BETWEEN MASSACRES IN VAN 



181 



wonderful aggregations of gas or micro- 

 scopic dust. Look on a winter's night 

 at Orion. Between Betelguese and Rigel 

 is his belt, and suspended from this belt 

 his sword. The central star of this 

 sword appears to the naked eye as merely 

 a fuzzy little fellow that might be passed 

 over without thought. 



THE INUTTERABLE GREATNESS OE THE 

 NEBUL-E 



But train a big telescope on it and in- 

 stead you see the most magnificent nebula 

 in the heavens. Its diameter is thought 

 to be twenty million times as great as that 

 of our sun. Even if its density were as 

 much more attenuated than air, as air is 

 lighter than lead, it would still be, ac- 

 cording to figures suggested by Professor 

 Moulton, as much heavier than the sun as 

 the great Pyramid of Cheops is heavier 

 than one-tenth of an avoirdupois grain 

 (see page 175). 



Of such attenuated material as this 

 are worlds called into being under laws 

 made in the beginning. How many 

 worlds have met, and are meeting, the 

 description, "the earth was without form 

 and void'' ! And from such new-born 

 worlds, with their blazing white light, of 

 which Rigel is a type, down through the 

 bluish white of which Sirius is a repre- 

 sentative, and then through the yellow, 

 like our sun and Procyon and Arcturus, 



to the red ones, like 19 Piscum, and again 

 to those that are black and eclipse their 

 brighter neighbors in the variable stars, 

 we run the gamut of star life, with here 

 mewling infancy, there gay youth, else- 

 where sturdy manhood and ripe age. And 

 in the end come dead suns, derelicts in 

 the ocean of space. 



When the sweet singer of Israel sang 

 that "the heavens declare the glory of 

 God and the firmament sheweth His 

 handiwork," he had never seen more 

 than five thousand stars. With the lat- 

 est Mount Wilson reflector three hundred 

 million will write themselves upon the 

 photographic plate. 



in david's time and ours 



What in David's time and with the 

 naked eye were only gems to render a 

 sky more beautiful and wondrous for 

 mundane dwellers, are revealed, through 

 such powerful instruments, as worlds and 

 systems, immeasurably distant the one 

 from the other, but each and all actuated 

 by laws so all-pervading that they apply 

 alike to infinitesimal and to infinite, so en- 

 during that they survive all wreck and 

 change, so powerful that all things created 

 are controlled by them, and yet simple 

 enough that with patient endeavor the as- 

 tronomer and the chemist and the physi- 

 cist are learning their principles one by 

 one. 



BETWEEN MASSACRES IN VAN 



By Maynard Owen Williams 



THE scene is Van, historic capital 

 of Armenia, whose antiquity is 

 proven by the inscriptions of the 

 conquering kings of many tribes carved 

 in Castle Rock. 



Tragedy is depicted in each ruined 

 home, but the background is one of strik- 

 ing charm. To the left, or southwest, 

 there lies the majestic line of snow moun- 

 tains which separate Armenia from the 

 Tigris Valley. 



Before us are the peculiarly lovely 

 waters of the lake of Van, with Nimrud's 

 cratered peak showing hazily forty miles 

 awav. A little to the north, one sees the 



graceful cone of Sipan, where the ark of 

 Noah first sought rest, only to have this 

 hoary-headed mountain resign its fame 

 to mightier Ararat, still farther north. 



To the right — a ribbon of dark brown 

 across the snow expanse — there runs the 

 road of the retreats, the way that leads 

 to the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 



My part has been building barracks out 

 of fire-scarred mud shells, where once 

 choice carpets and silk hangings gave a 

 touch of Oriental luxury to a city of 

 beautiful homes and green gardens, and 

 providing work through which proud 

 women could earn bread. 



