TOPOGRAPHY, RACES, RELIGIONS; LANGUAGES AND CUSTOMS. 65 



called. The said queen " had planted delicious gardens in 

 the fertile plain, and which she had watered with a thousand 

 rills," and there she " sought refuge from the intolerable heat 

 of a Mesopotamian summer, returning again on the approach 

 of winter to her palace at Nineveh."* 



I have lived in that delightful plain for more than two 

 months, where I enjoyed the hospitality of Captain Clayton, 

 the then Her Majesty's Consul at Wan, where the well-to-do 

 residents of Wan have villas surrounded with orchards 

 which are watered by numberless rivulets running in all 

 directions. Above the valley to the east of the lake stands 

 an artificial mound called " Tooprac Kalaassee," where I 

 carried on excavations for the British Museum, and found 

 there some interesting Armenian remains which are now 

 amongst the national collections in London. 



Armenia, after forming part of the Assyrian, Median, and 

 Persian Empires, became subject to the Greek kings of 

 tSyria after the defeat of Antiochus the Great in 190 B.C. 

 The Romans afterwards established the kingdom of Armenia, 

 but their power over them was contested in bloody battles 

 by the Parthians. That unhappy country has been the 

 scene of a series of desolating wars ; and yet notwithstand- 

 ing the successive invasions of the Persians and Turks, the 

 Armenians have adhered to the faith of their forefathers. In 

 the beginning of the seventeenth century, Armenia proper 

 was robbed of a large proportion of its inhabitants by the 

 barbarous cruelty of Shah Abbas, who carried off thousands 

 oi Armenian families to Persia, where many of their descend- 

 ants still remain. No nation, with the exception of the Jews, 

 has been more widely dispersed throughout the Avorld. Their 

 merchants are in almost all quarters of the globe where 

 money can be made, and like the Jews, they stick together 

 through adversity or prosperity. They have so far stood 

 firm against the inroad of papal influence, that none of the 

 Roman Catholic Mission have been allowed to have a footing 

 iu Armenia proper, i.e., in the Provinces of Van, Moosh, and 

 Bitlis, but the American Protestant JSIissions have been 

 doing wonderful work amongst them in the way of evan- 

 gelizing in all the above mentioned districts and Asia Minor. 

 The present lamented misfortunes of those poor Armenians 

 in the wholesale slaughter and fiendish treatment by the 

 farocious Turcomans and Coords, of helpless men, women, 



* Layard's Nineveh and its Remains, p. 330. 



