TriJKKY. 





,11. being upheld by repeated votes of confi- 

 dence from the Council of the Armenian nation. 

 Throughout the spring and summer agents of tlie 

 Iluntfhak were arrested in Constantinople, some in 

 the aet of smuggling arms into the country. Num- 

 bers of other Armenians were arrested and sent 

 into exile or deported often in chains to Asia Minor. 

 The United States minister raised the question of 

 the rights of naturalized American Armenians in 

 the case of nine such who were arroled, but the 

 Turkish Government held firmly to the doctrine of 

 natural allegiance, and denied that the capitula- 

 tions applied to persons of Turkish birth unless 

 their naturalization in another country had been 

 formally recognized. The right of Armenians in 

 the United States to have their families sent out 

 was also denied. The Armenian revolutionary 

 committees made demands for money upon rich 



to repress disorders. In Au^ii<t tin- rillagl 1 >.f the 



districts of Ha-hkalc. inthevil.-, 



st roved by the Kurds wherever the inhubi- 



Armenians or Assyrian Christians, iv: 



their religion. Matthia- Izmirlian, the 



Patriarch, at la-i resigned on ing. 5,and .M 



gnor Bartolomeos was app nil the oil; 



Inruin fcni-nx until the elecl ion 



National Council. The new Council of the I' 



ai'chate prayed the Suitan to grant amnesty to all 



Armenians not accused of acts of violence, an*: 



that the whole Armenian nation might ! 



the arrears of the military tax and from 



payment of the tax for the next th: The 



Sultan granted this petition and promised am: 



to all excepting active revolutionists. 



Revolutionary Outbreak at Van. The Kurds 

 committed so many outrages between Antioch and 



CONSTANTINOPLE, FROM THE HEIGUTS OF EYUB. 



Armenians of Constantinople, which some paid, 

 while others left the country to escape the threat- 

 ened penalties. In the arrangement secured 

 through the mediation of the foreign consuls the 

 Turkish Government promised to appoint a Chris- 

 tian governor at Zeitun. Instead of doing so the 

 Sultan named a Turk as temporary administrator, 

 and for many months he refused, in spite of the 

 protests of the ambassadors, to appoint a Chris- 

 tian for fear of arousing the passions of the Mussul- 

 man inhabitants of the district. Massacres oc- 

 curred in Ordu on July 20. Serious disturbances 

 took place at Niksar. in the vilayet of Sivas. during 

 which 840 Armenians and 60 'Turks were killed. 

 These were attributed to the revolutionary Arme- 

 nians, whose leaders were arrested. The Sultan is- 

 sued an order to hold the members of the Council of 

 the Armenian Patriarchate personally responsible 

 for any disorders that might be provoked by Ar- 

 menians either in the capital or in the provinces. 

 The councilors repudiated the responsibility, which, 

 they said, devolved upon those who had the power 



VOL. xxxvi. 47 A 



Lake Van that troops were sent to that part of 

 Asia Minor to hold them in check and also to 

 guard against the revolutionary designs furthered 

 by foreign emissaries in Van. The revolutionists 

 of that city, who had murdered the bishop some 

 time before, circulated rumors in the middle of 

 June of an intended Kurdish raid on the city. On 

 June 14 the pretext for a riot arose from the arrest 

 of an Armenian girl upon whom seditious docu- 

 ments were found. Immediately afterward several 

 agitators attacked by surprise a squad of soldiers 

 who were patrolling the town, seriously wounding 

 the officer. The next day a mob of Turks ami 

 Kurds burned and pillaged several houses, and 

 street fights took place in which 50 were killed on 

 both sides. The Armenian shopkeepers barricaded, 

 and with the magazine rilles that the revolutionists 

 had supplied fired upon the Mohammedans and 

 the imperial troops. The disturbances were re- 

 newed the next day. and the Kurdish tribes from 

 the neighboring districts began to come in. and 

 surrounded the town to the number of 11,000, mad 



