ARMENIA AND THE ARMENIANS 



343 



medea. This is a town of narrow streets, 

 paved with great stones and bordered by 

 dark, narrow houses made of the un- 

 slaked brick of the Scriptures, but with 

 the straw much in evidence. The edges of 

 the streets serve as gutters, and the door- 

 steps over them are littered with chil- 

 dren. There is one school-house which 

 is a sort of social center, serving as lec- 

 ture-room or concert hall at need. There 

 is, of course, the square Gregorian 

 Church. There is also a silk mill, and 

 the fields are filled with mulberry trees 

 wherewith to feed the hungry silk- 

 worms. On the edge of the town are an 

 English orphanage, founded after the 

 massacre of 1896, and an American col- 

 lege for boys, the latter being the great 

 center for enlightenment ior the neigh- 

 borhood. The fields are fertile and well 

 tilled, but beyond them rise beautiful 

 hills, whence descend the marauding 

 Kurds to reap where they have not sown. 

 The people are largely agricultural, al- 

 though there are many of them engaged 

 in the intellectual and business interests 

 of the town. The women wear Oriental 

 costumes — bloomers, dark bodices folded 

 across their breasts, hair braided in two 

 or more braids, often dyed with henna, 

 and when on the street a kerchief over 

 the head. Most Christian women in the 

 interior of Turkey find it safer to veil 

 when abroad. In Constantinople the Ar- 

 menian women dress like Europeans, but 

 rather more showily. The men of Bar- 

 dezag dress like the Turks, in loose col- 

 larless coats and the red fez, but in Con- 

 stantinople dress like Europeans. There 

 is considerable intellectual activity in 

 Bardezag, and some noted revolutionaries 

 have gone forth from that town. 



AN ARMENIAN VILLAGE 



An Armenian village of the primitive 

 sort is Chalgara. When an American 

 missionary brought report of this wretch- 

 ed little village, separated from its neigh- 

 bors by the impassable roads, where the 

 people were lost in ignorance and dirt, 

 an Armenian lady, graduate of Constan- 

 tinople College, offered to go and live 

 with them. She took up this hard and 

 disgusting life ; she is teaching the people 

 to read and write, to be industrious and 



honest, to grow vegetables and make 

 clothes, to scrub their houses and say 

 their prayers. Such is the work a con- 

 secrated Armenian can do for her people. 



The best-known Armenian towns are 

 Erzeroum, a fortified town containing 

 interesting remains of the Seljuk Turk 

 rule; Kharput, a little town 4,350 feet 

 above the sea; Bitlis, not far from Van; 

 Van itself, on the beautiful blue lake of 

 the same name ; Diarbekir ; Marash, near 

 stately Mount Tarsus; Tarsus and 

 Adana, in the same district of Cilicia, 

 and Marsovan. In all of these towns the 

 population is partly Christian, partly 

 Moslem, with enough armed Kurds to 

 terrify the Armenians. Over the fron- 

 tier, within Russian Armenia, lie Erivan 

 and Etchmiadzin, with the city of Tiflis, 

 which is largely Armenian. 



One of the great Armenian cities, now 

 but a heap of ruins, was Ani, in Cilicia, 

 which was excavated in the last century 

 and shows traces of a high civilization. 

 Here are to be seen remains of conical- 

 roofed churches and massive walls 40 to 

 50 feet high, flanked by many round 

 towers and protected on two sides by 

 deep gorges. Yellow stone-work, black 

 basalt, decorative sculptures in the 

 churches, rude carvings in the caverns, 

 and faint remains of colored frescoes in- 

 dicate an art development of no mean 

 order. 



bryce's tribute 



James Bryce, in his "Transcaucasia 

 and Ararat," writes of Ani (see p. 331) : 



"These monuments leave no doubt that 

 the Armenian people may be included in 

 the small number of races who show 

 themselves susceptible of the highest cul- 

 ture. They exhibit the Armenians as 

 able and sympathetic intermediaries be- 

 tween the civilization of the Byzantine 

 Empire, with its legacies from that of 

 Rome, and the nations of the East. They 

 testify to the tragic suddenness with 

 which the development of the race was 

 arrested at a time when their capacities 

 thus formed were commencing to bear 

 fruit." 



The city of Ani did not last long. It 

 fell into the hands of the Byzantines and 

 was destroyed not long after. Its fate is 



