592 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



sustain the interests of the tribe. It is estimated that there are 

 from 30,000 to 40,000 of these " favorites of the King." 



In advancing toward the west you cease to see the Turks, and 

 little by little the Kurd element predominates in the villages, for the 

 open regions are left behind to enter the mountain gorges, and it is 

 only in the flat regions suitable for maneuvers of their cavaliy that 

 the men of the steppes are established. The hilly regions favor am- 

 buscades, and the Tartars have no taste for a kind of combat that 

 does not permit an attack from afar, free from much danger, and 

 then to escape at full speed of their horses when a hand-to-hand fight 

 becomes inevitable. The Persians themselves do not at all like expe- 

 ditions into the mountains, and the defiles inspire them with such 

 great terror that the Kurds have been able to preserve their full 

 independence. 



All these peoples, moreover, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Luurs, etc., 

 are the most perfect cowards. War for them consists in pillage; 

 they assassinate, but they do not come to blows. The Turks them- 

 selves, who in other countries under powerful chiefs show such great 

 military qualities, are wretched soldiers under the Persian system. 



In my many journeys I am often placed in perilous situations. On 

 nearly every journey I have been deserted by all my native personnel 

 or else forced to go on with much reduced force rather than to be 

 left alone. My men would tell me " I fear," and I could not under- 

 stand this cowardice on the part of men armed and strong enough 

 for defense. But in studying them and talking with them I finally 

 comprehended their attitude. Fear among these people, who had 

 never been taught courage, is a nervous sensation comparable to 

 vertigo. Fear is not dishonorable in them any more than vertigo 

 is in us, and none of them ever having been taught to banish fear by 

 the will, nor made to understand that on courage depends the life 

 and prosperity of the individual and the community, they give way 

 to fear and frankly confess it. A Persian general who came one 

 day to tell me of a fight between some nomads ended his story with 

 this conclusion : " No ; never have I had such fear of my life." 



At the foot of Mount Ararat, in the angle formed by the two fron- 

 tiers of Russia and Turkey, lies the Territory of Maku. The khans 

 are Kurd nobles. Their capital, Maku, is an agglomeration built 

 beneath an immense rock shelter and of most curious appearance. 

 This very peculiar site has probably always been inhabited ever since 

 man came into these mountains. You see there numerous traces of 

 a small Armenian village, and it is said that cuneiform inscriptions 

 are found which are probably written in an extinct language.^ 



1 This country during tlie Assyrian epoch was part of the Kingdom of Urartu (or 

 de Van) where they spoke a special language, some texts of which are found near 

 Gheuk-tchai (blue lake, Goktcha of the Russians) near Etchmiadzin and as far as 

 Mnkri in Turkestan. 



