77 in Bulgaria. The sickening details are beginning to come in.

This is from another letter written October 3, shortly after, from the same place:

Mr. Halward, the new consul at Van, has gone directly there (to Sassoun), and it is said that other consuls from Erzroom have also been sent to investigate. The

*Lord Byron's estimate: "This oppressed nation has partaken of the proscription and bondage of the Jews and of the Greeks, without the sullenness of the former, or the servility of the latter."

government tried to get the people here to sign an address to the sovereign, expressing satisfaction with this rule, disclaiming sympathy with the Armenians who have "stirred matters up," stating that the thousands slain in Talvoreeg met their just deserts, and that the four outsiders captured should be summarily punished; express ing regret that it has been thought best to send consuls to investigate, and stating that there was no need for their coming. The effect of such papers on foreigners will be much modified when they know the means used to procure them.

Here is an extract from a letter dated Constantinople, October 31, 1894:

We have word from Bitlis that the destruction of life in Sassoun, south of Moosh, was even greater than we supposed. The brief note which has reached us says: "Twenty-seven villages annihilated in Sassoun. Six thousand men, women and children massacred by troops and Kurds." This awful story is only just beginning to be known here, though the massacre took place early in September. The Turks have used infinite pains to prevent the news leaking out, even going to the length of sending back from Trebizond many hundreds from the Moosh region, who had come on this way on business. Some Kurds, having robbed Armenian villages of flocks, the Armenians pursued and tried to recover their property and a fight ensued in which a dozen Kurds were killed. The slain men were "semi-official robbers," i. e., enrolled as troops and armed as such, but not under control. The authorities were telegraphed

here that "Armenians had killed some of the Sultan's troops." The Sultan at once ordered infantry and cavalry to put down

the Armenian rebellion, and they did it, only, not finding any rebellion, they cleared the country so that none should occur in the future.

Another letter, dated Bitlis, October 9, 1894, gives the following details:

Nearly all these things are related here and there by soldiers who participated in the horrible carnage, some of them weeping, claiming that the Kurds did more, and declaring that what they did was to obey orders. Others said that a hundred fell to each of them to dispose of. No compassion was shown to age or sex even by the regular

soldiery,-not even when their victims fell suppliant at their feet. Five to ten thousand met such a fate as even the darkest ages of darkened Africa had hardly witnessed, for there women and tender babes might have at least the chance of a life of slavery, while here womanhood and innocency were but a mockery before the cruel lust that ended its debauch by stabbing to death with the bayonet, while tender babes were impaled with the same weapon on their dead mothers' breasts, or perhaps seized by the hair to have their heads lopped off with the sword. In one place three or four hundred women, after being forced to serve the vile purposes of a merciless soldiery, were hacked to pieces by sword and bayonet in a valley below. In another place, some two hundred, weeping and wailing, begged for compassion, falling at the commander's feet, but the bloodthirsty wretch, after ordering their violation, directed the soldiers to dispatch them in a similar way. In another place some sixty young brides and more attractive girls were crowded into a church, and, after violation, were slaughtered and the gore was seen running out of the church door. In another place a large company under the lead of their priest fell down before them, begging compassion, and averring that they *had had nothing to do with the culprits (?) but all to no purpose, all were killed. In another place proposition Iwas made to several of the more attractive women to change their faith, in which case their lives might be spared. "Why should we deny Christ?" they say: "We are no more than they," pointing to the mangled forms of their husbands and brothers before them, "Kill us too," and they did. Great effort was made to save one-the beauty-but three or four quarreled over her, and she sank down like her sisters. But why prolong the sickening tale? There must be a God in Heaven who will do right in all these matters, or some of us would lose faith. One or more consuls have been ordered that way to investigate. If Christians, instead of Turks, had reported these things in the city of Bitlis, and the region where I

have been touring, the case would be different, but now we are compelled to believe most of it. Another letter says:

The massacre, even as reported by regular soldiers themselves, some of whom admit having disposed of one hundred persons, was most fiendish. Rape, followed by the bayonet. Twenty to thirty villages wholly destroyed; some people burned with kerosene in their own homes. Close on the heels of the report of this massacre has

come

THE SULTAN'S ENDORSEMENT.

Constantinople papers of November 17, in the official column, state: "His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, has sent a special officer to Erzinjiarn, to convey to Zeki Pasha, Commander of the Fourth Army Corps, the decoration of the 'Imtiaz' in brilliants, and four new flags to the Kurdish cavalry regiments."

A well-known American of Constantinople, after thirty-five years' observation and experience with Turks and foreign diplomats, writes me: "The Sultan's act is a sort of insolent challenge to Christendom. Who would dare accuse the man whom His Imperial Majesty thus honors; or tell stories about Kurdish troops whom His Majesty specially commends? Perhaps you will recall the fact that, after the Bulgarian atrocities, the Sultan decorated the Turkish officer who was chiefly responsible. And that act put the Sultan and all his officers out of court, as witnesses."

One who for thirty-nine years has labored in Syria, and whose name would carry, perhaps, more weight than that of any one else, in England or America, and who has personal knowledge of the facts, makes

A HIGHWAY IN ARMENIA.

this statement : "In 1860, twelve thousand Christians were massacred in Damascus and Lebanon, and the only outbreaks occurred where Turkish officers were in command, and had disarmed the Christians before turning the Mohammedans and Druses loose upon them."

Here are three massacres in Turkey, gigantic, unprovoked, officially ordered and approved, occurring at intervals of seventeen years, and hundreds of miles apart. Do they not demonstrate that Mohammedan Turkey is the same, always and everywhere?

THE OFFICIAL PRAYER OF ISLAM

which is used throughout Turkey, and daily repeated in the Cairo "Azhar" University by ten thousand Mohammedan students from all lands, throws a flood of light on the subject. The following translation is from the Arabic :

"I seek refuge with Allah from Satan, the rejeem (the accursed). In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful! O Lord of all Creatures!

O Allah! Destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion! O Allah! Make their children orphans, and defile their abodes, and cause their feet to slip; and give them, and their families, and their households, and their women, and their children, and their relatives by marriage, and their brothers, and their friends, and their possessions, and their race, and their wealth, and their lands, as booty to the moslems, O Lord of all Creatures!"

All who do not accept Mohammed are included among "the infidels" referred to in the prayer.

THE CHRONIC STATE OF ARMENIA.

That the recent outrages are conspicuous by their extent rather than character, the following incident, which came within the writer's own knowledge, on the ground at the time, will show. In June, 1893, four young Armenians and their wives, living only two miles from the city of Van, where the Governor and a large military force reside, were picking herbs on the hill side. They carefully kept together and intended to return before night. They were observed by a band of passing Kurds, who, in broad daylight, fell upon the defenseless party, butchered the young men, and, as to the brides, it is needless to relate further. The villagers going out the next day found the four bodies, not simply dead, but slashed and disfigured almost beyond recognition. They resolved to make a desperate effort to let their wrongs at least be known.

Hastily yoking up four rude ox carts they placed on each the naked remains of one of the victims, with his distracted widow sitting by the side, shorn of her hair in token of dishonor. This gruesome procession soon reached the outskirts of the city, where it was met by soldiers sent to turn it back. The unarmed villagers offer no resistance, but declare their readiness to perish if not heard. The soldiers shrink from extreme measures that might cause trouble among the thirty thousand Armenians of Van, who